OK, Michael Jordan, all the all the animated characters.
00:00:17
Very fun.
00:00:18
Yes.
00:00:19
Do you remember the little mouse that goes in for approximately 13 seconds
00:00:24
in the film before getting squished by a basketball?
00:00:27
No, I don't remember this at all.
00:00:29
OK, well, the guy who plays Newman on Seinfeld is on the bench and he wants to get
00:00:33
in the game, right?
00:00:34
And they're trying to find a sub because the monster's are destroying everybody.
00:00:39
OK, and they pick this tiny little mouse character whose name is sniffles.
00:00:43
OK, and he's like, really the mouse and the mouse goes in and a very high pitched
00:00:49
voice just starts talking to one of the monster's and won't shut up and then
00:00:54
gets squished by the basketball when the monster has had enough.
00:00:58
That mouse, like I said, is named sniffles.
00:01:01
OK, and was played by the person that we interviewed for focused yesterday.
00:01:06
What?
00:01:07
Yes, her name is Colleen Wainwright.
00:01:10
OK, she's done a lot of cool stuff.
00:01:11
And I just I showed that clip after I got done recording because I was doing my
00:01:17
prep prior to and I started looking at all our projects and found it's the same
00:01:22
person and then found out for a record.
00:01:23
Yeah, she was sniffles in space jam.
00:01:28
So I showed that clip to my kids who all love that movie.
00:01:30
Yep.
00:01:31
And then I'm like, I just interviewed that person and they're like, what?
00:01:35
Mind blown.
00:01:40
That's what that is.
00:01:41
They thought that was the coolest thing ever.
00:01:44
That is pretty cool.
00:01:45
It is pretty solid.
00:01:47
That's that's super fun.
00:01:49
Yeah.
00:01:50
All right.
00:01:51
So enough procrastinating.
00:01:53
I'm procrastinating.
00:01:53
Let's jump in here.
00:01:55
We got lots of follow up items from last time.
00:02:00
It's true.
00:02:01
And most of mine again are not really ones that are going to be completely
00:02:09
actionable.
00:02:09
I'll start with the actionable ones.
00:02:11
First of all, I were the ones that I could actually complete.
00:02:15
But that was basically taking the quiz from Digital Body Language by Erica
00:02:20
Duan.
00:02:21
I did, well, I attempted to do this until I saw what the quiz actually was.
00:02:26
Did you look at this at all?
00:02:28
I didn't even look at it because I knew myself.
00:02:31
I was like, you know, it's a fun thing to aspire to, but I'm not taking this.
00:02:34
This is not a quiz.
00:02:36
This is it takes you to her website where you fill out the form and then you're
00:02:44
supposed to get emailed the link, but you don't.
00:02:47
You get emailed an old link.
00:02:49
So it's like the website was updated, but the rest of the email auto responder was
00:02:56
not.
00:02:56
So it delivers the wrong thing.
00:02:58
I was able to finally figure it out though.
00:03:01
And it's not an interactive quiz at all.
00:03:03
It's literally just a PDF with those little boxes that we saw at the end of the
00:03:07
chapters that you can print off and actually write in.
00:03:09
Sure.
00:03:10
Yeah.
00:03:11
So there was absolutely nothing new with the actual quiz and was pretty
00:03:17
disappointed by that because I enjoyed the book quite a bit, but the quiz was
00:03:22
pretty terrible.
00:03:23
So I printed it off, got access to it, did not actually bother to tabulate any sort
00:03:29
of results because there was nothing to tabulate.
00:03:31
It was just a PDF.
00:03:32
That makes sense.
00:03:33
I suppose if it's the same thing, it's in the book.
00:03:35
Why would I go through the process of doing it again?
00:03:38
I suppose you could do it in the book.
00:03:40
This would at least let you write on it without writing in the book itself.
00:03:43
True.
00:03:43
I suppose that would be the benefit there.
00:03:45
I guess.
00:03:46
Yeah.
00:03:47
I don't know.
00:03:48
Felt a little bit duped.
00:03:49
Oh, well, the other one that really has a.
00:03:53
A, a finish to it is figuring out the norms for communication.
00:03:58
I sort of did this with the one that I had in mind when I listed this action item.
00:04:04
I did think through and kind of codify what are the norms for communicating with
00:04:13
this particular person.
00:04:15
And that was helpful because I basically identified that there are specific days
00:04:21
that I should attempt to communicate something to this person.
00:04:24
And there are specific times of day that I should do that based on the other
00:04:29
responsibilities that they have.
00:04:31
Like I have to get it in front of them at the right time.
00:04:34
That's, you know, it'd be nice if I didn't have to do that, but that's not a huge deal.
00:04:40
And just recognizing where my windows are has made it much easier.
00:04:45
Yeah.
00:04:46
Yeah, I could see that already paying dividends for me.
00:04:49
I just had to do this with, we just had a guy in this morning.
00:04:53
It was helping a spec of potential sound system.
00:04:56
That's an outdoor deal.
00:04:57
And I, I text with them all the time.
00:05:01
We know each other as friends outside of this work relationship.
00:05:04
So it's like, I could text him at just about any time, but this was a work
00:05:09
related thing that I needed to text him about to schedule this.
00:05:12
And it's like, I wrote the text was about ready to hit send and realized it's 730
00:05:17
at night on a Monday night.
00:05:18
I'm like, not going to send this work related thing.
00:05:21
I'll wait till nine o'clock tomorrow morning because I know he starts at about
00:05:24
nine.
00:05:25
So I sent it at like nine 15 the next morning and he got back to me right away.
00:05:28
But I know if I had texted him Monday night, he'd been like, Joe, what are you doing?
00:05:33
Like what?
00:05:33
What?
00:05:34
It's just weird whenever you kind of muddy those lines like that.
00:05:38
So yeah, I appreciate you taking that initiative.
00:05:42
Yeah, timing is everything I'm recognizing and it's really not.
00:05:47
My preferences don't matter.
00:05:50
That's not a like I'm resigned to this, but really the more that I study leadership,
00:05:57
the more I realized that leadership isn't just like some lofty title and you get
00:06:00
all these extra benefits.
00:06:02
It's actually, if you want to become a better leader, you got to be more and more
00:06:06
selfless and it's less and less about you.
00:06:08
Correct.
00:06:10
Yeah.
00:06:10
So I'm okay with that.
00:06:12
The other ones I've got on here before we get to the big one,
00:06:17
eliminate.
00:06:18
I know you're really busy.
00:06:19
I guess you could say I've done that because I haven't used it, but I really
00:06:22
haven't had the opportunity to pull that out of the bag either yet.
00:06:25
So I don't know if this is gone from my vocabulary.
00:06:28
I want it to be.
00:06:29
I want to ban the mute button and I haven't had an opportunity to do this either.
00:06:35
Just the meetings that I've been in.
00:06:37
Nobody's using the mute button.
00:06:40
There's one team in particular that I know this will come up and I am
00:06:45
hesitantly looking forward to that confrontation because you know me.
00:06:50
I love me some confrontation.
00:06:52
Yep.
00:06:52
But I will, when that happens, ask everyone to unmute.
00:06:57
I did the other day ask everyone to put their computers away when we were in a
00:07:02
meeting.
00:07:03
Well done.
00:07:04
Yep.
00:07:05
Be mindful of whose voices I amplify.
00:07:09
I don't think I've amplified anybody's voice.
00:07:11
The last one.
00:07:12
But I've been thinking about that item specifically.
00:07:17
OK, so I don't, again, I don't really know who specifically I'm going to amplify.
00:07:23
But like I said in the last one, I do want to recognize that I don't want to
00:07:27
just like keep echoing the people just like me who say the same things as me,
00:07:32
which is kind of what happens in the tech community specifically is like somebody
00:07:37
has an article about something, whether it's Mac stories or Jason Snell or whoever.
00:07:43
And then everyone in the circle like writes a blog post and points to it or
00:07:49
retweets it and whatever.
00:07:50
So there's enough other people doing that.
00:07:54
And then the one that everyone came here to find out about, did I keep a procrastination
00:07:59
log?
00:07:59
I did not.
00:08:01
Oh, I've been on sabbatical.
00:08:05
Like Mike until this week.
00:08:07
And then this week I did not keep a procrastination log.
00:08:10
I still think there is some merit to this.
00:08:14
I think it's going to look very different than I had envisioned before we picked
00:08:20
today's book.
00:08:21
But I don't think procrastination is the four letter word that we always thought it
00:08:27
was.
00:08:27
OK, we'll get into that in a minute.
00:08:30
I think it depends on what we're procrastinating on, but exactly, exactly.
00:08:34
All right.
00:08:35
So those are my action items.
00:08:37
You've got to.
00:08:39
Yes.
00:08:39
How'd you do?
00:08:40
The first of those is to compliment in public.
00:08:43
Basically, the gist behind this is that I lead teams of people for running the video
00:08:51
production, sound production, live stream stuff for Sunday morning.
00:08:55
So I've got, I forget what the number is, around 18 different people that work
00:09:01
underneath of me and various things at the church.
00:09:03
And as a result of that, it's very easy for me to kind of just set everything on
00:09:09
autopilot and then just kind of sit back and show up whenever things go bad.
00:09:14
And I don't want to be just the guy that shows up when things are bad.
00:09:18
So I've been trying to make sure I know, right?
00:09:22
If Joe shows up, somebody screwed up.
00:09:23
Like that's generally the way it's perceived currently.
00:09:28
So what I've been doing the last couple of weeks is just whenever events are
00:09:33
when things are happening, if I see something that happened that went really
00:09:37
well, I make sure I go over and find that person and make sure that I'm
00:09:42
thanking them and pointing out and showing what I saw, despite whoever's around.
00:09:48
Like if everybody's around, that's great.
00:09:50
But I want to make sure that it's possible for everybody to see what's happening
00:09:55
there. There have been a couple cases.
00:09:57
Now, the trick with this is this is coming from digital body language, right?
00:10:00
So the idea was this is in the world of email and texts and such.
00:10:06
And one thing that we started to do as a result of this is we're playing around
00:10:15
with the idea and working towards some form of like a review of how did the
00:10:19
week go that goes out Monday morning.
00:10:22
It's like, here are all the good things that happened.
00:10:25
We could make that.
00:10:27
I mean, it's very easy for people to take that and say, Hey, and also here
00:10:30
all the things that went wrong, right?
00:10:31
It's very easy to just kind of throw that underneath.
00:10:34
But I don't want it to be that because if I'm pointing out all the positives,
00:10:39
that gives everyone else something to aspire to as well, who's a part of the team.
00:10:45
So that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
00:10:48
Like, okay, Steve did a really good job at setting up that camera shot.
00:10:53
And I noticed it.
00:10:54
So let's talk about it, talk about why it worked.
00:10:56
And hopefully that will happen more often in the future.
00:11:00
So anyway, been doing that.
00:11:01
Um, I've already received a handful of folks thanking me for doing that who have
00:11:07
noticed it.
00:11:08
So I think it's going to have quite a few positive results from that, but it's also
00:11:14
a chance for me to just notice the good things and not just the bad too.
00:11:17
So it's good on, good on both fronts.
00:11:20
Same thing with kids, right?
00:11:21
If I'm catching when they're doing good things, not necessarily when they're
00:11:24
doing bad things all the time.
00:11:26
So same thing.
00:11:27
Uh, that was the first one.
00:11:28
The second one was to pick up the phone more, which you gave me a chance to do
00:11:31
yesterday and I didn't take it.
00:11:32
And I, I've been good about it outside of Mike calling me.
00:11:38
Yeah, I called Joe yesterday and left a voicemail for the only reason that I
00:11:47
wanted to give him an opportunity to fulfill his action item.
