Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, so I have a little bit of self promotion.

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If you don't mind real quick here, Joe Bielig.

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- Okay, ready to set go.

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- As we record this, it is the eve of the launch

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of the video course, which has been my obsession

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for low these many months, and that is too obsidian

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and beyond over at the sweet setup.

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I absolutely love this app.

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Sharing with you some cool stuff I figured out even today

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before we hit record.

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And there's always a launch week discount

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as with all sweet setup courses.

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So we talk about it a lot on this show.

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Wanted to make sure people knew about it.

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Sweetsetup.com/obsidian.

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If you are interested in it, it includes

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the Zero Tube City and Workshop replay

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that I did previously, plus I think there's like

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46 different videos, and I keep finding new stuff

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and I keep adding things to it.

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So this is definitely not one of those ones

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where you just throw it out there

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and then you never think about it again.

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This is gonna grow over time because I just can't help

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myself.

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- Sure, sure.

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I get a kick out of this so much because you were

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on such the roam train.

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- I was.

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- Here for quite, like you were hardcore.

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It's like, I gotta get you off a roam.

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Like we gotta get you onto obsidian

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and now you're like hardcore obsidian.

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- I love this.

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- So it's kind of your fault, I guess.

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- I don't know about it.

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It's not 100% my fault.

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I know that one for sure.

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- It's partially your fault, partially Nick Milo.

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I'm doing a lighthouse session with him

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as we record this, it's tomorrow.

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So by the time that episode goes out,

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it will have happened already, but I'm a little,

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shared with you, I'm a little bit terrified

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to be doing that one because I still think

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I'm kind of an obsidian poser and I'm not that confident

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in my abilities with the app.

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Like I kind of feel the stuff that I do is cool for me

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but like no one else really cares.

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(laughs)

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But it's cool, Nick is a very thoughtful guy

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and I am excited to be in those sessions.

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He's had Eleanor, I forget her last name,

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but she's the one who does obsidian roundup on there.

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David Sparks is gonna be on there,

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a couple other people.

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David's doing a lot of cool stuff with obsidian too.

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But yeah, I'm just trying to share what I learned.

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It's fascinating like how you can build this

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into whatever you want it to do.

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I mean, just before we hop down, I was screen sharing.

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I added something to my personal retreat stuff

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which I think is gonna come up in the course of the episode

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'cause we can talk about environment disconnections,

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stuff like that.

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But anyways, there's the self-promotion segment

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of a bookworm so thanks for giving me a moment to do that.

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- Good work, you did well.

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- Thank you.

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Let's jump into follow up here.

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Did you print your summary and put it

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in front of your computer?

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- Not 100% and this is because, well,

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I guess technically so I did print it twice.

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But I haven't been happy with what I've got in the layout.

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So if you go to, oh shoot, what is the link?

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Let me get you the link here.

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If you go to liminalthinking.com,

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so this is based on "Lemonal Thinking" by Dave Gray.

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In the top, he's got a menu bar that has principles

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and practices and he has these listed there,

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which makes it very easy to copy paste

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and get it into a document and then you can do

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all the formatting and such that you want.

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But I really want this to be on one page

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but it's a lot of text and makes it hard to read.

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So I either need to make it on a really big piece of paper

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or figure out how to format this differently.

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So I've tried a couple iterations

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and don't like either one.

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So technically I have printed a summary

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and I have put it in front of my computer

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but I still don't like it.

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So I'm trying a third round,

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I don't know what it's gonna become.

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So I'm still working on it technically.

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So it depends on how far down the technicalities

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you wanna go here.

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So do you consider it done or not?

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I guess is.

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(laughs)

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My technical criteria here.

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We didn't really, so many of these are like,

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okay, we haven't officially decided what done is on these

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and in my head it was just,

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oh yeah, print it and stick it up on the wall.

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Like, well, no, it's turned into way more

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than just print it and stick it on a wall.

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So it doesn't work that well.

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When we didn't decide should I be done

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trying to get it formatted correctly

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or should I have at least started it?

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I think in this case it should probably be done

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in which case it's not done.

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If that made sense.

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- Sure, so if you're not willing to check the box

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then I'm good with that.

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I'll join you in not checking boxes.

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(laughs)

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'Cause I had two year of identifying limiting beliefs

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from others and making a list of my governing beliefs.

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I have been cranking on this obsidian course

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and I still intend to make both of these lists

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inside of obsidian but it hasn't happened yet.

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If I can get through tomorrow

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then I will be able to think again.

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And yeah, so I guess maybe we can keep those on

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for next time.

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I do think there's a lot of value in those.

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I've been talking about these limiting beliefs

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and these governing beliefs and I have an idea

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of some of these.

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I just don't have them in a list form

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like I was intending to make inside of obsidian

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so not done.

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- All right, so you got some work to do.

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I got some work to do.

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- Yeah.

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- At least we know how our action items

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for next time are gonna start.

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- I might have some more work to do after this book.

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So.

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- Yeah, there's that.

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So let's jump in here.

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Today's book is Will Power Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy.

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And this I picked kind of because of the clickbaity title.

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It's obviously taking a stance against Will Power

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which has been kind of a trendy productivity topic

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for the last several years.

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A lot of research about how you need to conserve

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your willpower, lots of stories about like Steve Jobs

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and Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah and all those really,

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really successful people,

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how they wear the same thing every day

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so they can serve their mental resources

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and they have the willpower for the things that really matter.

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And this book is basically just saying like,

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all that is a bunch of baloney.

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(laughs)

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It's all about the environment.

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So I didn't really know what to expect going into this.

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I kind of expected he would take a strong stance

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and then not back it up very well with arguments.

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I think he did a pretty decent job.

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We'll get into the specifics here

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but it is your standard three part productivity book.

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Although the flow of these parts was a little bit different.

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Did you catch that or is that just something

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that I felt was a little bit different?

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I can't say I noticed that there was a different flow in it

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because there was the parts and then chapters

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within those parts.

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I mean, there's a summary at the end of the chapters.

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- Sure.

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- So chapters or parts?

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I forget what--

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- Summary at the end of the chapters, yep.

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- So I can't say that I noticed

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there was a difference in flow.

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- Okay, well, maybe I just missed it.

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- Well, most of the three part books specifically

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is like part one is the biggest one.

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That's like half of the book.

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And this is everything you need to know about the topic.

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And then part two is like, here's how it applies to you.

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And then part three is usually like,

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here's how it applies to the future

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if I'm gonna make a template

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for how to write a productivity book.

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That would be it.

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(laughing)

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And part three is--

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- Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes.

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- Yeah, and part three is always the smallest section.

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It's kinda just like the last thing he wants to say

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so it sticks in your brain as you close it

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and you move on to the next thing.

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And this one, I felt was a little bit different.

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Part one is your environment shapes you.

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Part two, how to make willpower irrelevant

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and then part three, outsource high performance

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and success to your environment.

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But what's different about this, in my opinion,

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is that part three is the biggest one

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and that's where a lot of the gold nuggets are.

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That's where the stuff that really matters is.

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I feel like that's a little bit different

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than at least several of the last books

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that we've read that have been kind of broken up

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into these three different parts.

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And I felt like that was a little bit refreshing.

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I was kinda surprised when I was going into part three

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'cause it felt like it was coming pretty early in the book.

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And I kinda had a thought when I got there,

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I hope this doesn't just become monotonous and repetitive

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and by the end, I just wish it was a lot shorter

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and I can't say I ever got to that point.

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So I feel like he took a chance with the format of this book

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but it paid off because the whole part three,

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he was able to hold my attention

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and I felt like the chapters kind of tied together well.

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- It's interesting to me that you think

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that part three is where all the nuggets were

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'cause I thought that was part two.

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- Sure.

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- This is total and this is gonna play right

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into the topic of the books.

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I feel like my background has set me up

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such that part two is probably where I feel like

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a lot of the gold is on this.

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There's a lot of gold in three

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but I felt like I got the most out of part two versus three.

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- Sure.

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- And yet you feel like part three is where most of it is

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unless I'm putting words in your mouth

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but that's what it sounds like.

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- I feel like part three is where most people

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who are going to read this are going

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to find the most value.

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I think the way part two is written,

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that's the one that appeals to me the most

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and I'm not surprised that it appealed to you the most either.

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- Sure, sure.

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- But we just came off of liminal thinking

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where basically it's like go find the other things.

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How to make willpower relevant,

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this is kind of high level stuff still

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and you can find individual things in here.

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I do have an action item or two from this section as well

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but I do think that part three is where you would,

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for lack of a better term, find the tactics,

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the more actionable stuff where you read

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through one of these chapters and you're like,

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oh, that's the one that I've been missing

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because a lot of this is talking about your environment

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and things that you can do to make an environment

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where you can be more productive and achieve your goals faster.

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I mean, it sounds kind of sleazy when you say it that way

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but he does a better job of saying it than that.

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It doesn't feel like snake oil salesman.

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That's one of the common complaints I hear

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about productivity books is like,

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oh, these are all just snake oil salesman

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and I understand why people feel that way.

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I didn't feel that way about this guy

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but everything leading into it,

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that's kind of what I was expecting.

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- Sure, sure.

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I really thought I was gonna get a book

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where it was gonna like sidestep the conversation

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around what is willpower and how does it work

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and here's why it doesn't work.

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I thought it was gonna be one of these

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total click bait titles scenarios

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and I don't feel like I got that.

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I don't feel like this was a bait and switch scenario.

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I feel like he lived up to the title of the book in this case.

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So it feels solid to me from a gut reaction

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at the very beginning of this.

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- It does and that's why I think it's important

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to have this conversation at the beginning

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because if you just look at this book,

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you're probably like, "Ah, no."

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- Yep, yep.

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Even here's a good indicator, all right?

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So this book was sitting on one of the in tables

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by our sectional in the living room

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of the apartment last night

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and my mother-in-law had just,

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I was gone last week doing a bunch of work on the house

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and our girls were down for what we affectionately called

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a G camp, grandma and grandpa camp for the week.

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Well, grandma brought them home yesterday

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and then my mother-in-law spent the night with us

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and she left this morning.

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Anyway, she saw this book on an in table in the living room.