00:11:50
Yeah.
00:11:50
If you did it outside of me, then that's fine.
00:11:52
Yeah.
00:11:53
I did do it a lot outside of you.
00:11:55
There are a handful of places where like we were in the middle of scheduling, uh,
00:12:00
who's going to take care of what Sundays for the next three months.
00:12:03
And normally I would just send out an email, a few text messages and stuff, but
00:12:07
I've been making phone calls all the way around because then it gives me a
00:12:09
chance to figure out like, how can I help you do your job better?
00:12:12
There's some legwork I can do to make it easier for you and trying to ask those
00:12:18
questions at the same time.
00:12:19
I normally wouldn't do that over email or text.
00:12:22
It's just weird to do that, but I'll do it over with phone call.
00:12:25
And, uh, again, I mean, it's, it's had a much bigger impact than I expected.
00:12:30
People are like, Oh, well, yeah, I'm super awkward on the phone, but yeah, this
00:12:34
works.
00:12:34
So there is that side.
00:12:36
Um, but yeah, yesterday was crazy.
00:12:40
Ended up with a migraine and stuff.
00:12:41
So that's why I ended up not catching you.
00:12:44
But yes, I've been picking up the phone more.
00:12:46
Just not when Mike calls, apparently.
00:12:48
That's all right.
00:12:50
Cause as I said in the voicemail, that was literally the only reason that I
00:12:53
called.
00:12:53
So in fact, you texted me right after that and said you were in a meeting.
00:12:57
Can you call me back in about a half an hour?
00:12:59
And I said, you really don't need to just listen to the voicemail.
00:13:02
Sure.
00:13:03
And I never called, never responded, just disappeared.
00:13:06
Yeah.
00:13:08
Cool, cool.
00:13:09
Well, I think it is time to stop procrastinating, even if it is on purpose.
00:13:16
And talk about procrastinating on purpose by Rory Vaden.
00:13:24
Uh, this is a book that has been on my radar for a very long time.
00:13:29
Right after I joined the Asian efficiency team back in the day, Zach
00:13:36
interviewed Rory Vaden for the podcast.
00:13:38
And I think that was around the time that he published this book.
00:13:43
This is his second book.
00:13:45
The first one is take the stairs and there's some competing ideas.
00:13:49
It seems like competing ideas anyways between those two books.
00:13:52
I've read both of them.
00:13:53
They're actually pretty complimentary, but he kind of positions them
00:13:57
against each other just so there's a discussion, I think.
00:14:00
Uh, what did you think about this book?
00:14:03
Did it live up to your maybe negative expectations or were you
00:14:10
pleasantly surprised?
00:14:12
Uh, was it just another systems book?
00:14:15
Like what were you thinking when you picked up this one and started to read it?
00:14:19
When I started to read it, uh, when I started to read it, I felt like I was
00:14:25
going down the, this could be good.
00:14:27
Like I, I think he's going to prove me wrong.
00:14:30
And then as I started going through it, it was like, no, he's going to give me
00:14:34
a system to follow and he's going to tell me to put things off until they
00:14:38
need to be done, which is exactly what I thought he was going to tell me to do.
00:14:41
And like, okay, well, I got what I thought I was going to get for the most part.
00:14:48
Um, I mean, there's some tidbits in here and I'm, I'm kind of itching to go
00:14:53
through these because I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of good points
00:14:56
here and procrastination is one of those points.
00:15:02
But depending on how you want to define this, I'm not certain that the title of
00:15:11
this book fits what is in it.
00:15:13
So that's fair.
00:15:16
I, I feel like the title of the book was designed to get us to buy the book.
00:15:21
That's, I feel like it's one of these clickbaity type titles.
00:15:25
And what's inside of it is good stuff, but it's not what I expected.
00:15:31
Sure.
00:15:32
I think that's completely fair.
00:15:35
At least I should say it's not what I expected.
00:15:37
If I go off the title, it is kind of what I expect.
00:15:41
You get what I'm saying, like it is kind of what I expected.
00:15:44
If you follow Mortimer Adler's approach to reading a book, then you have a different
00:15:49
idea than if you've just read the title.
00:15:52
Yes.
00:15:53
Yes.
00:15:53
Very much.
00:15:54
So it's in line with that approach, but not just from reading the title.
00:15:59
Right.
00:16:00
Right.
00:16:00
I think the title is kind of positioned in a way that I mean, procrastinate is one
00:16:07
of those words that people are always like, Oh, yeah, that's a problem.
00:16:11
I, I struggle with that.
00:16:13
And so it's when I first heard the title, my initial response was he's
00:16:18
basically trying to tell you that you're okay.
00:16:23
You know, you're not, which I kind of appreciate, to be honest.
00:16:28
I think there's a lot of books in the productivity space that are just like
00:16:34
full jocko, you know, lazy you.
00:16:38
You need to just completely change your life by getting up at 4.30 in the morning
00:16:42
every day, you know, yeah.
00:16:45
And Rory, like the title of this book kind of implicit implicitly says, well,
00:16:50
you're not going to eliminate procrastination.
00:16:53
Everybody deals with this.
00:16:54
You're just going to kind of shift it a little bit so it's more positive.
00:16:57
Not exactly what, what, uh, what it's going to do.
00:17:03
But let's jump in here.
00:17:04
There's, there's three sections, obviously.
00:17:07
Surprise, surprise.
00:17:09
It doesn't need to be three sections.
00:17:10
There only needs to be two sections, but maybe one depending on how you can get it.
00:17:15
So the first one is part one, the truth about time.
00:17:19
There are three chapters there.
00:17:21
Then there is part two, the five permissions.
00:17:24
That's where we get into the five steps of his system.
00:17:27
And then part three is literally just one chapter.
00:17:31
And that is part three is the next step.
00:17:34
Chapter nine is the last one that is multiplying your time.
00:17:38
And it's basically just a summary of the stuff in the book.
00:17:44
So let's start with the first section here, though, on the truth about time.
00:17:49
I thought there was actually some pretty cool stuff in here.
00:17:53
The first chapter, what you thought you knew talks about priority dilution,
00:18:00
Parkinson's law, intentional imbalance, a whole bunch of stuff that we've covered before.
00:18:05
The one that I think is most interesting is priority dilution, which is delaying
00:18:10
the day's most important activities by allowing attention to shift to less important
00:18:14
tasks.
00:18:15
And I think every single person on the planet has fallen into this trap where you've got
00:18:22
some things that are important that you're looking to get done.
00:18:24
And then you just go and you check your email and you get sucked into whatever
00:18:28
form of busyness, you know, that procrasto working feels kind of like work can technically
00:18:34
be classified as work, but is really just you trying to avoid the thing that you don't
00:18:40
really want to do.
00:18:41
Right.
00:18:41
You know, so that priority dilution, I like that term.
00:18:45
What did you think about that?
00:18:46
I like it.
00:18:47
It sounds like it came from the other book.
00:18:50
I did not read what's the other one, Take the Stairs.
00:18:53
Um, I should know that because he brought it up.
00:18:55
Yep.
00:18:55
Every other page throughout the whole book, it was one like, why are we
00:18:58
keep talking about this?
00:18:59
Um, it sounds like this is definitely one that you should probably read,
00:19:03
take the stairs first.
00:19:05
Is that fair?
00:19:06
That was better anyways.
00:19:07
Is it?
00:19:08
Okay.
00:19:08
Yeah.
00:19:09
Um, but priority dilution.
00:19:12
I think I like that term a lot because it, it's a good indicator to me that, okay,
00:19:18
these are all the things I forget what the book is, but at one point we talked about how you can't have priorities.
00:19:23
Yep.
00:19:25
Cause it's only the top, like it has to be singular priority.
00:19:29
I think it was essentialism, but he also makes the point here.
00:19:32
I think it's later on that there is only one priority.
00:19:35
Correct.
00:19:35
Yep.
00:19:36
And so anyway, priority dilution, basically you've got too many things and it's easy to lose track of what that priority is.
00:19:46
And I think that's absolutely true.
00:19:50
When you have so many things happening, you have so many potential.
00:19:56
Items that could make it to priority status that it gets difficult to nail down which one it actually is.
00:20:04
And something like priority dilution is a term.
00:20:07
I feel like fits that really well.
00:20:09
So yeah, I like it.
00:20:09
Yeah, I like it too.
00:20:11
I think he nails the pain point here exactly when he says that when suffering from priority dilution, it feels like you fall further behind the harder that you work.
00:20:18
And then also kind of coupled with this is Parkinson's law.
00:20:22
This isn't new, but we've heard this before.
00:20:24
The amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of time that we allow to be available.
00:20:30
He also says on page eight and this kind of sets the stage.
00:20:34
So you're either going to resonate with this and be like, yeah, I want to read the rest or you're instantly going to disengage.
00:20:40
He says, once you own your own problem, you empower yourself to create your own solution.
00:20:46
Now I know you, I know me.
00:20:49
And we probably were like, yeah, go Rory at that point.
00:20:52
But there's a few other people that's going to rub the wrong way.
00:20:56
Yep.
00:20:56
So I like that though, right at the beginning of the book, like drawing the line in the sand.
00:21:02
You're either with me or you again, me.
00:21:03
Yep.
00:21:04
And it's not too far after that.
00:21:05
He makes the point that like there's always more to do than you can do.
00:21:09
Yep.
00:21:09
And like take your pick.
00:21:12
You will always have more options than what you can actually do.
00:21:16
Yep.
00:21:17
And it's like rock on.
00:21:18
You got me.
00:21:19
This is where like part one, like I'm all in.
00:21:21
Like this is not what I thought I was going to get, especially at the beginning.
00:21:24
Like you got me.
00:21:25
Let's go.
00:21:26
Like I'm on board.
00:21:27
Yeah, he does a great job kind of unraveling the problems here with traditional time
00:21:32
management.
00:21:33
And I think he does a great job.
00:21:35
One thing I think it wasn't super effective.
00:21:39
Ha ha, effective is his description of efficiency versus effectiveness.
00:21:44
He adds a tries to add a third dimension, which is efficacy.
00:21:49
And then he tries to take that two by two grid and make it into a cube, which I
00:21:52
think visually just didn't really work for me.
00:21:55
But basically what he's saying is it's not just efficiency or effectiveness.
00:22:00
He defines these terms.
00:22:01
Efficiency is performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least
00:22:05
waste and effort.
00:22:06
Effectiveness is being competent and able to perform well, having a proven capacity,
00:22:11
adequate to accomplish a purpose, productive or capable of producing a result.
00:22:14
Okay.
00:22:16
So those two are great.
00:22:17
But then efficacy, he says, is the quality of being successful in producing that
00:22:21
desired result.
00:22:22
So effectiveness is you're able to produce it.
00:22:25
Effectus efficacy is, did you actually produce it?
00:22:28
I think that's how he would put it.
00:22:30
And then in chapter two, he takes that big rocks analogy that we've heard a thousand
00:22:36
times from Stephen Covey, where you put the rocks in and then you put the gravel
00:22:40
in and then you put the sand in, then you put the water in.
00:22:43
And kind of the point is like, if you don't put the big rocks in first, it's not
00:22:47
going to fit.
00:22:47
And so people take them like, a, I just need to organize all my things better.
00:22:51
But he points out and I kind of have implicitly felt this with that analogy,
00:22:58
especially when I hear other people explain it is like, well, what if you've got
00:23:02
too many rocks?
00:23:03
What if you charge is only so big?
00:23:06
Yeah.
00:23:07
What do you do then?
00:23:08
You know, and he, he says eventually the water is going to overflow.