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She's like, "Willpower doesn't work."

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Well, that's not true.

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Willpower does wonders.

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It's like, "Okay, this'll be a fun conversation."

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And started like, "Okay, why do you think that?"

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And just had a whole,

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it was about a 30-minute conversation there

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around a lot of her history

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in making big decisions, things like stopping, smoking

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and how it happened.

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She's like, "I totally used Willpower to stop smoking."

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It's like, "Okay, well, talk to me about

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"how you came to the decision to stop smoking."

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Well, she was dating now her husband

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and they decided they wanted to stop smoking together

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so they made a pact that whoever smoked a cigarette first

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had to buy a steak dinner for the other person.

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And that was the pact.

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I was like, "You totally changed your environment.

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"That wasn't Willpower.

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"You totally changed the circumstances

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"around the situation."

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And she just kind of looked at me like,

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"I suppose you're right."

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It's like any other examples that she gave me two or three more.

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It's like same thing every time.

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It was environment changing, not Willpower.

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And time it was done.

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She's like, "Oh, huh.

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"Okay, I guess maybe I could get on board with that,

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"but that's completely different

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"than what I've thought in the past."

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So this is a thing.

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It totally feels clickbaity,

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but whenever you start getting into it,

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which we'll do here,

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and it seems to stand just from what I can tell.

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- Yeah, that's a great place

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to jump into this first section, I think.

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So I have this broken up in the outline by parts.

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There's a lot of different chapters,

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but I don't want to go through each chapter individually.

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I just want to grab a couple key ideas

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from each of these parts.

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So part one is your environment shapes you.

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And in the first chapter in part one,

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talks about there are two different worldviews.

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One is extreme individualism,

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which is I have free will,

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I make my own decisions, Willpower works, et cetera.

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And then there is complete determinism

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where everything is decided ahead of time,

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and I'm just a victim of my environment.

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And he basically says the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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So Willpower doesn't work

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is a little bit of a clickbaity title,

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because I don't think he's saying,

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it doesn't exist.

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But he is saying that it only accounts

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for part of the formula,

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and you have to recognize that your environment

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is going to contribute more to the other part.

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This particular point, by the way,

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this resonated with me because of my Christian background,

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there are two very different theological camps.

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One is Calvinism, where everything is decided ahead of time.

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And the other one is Armenianism, I believe.

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And so right away when he's like two worldviews,

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extreme individualism, complete determinism,

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like, oh yeah, of course, just like the church.

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- Great destination, yes.

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- Oh, tulip, got a look.

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And that's going deep into church history and theology background.

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- That's as far as we're gonna go.

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- That's deep.

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- Yeah, just saying that I have thought

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about this particular topic before,

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which I think kind of primed me for his argument

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at this point in the book.

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- I think it is interesting,

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like this whole concept of,

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the misnomer here of willpower doesn't even exist.

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Well, it does, but he's just not saying it's the end all,

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be all that the productivity self-help world says it is.

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That's essentially what he's getting at.

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At least that was my take on it.

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And in this particular, in the beginning,

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especially at this first part, individualism and determinism,

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which that's not the name of the chapter,

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but that's one of the topics within those first couple chapters.

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And whenever you start looking at it, like,

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oh, okay, well, if I admit that I can change my environment,

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if I have this individualism mindset here,

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if I recognize that I can change that,

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you still have to have some form of a very small piece

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of willpower to change that environment.

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Like if you're gonna say that your environment is

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the key indicator here and not willpower,

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then you still have to make the change.

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You've gotta have some form of motivation or willpower

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to make that change so that the change

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you're actually after can happen.

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So there has to be something at the beginning.

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That's the one piece here that I don't feel like

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was talked about a ton.

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Maybe I just missed it,

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but there does have to be at least a small piece of that

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at the beginning of the chain here.

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- You're right, he does get a little bit into that

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in chapter two.

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He talks about when you're in a bad environment,

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you only have two choices.

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You either conform to the bad environment,

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that's the default, or you battle your environment

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through willpower, which is not ideal.

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So the whole book is trying to enable you

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and give you the authority and the power

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to change your own environment

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instead of just continue to stay somewhere

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where it's doing you harm.

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At the end of chapter one,

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he talks about this coming of age moment,

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which I know this is gonna take some people off

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when they read this.

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He says, the coming of age moment,

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so when you become an adult, right,

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that is when you take responsibility

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for changing your own environment.

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So he's not mincing any words here.

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He's not beating around the bush.

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He's basically saying, look,

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if you're not willing to take responsibility

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for changing your own environment,

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we're basically done here.

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- Yes, yeah, which is probably good

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because the rest of the book,

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you're just gonna be mad at him if you don't.

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(laughs)

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Hit that piece at the very beginning here.

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So yes, take ownership,

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but we've talked about this before,

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self responsibility.

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- Yes.

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(laughs)

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- Please do this.

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Though at this point, I would imagine that

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if you haven't or you haven't at least acknowledged

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that that's a thing you should do,

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you're probably not listening to bookworm anymore

00:18:03

at this point, so.

00:18:04

- That's true.

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- There's that. (laughs)

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- Yeah, also with taking responsibility

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for your environment,

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this goes beyond your immediate environment.

00:18:15

The second thing I jotted down for the outline here

00:18:18

is this negative secondary connections.

00:18:21

I found this idea pretty fascinating

00:18:25

where if you have a friend who has a friend,

00:18:30

who is getting into some stuff

00:18:34

that you would consider bad,

00:18:35

then it's going to have a negative impact on you

00:18:38

even though you don't spend any time with that other person.

00:18:40

Does that make sense?

00:18:42

- Mm-hmm.

00:18:43

- Yeah, this is the whole guilty by association concept.

00:18:45

- Yeah, so he even mentions in this book

00:18:47

that belief that I don't know where it originates from,

00:18:50

but you are the average of the five people

00:18:52

you spend the most time with,

00:18:53

but actually you're the average of the people

00:18:57

that the five people you spend the most time with

00:18:59

spend the most time with.

00:19:00

'Cause they're bringing in all of those influences

00:19:02

into your circle of safety

00:19:05

to borrow a Simon Sinek term

00:19:08

and that's having an impact on you

00:19:10

whether you realize it or not.

00:19:12

So if you have a friend of a friend

00:19:15

who is gaining weight,

00:19:17

then you are more likely to gain weight.

00:19:21

And he's got science and research

00:19:24

and numbers to back that up,

00:19:26

which is pretty crazy when you think about it.

00:19:28

I don't want to admit that my well-being

00:19:32

is at the whims of people

00:19:34

who I don't even really see day to day.

00:19:38

But I think it's important to recognize

00:19:40

all of those little factors

00:19:42

that do make an impact in your environment.

00:19:44

- It's so true.

00:19:46

And one of the ways,

00:19:48

and this is something I've been working on a little bit here

00:19:51

recently, the easy one here is fitness.

00:19:53

This is always gonna be the easy example.

00:19:56

It's more universal than many, many others.

00:19:59

But I recently started playing basketball

00:20:02

with a group of guys early on Thursday mornings when I can.

00:20:06

And it's fun,

00:20:09

but the guy who heads the whole thing up

00:20:12

was a bit tentative in asking me

00:20:15

because I'm the tech guy

00:20:16

and he knows I grew up on a farm.

00:20:18

And I don't usually come across

00:20:21

as somebody who's super athletic.

00:20:23

Like that's not something that people assume about me at all.

00:20:27

But I made all star teams in basketball in high school.

00:20:30

Like that was my sport.

00:20:31

And so whenever I talked to,

00:20:35

who was I talking to?

00:20:36

I was talking to my wife

00:20:37

and she was talking to his wife.

00:20:39

And they found out that Joe used to play basketball

00:20:42

in high school anyway, long story short.

00:20:44

He asked because they're super, super competitive.

00:20:47

Like a lot of the guys who play,

00:20:50

you played in college

00:20:51

and they played on the Varsity team in college and such.

00:20:55

So they're good.

00:20:56

And they're a bit younger than me even.

00:20:58

So it's a challenge to keep up with these guys.

00:21:01

And that has pushed me to very different levels

00:21:06

in basketball than what I did even in high school.

00:21:09

So I feel like I've upped that significantly

00:21:12

and then the whole fitness realm

00:21:14

I've now been doing things I haven't done in years.

00:21:17

So that's a very positive thing.

00:21:19

So this is definitely like that whole

00:21:22

who you hang out with thing can change

00:21:25

partially because like in this scenario,

00:21:27

that group of guys, they're all dads.

00:21:29

Everybody's dads.

00:21:30

Everybody's got some form of a white collar job of some kind.

00:21:34

So it's a very interesting group.

00:21:38

But I feel like it's a group that,

00:21:40

we can keep each other accountable

00:21:41

and help each other grow that whole average concept there.

00:21:44

So I don't know.

00:21:45

It's something I've been working on lately.

00:21:47

- Do you feel that they are better than you?

00:21:50

- Yes.

00:21:51

- Okay.

00:21:52

- It's very obvious.

00:21:53

- Okay.

00:21:54

I just ask because that's one of the specific things

00:21:56

he says to look for in part three

00:21:58

is whatever skill you're trying to become better at,

00:22:03

go compete with people who are way better than you are

00:22:06

'cause you'll learn a lot just

00:22:07

from being with them and watching their mannerisms

00:22:10

'cause you don't wanna be embarrassed.

00:22:12

So you'll figure out a way to keep up.

00:22:15

Which I think is a pretty fascinating concept

00:22:17

but I couldn't think of anything personally

00:22:19

where like I would wanna put myself in that environment.

00:22:21

Sounds like you already did that.

00:22:22

That's pretty great.

00:22:23

- Yeah.

00:22:24

I've done it there and then,

00:22:27

the thing that's been on the forefront of my mind

00:22:29

is remodeling a house in the span of three months,

00:22:33

tearing it down to studs and rafters

00:22:34

and bringing it all the way back in three months.

00:22:37

That's what I'm in the middle of right now

00:22:39

which means I've been hanging around a lot of people

00:22:42

who are DIYers and contractors and engineers and inspectors

00:22:47

and permit people and all sorts of folks

00:22:49

which is a very interesting crowd

00:22:52

that I've now found myself neck deep in.