00:23:13
So time management is trying to fit everything inside of that jar.
00:23:18
And really the self management is deciding what things should go into that jar.
00:23:22
I like that.
00:23:23
Uh, page 25, he says, there is no such thing as time management.
00:23:26
There is only self management.
00:23:28
That's uncomfortable.
00:23:29
Again, going back to his previous quote about how you are the problem and you are
00:23:33
the solution, but I don't think he's wrong here.
00:23:36
I think that's very accurate.
00:23:37
Yeah.
00:23:38
This is, this is one of the pieces that like I'm, I'm very on board with you.
00:23:43
Here, I've never, I feel like I've never been good at time management to use that term.
00:23:51
Uh, just ask my wife.
00:23:52
She thinks I'm horrible at it and I am.
00:23:54
And this is kind of a slap in the face in that like, sure, time management.
00:24:02
Great.
00:24:02
But it's actually, you're not good at managing yourself.
00:24:05
So if you're bad at time management, it's just you're making bad choices.
00:24:10
That's what he's getting at.
00:24:12
And like that, okay, I put the book down at that point to be completely up front with you.
00:24:19
Like, all right.
00:24:20
I, how do I?
00:24:23
Mm.
00:24:24
Hmm.
00:24:25
I don't like you right now, but we're not friends anymore.
00:24:28
We are not friends, but you're right.
00:24:31
And I am going to continue reading this because now I need to know, like you've
00:24:34
set the problem up very well.
00:24:36
You have identified the problem that I deal with extremely, painfully, clearly.
00:24:42
And now I need it solved.
00:24:44
So please tell me what comes next.
00:24:45
And that's, I mean, he set that up really well, but yes, he, he spoke to my heart at that point, which ultimately, I mean, on that topic real quickly, that's really what you want, even though it's uncomfortable.
00:24:59
You want someone who will show you your blind spots.
00:25:04
That's why people hire coaches.
00:25:05
You know, it's not just that they can tell them, Hey, you're doing a great job and be a cheerleader all the time.
00:25:11
They want to know what they're doing wrong so they can fix it.
00:25:15
Right.
00:25:15
So that is what a true friend does is they, they maybe say it nicely, but they, they'll knock it off.
00:25:21
I noticed you're doing this thing and it's going to hurt you.
00:25:24
Yes.
00:25:25
Yes.
00:25:26
At least you hope they would point it out.
00:25:27
That's for sure.
00:25:28
Yeah.
00:25:28
Uh, then the last chapter in this section is called multiplying your time.
00:25:33
This sets up the model for this system because he's basically saying like there are really successful people who function.
00:25:41
Differently.
00:25:42
And what they have done is they have learned to multiply their time.
00:25:46
Uh, just as time management has limitations, so does prioritizing.
00:25:51
You can only put things in the proper order so much.
00:25:54
Eventually you got to do the things and you got to cut out the ones that really don't matter.
00:25:59
So you go back to that.
00:26:00
Covey quadrant, you know, what is important?
00:26:03
What is urgent?
00:26:04
And urgency, he defines as how soon does this matter?
00:26:09
Important, he defines as how much does this matter?
00:26:12
And then he tries to add a third one, significance, which is how long is this going to matter?
00:26:17
That was interesting.
00:26:19
I never thought of it that way.
00:26:21
I guess I kind of bundled that into the important.
00:26:24
Uh, column whenever I would try to rank these things, I'm not sure how helpful that would be to break out a separate, a separate access, you know, and decide as I'm doing things.
00:26:37
Is this something that's going to matter five years from now?
00:26:41
Or is it not only going to matter for the next, you know, five minutes?
00:26:44
I could see that being valuable, being weighed into the equation.
00:26:48
I'm not really sure that this works for me, though, the three dimensional grid.
00:26:53
I feel like the third dimension, it makes it, it makes it harder to nail down what to do because it, it by adding the third dimension, it automatically.
00:27:08
Is it doubling or is it tripling the number of options in that whole quadrant?
00:27:13
Because it's no longer a quadrant, right?
00:27:15
Yeah, I don't know.
00:27:17
It's significantly more though.
00:27:18
That's for sure.
00:27:19
Yeah, it's possible combinations you're talking about, right?
00:27:22
Yeah, I think it doubles it.
00:27:23
I think those are the way that works.
00:27:24
So it goes from four to eight.
00:27:26
And when you do that, it's now outside the realm of you being able to process that mentally.
00:27:35
For most people, I mean, generally speaking, trying to sort through eight categories in your mind.
00:27:41
To figure out where something fits in the month's eight categories.
00:27:45
I feel like four is already like towards the limit.
00:27:48
Three is kind of where you need to be.
00:27:50
But that said, having the third dimension and processing, like, okay, how urgent is this, how important is it?
00:27:59
And then also, how significant is this? If I'm looking at, say, 30 years out from right now,
00:28:05
is this worth?
00:28:07
And there's some numbers and stuff we can talk about later about how to calculate some of that.
00:28:11
But 30 years from now, how significant will this be to me?
00:28:17
And using that as a gauge to decide what you should be doing.
00:28:22
It's a really cool idea.
00:28:26
I just don't know. I feel like it's kind of shoehorned into this whole matrix quadrant setup.
00:28:34
And I'm like, well, okay, sure.
00:28:36
That part, I'm probably not going to use the whole three-dimensional cube bit.
00:28:41
But the concept of significance on top of urgent and important that I resonate with,
00:28:46
that part I would probably use.
00:28:48
Yeah, because he mentions that the significance that helps work against priority
00:28:54
dilution. And I 100% agree with that.
00:28:57
He also, the main point that he's making in this chapter is that multipliers make decisions based
00:29:06
on the future.
00:29:08
So if you've got all of these things that you have to do, and you don't take into consideration
00:29:13
the significance, and it does this really matter going forward, it's easy to just feel
00:29:21
overwhelmed by all of the things that you have to do.
00:29:24
But then he says here that choosing how to spend your time is emotional, not just logical.
00:29:31
Okay, I agree with that too.
00:29:34
I'm already, I can see how my emotions are already influencing how I am ignoring certain things.
00:29:43
So basically what he's telling me to do is to harness that emotional decision making
00:29:50
and have a bias towards things that matter going forward, not things that matter right now.
00:29:56
Play the long game essentially.
00:29:58
Sure.
00:29:58
And he says that multipliers give themselves emotional permissions that others don't.
00:30:02
I think this is a really cool idea.
00:30:06
If this is the first time that you've stumbled upon that idea, that alone could make this a
00:30:10
five-star book for you.
00:30:12
I also think there's a lot of resistance to this because we've got a course on email,
00:30:17
and I've talked to people and I'm like, you know, you don't have to respond to every single email
00:30:21
that comes in like, yes I do.
00:30:22
Don't you know my boss?
00:30:25
Don't you know my coworkers?
00:30:25
And interestingly, we talked to, I mentioned Colleen Wainwright at the beginning.
00:30:33
She's the lady who did Sniffles for Space Jam, and she manages a team and does it all out of
00:30:37
email, but she's got all these filters set up, which basically bring the things that she needs
00:30:42
to see to the front and everything else is automatically filters out.
00:30:45
And she is, I mean, if there was one person on this planet who can legitimately say,
00:30:50
I work in email all day and I need to see things right away, it's her.
00:30:54
But even she has these systems set up where she's filtering this stuff,
00:30:58
so she doesn't have to do all of that mental load of deciding all these things.
00:31:02
And that's kind of where we talked about that later too.
00:31:05
So sometimes, you know, I start arguing with these people who just are fighting for wasting time
00:31:11
in email, and I'm just like, you know, I'm not going to win this one.
00:31:14
You've already decided like, there is no changing your mind, so I'm just not going to try anymore.
00:31:20
And I do think there's a potential of you getting to that point with this book as well.
00:31:25
So that's fair.
00:31:26
I don't live in my email.
00:31:27
Even people that I work with know you should text Joe, you don't email Joe.
00:31:31
All right, anything else from the first part for we get into the second one here?
00:31:36
I don't think so, because I think the second part is where we're going to spend most of our time.
00:31:39
All right, as we get to go through the five pieces.
00:31:41
Yes, part two is the five permissions, which sounds really nice.
00:31:47
And then there's this graphic.
00:31:49
The five steps here, let's just walk through these.
00:31:52
Eliminate, automate, delegate, procrastinate, and concentrate.
00:31:59
And there is a visual here.
00:32:02
The process is you start with all, you get rid of everything that you
00:32:06
want to, that you shouldn't be doing, eliminate, then you automate all the stuff that you can,
00:32:10
you delegate all the stuff that you can, and then what you end up with is just stuff that
00:32:14
only you can do.
00:32:15
And then you're going to either concentrate on those and you're going to do those now focus,
00:32:19
you know, or you're going to procrastinate on those things and do them later, in which case
00:32:23
you're going to dump them back up into the top of the funnel.
00:32:27
All right, so with that as the backdrop, let's tackle these one at a time starting with
00:32:35
the first one, which is eliminate.
00:32:37
And these are called the five permissions.
00:32:39
This is labeled eliminate, but eliminate is the permission to ignore.
00:32:45
And this is the one that I think if you got nothing else out of the book other than Rory's
00:32:51
saying, hey, you can ignore some stuff.
00:32:54
It's probably got tremendous value for some people.
00:32:57
It's so true.
00:33:00
So true.
00:33:01
He gives a whole bunch of examples of things that we shouldn't be doing,
00:33:05
re-deciding was one that stood out to me.
00:33:07
And if you make a decision, jot down the result of that decision,
00:33:10
take action on it right away.
00:33:11
Don't just say, oh, yeah, I'll do that later.
00:33:13
And then you have to make the decision again later.
00:33:15
That is just a complete waste of time.
00:33:18
And that really just drives me nuts.
00:33:20
He also lists watching TV, mentions the average American, I think,
00:33:23
I think he said American, watches 35 hours of TV a week, something like that.
00:33:28
It's ridiculous.
00:33:33
Eliminate unnecessary meetings, long emails, unnecessary change.
00:33:34
Whole bunch of things here.
00:33:36
And the big revolutionary idea here is say no, either by saying it to somebody who is asking
00:33:46
for your time and attention or just ignoring it.
00:33:51
You know, that's the thing that I got out of reading this, this particular section,
00:33:56
is I don't owe people an explanation when I say no.
00:34:00
Sometimes I do.
00:34:01
If someone is going to ask me to do something face to face, I'm going to say,
00:34:05
no, I'm not going to do that.
00:34:06
I'm not going to hedge and commit.
00:34:09
It was interesting reading digital body language because
00:34:13
talked about how when you ask somebody to do something in certain cultures,
00:34:16
and they say, yes, really what they're saying is I've received your request.
00:34:19
Not yes, I'm going to follow through and actually do it.
00:34:23
So I'm thinking about that when he's talking about how an uncommitted yes is actually a maybe,
00:34:28
how you're always saying no to something.
00:34:30
These are things that we have understood for a while.
00:34:34
But just because you get a request via email doesn't mean that you have to reply to the person,
00:34:41
even if they read your article and they think that you now owe them tech support for life.
00:34:45
Don't ask for tech support.
00:34:49
Just going to say that.
00:34:51
Does happen.
00:34:51
I have to say that.
00:34:52
Does happen.
00:34:53
Just have to say that.
00:34:54
Yes, eliminate say no.
00:34:57
That's the groundbreaking all-encompassing solution here.
00:35:02
I have to just keep in mind, it was written in 2015.
00:35:09
I've been trying to keep my head in this, this was six years ago when it was written, state,
00:35:16
and trying to put the backdrop of what books had been written by that period.