00:22:55

So anyway, a lot has changed in Joe's world

00:22:57

and in my environment.

00:22:58

So this has all been very interesting to me

00:23:02

given the stage that I'm in the middle of right now.

00:23:04

- So if you can't find Joe, go look at a Home Depot.

00:23:07

- That's not far off.

00:23:08

Home Depot, Minards, the local home outlet.

00:23:11

Like these are the places.

00:23:14

This past week when I took the week off

00:23:16

and worked on the house,

00:23:17

I was in Home Depot or Minards at least once

00:23:20

if not twice a day.

00:23:21

So, so here it goes.

00:23:24

- Nice.

00:23:25

I don't have an action I'm associated with this

00:23:27

'cause I think I've kind of already pruned my social circles

00:23:32

as much as I feel comfortable

00:23:33

but that would be a very obvious action item

00:23:36

from reading this would be to take stock

00:23:38

of the people who are speaking into your life

00:23:39

and making sure that you're okay

00:23:41

with the effect that they're having.

00:23:43

If you're not, then figure out what connections you need

00:23:47

to break off and that's never easy.

00:23:49

It's never comfortable but I think he's making

00:23:53

a very strong case here at the beginning

00:23:54

that it is important especially if you want

00:23:58

to change your situation

00:23:59

which he's got a cool personal story of how he did that.

00:24:02

He gets into a lot of the details at the very end

00:24:05

in the conclusion part of the book

00:24:07

but he kind of alludes to it over and over throughout here

00:24:09

but there's been different tipping points in his life

00:24:12

where he's been under a considerable amount

00:24:15

of positive stress he calls it.

00:24:17

He makes a difference between use stress and distress

00:24:20

and using those as a launch pad to go up to a new level

00:24:25

in his life in a specific area

00:24:28

which kind of gets into the last part of this

00:24:31

I wanted to talk about was the environments and stress

00:24:35

'cause he says we need two different types of environments

00:24:37

and I think we know this analytically

00:24:40

because we've read flow by Mihali.

00:24:44

- Yeah.

00:24:45

- 'Cause that's all about being in a stressful environment

00:24:48

but not one that is beyond your capability

00:24:50

and then you're able to get a lot done

00:24:53

and you're in the zone, you're flowing

00:24:54

and then when you're done you step out of the zone

00:24:57

and so there's high stress where you're functioning

00:25:00

at peak capacity but then there is a place

00:25:03

where you completely disconnect and that is high recovery

00:25:06

and the high stress environment

00:25:09

that's where the positive stress or negative stress

00:25:11

comes in the positive stress that use stress

00:25:13

that leads to growth but interestingly he says

00:25:16

it only leads to growth if it's followed by

00:25:18

a period of rest and in order to become a lead at anything

00:25:21

you have to constantly switch between these

00:25:23

highly stressful environments to highly restful environments.

00:25:26

Reminds me a lot of the, "Life is Not a Marathon"

00:25:29

it's a series of sprints.

00:25:31

I don't think there's anything specific.

00:25:33

I take away from this.

00:25:35

I feel like I'm kind of already doing this

00:25:36

with the built-in, you know,

00:25:38

it's the badicals that we have at the Eponch Media

00:25:40

every eighth week we take the week off.

00:25:43

So reading this makes me thankful to have that cadence

00:25:47

and I think maybe if you are typical productivity person

00:25:52

who's reading all these books because you just wanna

00:25:54

maximize your output, there's a good chance

00:25:56

that this is a radical idea and maybe you should take a break

00:26:00

and actually the way to go faster is to slow down.

00:26:03

- This is something that I've been having a conversation

00:26:06

with Becky quite a bit lately in that this whole peak

00:26:11

moments concept, this peak, wasn't peak moments.

00:26:15

- Peak experiences, that's actually in the next section

00:26:18

he gets into those but this is kind of

00:26:20

running the pump for that, yeah.

00:26:22

- It is, it is.

00:26:22

So when you have these big stressful times

00:26:26

and then you need to rest from them,

00:26:27

like I'm in the middle of one of these great

00:26:29

big stressful times right now.

00:26:30

And in the process of trying to maintain a day job

00:26:34

and, you know, maintain some of my online stuff

00:26:37

plus remodeling a house as fast as you possibly can.

00:26:41

And trying to do all that stuff all at one time

00:26:44

means that this is a period where there's a ton of learning

00:26:47

happening in a very short amount of time

00:26:50

and the goal is to make sure our kids are brought along

00:26:54

for the ride which they've been loving it so far

00:26:56

which is a good thing.

00:26:57

So trying to go through all of that and then knowing,

00:27:01

like we've talked about like the culmination of this period

00:27:04

for us is moving into the house.

00:27:07

And I've already said we're taking at least two weeks off

00:27:10

from any work on the house after we move

00:27:14

'cause that needs to be our break before we start doing,

00:27:17

there's like a second wave of remodel we'll do

00:27:19

after we move in.

00:27:20

So we'll start in on that after that two weeks

00:27:23

but that's not of course,

00:27:24

that doesn't have to have the timeframe that this one does.

00:27:27

But we're in the middle of one of those right now

00:27:29

and like, okay, I wanna learn as much from this

00:27:31

as I possibly can.

00:27:33

I've met a ton of people in this process

00:27:35

some of which I hope to become good friends with

00:27:37

because they are way better at things than I am

00:27:40

and I would love to learn from them.

00:27:42

So there's a lot of that going on

00:27:44

but all this to say, environment for Joe

00:27:46

is changing very rapidly.

00:27:48

So there you go.

00:27:49

- Sure.

00:27:50

Well, that's a good place to get into the second part

00:27:53

which is how to make willpower relevant.

00:27:56

And one of the things that I jatted down here,

00:27:57

I wanna talk about was this peak state

00:27:59

and this disconnection

00:28:01

because here he gets into a little bit more specifics

00:28:04

about these peak experiences he calls them

00:28:08

which are rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving,

00:28:11

exhilarating, elevating experiences

00:28:13

that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality

00:28:16

are even mystical and magical

00:28:18

in their effect upon the experimenter.

00:28:21

They are essential to becoming a self-actualized person

00:28:25

and they are most likely to occur

00:28:27

in what he calls an enriched environment,

00:28:32

an enriched environment can be either one

00:28:35

where you are hyper-connected

00:28:37

or one where you are hyper-disconnected.

00:28:40

He uses the story of the person who is doing marketing

00:28:44

and when she's in Denver, she's full go

00:28:48

and then when she's there half of the month

00:28:50

and then the other place I forget

00:28:53

where she originates from maybe Southern California

00:28:55

or something the other half of the month

00:28:57

and that's just kinda like a couple hours a day

00:29:00

and it's pretty chill

00:29:00

and she's having lunch with people and networking

00:29:04

and stuff like that but when she's in Denver

00:29:06

she's focused on the project and doing the work

00:29:10

and that cadence actually sounds pretty cool to me.

00:29:13

I'm not sure I have the ability to do that sort of thing.

00:29:18

I like the fact that they're in different locations,

00:29:20

different spots.

00:29:21

I feel like that's an easy way to do this

00:29:24

to force yourself into a new state and compartmentalize

00:29:28

but for most people that's not an option

00:29:31

especially when things get shut down

00:29:33

and now you have to work from home, school from home,

00:29:37

everything from home, right?

00:29:39

Everything becomes blended and that's not great

00:29:42

but one of the other ways that you can kinda separate

00:29:45

these things is to disconnect completely.

00:29:50

So he says to get into a peak state

00:29:53

you have to be able to disconnect

00:29:55

and I immediately thought of my personal retreat

00:29:58

thing that I do every three months.

00:30:01

It made me thankful for that process

00:30:04

and I've been doing it now for several years

00:30:07

so Rachel's on board and she supports it.

00:30:10

I'm not sure it would have lasted very long

00:30:12

if I didn't have my wife's support for that

00:30:14

and she does the same sort of thing

00:30:17

but I don't know what did you think

00:30:19

when you were reading this section

00:30:21

on like peak state and disconnecting.

00:30:24

What did this mean to you and is there anything

00:30:26

that you're hoping to do about this in the future?

00:30:30

I know things are a little bit crazy right now

00:30:32

in the apartment working on the house,

00:30:34

all that kind of stuff but like, I don't know.

00:30:36

Is there any sort of process for this

00:30:39

you're looking to implement?

00:30:41

- Yeah and it's been very intentional on my part.

00:30:44

So and I started doing this even before

00:30:48

we picked up this book to go through it

00:30:51

but at night and this is on a day to day basis.

00:30:55

This isn't a, it's not like a personal retreat

00:30:58

that's happening on a recurring month to month

00:31:01

or quarterly basis, it's a daily thing

00:31:04

and what I've been doing is at night

00:31:08

when we're done working on the house,

00:31:11

it's a five acre property with about two acres of woods

00:31:13

on the back, it has a bunch of trails cut through it.

00:31:16

The previous owner had a bunch of these trails

00:31:18

and there's a big open prairie that we don't own it

00:31:20

but there's a big prairie on the backside of it

00:31:23

that our property butts up to.

00:31:25

So what I've been doing is when I'm done working

00:31:28

on the house at night, everybody is packed up,

00:31:31

houses locked up, we're ready to leave

00:31:33

and go back to the apartment.

00:31:35

I go for walks out on those trails by myself

00:31:38

and it's usually about a 15, 20 minute walk that I go on

00:31:42

and it gives me a chance to just settle down

00:31:46

from the craziness of trying to hustle all day long.

00:31:50

That's what I've been doing now.

00:31:51

Now of course I'm not there at that time of night

00:31:53

every night of the week but when I am,

00:31:56

that's what I'm doing.

00:31:57

I have to admit, I'm super excited to get moved

00:32:00

into the house because I wanna make that a morning

00:32:02

and evening thing. - Sure.

00:32:04

- Obviously if I live there, it's very easy to walk out

00:32:06

the back door and go walk through the woods

00:32:08

and that's what I would love to do.

00:32:11

The question mark there is what are you doing the winter?

00:32:15

You live up north where we do.