00:35:21
Because a lot of the books that we've covered on Bookworm are actually beyond that.
00:35:26
They're newer than that.
00:35:27
Or significantly older.
00:35:30
Yeah, or way older, yes.
00:35:32
And the concept of saying no to things wasn't even brought up because people didn't take on too much
00:35:38
stuff at the time.
00:35:39
It was kind of a culture beforehand of you only did certain things and you don't say yes to
00:35:45
absolutely everything.
00:35:46
We're too nice now and we don't want to say no.
00:35:49
We're uncomfortable saying no when we used to be a lot more comfortable with it.
00:35:52
And this, I wonder if this is one of,
00:35:56
like I was trying to place the time period when we have had books tell us you need to say no to
00:36:03
things and which of them are some of the early ones in that period.
00:36:07
I don't know if this fits in with the beginning time period.
00:36:10
Like 2015, if that's roughly that time period when those books were starting to say that.
00:36:16
So I don't know if at the time it was a good thing to say reading it today.
00:36:21
Big deal.
00:36:23
We know this.
00:36:25
Tell people no.
00:36:26
We hear people tell it to us all the time.
00:36:30
But do we listen to it?
00:36:31
Sometimes you're probably better at it than me.
00:36:36
To some degree, I can't say no on some things when it's work related.
00:36:41
Hey, guess what?
00:36:42
My computer doesn't print.
00:36:43
Well, I can't say let me put you on the schedule for next week.
00:36:46
No, I'm not allowed to do that.
00:36:50
So it's pretty much drop things and go do it now.
00:36:53
That's the way that my job works and is expected to work.
00:36:57
That's why they pay me.
00:36:59
So there are periods when saying no are good.
00:37:04
There are some things that are nose absolutely every time.
00:37:07
Something I've, I don't think I've mentioned this on Bookworm, but
00:37:12
whenever I started working at the church as a full-time employee with a title of Director of IT,
00:37:18
very shortly after I started getting people calling in to the church saying,
00:37:23
hey, we have a full-time tech person now.
00:37:25
Do you think they could come to my house and help me fix my Wi-Fi network?
00:37:28
I can't seem to get my computer connected to it.
00:37:30
My domain is like the building walls.
00:37:35
It doesn't go outside of that unless the church takes something outside of it intentionally.
00:37:40
Like me going to your house to fix your printer, like how is, no.
00:37:44
So those are things I say no to all the time.
00:37:48
I still get those occasionally.
00:37:51
Anyway, all this to say eliminate, say no to things.
00:37:56
We know this, but sometimes we need the reminder, I suppose.
00:38:01
Yeah.
00:38:01
Now, see, you brought up something, which I want to unpack a little bit because
00:38:06
inherent with the job are these requests which create problems using Roy Vadon's terminology
00:38:15
for you, right?
00:38:16
Yes.
00:38:17
Someone says, I need this fixed right away and you are getting paid to fix that thing,
00:38:23
so you have to fix that thing.
00:38:25
You don't like the fact that they can completely derail your day,
00:38:29
but that comes with the territory, right?
00:38:31
But go back to the beginning of this book where he says that once you own your own problem,
00:38:37
you empower yourself to create your own solution.
00:38:39
So I think Roy's approach to this would be you are volunteering to work at your current position.
00:38:48
So by saying yes to the job, you're saying yes to these other things.
00:38:55
So it's not really a restriction of your ability to say no, just that no is not just a no to that
00:39:03
individual task.
00:39:04
It's probably no to your future employment at your current position, which some people are going to
00:39:12
be so terrified by that, that they're going to field trap like they don't have an option.
00:39:16
But what Rory is trying to do, I think, is help you see that you do have other options.
00:39:23
You can get another job.
00:39:25
You maybe don't want to go through the whole process, right?
00:39:28
And that's completely fine.
00:39:29
I wouldn't want to do that either if I was in that situation.
00:39:32
But that is technically an option that most people are not going to consider.
00:39:38
Correct. One thing to point out here is that whenever you own your problem,
00:39:44
they have a problem.
00:39:46
They bring it to me.
00:39:47
It becomes my problem, right?
00:39:50
And in that particular scenario, take the whole, hey, I can't print scenario, right?
00:39:57
I can own that problem in that that is now a fact finding mission to me.
00:40:04
Because why is it not working?
00:40:07
Is it potentially going to be an issue for someone else?
00:40:10
Is that a bit of information I can use to fix an infrastructure problem so that that
00:40:15
problem doesn't come up again?
00:40:17
Like those are all things that I'm generally processing whenever I'm going to fix those things.
00:40:23
But I think that only happens because I'm in control of and make decisions for how the building
00:40:29
operates from a technology stance.
00:40:31
And I've been empowered to make changes at an infrastructure level
00:40:36
if it will make things better for the overall staff.
00:40:39
So yes, they are coming to me.
00:40:40
It's going to derail whatever it is I'm working on at that time.
00:40:46
But I also know that I've been building, we've talked about some of these other,
00:40:50
how do I set aside time, deep focus, all these deep work, all that stuff.
00:40:55
How do you set aside time to actually do your work?
00:40:59
I've learned that I can set some time aside and shut the door here to this room.
00:41:04
And people will respect that.
00:41:06
So I know that for about an hour a day, I can probably shut that door without
00:41:12
anything major going on.
00:41:13
I have to pick when that hour is going to happen though.
00:41:16
Because if I do that at the same, say I am going to do it from 8.30am to 9.30am.
00:41:23
Okay.
00:41:23
But I know that at nine o'clock there are three groups coming in.
00:41:28
They're going to do different things in different places in the building.
00:41:31
That's not a good idea to do it at that time frame.
00:41:34
Wait until they're about 30 minutes past done.
00:41:38
Because if you do it anywhere and they're like, hey, my computer's not working.
00:41:42
Hey, let us get our tech guy.
00:41:43
He'll come help you.
00:41:44
Well, I'm in the middle of, well, they will open the door at that point.
00:41:48
So anyway, I'll let us say, I can say no to some things, but generally if it's an immediate,
00:41:56
this is broken right now and there's something getting ready to happen, I'll go fix it right now.
00:42:01
But there are cases where someone brings me a computer.
00:42:04
It's got an issue.
00:42:05
Do you need this right now?
00:42:07
And if the answer is no, then generally I'll schedule it for some other time to go fix it.
00:42:14
Yeah.
00:42:14
I think the big takeaway is to control what you can control, say no where you can say no,
00:42:19
but recognize that if you're going to own your situation, really, you have the ability to say no
00:42:25
to the other things.
00:42:26
It's just maybe too uncomfortable for you.
00:42:29
Right.
00:42:30
Right.
00:42:30
And that's the thing that's causing you to stick there.
00:42:34
Next chapter is automate and automate is the permission to invest.
00:42:40
This is where he talks about multipliers math and that is calculating the hidden costs that come
00:42:48
with our decisions.
00:42:49
He says that anything that wastes your time is also a waste of money, which makes me uncomfortable
00:42:57
because I have prescribed to this for a very long time.
00:43:03
And I have recognized that I cannot project that belief to other people that I work with.
00:43:11
And it leads to me being frustrated.
00:43:14
So I need to figure out when and where I can apply that.
00:43:20
But the big principle here in this chapter is really good.
00:43:25
He talks about the rule of 72, which is actually a financial thing.
00:43:30
And for people who aren't familiar with this, basically you divide the interest rate that
00:43:34
you're getting by 72 and you get the number of years that it's going to be required for you to
00:43:38
double your investment.
00:43:39
And when it comes to finances, that's compound interest.
00:43:43
So this is at the heart of like, well, if you just saved $10,000 by the time of your 18,
00:43:48
when you retire, you'll be a millionaire.
00:43:49
You don't have to invest anything else the rest of your life.
00:43:52
That's the power of compound interest as it pertains to financing.
00:43:56
But I think this is a really interesting idea as it pertains to your time.
00:44:01
So investing is multiplying your money and building your army, spending your losing money,
00:44:06
and you're depleting your army when you're borrowing.
00:44:09
You are using your money to build someone else's army.
00:44:12
So basically, how do we apply that to the realm of our time?
00:44:21
And again, he gives a whole bunch of examples of things that you could automate.
00:44:25
This kind of leads into the next chapter delegate, but I don't want to go there quite yet.
00:44:33
So with automating, I think we're really just talking about systems, machines, computers,
00:44:41
things like that.
00:44:42
In fact, he says that a company can never outgrow the strength of its systems in this chapter.
00:44:47
So that's kind of the backdrop for this.
00:44:50
Anything you create a process for today can save you time tomorrow.
00:44:54
He and Sam Carpenter would probably be pretty good friends.
00:44:57
Just to let me read off some of the examples that he has here.
00:45:03
Just so you can get an idea of where he's taking it.
00:45:06
I feel like you and I, when I see the term automate, my brain immediately goes to things like
00:45:12
Siri shortcuts and writing scripts and plugins.
00:45:16
That's where my brain goes to.
00:45:18
Yeah, tech expanders, Zapier, Alfred, you name it.
00:45:21
These are all the tools, keyboard, maestro.
00:45:23
These are where my brain goes, but this is what he's talking about.
00:45:27
FAQs.
00:45:28
So if you're a company writing FAQs can help save you time later, I use these things all the time.
00:45:34
So when companies have an FAQ, it's one of the first places I go just to figure out
00:45:39
more information about the site.
00:45:40
So anyway, FAQs, disorganized recreation and basically it's recreating things that already exist
00:45:50
because there's no way to know if it already exists or not.
00:45:53
So making things clear.
00:45:54
So standard operating procedures.
00:45:56
Yes, SOPs.
00:45:57
Online bill pay, so it's easier to pay things.
00:46:00
Data backup sync, neat receipts, it's a specific thing.
00:46:05
But anyway, social media management, past client, follow up, online learning, talk tracks.
00:46:12
It's kind of like FAQs, but internal.
00:46:16
You got to understand where he's coming from with this because he is one of the people behind
00:46:22
Southwestern consulting, I believe.
00:46:24
He talks about how when he was starting off, and there's a bunch of really big names that have
00:46:30
come from this consulting firm, but they basically sell things.
00:46:34
And if you hustle as a salesperson, you will sell a lot of product and you'll get paid a lot
00:46:41
because it's all commission based.
00:46:42
And if you do nothing, you won't get paid anything because it's all commission based.
00:46:46
So talk tracks for salespeople help you learn the ropes and can help train you to deliver a pitch
00:46:57
well.
00:46:58
When I say this and the customer responds with that, then I know that I should take the conversation
00:47:03
in this direction.
00:47:04
Yep.
00:47:05
So talk tracks and then drop shipping is the last one he has here.
00:47:08
But he does give some other examples where you can zoom out and such and see things at a higher
00:47:15
level.
00:47:15
But again, I don't think that the scripting and automation zapier world of tools is out of line.
00:47:24
That's just not where he's going with it because that's not his background.
00:47:28
Sure, yep.
00:47:29
That and again, 2015, I'm not sure how much of that stuff would have been so prevalent as it is now.
00:47:35
Now, I'm speaking about it.
00:47:36
Well, he definitely used his infusion soft.
00:47:39
Yes.
00:47:40
Yeah, I'm saying that.
00:47:41
But again, it's six years ago, but I also know that like the whole world of automation has just
00:47:46
exploded in recent years.
00:47:47
So there's that.
00:47:49
Yeah.
00:47:49
He mentions in this chapter that the goal is to eliminate think time.
00:47:54
And that, I think you can apply a lot of different ways.