00:32:17

- So when you get a foot of snow,

00:32:21

what's gonna happen out on those trails?

00:32:24

I don't know, maybe I'll buy a set of snow shoes

00:32:25

and keep doing it. - Put on your yak tracks

00:32:27

and you go for a run anyways.

00:32:30

- Exactly, exactly, we'll do something.

00:32:32

So I intend to make that a daily routine.

00:32:36

I'm not able to do that every single day right now,

00:32:40

especially in the mornings 'cause I'm not there.

00:32:42

So whenever we get moved, that's definitely on the goal list

00:32:46

of altering Joe's daily environment and routines for sure.

00:32:51

- Sweet, I like that example.

00:32:54

I think that's great.

00:32:55

I've been thinking through what I could do

00:32:58

on a regular basis to split these up for myself too

00:33:02

and nothing really comes to mind.

00:33:05

Although going for a walk was one of the first things

00:33:07

that I thought of.

00:33:08

I remember reading, I think it was daily rituals.

00:33:13

Though we didn't cover it for a book where I mean,

00:33:15

it was a gap book, a whole bunch of couple page bios

00:33:18

of really famous people and kind of their daily routines.

00:33:21

Surprising number of them spent the morning creating

00:33:24

and then the afternoons walking around their property.

00:33:27

- Yeah, it's so true.

00:33:30

- Also a lot of them had some sort of meditation

00:33:36

prayer journaling habit which in this particular chapter

00:33:39

he talks about all three of those going together.

00:33:41

I thought that was a kind of cool description.

00:33:43

I never really thought about the overlap

00:33:45

of all three of those.

00:33:47

Although as soon as I did, it made perfect sense.

00:33:50

(laughs)

00:33:51

- Yes.

00:33:52

It's like, oh wait, I suppose those would work together.

00:33:55

- Exactly.

00:33:56

The other thing from this chapter though

00:33:58

that I really liked was the weekly planning session.

00:34:02

He's got several questions that I think are just kind of

00:34:06

get you thinking type questions.

00:34:07

I'm not sure they're meant to be replicated.

00:34:10

But they were good, I thought.

00:34:12

How did the previous week go?

00:34:14

What were my wins?

00:34:14

What could have gone better?

00:34:15

Any significant moments?

00:34:17

What are my plans for next week?

00:34:19

How am I gonna take what I've learned into next week?

00:34:22

What are my bigger picture goals?

00:34:23

What are my proximal goals?

00:34:25

What specific to do is do I have to finish this week?

00:34:27

I kind of reworded those into my own language

00:34:30

when I jotted them down into my my node file here.

00:34:33

But that's one of the things I look at

00:34:36

when people give you like a series of questions.

00:34:39

I feel that's a really great place to locate

00:34:42

whether they're a voice worth listening to.

00:34:44

If they give you good questions,

00:34:47

then I feel like they are more thoughtful

00:34:51

and I'm more likely to align with their perspective.

00:34:56

They've got more credibility in my head

00:34:59

if they have gotten me to ask a good question.

00:35:02

However, frequently, most of the questions

00:35:06

I see people pose because I've been around this space

00:35:11

long enough and I've seen enough good questions.

00:35:14

You can kind of tell someone's just making some stuff up

00:35:17

and throwing them on a page.

00:35:19

I can sniff that out from a mile away.

00:35:21

These I thought were good though.

00:35:22

- Yeah, he spent some time with these.

00:35:24

I will say, I do have an action item from this section though.

00:35:27

It's the, he's got the weekly planning sessions.

00:35:30

I don't know that I'm gonna adopt his questions,

00:35:32

but I've been doing journaling at night,

00:35:35

which is if you follow the whole timeframe here,

00:35:38

whenever I do that walk at night through the woods,

00:35:41

when I get back to the apartment,

00:35:43

I am in dire need of a shower.

00:35:45

You don't wanna be anywhere near me

00:35:46

whenever I get to that point.

00:35:48

Usually covered in plaster dust and such,

00:35:50

but whenever I get back, I'll take a shower

00:35:53

and then I do my best to grab the journal

00:35:55

and just write down how I feel the day went.

00:35:58

And that can take a lot of different forms,

00:36:01

but it's been extremely helpful for me

00:36:03

to just process my thoughts as far as what's going on.

00:36:07

But he did talk about journaling in the morning as well,

00:36:11

which is something that I hadn't really processed much.

00:36:15

So that's something that I wanna try to take on

00:36:18

as having like a morning journaling routine,

00:36:21

just kind of reminiscent of morning pages.

00:36:24

But I don't think it's gonna be anywhere near that extensive

00:36:29

'cause that's like a 45 minute to an hour long commitment,

00:36:31

at least for me.

00:36:32

Some people say they can do it in 15 minutes

00:36:34

and I still can't figure out how you do that.

00:36:36

But ain't nobody got time for that?

00:36:37

No, so if I can figure out like a five,

00:36:40

maybe 10 minute morning journaling routine of sorts,

00:36:45

I think that would be helpful.

00:36:46

So that's one of the action items I have from this section.

00:36:49

Well, I have a thing, an action item here

00:36:52

to create a weekly planning template.

00:36:54

I don't know if it's gonna specifically use these questions,

00:36:57

but I do like these questions.

00:36:59

And I think I wanna ask a couple of these

00:37:01

as I'm thinking about the week ahead.

00:37:05

I also think that Obsidian is a great place to do that,

00:37:09

which is why I think it might work for me

00:37:12

because I can just kind of add it on

00:37:14

to my current journaling workflow,

00:37:17

which is basically built around daily questions.

00:37:21

And then I have a separate section on my daily notes

00:37:24

for journal entries.

00:37:25

So when there's a significant event,

00:37:27

I'll jot about it and then I'll hashtag journal slash entries.

00:37:30

So it applies both the journal and the entry tags.

00:37:32

And then there's a gratitude section at the bottom.

00:37:34

I don't fill those two sections out every day.

00:37:36

I do do the daily questions every day.

00:37:38

One of the things that makes me,

00:37:41

or makes this stick for me,

00:37:43

because it's not something that you just do

00:37:45

at the end of the day.

00:37:46

If I just put off the journaling until the end of the day,

00:37:49

I'll forget about the significant event.

00:37:51

So I gotta capture it right after it happens.

00:37:54

So one of the things that I've done is I have installed

00:37:57

the daily notes core plugin,

00:37:59

and then there's an option in there

00:38:00

to open it to today's daily note.

00:38:02

So I have that toggled on.

00:38:04

And those, if you set up your vault in your iCloud folder,

00:38:07

those plugin preferences sync as well.

00:38:10

So now when I open up Obsidian on the Mac,

00:38:13

it takes me to the daily note for open it on the iOS device,

00:38:17

my iPhone, it takes me to that daily note.

00:38:20

And now I can just put in the scores for the daily questions

00:38:23

or jot down on journal entry or gratitude whenever

00:38:26

I'm thinking about it because it's all on that one note.

00:38:31

I'm ashamed to say I just discovered

00:38:33

that workflow, but I think that's going to be very effective

00:38:37

for me.

00:38:38

And I think the weekly planning can fit into there nicely.

00:38:42

Just need to figure out how I'm gonna do that specifically.

00:38:46

So the action item is to create a weekly planning template

00:38:49

and I'd need to figure out what exactly it's gonna do,

00:38:53

but I'm 99% sure it's gonna take place

00:38:56

in Obsidian somewhere.

00:38:57

- Makes sense.

00:38:58

I would expect absolutely nothing less from you, Mike.

00:39:01

- My setup is in the Trustee Bullet Journal, so.

00:39:06

There you go.

00:39:08

(laughs)

00:39:09

- Trustee Bullet Journal.

00:39:12

- Yep, good old pen and paper.

00:39:14

- The next thing I wanna talk about from this section is,

00:39:18

I just jotted it down as Newton's third law,

00:39:21

but this is from chapter six where he talks about

00:39:26

that everything in your life is energy.

00:39:27

And when you make a decision,

00:39:29

it has an equal and opposite reaction.

00:39:31

I think this pertains to even something

00:39:35

like you just mentioned,

00:39:36

the pen and paper bullet journal stuff.

00:39:39

So like you decide, "Hey, I'm gonna do this."

00:39:41

There's a whole bunch of other stuff

00:39:43

that is gonna happen like the fact

00:39:45

that you do a lot of stuff online

00:39:47

and you have to reconcile that, right?

00:39:48

But those are forces that are gonna be competing against

00:39:52

this new behavior that you're trying to create.

00:39:54

You can't just say, "Oh, well, this thing looks fun.

00:39:56

"I'm going to try it."

00:39:58

Because the minute that you decide to try it,

00:40:00

there is going to be something on the other side

00:40:02

that is trying to pull you back to the level you were at

00:40:06

or the way you were doing things.

00:40:09

You're not just going to stumble into a better future.

00:40:14

And I think it's valuable to recognize

00:40:17

that there is, every time we make a decision

00:40:22

for an action item, whether we succeed with it or not,

00:40:25

the moment that we say, "I have this action item,"

00:40:28

there is now a competing force in the universe

00:40:31

that is trying to make us fail at that action item.

00:40:35

So recognizing that there's gonna be some resistance

00:40:37

that you need to overcome, in some cases,

00:40:39

that's all that's required.

00:40:41

In other cases, that's just the first step.

00:40:43

- I did a coaching call with a gentleman here

00:40:48

a few weeks ago and he was attempting to do

00:40:53

a certain workflow, a certain system.

00:40:55

I'm not gonna go into the details of that

00:40:57

'cause we'll be here way too long.

00:40:58

But he was trying to implement a system.

00:41:01

And that system, in his mind, dictated the use

00:41:06

of a certain piece of software.

00:41:09

He had never worked with that piece of software before.

00:41:12

- Oh boy.

00:41:14

- So I told him, "Do not do this."

00:41:16

This is a problem, you are going to fail at this.

00:41:20

I don't wanna sugarcoat this in any way

00:41:23

if you attempt to learn that tool

00:41:24

and you attempt to learn this system at the same time,

00:41:28

almost guaranteed you will fail at this.

00:41:30

And it will take you much, much longer

00:41:32

to achieve what you're trying to achieve.

00:41:36

Instead, what you need to do is whenever you have

00:41:39

something pushing on you, you need to adopt something.

00:41:43

Trying to go a different direction

00:41:45

and take on a different system or a different tool

00:41:48

at the same time is absolutely going to cause you problems.

00:41:51

You're better off going to a known tool

00:41:52

which is why in your case, Obsidian, obviously,

00:41:56

like you should, right?

00:41:57

That is by far the answer you should have to that.

00:42:01

If you're going to adopt a new thing

00:42:04

that can easily be transformed into just raw text,

00:42:07

in your case, it should be an Obsidian.

00:42:10

In my case, almost every single time

00:42:12

that's in a pen and paper notebook.

00:42:14

So of course, it should be there 'cause I know it

00:42:16

and it's not gonna create problems for me down the road.

00:42:19

So there you go.

00:42:21

That's my take on Newtons third law.

00:42:23

- Cool.

00:42:25

I do think there's a little bit more complexity

00:42:30

than we just made it sound like with this.

00:42:36

- Very much so.

00:42:37

- And you do have to recognize

00:42:39

like with the app stuff specifically,

00:42:41

this stuff kind of grinds my gears

00:42:43

because people often assume that a different app

00:42:47

is going to solve their problem.

00:42:49

I stumbled upon a clip.

00:42:51

I think Matt Burchler shared it on Twitter

00:42:54

of a podcast episode with Casey Newton

00:42:56

describing the task manager that he was gonna use.

00:43:01

And he's like, I just picked the prettiest one

00:43:04

because I know next year I'm gonna want to switch

00:43:06

to something else anyways.

00:43:07

And they've all got the same features at this point.

00:43:09

(laughing)

00:43:12

- That's brilliant.

00:43:13

- Yeah.

00:43:14

- It's kind of true though.

00:43:15

- So I don't know.

00:43:17

There's an element of truth to that I think

00:43:19

where part of it is just if you enjoy the tools

00:43:23

that you're using, then it's easier to do your work.

00:43:27

But also there's the other side of that

00:43:29

which is if I have a system already

00:43:32

that allows me to do the work,

00:43:34

I should therefore not go see what else is new.

00:43:39

And I don't know that there's any clean place

00:43:43

to draw the line there.

00:43:45

Like especially with something like the bullet journal method

00:43:48

that you do because you do so much other stuff

00:43:51

in the tech space.

00:43:55

I mean, are you just saying like,

00:43:59

I'm never going back to digital task management.

00:44:01

I mean, is that a stance you're willing to take right now?

00:44:04

- It's messy, intentionally.

00:44:08

- Yeah.

00:44:09

- And people get really confused

00:44:12

and all been out of shape over this.

00:44:14

And I totally get it, I do, but for me,

00:44:18

what I have found is if I keep track of my day-to-day,

00:44:23

week-to-week, like ritual-based stuff in the bullet journal

00:44:28

and keeping track of what is it I need to do today,

00:44:31

this week, this month, like that sort of thing.

00:44:34

We're not even this month really today and this week.

00:44:36

That's really where the bullet journal stops.

00:44:39

But whenever I have templated projects,

00:44:42

like this bookworm episode,

00:44:45

I have a whole series of, I think it's like 160 checkboxes

00:44:49

that I've got to go through from reading the book

00:44:52

to publishing the episode, which you do mostly,

00:44:57

but all the stuff that is on my side

00:44:59

that makes that happen, right?

00:45:00

So all of those are in a templated checklist,

00:45:03

but that's an obsidian.

00:45:05

And that's because I've been keeping,

00:45:08

I wrote some of this stuff down

00:45:10

just because I like having it on paper in front of me,

00:45:12

but a lot of times I'll capture some notes on paper

00:45:16

and then I transfer it into obsidian for book notes,

00:45:19

but a lot of times those book notes are in the text file

00:45:22

that I created for the bookworm episode,

00:45:24

which also contains that template.

00:45:26

So those tasks are kind of scattered

00:45:29

through some text files now.

00:45:33

And I was doing that with a mix of omni-focus and obsidian,

00:45:39

but I've kind of, I shouldn't say kind of,

00:45:41

I've migrated all that over to obsidian at this point

00:45:45

because it's easier to keep the tasks

00:45:47

and the notes in one place,

00:45:49

which is a bit backwards from what I've done in the past,

00:45:53

but it seems to work.

00:45:54

- Yeah.

00:45:55

- But at the same time, I also know I'm not using obsidian

00:45:58

anywhere near what you're doing either.

00:46:00

Like I'm not using it as a thinking tool at all.

00:46:03

So that's not on my radar to use it in that way,

00:46:07

but I don't know, seems to work well for me

00:46:10

to have things kind of broken up that way

00:46:12

with templated projects in obsidian,

00:46:14

but all of the other task management type stuff

00:46:17

goes in the bullet journal.

00:46:19

But I will say like we use for all the house remodel stuff

00:46:23

I've been using base camp with my wife.

00:46:25

So that's where we've been managing

00:46:27

all of the house project stuff.

00:46:30

All the stuff that's gotta be done before we move,

00:46:31

after we move, et cetera, et cetera.

00:46:34

So that's where that lives.

00:46:37

- Yeah, I think there's some inertia based off

00:46:41

of the choices that you have previously made,

00:46:45

but that doesn't necessarily indicate

00:46:47

whether a choice is good or bad.

00:46:49

I think this one's pretty whatever you feel like doing.

00:46:54

- Yeah.

00:46:55

- But when you're talking about creating new habits

00:46:58

or setting some goals for things that you want to achieve,

00:47:05

I think the completion of the activity,

00:47:09

if it's a positive habit or a positive goal

00:47:11

you're trying to achieve,

00:47:12

that's the good state and the bad state is,

00:47:14

well, I didn't do it.

00:47:16

And with those specifically,

00:47:18

that's where I see a lot of this

00:47:21

equal and opposite reaction stuff coming in.

00:47:24

You don't think about it that way.

00:47:26

When you decide I'm going to create a journaling habit

00:47:30

or a mindfulness meditation habit

00:47:32

or a habit of exercising every day,

00:47:35

that someone on the other end is like,

00:47:37

oh, really?

00:47:38

Well, we'll see about that.

00:47:40

Not if I have anything to say about it,

00:47:42

but that's really what happens.

00:47:44

- It's true.

00:47:46

There's always somebody on the other side trying to stop.

00:47:48

Like even if you, and this happens,

00:47:51

if you make a statement that you're going to start a habit

00:47:56

or you're going to release a product,

00:48:00

what's one of the first things you hear?

00:48:03

Oh, that's really hard.

00:48:05

Oh, that takes a lot of work.

00:48:06

- Yes, of course.

00:48:07

- Oh, that's a difficult task to take on.

00:48:08

Why is, oh, that's a big project.

00:48:11

These are the comments you'll hear almost immediately,

00:48:14

which is a hint in the exact opposite direction

00:48:18

of where you want to go.

00:48:20

So I've been talking to a bank of these subcontractors,

00:48:25

and it's interesting how many of them are entrepreneurs.

00:48:29

Like they started that business, right?

00:48:31

And as with a lot of entrepreneurs,

00:48:35

like they always have people telling them what will

00:48:38

and won't work, or what type of business model to take on.

00:48:42

And just for fun, I was talking to my drywall guy,

00:48:47

'cause he's got to come in in like five, six weeks.

00:48:51

I'm not ready for him now, but he,

00:48:53

I was talking to him about how he got his business going

00:48:56

and how he got it up and running and stuff,

00:48:58

and was talking to him about like how many people

00:49:02

will tell you stuff doesn't work when you want to make it work.

00:49:04

And he's like, oh yeah, I just decided early on

00:49:07

that whenever someone tells me that something won't work

00:49:09

or it's going to be too hard,

00:49:10

like I just won't talk to them anymore.

00:49:12

(laughing)

00:49:14

Okay, sure, that'll work.

00:49:17

So yes, it's something that does exist.

00:49:19

It's something that, you know, I think it can work

00:49:23

is whenever you have these negative influences,

00:49:26

like when people are pushing back against you,

00:49:28

this equal and opposite energy that's happening

00:49:33

whenever you try to make a decision,

00:49:36

you need to counteract it or ignore it in this case

00:49:39

as these guys are doing.

00:49:40

Yeah, and that kind of leads into the next point

00:49:43

on the outline, which is what if it's not equal and opposite?

00:49:48

What do you do if you're in an environment

00:49:51

where you can't control the forces at play there?

00:49:56

And immediately I thought of obviously an office environment

00:49:59

where you've got a boss or a manager

00:50:02

who is dictating the way that you do things,

00:50:06

but that's not the only one that comes to mind.

00:50:11

I think that process is probably the same

00:50:15

for all of these.

00:50:18

The advice that he gives in this last chapter, chapter eight,

00:50:22

I feel is pretty brilliant if you sit and think about it

00:50:26

for a little while, because the chapter before this

00:50:30

is talking about changing your default options.

00:50:34

Okay, so that's great when you have the ability

00:50:37

to set your own course and make intentional choices

00:50:40

and change the default options,

00:50:42

but what if you can't control the options

00:50:45

that are presented to you?

00:50:47

In that case, he advises that you create automated responses

00:50:51

for situations where you know you will be triggered.

00:50:54

Have any examples of this that you'd be willing to share?

00:50:57

(laughing)

00:50:59

Like default answers whenever something could go wrong.

00:51:02

Like, okay, so here's one.

00:51:04

Just a situation where you know you're gonna get triggered.

00:51:08

Sure.

00:51:09

One thing that really, really, really bugs me

00:51:12

is whenever I have people point out things

00:51:14

they don't like about a technical production

00:51:17

that they aren't willing to help with.

00:51:22

So I work at a church, we operate off of a volunteer base,

00:51:26

right, this is fairly standard practice,

00:51:28

and I regularly need people to volunteer for things

00:51:33

like on a weekly basis, I need volunteers.

00:51:36

And I have a pretty good base of folks

00:51:38

who are willing to help out, but it's the folks

00:51:41

outside of that team that like to offer suggestions

00:51:47

unsolicited and it really, really bugs me.