00:47:59
And I think that's a good definition where nerds like us are going to naturally take it to
00:48:05
like computer based automation because if I'm going to type the same thing over and over again,
00:48:11
I can spend mental resources thinking about the words, making sure I don't miss spell anything,
00:48:17
checking all the links, or I can create a text expander snippet so that I never have to use that
00:48:21
think time whenever I have to use send that email or whatever, you know.
00:48:26
So it's very much in line though, like I see the same thing popping up over and over and over again.
00:48:32
What can I do to make this easier so I don't have to think about it?
00:48:36
Whether that be setting up my clothes the night before, creating a talk track for my sales team,
00:48:41
so I have to answer a whole bunch of questions, whatever.
00:48:44
Yes.
00:48:44
Automate.
00:48:46
Very fun.
00:48:47
So fun.
00:48:48
There's a whole podcast on it.
00:48:49
It's true.
00:48:51
It's good podcast.
00:48:52
Rosemary Orchards and David Sparks.
00:48:55
There's a lot from that podcast.
00:48:57
Next one is delegate, which is very related, I think.
00:49:01
In fact, when I first started reading this, I forgot at that point where the things were in
00:49:07
the funnel.
00:49:08
I started to think about automating as working with an assistant and offloading specific tasks,
00:49:16
which I am doing now.
00:49:17
But that is actually something different.
00:49:19
That is delegation.
00:49:20
Delegate is the permission to be imperfect.
00:49:24
And I get why this is its own separate thing, because this is exactly what I struggle with.
00:49:28
No one can do it as well as I can do it.
00:49:30
No one's going to be as careful as I am going to be, which is not necessarily a problem.
00:49:37
Rory is saying, and I think he's right.
00:49:40
Well, I know he's right.
00:49:42
I'm inspired after reading this book to delegate more things with the understanding that it is
00:49:50
not going to be perfect and that is going to be okay.
00:49:53
It's not going to be exactly the way that I would have done it, but that doesn't mean
00:49:57
that it's a task that I should own.
00:50:00
Doesn't mean that it requires my unique skill set.
00:50:04
Two reasons we don't delegate money and perfection.
00:50:08
And perfection, I think, is the big one for me.
00:50:13
He talks about all the different roles in the business of you, which I thought was interesting,
00:50:18
because I think you can go through this and kind of think,
00:50:21
like, oh, well, that's great for Rory.
00:50:23
Obviously, he's got a company, a whole bunch of people.
00:50:25
He's got assistance that he can delegate stuff to, but it's just me.
00:50:28
And he says, even if it's just you, that you are a business, you are the CEO of your life,
00:50:35
and you operate as office assistant business coach, accountant, bookkeeper, financial planner,
00:50:39
lawyer, whatever.
00:50:40
And recognizing those roles and recognizing which ones you don't really need to be involved with
00:50:47
is important.
00:50:48
And then if you're going to delegate that stuff, then it's worthwhile spending additional time
00:50:54
to get someone else trained up to do it.
00:50:57
This is where the 30x rule comes in.
00:50:59
He says, it's a worthwhile investment as long as you can delegate the task for up to 30 times
00:51:04
the amount of time it would take you to do the task yourself.
00:51:07
It's probably even higher for stuff that happens all the time.
00:51:10
But that's always been the big thing that's held me up is like, well, I know that it's
00:51:16
going to buy back more time, but it feels like even if it takes twice as long, it's like,
00:51:21
I'll just do it myself.
00:51:22
And I got to push back against that and recognize it.
00:51:25
No, no, no, you got to play the long game if you're going to multiply your time and delegate
00:51:29
stuff effectively.
00:51:30
I do this one a lot.
00:51:31
So I have an assistant that works under me at the church.
00:51:37
And whenever I've got like a routine task that happens every single week, which drives me up a
00:51:43
wall, I don't like repetitive things that are the same thing over and over and over again,
00:51:48
where you take this file and you move it over there, you clip the beginning and end and kick it out.
00:51:52
Like that sort of thing, there's no creative thing to that.
00:51:57
It's just a mechanical take this, cut it, move it on.
00:52:00
That stuff drives me up a wall.
00:52:02
So he's really good at that.
00:52:05
He likes doing some of that stuff.
00:52:07
So it's like, perfect.
00:52:08
So here's where the steps and what I have found is in the span of a few months since he's been,
00:52:16
I suppose it's been about six months now, since he's been working here, I've moved a lot over to him.
00:52:23
And it's freed me up to do a lot of these longer term projects, the ones I like doing.
00:52:29
And the amount of time I've gotten back versus the amount of time I've put into it is not 30.
00:52:37
Like I haven't put 30 times into it.
00:52:38
I've maybe put four, five into it.
00:52:41
Like it's not done as well, takes him a lot longer, but who cares?
00:52:45
It's off my plate.
00:52:46
Like he can take longer.
00:52:47
It's fine.
00:52:48
It doesn't matter.
00:52:49
And I can still check up on it every other week or so to make sure it's happening correctly.
00:52:54
And it takes me 30 seconds to check it when it would have taken me four hours to do all of that stuff.
00:52:59
So that was well worth it to me, but that's still a way better return than 30 times.
00:53:08
So it tells me having read this, like, okay, if 30 times, if it's a five minute task,
00:53:14
and I can spend 150 minutes training someone to do that five minute task,
00:53:19
it saves me.
00:53:20
What was the number?
00:53:21
1100 minutes in a year is what that stands.
00:53:25
Whatever the example was.
00:53:27
That makes a lot of sense.
00:53:30
I should probably do that.
00:53:33
It makes me like wonder what are the other small things or even bigger things that I could easily put
00:53:40
30 times the amount of energy into
00:53:44
training someone to do a task instead of me doing it.
00:53:50
Like that, there's a lot of stuff I could put on that list for sure.
00:53:53
And probably should.
00:53:55
Yeah, me too, which is where one of my action items comes in is two.
00:54:03
Figure out what I'm going to delegate to my assistant.
00:54:07
Yeah.
00:54:08
And then bite the bullet and spend the time, create the processes, even though it's going to take me a lot longer.
00:54:16
Set it up so I don't have to do it over and over and over again.
00:54:20
This particular chapter probably inspired me the most out of everything in this book.
00:54:27
But that's again just because the timing is kind of perfect for me getting my
00:54:31
feet wet with the virtual assistant.
00:54:34
So cool.
00:54:35
All right.
00:54:36
Next one, chapter seven.
00:54:37
We are now out of the funnel.
00:54:40
This is where we procrastinate.
00:54:43
And procrastination is the permission to be incomplete.
00:54:49
And this one is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul.
00:54:55
I want things to be complete.
00:54:59
I want things to be done.
00:55:01
I want all the boxes checked.
00:55:02
But yeah, I understand where he's coming from here.
00:55:08
The key question for fishermen, he says, because fishing is about timing.
00:55:18
It's not about doing the right thing and doing it a certain quantity.
00:55:26
You could have perfect casting form and be out on the lake eight hours a day casting perfectly.
00:55:33
If you're not in the right spot at the right time, you're not going to catch any fish,
00:55:38
which I'm not really an outdoorsy type of guy.
00:55:44
I don't really enjoy fishing, but that particular metaphor, I guess, really kind of spoke to me.
00:55:54
Maybe because I've been out on the boat board before.
00:55:58
Sure.
00:55:59
I was like, I don't really want to be here.
00:56:00
What if this could be easy?
00:56:01
Why am I here?
00:56:05
There are no fish.
00:56:07
Why am I throwing this in the water and pulling it back in?
00:56:09
I don't understand.
00:56:10
Exactly.
00:56:11
It's the most useless thing I could be doing.
00:56:15
I get it.
00:56:17
That's not why people do it, but yeah, just not my thing.
00:56:22
So timing matters and a multiplier knows that it's not about what or how, but about when.
00:56:28
If you go into your task list thinking about is now the right time to be doing these things,
00:56:34
I totally get where he's coming from when the way he's defining procrastination.
00:56:40
The typical way of people define procrastination, where you just are unconsciously putting something
00:56:46
off.
00:56:46
You're unconsciously delaying something because you're not looking forward to it.
00:56:50
But related to that is patience, which is intentionally delaying something because we
00:56:55
determine that the timing is wrong.
00:56:57
And then it goes into these gun slingers versus worry warts, which hit way too close to home.
00:57:05
I have a picture of this in the Mind Node file, but the worry warts, they risk acting too soon,
00:57:18
and there's unexpected change costs.
00:57:20
I had this happen with me when I was doing screencast for screencast online because
00:57:25
you're supposed to deliver a screencast during this particular week.
00:57:27
They have a new one from the team every single week.
00:57:31
This is the one that I'm going to be doing.
00:57:33
And I tried to get a jump on it one time, and I did one for Spark, the email client for MacOS.
00:57:39
And then I recorded it ahead of time.
00:57:40
I had it all edited.
00:57:41
It was completely done.
00:57:42
And then they completely changed the interface like a week before my due date.
00:57:47
And at that point, I've got to redo the whole thing.
00:57:49
So that was acting too soon.
00:57:51
On the other side, you can wait too long.
00:57:54
And then there's all of the after last minute costs, which I thought was interesting because
00:57:59
last minute is actually the ideal time to do something.
00:58:05
The problem is we view last minute as like the second before the thing goes public,
00:58:10
as opposed to the second before this thing could be put into the system.
00:58:15
And it could be published without any additional stress or anxiety coming from a creator's perspective.
00:58:21
So that was interesting to me.
00:58:23
Like last minute really doesn't mean what I think of as last minute.
00:58:28
There's a last minute prior to what I would consider to be the last minute.
00:58:32
And that is the ideal moment that I should be doing things.
00:58:36
I shouldn't really be trying to get stuff done way ahead of time.
00:58:39
Unless I'm like going on vacation or something and I've got to get stuff done ahead of time.
00:58:43
But just having like a backlog of stuff, just sitting there getting old isn't necessarily a
00:58:47
great solution.
00:58:48
There's one question I have about the section.
00:58:52
Maybe he mentioned it and I missed it and you can correct me here, Mike.
00:58:56
But the question is what happens if there is a deadline and that deadline is self-imposed
00:59:07
and can move if you choose to let it move.
00:59:11
And there's really no ramifications of going late.
00:59:15
Like that's the problem with something like this.
00:59:20
And it's something like I would deal with that.
00:59:22
Yep.
00:59:22
Because it's very easy for me to move it.
00:59:24
And the last minute could easily become a different time frame.
00:59:29
Very easily could become a different time frame.
00:59:34
I think he would say that's okay.
00:59:36
He does say in the section that there is no finish line but there also is no deadline.
00:59:41
So he's not thinking of deadlines like you and I are probably thinking of like content production
00:59:50
deadlines.
00:59:51
We have to publish the episode on Friday at 6am.
00:59:57
He would probably say, well you technically don't have to do that.
01:00:00
You've chosen to do that.
01:00:02
I've chosen to do that.
01:00:03
Yeah.
01:00:04
I remember that was that's one of the things that I was really pushing for.
01:00:07
I was like we got to be consistent with the publishing.
01:00:11
And so I think that is a self-imposed deadline that he would say if you really want to move it,
01:00:20
go ahead and move it.
01:00:22
But if you're assuming that it's not going to be moved, then figure out how to work backwards
01:00:27
from that publishing deadline, which we have essentially.
01:00:32
We record on the Friday before.
01:00:35
And that gives me enough time to do all of the editing and create the WordPress post,
01:00:40
put in all the links, stuff like that.
01:00:42
So last minute, it depends on what part of this process you're talking about.
01:00:48
Let's just say finishing the book because we have to show up and talk about it.
01:00:52
Last minute would be Friday at 1.55pm.