00:51:52

Like, I don't know why that is, but whenever people

00:51:55

really, really want to tell me how things

00:51:58

are not going well, but they don't want any part

00:52:02

in helping solve the problem.

00:52:06

That's when I start to have issues.

00:52:09

So this has been a while back now, I just decided like,

00:52:13

okay, every time somebody comes up to me

00:52:15

and they have an issue with a technical production,

00:52:17

'cause obviously I'm the one in charge

00:52:19

of how that all goes down, anytime I get those complaints,

00:52:23

my first response is, I hear you,

00:52:26

would you be willing to help us solve it?

00:52:29

And that is my default response.

00:52:32

And sometimes, as in once, I've had somebody say,

00:52:35

yeah, I could help.

00:52:37

And every other time it's been, you know,

00:52:40

I don't know that I'm gonna be able to help you with that.

00:52:44

Oh, okay, all right.

00:52:45

Well, if you change your mind, please let me know

00:52:47

if you'd be willing to help us make this production better.

00:52:50

Like, I'm all ears if you're willing to help.

00:52:52

- I like that.

00:52:53

- Which I'm not saying it, but what I'm essentially saying is,

00:52:57

I'm not listening to a word you say

00:52:58

unless you're willing to help me fix it.

00:53:00

That's really what I'm saying, but that's,

00:53:02

that's the hard part about it, right?

00:53:06

So that's kind of one of my default responses.

00:53:08

I don't know if that's the right way

00:53:10

to handle that situation, but for whatever reason,

00:53:12

that whole scenario is one that really trips my trigger.

00:53:16

- I like that a lot.

00:53:17

You know, as you're talking about that,

00:53:18

I'm trying to think of a way to summarize that stance.

00:53:22

I don't know if it's correct or not either,

00:53:24

but I tend to agree with your approach to this,

00:53:28

which is if you aren't willing to commit,

00:53:32

then I don't want the feedback.

00:53:34

- Yes, yes, which again, I don't know

00:53:36

if that's the right stance to take in that scenario.

00:53:40

It's just that people really, really, really like to complain.

00:53:45

- Yeah.

00:53:46

- And I don't want to just listen to complaints

00:53:49

unless you're willing to do something about it.

00:53:52

So again, I don't know if that's the right way to,

00:53:54

again, it's a church, right?

00:53:56

So I don't know, that's what I've chosen to do.

00:53:59

I haven't had anybody really, really get upset with me

00:54:01

over that.

00:54:02

- Yep.

00:54:03

- Yes, yet.

00:54:04

- Yeah, I don't know.

00:54:06

I think that feels fair to me.

00:54:09

I think it's a good filter because I think a lot of people

00:54:13

and myself included will tend to offer feedback

00:54:18

when it's not asked for with maybe the intention,

00:54:26

at least we tell ourselves,

00:54:27

the intention of helping the person solve the problem

00:54:31

that we so clearly see.

00:54:33

But often, even if we do bring attention

00:54:36

to a legitimate problem, it's really not helping

00:54:39

unless we are willing to be part of the solution.

00:54:42

So.

00:54:43

- Yes.

00:54:44

- My gut says that's a pretty decent rule of thumb,

00:54:47

but I don't know, I don't know, for sure.

00:54:50

- I don't know.

00:54:51

I know that I've recommended that process

00:54:53

to a couple other volunteer team leaders.

00:54:58

And I know a couple other folks have adopted that.

00:55:00

And actually in their particular case,

00:55:02

they've gained a lot more volunteers that way.

00:55:04

So I think it does help to some degree,

00:55:08

but because the teams that I'm in control of

00:55:12

are fairly skilled positions,

00:55:15

I think I don't get as many people willing to actually help.

00:55:17

- Yeah, I think that's probably true too.

00:55:20

The example that comes to mind for me

00:55:23

is in person meetings.

00:55:28

I can't stand a poorly organized in person meeting.

00:55:34

And I'm kind of fortunate that for the last year and a half,

00:55:37

a lot of the local meetings have been via Zoom.

00:55:42

And we're kind of in this place now

00:55:46

where people are pushing to meet back in person.

00:55:50

And the way that I am embracing this,

00:55:53

what to do in an environment you can't control

00:55:56

is to drag my feet and basically create

00:56:02

a scenario where I can still join virtually

00:56:07

to hide my annoyance with the way things are run.

00:56:12

- Sure.

00:56:14

- That sounds terrible.

00:56:15

I need to not show my displeasure for things,

00:56:18

but there's some meetings that I'm thinking of specifically

00:56:22

that they're scheduled for an hour

00:56:23

and they take two hours every single time.

00:56:25

And it ends up being a monologue.

00:56:28

And I'm very, very glad that they're poorly run meetings

00:56:32

that I can attend virtually with everybody

00:56:34

has their cameras off.

00:56:35

'Cause then I just turned my camera off too

00:56:36

and no one can see me roll in my eyes.

00:56:39

- Yeah.

00:56:40

(laughs)

00:56:40

I remember early on in the pandemic,

00:56:44

when we were shut down,

00:56:46

there was none of our staff was at the building,

00:56:49

but I was in control of the live streams, right?

00:56:51

So I was here at the building,

00:56:53

which is where I'm at currently.

00:56:54

So I was at work, but no one else was.

00:56:57

So it's kind of weird, but they would want to do

00:57:00

these Zoom calls.

00:57:00

Well, you know, the rule of thumb when you're doing a Zoom call

00:57:03

is like you cut your meeting in half

00:57:05

of what it would have been in person, if not more.

00:57:07

Like that's generally what they say,

00:57:08

'cause it doesn't have all the interactions.

00:57:12

Over Zoom is what you would have in person.

00:57:15

But it seems like people who aren't used to that

00:57:17

make them much longer.

00:57:19

- Yeah.

00:57:20

- Just shoot me now.

00:57:21

I am so grateful for being able to turn things off

00:57:23

'cause I always throw the AirPods in.

00:57:25

I'm gonna keep working on my thing.

00:57:26

I'll stay within about 50 feet of my computer

00:57:28

and I'll be fine.

00:57:31

Or I'll join Zoom for my phone and carry it around with me.

00:57:33

Like that's what I'm gonna do.

00:57:35

- Yeah.

00:57:36

- 'Cause I don't want people to see that I'm not paying

00:57:38

any attention to what they're doing,

00:57:39

but I still need to be on the call.

00:57:42

- It's true.

00:57:43

And in the past, I think I would have

00:57:47

tried to change the meeting culture.

00:57:51

And then I still try to push things in the right direction

00:57:54

when I feel like I have an opportunity to do so.

00:57:58

But I also know that for the most part,

00:58:02

my advice is not going to be heard or heated.

00:58:05

So I'll just play by everybody else's rules

00:58:10

and see what I can get away with.

00:58:14

It's not an ideal situation.

00:58:15

Ideally, we have an effective in-person meeting

00:58:19

since that's not going to happen.

00:58:21

How do I make this suck the least?

00:58:23

It's kind of the approach I'm taking.

00:58:26

And I think ultimately when you're talking about

00:58:28

an environment you can't control,

00:58:29

that's kind of the approach you have to have.

00:58:33

It's like you think and you plan for the worst case scenario.

00:58:38

And then when it happens, you're not surprised.

00:58:41

You don't get bent out of shape.

00:58:42

You just initiate your pre-planned response immediately,

00:58:47

even though it's not maybe ideal.

00:58:51

But yeah, I think that's helpful.

00:58:53

I think the situations that he describes

00:58:56

for the majority of the book don't fall into this category.

00:58:59

But I also, unlike some of the other books that we've read,

00:59:03

feel like his advice to someone who's not in a situation

00:59:06

that he's in is still pretty good.

00:59:09

There are other books that we've read where it's like,

00:59:11

oh, well, you just apply this this way

00:59:13

if you're an employee instead of a CEO.

00:59:15

Maybe not.

00:59:17

(laughs)

00:59:19

Thanks for the tip, but no way.

00:59:21

It's actually going to work.

00:59:23

Yep.

00:59:24

I feel like this one, there's at least some clear path forward

00:59:26

for just about anybody.

00:59:28

Yeah, that's fair.

00:59:29

Yeah, 'cause you can at least figure out

00:59:30

how you're going to respond to things.

00:59:31

Like it's the classic, I can't change what you can do.

00:59:35

I can't change what you do, but I can change my response

00:59:37

to what you do.

00:59:38

Yep.

00:59:39

So it's kind of that concept.

00:59:41

Yeah, exactly.

00:59:42

All right, and then part three is outsource,

00:59:45

high performance and success to your environment.

00:59:48

As I mentioned before, I feel like this is

00:59:51

the longest part of the book feels.

00:59:53

Like the longest part of the book.

00:59:54

There's five chapters, six chapters here, nine through 14.

01:00:00

And they all tackle a specific aspect of outsourcing

01:00:06

your performance to your environment.

01:00:12

I think it's very possible that listeners to bookworm,

01:00:15

they're not going to be blown away by every single one of these,

01:00:17

but there's probably something in here for everybody.

01:00:22

I'll just run through the chapters real quickly.

01:00:24

Chapter nine is embed forcing functions

01:00:26

into your environment.

01:00:27

Chapter 10, more than good intentions.

01:00:30

Chapter 11, grow into your goals.

01:00:32

Chapter 12, rotate your environments.

01:00:34

Chapter 13, find unique collaborations.

01:00:36

Chapter four, never forget where you came from.

01:00:38

I just picked, I got a couple of things from these chapters,

01:00:42

which kind of stood out to me.

01:00:45

First one being the forcing functions from chapter nine.

01:00:49

And these are self-imposed situational factors

01:00:53

that quite literally force you to act and achieve

01:00:58

what you had intended.

01:01:02

I immediately thought of some negative versions of these.

01:01:06

Like, I remember hearing a story about somebody

01:01:09

who would pre-schedule an embarrassing tweet

01:01:13

to go out at like six in the morning.

01:01:14

So it would force him to get up before then

01:01:17

and turn it off every day.

01:01:19

And if he didn't, then it was gonna go out

01:01:21

and it said something like so-and-so is a lazy bum

01:01:25

who didn't bother to get up and turn off

01:01:29

this embarrassing tweet, something like that.

01:01:32

So I had no trouble envisioning negative versions

01:01:37

of these, but I wasn't real clear on how I might apply these.

01:01:43

He does talk about the most important forcing functions

01:01:48

or high investment, there's social pressure,

01:01:50

there's high consequences for poor performance,

01:01:53

there's high difficulty,

01:01:54

and there's novelty associated with these.

01:01:57

I was curious though, did you have any insight

01:01:59

into forcing functions?

01:02:01

Are you planning to do anything with these?

01:02:03

- I'm in the middle of a very big one

01:02:05

with a house right now.

01:02:06

- That's true.

01:02:06

We did this very intentionally.

01:02:10

Whenever we set up the lease for our apartment,

01:02:13

we set up a six month lease.

01:02:15

And the reason for that was we didn't want to be

01:02:19

in an apartment for more than six months.

01:02:21

So the choice we had was to either find a house

01:02:25

that needed a decent amount of work early on in that lease

01:02:28

and buy it and work on it until our lease expired,

01:02:31

or we needed to over time decrease the amount of work

01:02:36

that a house needed that we were looking for

01:02:38

so that we could get one bought that needed less work done

01:02:41

so that we could move into it towards the end of our lease.

01:02:43

Like that was our forced deadline in the process.

01:02:47

And we can go month to month after the lease

01:02:50

but the price goes up and we didn't want to do that.

01:02:52

So we kind of forced ourselves into this.

01:02:55

So with that, I've got this deadline in October

01:02:58

where the house has to be move in a bowl

01:03:01

and that is forcing me to make a lot of life choices

01:03:06

to get a house ready to go very quickly.

01:03:09

So if you don't get the gist, like this house has been

01:03:13

very much what I've been eat, sleep and breathing

01:03:17

for the last month now.

01:03:19

So everything kind of is seen through that lens right now

01:03:22

but yes, I've kind of set this deadline

01:03:25

that's forced based on a lease expiring at that point.

01:03:28

- That's a good example.

01:03:30

I have trouble, a little bit of trouble

01:03:33

around wrapping my head around that one though

01:03:35

because that is an example of like later on

01:03:38

when he talks about burning the boats

01:03:40

where you have to have a house to live in.

01:03:44

I guess technically you don't because you do have

01:03:46

the apartment and like you said,

01:03:47

you are going to keep paying rent on it

01:03:50

if you aren't moving into the new place.

01:03:55

But I feel like that's less optional

01:03:57

than some of the other stuff that he has on here.

01:04:02

Like you're going to move into the house.

01:04:03

It's a matter of when.

01:04:06

And I'm trying to figure out from myself

01:04:09

how and where I might want to apply these.

01:04:13

Like for example, in this section,

01:04:16

he talks about the idea of flipping the sunk cost fallacy

01:04:20

and using it for forcing functions.

01:04:22

And sunk cost fallacy, I was an economics minor in college.

01:04:25

So that caught my attention where you made a big investment

01:04:29

in something and so you just convinced yourself

01:04:31

that you're just going to keep going with this thing

01:04:34

because you've already made this big investment in this thing.

01:04:37

And the economic perspective is,

01:04:40

well, it doesn't matter how much you have invested

01:04:42

in something, if it's still the wrong choice,

01:04:44

then the best thing you can do is to stop investing in that.

01:04:48

And even if you have to throw away all the money

01:04:50

that you haven't invested in that thing,

01:04:52

make the right choice now,

01:04:53

it's going to be better off in the long term.

01:04:55

I like the idea of using this in terms of creating

01:04:59

positive habits and setting positive goals.

01:05:03

But I can't figure out how I would want to do this.

01:05:07

I guess, if you've got a streak,

01:05:12

like I still practice my Spanish every night

01:05:16

in like 650 days or something in a row.

01:05:19

So that's kind of a sunk cost fallacy.

01:05:22

Like, well, I can't throw away that giant streak.

01:05:24

I'm just going to keep going so I don't break the chain.

01:05:27

I guess maybe that's a version of it,

01:05:30

but I'm having trouble thinking of a real practical way

01:05:34

that generally speaking, anybody could implement

01:05:37

this sort of thing.

01:05:38

- Sure.

01:05:39

Well, if you're following the chat,

01:05:41

Blake talks about having an appointment with a trainer.

01:05:45

So you've got the sunk cost of hiring the trainer,

01:05:50

and you've got the appointment made with them.

01:05:52

You've kind of got the forcing function

01:05:54

of the every other week scheduling a bookworm.

01:05:58

Like you have some of these already.

01:06:00

You've got the sabbatical weeks that you take off,

01:06:04

but you generally have launches somewhere in the middle.

01:06:08

So you've got these deadlines that are forced in there.

01:06:11

So you kind of have a lot of these.

01:06:14

- True, yeah, maybe that's why I'm having trouble thinking

01:06:16

of other places that I might implement this

01:06:18

'cause I've got all low hanging fruit already, but.

01:06:22

- Possibly, yeah.

01:06:23

Which might beg the question, why add another one?

01:06:26

- Yeah, true.

01:06:27

I guess one thing to be said about this book

01:06:30

is that there is an emphasis on achieving a specific goal

01:06:34

he uses launching a book towards the end

01:06:38

as a specific example, but obviously there's a bias here

01:06:43

towards goals and you know how I feel about goals.

01:06:48

I much prefer habits.

01:06:50

- I know, you're a big fan.

01:06:51

- Yeah, so forcing functions, I don't think translate real well

01:06:55

into habits.

01:06:56

Changing your environment does and setting things out

01:07:00

to make it easy to initiate a habit I feel like does,

01:07:04

but I don't know, maybe the forcing functions

01:07:06

and the sunk cost that goes into some of these,

01:07:09

maybe that doesn't really fit with show up every day.

01:07:13

- I feel like it could.

01:07:15

It would just depend on what you show up for.

01:07:17

- Sure, yeah.

01:07:18

- Like if you were to say you're gonna launch

01:07:20

a YouTube channel in three weeks,

01:07:22

that would force you into doing a lot of video editing

01:07:27

and such and launching a product of sorts.

01:07:30

- That's tied to a goal though, right?

01:07:31

Launching the product or launching the YouTube channel?

01:07:34

- Sure.

01:07:35

- Yep.

01:07:36

- So I guess my question is the goal,

01:07:38

a necessary component to the forcing function?

01:07:41

- To me, the forcing function is a tool to be used

01:07:46

if needed, not like it's not a requirement,

01:07:49

but if you have a goal that you're trying to achieve

01:07:51

and you're having our time achieving it,

01:07:53

using a forcing function to help you with that

01:07:55

would be the answer or one of the answers.

01:07:59

But it's not, like I feel like it's not a necessary,

01:08:02

like it's something to be added on if required.

01:08:05

- Okay, that's fair.

01:08:07

- That's the way I took it anyway.

01:08:09

Maybe I misunderstood it.

01:08:10

- No, I think you're right.

01:08:12

I do think that fits very well with the idea of goals,

01:08:16

not so much with habits, but the next point on the list here

01:08:21

and the next chapter actually,

01:08:23

which is more than good intentions,

01:08:24

this talks about learning styles.

01:08:27

This part I feel aligns better with the concept of habits.

01:08:30

'Cause it talks about the growth mindset,

01:08:33

going back to the book by Carol Dweck,

01:08:35

which is one of the better books we have ever read.

01:08:40

That one might get more mentions than flow at this point,

01:08:43

and not sure, probably pretty close.

01:08:46

But he mentions here that people with a fixed mindset

01:08:49

have a really hard time learning.

01:08:52

And that spoke to me because from a point several years ago,

01:08:57

I have identified as someone who personal growth

01:09:05

is very important to me.

01:09:08

So I want to be a lifelong learner,

01:09:11

and that's one of the things that my wife and I

01:09:13

have explicitly decided we want to teach our kids

01:09:17

to be lifelong learners.

01:09:19

Because that is going to serve them better

01:09:22

than getting into the right school

01:09:23

or getting the right degree ever could.

01:09:26

Unless they're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer

01:09:28

or something like that, and they need the piece of paper.

01:09:31

In which case, I'd support them if that's what they really

01:09:33

want to do, but whatever.

01:09:36

I want them to be able to learn,

01:09:37

and not just in a classroom.

01:09:39

So there's these different learning styles here,

01:09:41

imagining, reflecting, analyzing, deciding, acting,

01:09:44

and experiencing, just to name a couple of them.

01:09:47

And he says that people tend to have a growth mindset

01:09:49

and learning styles that they're comfortable with,

01:09:51

but a fixed mindset in those that they are uncomfortable with.

01:09:55

I think this is an interesting idea,

01:09:58

and I think it's 100% true.

01:10:00

I can see how I have fallen into this in the past,

01:10:05

but also I'm kind of encouraged by this

01:10:07

because I've sort of embraced the fact

01:10:11

that I don't have certain skills

01:10:14

and I don't feel comfortable learning certain ways,

01:10:17

and I've kind of forced myself

01:10:18

to try to learn those ways anyways,

01:10:22

if that makes any sense.

01:10:23

So I've never really been a big YouTube person,

01:10:28

but I am starting to get into YouTube

01:10:31

and primarily finding and watching videos

01:10:34

from people who are speaking intelligently

01:10:37

about topics that I'm interested in.

01:10:41

The whole video format is just not the way

01:10:43

that I would have traditionally chosen to learn something,

01:10:47

and it's not like giving a choice

01:10:49

between reading a book or listening to a book

01:10:51

or watching a book that they're all equal,

01:10:54

but there is information that is valuable

01:10:56

that I wouldn't be able to get any other way

01:10:58

that I'm going to YouTube for,

01:11:01

even though it's still kind of low on the totem pole

01:11:05

of the ranking of sources for me.

01:11:08

But point being that I'm kind of forcing myself

01:11:11

to learn in a channel that isn't naturally comfortable for me.

01:11:16

I think also the whole sketch note,

01:11:21

my journey with sketch notes is another example of this

01:11:24

where I never really was a visual learner.