01:00:56
Right?
01:00:57
Yep.
01:00:57
Yep.
01:00:58
I have had Friday over lunch as the time frame when I'm finishing a book.
01:01:03
That has happened more than a couple of times.
01:01:06
Yep.
01:01:06
And I think you could even go back even further from that because why do we read the books?
01:01:13
We want to formulate our own opinions on them.
01:01:15
We want to talk about what stands out to us, what we want to apply from them.
01:01:20
So in order to do that effectively, maybe last minute is the night before.
01:01:24
So you can sleep on it and formulate your own thoughts.
01:01:27
So in that essence, you get where I'm going.
01:01:31
Like you keep working backwards and you define your own last minute.
01:01:34
And if you decide that you're going to change the delivery date for the podcast,
01:01:38
then it affects all of those things.
01:01:39
That's completely fine.
01:01:40
You kind of have to re-identify all that stuff for you.
01:01:45
But the big thing for me is just identifying, like, not trying to get stuff done too early.
01:01:55
Because that's where I tend to err on the side of it.
01:01:58
And I think you could err on the other side of like, well, you've cut it a little bit too close.
01:02:02
And now you didn't get the book done and you show up and you got to record.
01:02:06
And it's not as good of a product as it can be.
01:02:09
Figuring out where that balance is for you is kind of what he's trying to help you to do in this section.
01:02:14
Yeah.
01:02:16
I mean, you get what my question is here though too, right?
01:02:19
In that if I have a project that I want to do is a nice to have, but is not actually necessary.
01:02:28
Yep.
01:02:29
Yep.
01:02:30
And I have it give myself a deadline for it.
01:02:32
When is last minute?
01:02:33
Like, I could put it off six months and it's not a big deal.
01:02:37
There are so many different ways I could easily say that's an unnecessary thing.
01:02:44
I can put it off.
01:02:45
And that, you know, and this is part of what the book is trying to get you to, right?
01:02:52
That is your multiplier.
01:02:55
Like, yes, if that's a thing that's important, that's going to help you have a significant impact.
01:03:00
Then that is the thing you need to be spending time on.
01:03:03
But procrastinating on it because there is no deadline, that's where there's like this loop
01:03:09
in this system that I'm like, how do you rectify that?
01:03:14
Yeah.
01:03:14
So when he's talking about procrastinating, a lot of the, he's talking a lot about the little things
01:03:20
and he talks about batching as a potential solution to that.
01:03:23
But also he talks about how time allows ideas to incubate.
01:03:27
And I think that that is really more in line with some of the stuff that you're talking about.
01:03:31
Because I've done that before.
01:03:32
It's like, well, I'm going to get this thing done by this specific time.
01:03:34
And then I start working on it and like, oh, this really doesn't feel like the right thing.
01:03:37
I just push it back, right?
01:03:38
Yep.
01:03:39
So at that point, looking at that funnel, you are procrastinating on that thing and you're dumping it
01:03:44
back in, right?
01:03:46
And you're going to review it again at some point in the future.
01:03:50
So the batching stuff, I don't know.
01:03:53
I mean, I kind of already do that too.
01:03:54
He talks about like email, meeting talk topics, like an office hours type thing,
01:03:59
you know, come with your questions, then you hammer through stuff.
01:04:01
I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on those.
01:04:03
But the other one is interesting to me.
01:04:05
And one of my action items from this is, I mentioned I'm starting to play around with OmniFocus again.
01:04:13
I'm not 100% sure it's going to stick, but that's the system I use them for now.
01:04:17
And I want to mess around with creating a pop tag.
01:04:21
And I'm not sure how I could do this, but basically I want it to like every time
01:04:26
that I look at something and I decide, no, I'm not going to do this right now.
01:04:31
It like adds another number to the pop tag.
01:04:34
I know I can create sub tags.
01:04:35
It's probably what I'll end up doing.
01:04:36
I'd like it to be more of a manual or an automatic process.
01:04:39
But you get where I'm going with this is like, okay, so this is the third time I've looked at
01:04:44
this popped project at this point, you know, whatever that number is.
01:04:48
And I think I'm going to settle on like three.
01:04:51
At that point, I have to decide like, this is just not something I should be looking at.
01:04:55
You know, I'm going to just delete this project now because it's obviously not important.
01:04:59
Or make it back as like a single point on a someday, maybe list.
01:05:03
You know, I don't really know exactly how I want to implement this.
01:05:08
But I do get where you're coming from.
01:05:11
And I think it's, I think it's fine.
01:05:12
You know, it's my big takeaway.
01:05:14
I think he would say, if you don't feel like doing it right now,
01:05:17
then just don't do it right now.
01:05:18
At that point, it's going to procrastinate, go back into the funnel.
01:05:21
And the missing piece here from his system, I think, is how many times do you revisit that
01:05:26
over and over and over again?
01:05:28
Because that is getting at some of the wasted,
01:05:31
re-decision stuff that he's talking about.
01:05:33
At some point, you got to put a number on that and then say, okay,
01:05:36
we're really going to do this or we're not.
01:05:37
Yes, but we're dealing with an ADD person.
01:05:40
So it's like, sure, I can put that off.
01:05:43
I can put that off for years and think I'm still going to do it.
01:05:47
[laughs]
01:05:48
So sure.
01:05:49
There's that side of things too.
01:05:51
And if you think I'm making that up, talk to my wife.
01:05:54
There have been projects that have been put off for at least three years.
01:05:57
So yes, at some point, there's a motivation aspect that's never talked about in this process.
01:06:06
That's true.
01:06:08
And maybe that's in this next section here.
01:06:12
But there's a component here where there's an assumption that,
01:06:19
yes, you can procrastinate, yes, you can put it back in the top of the funnel
01:06:23
and then choose to eliminate, automate, delegate, or concentrate, which we'll get to.
01:06:28
But you have this option to put it back in the top.
01:06:32
But at some point, you either have to decide to not put it back in the top
01:06:37
or to actually work on it.
01:06:40
At some point, you have to make that particular decision.
01:06:44
And that decision isn't as simple as, sure, I'll do it now.
01:06:49
For some people, they can't just do that.
01:06:53
I would say I'm one of those people.
01:06:56
So it's very easy for me to just keep throwing it on the top.
01:06:58
And I will do that repetitively just so that I don't have to make that decision.
01:07:03
Or because I think I'll get to it.
01:07:06
And then whenever I get to the time period where I've actually got time set aside to work on it,
01:07:11
it's like, "Eh, YouTube's more fun. We'll do that."
01:07:14
That's the problem with some of this, I think.
01:07:18
And that's part of what I was struggling with.
01:07:20
Okay, there's a component here that I feel is very important.
01:07:24
It's very small, but it's not talked about.
01:07:26
It's like, how do I get myself out of that loop?
01:07:29
And it's never talked about through this.
01:07:31
Maybe I missed it.
01:07:32
I think maybe he feels that he dealt with it already because in chapter three,
01:07:37
he talks about discipline.
01:07:38
He says that disciplined people don't actually like discipline.
01:07:44
Sorry, Jaco.
01:07:44
Yes.
01:07:45
They just think about it differently because they have that multiplayer's mindset and they see
01:07:52
long-term what the discipline is going to lead to.
01:07:56
So I can see an argument, and I'm putting words in Rory Vaden's mouth right now,
01:08:02
but based on what he has said in chapter three,
01:08:06
I would think he would say, "Well, you have to have the discipline to do the thing that needs to be done."
01:08:11
So the whole purpose of the funnel is to get you to identify this is the thing that needs to be done
01:08:18
right now.
01:08:18
And at that point, there's no question about whether you're going to do this or not.
01:08:22
You're just going to do it because you've developed that multiplier's mindset.
01:08:26
And you know that when you get it done, it's going to feel really good,
01:08:29
and it's going to provide X, Y, and Z and all this other stuff.
01:08:32
I don't know what he would say to ADHD.
01:08:37
It's like, yeah, that's all fun roses, but...
01:08:40
I do think that's the danger of this system is that you do just keep procrastinating on things.
01:08:48
You're constantly shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
01:08:52
Yes.
01:08:55
And I don't know. Maybe that's an inherent major problem with the book and the system.
01:09:05
I guess it would be interesting if we had read this at the very beginning of Bookworm,
01:09:12
because I think there's two different time periods, like BC and AD, for me with Bookworm.
01:09:20
There's the books that I read before I read, how to read a book and the books that I read after.
01:09:24
Sure, sure.
01:09:27
And the books that I read before how to read a book, I would have taken an isolation and I would
01:09:32
have been like, yes, Rory, teach me your ways and I'm going to apply everything that you are going
01:09:37
to tell me. And afterwards, I'm just kind of like, hmm, that's interesting. I don't agree with you.
01:09:42
But this part I like, you know, and so I'm recognizing now as we're talking through this,
01:09:50
one of the benefits for me of Bookworm is that I have not completely bought into this system.
01:09:56
And I've cherry picked the pieces of this that appealed to me and kind of just like written off
01:10:02
everything else. I really considered it. So yeah, I definitely see the problem with that.
01:10:07
But let's talk about this last chapter concentrate. Maybe this will kind of continue the conversation
01:10:12
and we'll we'll end on something here. But at the bottom of this funnel, you know,
01:10:16
you've identified now the things that only you can do. You're procrastinating on the things that
01:10:20
you don't want to complete right now. And then concentrating is the permission to protect.
01:10:29
That is where you are going to focus on and do the things that really matters. This is where
01:10:36
he talks about priority being singular, talks about the Pareto principle, things we've heard a
01:10:41
million times, you know, 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. He does define concentrate,
01:10:48
which I thought was kind of cool as a verb. It's to bring all efforts, faculties, activities,
01:10:52
et cetera, to bear on one thing or activity. And then as a noun, it means an intense form of
01:10:59
something. So what he's saying with this part of the system is that when you are concentrating on
01:11:04
something, you are focused only on that thing. There is only one priority. That is the thing
01:11:10
that you are doing. It has all of your attention. You're not thinking about the thing that comes
01:11:16
next. And I think that's the goal of any good task management system is it's going to show you
01:11:24
the thing that you should be thinking about right now. And it's going to just hide everything else
01:11:29
if your system does give you like a whole bunch of options and you have to pick one,
01:11:34
then it's really not working the way that it should, in my opinion.
01:11:39
But you still have to choose to do it. You do still have to choose to do it.
01:11:43
It's like you can have the best system that brings you all the way to the point where it
01:11:48
gives you only one thing and it tells you what that priority is. But you still have to do it.
01:11:55
And this is something that I've seen a lot of folks like this is partly why I think people switch
01:12:00
task management systems. Like for whatever reason, they've built their system in OmniFocus.
01:12:07
And at the end of the day, they find that they're not checking things off and they're not accomplishing
01:12:13
what they want to accomplish. So obviously, the answer is the task management tool isn't doing
01:12:20
its job because I'm not getting my work done. So obviously, I need to go try to do it or Trello
01:12:28
or text files or drop it in obsidian or I need to find some other tool so that I can get this
01:12:36
stuff done so I can keep track of it so I can get this stuff done. And then they go to the other
01:12:39
tool, they get all the migration stuff done, they build it all out. It's super fancy, super nice.
01:12:44
And for some reason, I'm not getting all the things done that I put in that system. So obviously,
01:12:49
I need a different tool. Do you get what I'm saying? Obviously. Yeah. It's not the tool in most of
01:12:55
these cases. So trying to, and this is like the part that I'm trying to break. And I know that for
01:13:03
me, trying to stick with a single tool, which in my case is the bullet journal, and Nikki kind of
01:13:10
messed with me yesterday on a session for analog Joe. It's like, so anyway, has to do with daily
01:13:17
logs and writing it on in a notebook and on note cards and anyway, messy stuff. Not messy,
01:13:23
just different. Anyway, I trying to find some tool that helps you keep track of what it is you're
01:13:29
supposed to do is only one small piece of that broader conversation. Like what Rory's saying,
01:13:37
discipline is a big part of this. Motivation is a part of this. It's not talked about here. And
01:13:43
at the same time, I'm not sure that's what he needs to do here. But I know, especially today,
01:13:52
given how tired everybody is of pandemic stuff, like motivation is kind of hard to come by for a
01:13:59
lot of folks. And yeah, this system, if you follow the funnel, throwing tasks in the top,
01:14:06
eliminate a bunch of things, automate a bunch of things, delegate a bunch of things, procrastinate
01:14:11
what you don't have to do right now, and then concentrate on the ones that you're supposed to
01:14:15
be doing right now. When you get to that point, you have to be able to act. And if you have no
01:14:23
motivation, acting is not that simple. And there's now either games you have to play with yourself
01:14:30
to convince yourself to do them, which is a lot of what I do. And bring yourself to a point where
01:14:38
you can see the big picture and see that doing that thing will help you out later on. And apply
01:14:45
that to the concentration piece. You have to put all that stuff together in order to
01:14:52
start working on it. And for some people, that's super easy. You put my wife on this and
01:14:58
she's like, okay, done. She's on it. It doesn't even phase her. She'll just be right on it.
01:15:04
Me, on the other hand, like, no, it doesn't work that way at all. So it's a very different
01:15:10
conversation if you put this with her versus me. So anyway, I'm probably repeating myself
01:15:18
at this point, but you get my point. Like this is potentially a problem for some people.
01:15:23
It would be interesting to hear your perspective on take the stairs.
01:15:27
Okay. I haven't read that one in quite a while, but I imagine that that would address a lot of
01:15:36
your concerns. And like I said, he kind of talks about that book a lot in this one.
01:15:40
Doesn't do a real great job, I think, of bringing over the concepts from there. And again, it's
01:15:45
been a long time since I read that one. But one of the things that stands out specifically to me
01:15:50
from that is a story he told about Buffalo. So there's a difference between Buffalo and Cows.
01:15:56
Cows, if they see a storm coming, they will try to run away from the storm, which obviously is
01:16:01
not going to work. Works real well. But he says in take the stairs that Buffalo will actually run
01:16:10
at the storm and get through it as quickly as they can. And so I see that mindset being applied
01:16:20
here when he talks about how until you accomplish the next most significant priority,
01:16:25
everything else is a distraction. So you're right, that's missing from this book. Maybe he's
01:16:31
assuming that I already talked about that. So go read the other book. And that's not really
01:16:35
trying to address here. But I do think that if you're just reading this one in isolation, that is
01:16:42
a missing component. I do wish he would have talked a little bit more about that. Because you're
01:16:48
right, there isn't a whole lot here on the motivation to sit down and do the thing that you know you
01:16:52
need to do. Really, this whole system is designed to help you identify the thing that you really need
01:16:57
to do. But like you said, you're 100% correct, that that does not mean that you are actually going
01:17:04
to have the motivation and the energy to actually do it. Yeah, yeah, because I just think about,
01:17:10
okay, so I'm at work till four o'clockish most days. And I go home lately, it's go to the new house,
01:17:19
work on the house, do dinner and go home, put the kids down. And then I'll work on some of my
01:17:24
personal side projects after the kids go down. By that point, I've spent eight hours at my day job
01:17:32
fighting fires and doing long term projects. I've spent at least a couple hours at the house
01:17:38
doing projects. I've now hustled the kids to bed. And somehow I'm supposed to keep working on some
01:17:46
things after that point, which I do slowly, but not well. So some of that is I've got too much going
01:17:55
on right now. There's obviously the eliminate piece there. But at some point, there's a breakdown.
01:18:01
Somewhere in that process. And this might be what you're saying might be exactly what he's
01:18:08
expecting and that you've read his other book, because he brings it up constantly. He does.
01:18:14
In this book. So I felt like I was like a fly on the wall seeing what like what he's telling his
01:18:23
long term followers and other readers whenever I was reading this. So maybe at this point, what I
01:18:29
need to do is go back and read the other one. And maybe that would answer a bunch of the questions
01:18:33
I have because like right now, I'm like, sure, this is a cool concept, but it's for very specific
01:18:39
people and I'm not one of them. That's kind of what I'm seeing. You know, it's interesting,
01:18:44
because when I read this book, I had read Take the Stairs prior. Yeah, I didn't feel when I read it,
01:18:51
like there were missing components to this particular book. He referenced it a lot. He did
01:18:58
it did not seem to me like it was just blanket promotion for go by my other thing.
01:19:05
And I'm kind of thinking now, maybe he should have. Maybe he should have said more explicitly,
01:19:14
you know, I unpack all of this and the four points, whatever, you know, in my other book,
01:19:20
I'm not going to talk about him here. So if you want to understand that fully, go by the other
01:19:24
thing. I didn't even realize till we're talking about this now that like my mind just kind of
01:19:30
filled in those blanks. Sure. But you're right, they do exist in this particular book.
01:19:36
And as much as much as he talks about his new book, it didn't really seem like when you're
01:19:43
reading it, like there was stuff missing, but obviously there is.
01:19:47
And it makes sense what you're saying. Sometimes when you read the follow-ups like this,
01:19:54
they will oftentimes have either in the intro or somewhere in chapter one, where they explain,
01:20:01
here's the foundation that I'm going to work from. And it starts in this other book.
01:20:07
If you've read that, this is kind of the base that we're going to build on. And then they move
01:20:12
forward from there and they really don't talk about the other book much at all. They just assume
01:20:16
that you've either read it or chosen to not read it, but they've laid out the groundwork at that
01:20:22
point to get them there. This one, he just kind of mentions it about every chapter and mentions
01:20:28
like, yeah, in my other book, I mentioned this. And then he goes on about it. But I don't like
01:20:33
having read this one, I still don't really know what Take the Stairs is about. Even though he
01:20:39
mentions it repeatedly, I'm not real sure what it is. So there's that piece as well, where it's
01:20:45
just not explained here. Yeah, I feel like the, he did the, there were three options and he chose
01:20:51
the wrong one, which is referred to the old thing over and over and over again. Without
01:20:57
both of these would have been better. Explicitly stating, if you want to understand a key piece
01:21:04
to this, go read the other book or explaining more in depth in this book, the concepts from the
01:21:10
other books, so we didn't have to go read it. But let us know what is missing here.
01:21:15
Yep.
01:21:16
And because he didn't do that and he just keeps pointing at the other book, he's kind of doing
01:21:21
the reader a disservice without telling them the clear path forward. You know, we can kind of,
01:21:28
a lot of times we see those, those things like, oh, go buy my other thing and that,
01:21:35
that can rub us the wrong way. But even that is better than leaving somebody hanging.
01:21:42
Yep. Yep. For sure. So anyway, all it's to say, I feel like there's a gap in this whole thing,
01:21:49
but it sounds like it might be filled in with the other book, in which case, that's probably valid.
01:21:53
Sure.
01:21:54
To have that gap here.
01:21:55
Yeah.
01:21:56
All right. Let's talk about the last part here real quickly. Part three, the next step,
01:22:02
which is really just one chapter, multiplying your results. I don't have a whole lot to say
01:22:07
about this. He says that procrastination like employee turnover in a business is an invisible
01:22:13
cost and I agree with that. I think that's an important point to recognize. And then he talks
01:22:20
about farmers later on, previously in the five permission section and how they work,
01:22:26
double time, part time for a full time freedom later on or something like that.
01:22:32
Yeah.
01:22:32
And so he makes the point here that what you want to be doing is you want to be planting seeds
01:22:38
instead of fighting fires. So I think that is a great way to summarize this book. It doesn't
01:22:46
give you anything specific. You got to decide that for yourself, what sort of the seeds you're
01:22:50
going to be planting. But then he ends it with a Bible story. It doesn't explicitly say it's a
01:22:56
Bible story, but it's the parable of the talents at the very end, which I, of course, liked because
01:23:01
my whole book is based off of the parable of the talents.
01:23:05
Sure. So that was interesting to me just because I recognized where he was getting that story from,
01:23:10
he doesn't explicitly say like I'm pulling this from the Bible or anything like that. But
01:23:14
I guess recognize that's where he's coming from. That's his mindset and probably why you and I
01:23:21
would enjoy hanging out with him. But if you don't like us, I don't know why I was singing this podcast,
01:23:25
but if I wasn't hanging out with Rory there because he's going to talk about his faith.
01:23:28
It's true. That is true. I don't really have anything to add to this one. It's just a wrap up
01:23:34
chapter, basically. It's like, here, do this. Now that I've told you this big cycle, do it.
01:23:40
Exactly. All right. So do you have any action items from this book?
01:23:48
I have one. And I feel like had I read the other book and filled in this gap that I've
01:23:59
been talking about. I would probably have a lot more. But because I feel like there's a lot of flaw
01:24:05
in the whole cycle to me that meant that I didn't really want to commit to much off of this because
01:24:13
I feel like I'm going to be setting myself up for a rough failure to try to do that. So I have one.
01:24:18
And that's in the automation territory. I have a bank of video projects that I do on a regular
01:24:27
basis that I could build templates for that I haven't done. And it would help me create things much
01:24:35
faster. And that I could see as a pretty big multiplier in this process of like, okay,
01:24:41
if I have a template where I can record a video, edit it down and drop it into this particular bank
01:24:47
that has all the background music, has all the intro, outro, base graphics already built,
01:24:55
I will make a lot more of these. And this is both for work stuff and my personal stuff. So
01:25:02
that's what I want to work on. It's going to take me a little bit to build those, of course,
01:25:06
but I think it will have pretty big payoff in the long run. So that's the one action item I have
01:25:11
from this one. Cool. Yeah, templates are a great, you know, we didn't even talk about that in the
01:25:16
automation section, but that is a great way to go. It goes a long ways. It really does. Yeah.
01:25:22
I've got a couple. So the big one I mentioned is I want to create that pop tag in OmniFocus and
01:25:30
figure out a system for how many times I review those things and forcing myself to just say,
01:25:39
admit I'm not going to be doing this thing at any point in the near future. If I see it a certain
01:25:43
number of times, which I think is going to be three. So I want to build that by next time. I also
01:25:50
want to identify the tasks that I can batch. I sort of have done this already with like email,
01:25:57
but there are other things I think that I could, I could batch and then work those into my time
01:26:02
block plan and then identify the tasks that I can delegate and create the processes in order to do
01:26:09
those. That's the big one for me. I'm inspired from this. I don't have any like specific ones that
01:26:16
come to mind as I'm doing this, but I think this is the one where I will see the most
01:26:22
benefit from. That's the one I have the most excitement behind at the moment. Cool. So those
01:26:29
are mine. Nice choice. I wish you all the best with them. Hey, thanks. All right. Style and
01:26:36
rating, my book, I got to go first. I will start with the style part first because I really like
01:26:44
Rorivain style. If it was style only and not content, this would be different.
01:26:53
Yes. I really do think he's a really good writer, really good communicator. He mentions in this book
01:27:00
how he wanted to get better at communication. So he joined Toastmasters and he ended up taking
01:27:05
second in the world championship of public speaking, understanding his journey into Toastmasters and
01:27:11
hearing him on podcasts and reading, take the stairs. That was one of the things that got me
01:27:16
interested in pursuing Toastmasters myself. So I think he's seeing the way he communicates
01:27:25
and that was just really, that's my jam. I want to be like Rorivain.
01:27:31
But the content from this book, I think there's a couple cool insights you can get from it.
01:27:39
I don't think the system is particularly good. I don't know how you would actually just like
01:27:46
assuming you were going into this. Okay, I am 100% in you've convinced me, let me use your system.
01:27:51
I don't know exactly how you would implement this. I mean, there is no like, here's how you
01:27:57
make this work inside of a task manager. One of my action items is like, how do I apply one small
01:28:07
piece of this that really resonated with me? And even that, I'm not quite sure what it's going to
01:28:12
look like. So I think there's a very good chance that you get into this and it makes sense to you
01:28:17
and you walk away from it and you're like, I don't know what to do now. I do think the first
01:28:23
section is probably the strongest section where he's talking about the problems with the way people
01:28:28
view time management. That's the one that I liked the most. But that's not really the main thrust of
01:28:36
the book. That's just the problem. And then he's trying to present a solution and I feel like
01:28:40
could have done a better, better job with that particular piece. I will cut him some slack and
01:28:48
recognize that this book, I think is kind of intended to be a bookend to take the stairs.
01:28:56
I don't think it was just accidental that he wrote this one after and then he keeps referring to
01:29:01
take the stairs. It kind of felt to me like he knew going in before he wrote anything that these
01:29:08
were two very different topics and he was going to try to address them separately and bring them
01:29:13
together. I just am not convinced that it happened very well. I do think I would recommend this to
01:29:22
people. I think it'll challenge a lot of people, especially in the bookworm audience who maybe have
01:29:28
a preconception of what procrastination is and how it's evil and ruining their lives.
01:29:34
And so the clickbaity title, I don't actually mind because he's going to challenge a lot of
01:29:42
those traditional beliefs around time management. He takes a couple of familiar concepts,
01:29:46
tries to flip them on their head and forces you to kind of make your own decisions about
01:29:51
what he's saying is a better alternative. I think I'm going to put this at 4.0. I'm trying to decide
01:30:00
3.5 or 4.0. Like I said, give him the benefit of the doubt and say a lot of the shortcomings,
01:30:06
like the gaps not being filled in. Maybe he could do a better job pointing people towards some of
01:30:11
the key concepts and take the stairs. But I also don't think he's trying to be an author. I mean,
01:30:20
I think he's written these two books. I don't know what else he's written. I don't see him making
01:30:26
the circuit. I think he's primarily working with southwestern consulting. So I don't know. I think
01:30:34
maybe this was never really intended to be his main thing. It was just a message that he had to
01:30:40
had to share, in which case kudos to you. I mean, that's the situation I found myself when I decided
01:30:47
to write my book. And I'm sure lots of people could point out a lot of mistakes that I made in mind.
01:30:50
I like that though. I like the fact that this isn't your purebred
01:30:56
New York Times best-selling author, even though he was on the New York Times best-selling list,
01:31:01
I believe. This is somebody who you wouldn't necessarily consider
01:31:07
an author. And he's just like, I'm going to go for it. And did he do it perfect? No. But he did a
01:31:14
pretty decent job, especially when you compare them to a lot of the other books that we've read.
01:31:19
Yeah, there's some stuff that he missed and could have been tighter. But overall, I think this is
01:31:24
pretty cool. And it kind of inspires me. I want to redo my book because I see all the
01:31:29
stuff that I've more complete thoughts and better mental models and things like that. So,
01:31:35
I think there's a lot of other people like me in the bookworm audience who just need
01:31:40
little inspiration permission to go for something like this. Furry can do it. If Mike can do it,
01:31:46
you can do it. So, I think there's value in that. So, I'm going to rate it 4.0.
01:31:50
OK. Well, I think we've talked about the gap and stuff that I've seen in here. The
01:31:58
style of this, he's very good at bringing stories in that make a lot of sense.
01:32:05
You mentioned the farmer story. He's talking about how much time do farmers spend working
01:32:12
during harvest? And he calls out 18 hours. Something. Yep, that's about right. Having been
01:32:19
there and done that one, yes, absolutely 100%. It's 11 o'clock if not midnight before your home.
01:32:25
It's 4 or 5 in the morning when you're back out in the field. Yep, it's about right. And
01:32:31
that concept of putting in the time now, because again, farmers during harvest,
01:32:38
that's when they're reaping all the rewards from the entire year of work,
01:32:42
they're not going to put in that amount of time mid-summer. I mean, they don't have to.
01:32:47
And don't mid-winter. There's really nothing to do other than a few hours of maintenance here
01:32:52
and there every day. So, there's a, like, you make it back at other periods in the year.
01:32:58
And that is, I think, the concept of multiplying that he's really getting to here. And he does a
01:33:04
good job of bringing that out with some of these stories. Some of the things that I'm noticing,
01:33:11
like, as we're talking about this and, you know, this being his second book and it's maybe not
01:33:15
his thing to be an author. And, like, the bottom of this says, "New York Times best-selling author
01:33:22
of Take the Stairs." But this is not a best-selling book. Right? So, at least I don't think it is.
01:33:29
It's not. At least this copy doesn't say it. He's got Seth Godin as a recommendation on the front.
01:33:36
Johnny Cuff is on the back. The back calls out that he's a self-discipline strategist
01:33:42
and he's the co-founder of Southwestern consulting. But something that I've noticed in the past
01:33:51
is whenever we're reading the second book from an author and the first one was a hit,
01:33:56
they'll put New York Times best-selling author of whatever that book was on the front. But if
01:34:02
this one's not a bestseller, it usually means this was a cash grab in a lot of cases.
01:34:08
They did the follow-up book because the first one did so well. People are like, "Give me more,
01:34:14
give me more, and I'll buy it." And then all the people who bought the first one bought the second
01:34:18
one. And then it's a money grab for them because they can make a ton off of that when it happens.
01:34:25
And then the content of this really doesn't matter a whole lot to the publisher because they've got
01:34:34
a best-selling author on their hands. They can sell that all day long. So, I'm not saying that this
01:34:40
is a cash grab. I'm just saying that is a very common thing that happens. And we've seen that
01:34:46
as someone who hasn't read the first one, this feels like that to me anyway because like you're
01:34:54
saying, there's the five-step process. But how do you apply that? Like you're saying, like,
01:34:59
what do I do with that? I mean, it's a cool concept. But how do you work through this? Like,
01:35:03
what is the flow? When do I do this? And do I have to do this with every single task that comes
01:35:08
in my plate? What? Like, there is no real... It's a great idea, but I'm not sure what to do with it.
01:35:17
Like, that's kind of how I feel with it. So, I feel like I want to read the other one,
01:35:23
even though I feel like this one has a lot of gaps and such. But it's because he has such a great
01:35:27
way of putting things together and helping you understand the concept he's talking about.
01:35:32
I just don't think the high level is all there. And I don't think the broad topic was put together
01:35:39
as well as it could have been. But again, that might be because the other one has that in it.
01:35:44
And that's actually required reading for this one. So, if that's the case, this could be a really,
01:35:51
really high-ranking book for me. But as it stands, like, I feel like I need to put it at a 3.0
01:35:58
because I'm just a bit baffled by some parts of it. Like, okay, I'm not sure what to do with this.
01:36:06
And I feel like that's on the author to bring that out. Again, what he presented was really good.
01:36:12
But I feel like he didn't choose to present the things that I could use. And it was just a,
01:36:17
here's some fun ideas sort of thing. So, I'm not going to rank it very high. So, I'm going to put
01:36:23
it at 3.0. Probably not going to recommend this to a bunch of folks. And that's primarily because
01:36:29
I think I'm going to read the other one first before I decide on if someone should read this one.
01:36:35
And if I do that, it would be a recommendation in pair. Like, you got to read both of these
01:36:41
together. They're in conjunction to each other. So, you got to have that.
01:36:46
Yeah, I think that's fair. I'll quit talking about it now. But those are my thoughts about it.
01:36:50
I thought he had a great style. Put it at 3.0. I'm ready to put it on the shelf.
01:36:54
All right. Well, let's put it on the shelf. And what are we reading next?
01:36:59
Yeah, the next one is "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. I've kind of seen this one around
01:37:05
for a while. I've had it recommended to me a few times from some friends. And I feel like it would
01:37:10
be a good fit for Bookworm. How do we think? We've kind of been on that train a little bit lately.
01:37:16
So, let's continue that. It's been kind of fun. All right. And then, what are you picking? I don't
01:37:21
even know. I'm blind on this one. What are we doing next? Yeah. Well, you inspired me after reading
01:37:26
this book and raising all the questions about motivation and actually following through
01:37:32
and doing the work. Sure. So, we are going to read after that, "Will Power Doesn't Work" by Benjamin
01:37:40
Hardy. Okay. And I feel like this will be interesting because we've read "The Will Power
01:37:46
Instinct." And I feel like a lot of the books that we've read have talked about. Willpower,
01:37:52
don't deplete it. Yadda yadda yadda. The topic I just think is something that we're...
01:38:00
It's the right thing at the right time for us currently. So, let's get to the bottom of this
01:38:04
and figure out how to get our work done, Joe. I'm going to focus on my bullet journal.
01:38:10
Just won't do the work for me. As much as I try, they won't do it. It's true. Oh, fun times.
01:38:17
Yet again, Joe has no gap books. Do you have one? I do. I finished one. I finished "Creativity" by
01:38:25
John Kleece, which is just a short little book. That was pretty fascinating, actually. And I have
01:38:31
another one that I am starting called the 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma, which I don't know a lot
01:38:39
about Robin Sharma. I looked at some of the reviews and it looks like this is a very polarizing author.
01:38:44
I'm not really sure what to expect going into this. But I also think it's more of a narrative
01:38:52
than it is like a system sort of a thing. So, kind of along lines like Patrick
01:38:57
Glencioni. That's my impression of having just cracked it open. Sure. So. Yeah. I've debated that
01:39:03
one for bookworm a couple times, but it doesn't seem like it would fit real well. But
01:39:08
anyway, it's crossed my mind a couple times. Well, if I read it and I'm like, we're going to have
01:39:14
a cool conversation about this, then I'll pick it for bookworm. Okay. All right. Sounds good.
01:39:19
All right. So thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you to all the people who joined us live.
01:39:25
You can do that too. If you go to bookworm.fm, you'll see all the links to all the different things.
01:39:32
Joe always tweets out the schedule ahead of time. So that's always fun. Also, thank you,
01:39:39
especially to the Bookworm Club premium members who are willing to support the show financially.
01:39:44
Five bucks a month, you can do that too. If you go to bookworm.fm/membership, you get access to
01:39:50
a couple of goodies, wallpaper that I created, a couple of gap episodes that Joe recorded back in
01:39:57
the day. And then the MindNote files that I create whenever I take notes on these books,
01:40:03
I upload those and those are available to members, both the PDF versions, if you just want, you know,
01:40:07
something to throw into your obsidian or whatever. And also the MindNote files. I know some people
01:40:11
like to use those as a base when they're reading their own books, and then they kind of edit it
01:40:14
as they go. So all that stuff is up there. Bookworm.fm/membership. Yes, yes, yes. All the things,
01:40:22
yeah, if you follow us on Twitter, Bookworm.fm, I usually tweet out when we're going to be live,
01:40:27
at least day of, sometimes it's day before, and it'll give you a link that you can set a reminder on.
01:40:32
So anyway, there's that. If you ever want to join us live and actually see us as we record,
01:40:37
you're welcome to do that. But if you're someone who's following along with us,
01:40:40
you can pick up "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. We'll go through that one in a couple weeks.