01:11:27

I would always take notes on a computer

01:11:30

and then kind of decided one day I read this study

01:11:33

that if you took notes by hand, you retained more.

01:11:37

You didn't get as much information,

01:11:39

you couldn't keep up word for word,

01:11:42

but that's okay because you have to sort of synthesize

01:11:45

what's going on and put it into your own words.

01:11:48

And so you retain more information

01:11:50

and then I came across sketch noting and like,

01:11:53

"Oh, I bet it's that concept to the nth degree."

01:11:57

And so even though my first sketch notes

01:11:59

were absolutely terrible, stick figuring a bunch of words.

01:12:02

I forced myself to do it over and over again,

01:12:06

and I've been able to see the benefit

01:12:08

of forcing myself to learn that way,

01:12:10

even though it was super uncomfortable at the beginning.

01:12:14

So I guess I'm discovering that I can

01:12:18

and am willing to embrace the discomfort

01:12:22

when it comes to these different learning styles.

01:12:25

Is there anything in this section here

01:12:27

on these learning styles that you see for yourself?

01:12:31

Like this is the one that I kind of gravitate towards

01:12:34

or this is one that I've been thinking about

01:12:38

for a while, but I've been dragging my feet on it.

01:12:40

Coming out of this, was there any sort of path forward

01:12:45

for you in terms of continuing to develop a growth mindset?

01:12:49

- I don't think so.

01:12:50

I mean, you know, at risk of beating a dead horse,

01:12:55

like I've been forced into learning a lot of things

01:12:59

from a house construction stance lately.

01:13:04

And I think I've always had the mindset

01:13:07

like, okay, if I don't understand how to do something

01:13:11

or how something works, I can either figure it out,

01:13:15

find somebody who can tell me how it works

01:13:17

or find it online somewhere.

01:13:19

Like those are generally the ways I've done things.

01:13:23

Like just to use a different example,

01:13:25

I've got a running light that's out on our suburban

01:13:29

that I need to get replaced.

01:13:30

I found out that GM is a genius

01:13:32

and it actually requires removing the fender well

01:13:35

in order to get the running light out

01:13:37

so you can replace it.

01:13:38

Like, come on.

01:13:40

So, like I can learn how these things work

01:13:44

and how to do them.

01:13:46

And I feel like, I don't know if it's the growth mindset book,

01:13:50

but I feel like I've always had this,

01:13:52

like I can figure out how things work mine,

01:13:54

you know, this mental model, if you will.

01:13:58

So I've kind of always had that

01:14:01

in the back of my head somewhere.

01:14:03

So I can't say that's anything new,

01:14:05

but I know that I've got a ton of things right now

01:14:09

that I've been learning very intricate details on.

01:14:12

Simple things too.

01:14:13

Like, how do you lay out recessed lighting in a room?

01:14:17

Like, I can walk you through the math

01:14:18

on how to figure out how many lights

01:14:19

and how to place them right now.

01:14:21

Like, I can do all of that.

01:14:23

But these are things that I've had to learn

01:14:26

in order to put a house together to keep, you know,

01:14:29

vehicles maintained 'cause I choose to do those things myself

01:14:32

instead of outsourcing them.

01:14:33

So I guess if there's something in this

01:14:37

that I've kind of forced is that

01:14:39

I've made the decision to do a lot of things myself

01:14:42

instead of trying to get other people to do them for me.

01:14:47

And, you know, even the things that

01:14:49

I'm gonna pay other people to do right now,

01:14:52

I'm paying other people to do them

01:14:54

because they will do them better than me

01:14:55

'cause there's a little bit of an art form to it

01:14:58

and they can do it quicker than me.

01:15:00

And I don't have time.

01:15:01

So I can technically do, like, I can lay carpet,

01:15:06

I can hang drywall, I can do the mud and stuff.

01:15:08

Like, I can do all of that,

01:15:10

but I'm not gonna take the time to do it

01:15:12

as well as they're gonna be able to do it

01:15:13

in the quick speed that they're gonna be able

01:15:16

to do that as well.

01:15:17

So sometimes I will outsource things

01:15:19

even though I do have this tendency to say,

01:15:23

I'm gonna figure out how to do that myself

01:15:24

and do it myself.

01:15:26

I don't know if that answers what you're asking.

01:15:28

- Kind of, I don't think I'm putting it very well.

01:15:31

I feel like this chapter, he talks about at the very end,

01:15:35

the primary obstacle is how you feel

01:15:37

about what you need to do.

01:15:38

And with these learning styles specifically,

01:15:42

he talks about a behavioral inhibition system,

01:15:44

which is when you perceive risks or threats

01:15:46

that stop you from acting

01:15:48

and then a behavioral activation system

01:15:51

where you perceive the rewards that encourage action.

01:15:54

And it sounds to me like your behavioral activation system

01:15:58

is very active and you're not thinking

01:16:00

about how stupid you're gonna look,

01:16:02

trying to figure out how to hang drywall,

01:16:05

you're just gonna figure it out 'cause you're curious.

01:16:07

(laughs)

01:16:08

- Yes, yeah, absolutely.

01:16:11

Whenever, here's a good example too.

01:16:14

Whenever I've gone to Home Depot,

01:16:16

and here's a silly one, you'll love this one,

01:16:19

the shut off valves for the washing machine need replaced.

01:16:24

Okay?

01:16:25

And I found out when I got to Home Depot

01:16:28

that there's like 14,000 versions of these things.

01:16:32

And I did not know that.

01:16:33

And the nice thing about Home Depot

01:16:35

is the people who are, at least the local one,

01:16:37

the people who are working there

01:16:39

are like previous contractors and such.

01:16:41

And one of the guys who was in the aisle there

01:16:43

used to be a plumbing contractor.

01:16:45

And I just asked him, I have an old house,

01:16:49

I don't have a clue what I'm getting into here.

01:16:51

What am I not knowing that I need to pay attention to?

01:16:55

I don't mind asking that question

01:16:57

'cause I know I'm probably an idiot when it comes to

01:17:01

(laughs)

01:17:02

how this stuff is supposed to be done.

01:17:04

But if I'm willing to ask the question,

01:17:07

I've learned that most of these people

01:17:09

who have expertise in an area,

01:17:12

they love teaching other people how to do it the right way.

01:17:16

So I don't usually worry about me looking dumb

01:17:21

because if I can activate their teacher,

01:17:25

then I can be a better student.

01:17:27

I guess that's probably the way to put that.

01:17:29

- Sure, and that's the thing.

01:17:31

I think a lot of people, myself included,

01:17:35

would have trouble doing

01:17:37

because you don't wanna look like an idiot.

01:17:40

- Sure, yeah.

01:17:42

- I mean, I kinda went through that

01:17:44

when I started taking virtual guitar lessons last fall,

01:17:49

is I've been playing guitar for a long time.

01:17:50

I play on the worship team at our church

01:17:52

every single Sunday.

01:17:54

And it's a little bit humbling to say,

01:17:58

I'm not happy with my current ability

01:18:01

and I wanna submit myself to somebody who is better than me,

01:18:05

who can help me improve.

01:18:07

- Sure.

01:18:08

- And in order to do that, in order to have a coach,

01:18:11

if you're working with a trainer,

01:18:14

I think it's probably the same thing.

01:18:16

Like you have to admit how out of shape you are

01:18:19

or how bad you are at something before

01:18:21

somebody can really help you get better.

01:18:23

- Right.

01:18:24

- And that's not an easy thing, I think, for most people.

01:18:28

- Sure.

01:18:29

Well, here's another example.

01:18:30

It's not really house related,

01:18:32

so it's just probably a good thing.

01:18:33

But for a long time, I've wanted to get into blacksmithing.

01:18:36

When I was on the farm growing up,

01:18:38

I used to do welding and such quite a bit.

01:18:40

So I've done metal work quite a bit in the past,

01:18:43

but I've never done blacksmithing.

01:18:45

So I would love to make an axe head

01:18:48

or I don't even know what, make garden tools and stuff.

01:18:51

Like I would love to be able to just make stuff

01:18:54

out of molten metal.

01:18:56

I have no idea why I want to do that, but I do.

01:19:00

And I discovered two weeks ago

01:19:02

that one of the custodians here at our church

01:19:06

has a blacksmith shop and has been doing this

01:19:08

for quite some time.

01:19:09

I was like, dude, when I'm done on this house

01:19:12

and I get some more time, preferably in the winter,

01:19:13

'cause I know blacksmithing is hot,

01:19:15

can I please come out to your place and you teach me?

01:19:20

Like, yeah, absolutely.

01:19:21

We'll do like every other week lessons or something.

01:19:23

Like that'd be amazing.

01:19:24

I would love that.

01:19:26

So like, I guess I don't mind looking like a dummy sometimes.

01:19:31

Maybe that's just me.

01:19:32

- Well, I think I can get to the point where I'm okay with it,

01:19:37

but it takes me a little while.

01:19:39

- Sure, sure.

01:19:40

- Which is kind of the next point on the outline here.

01:19:45

It talks about collaboration and also masterminds.

01:19:49

So I feel like these are kind of related.

01:19:54

The masterminds thing comes from chapter 11,

01:19:57

grow into your goals.

01:19:58

And this is where it talks about competing

01:20:02

with people who are much better than you.

01:20:04

Towards the end of this, he talks about joining

01:20:08

a mastermind group.

01:20:08

I don't think those two ideas map perfectly,

01:20:11

although if you can get yourself in a mastermind

01:20:13

with a bunch of people who are more successful than you,

01:20:16

then absolutely do it.

01:20:18

I do think the big value of the mastermind group

01:20:21

is just getting people who can help you kind of see your,

01:20:26

your blind spots and help you implement this context-based

01:20:30

learning that he's talking about here.

01:20:32

Where you learn something at a surface level,

01:20:34

you practice it, you get immediate feedback

01:20:37

so you can smooth out your rough edges,

01:20:39

you repeat it over and over,

01:20:40

and then you get more coaching and feedback to assess

01:20:44

and assess your knowledge and skills over time.

01:20:46

So you're constantly looking for the next thing

01:20:48

that you can improve.

01:20:50

It's been a while since we've talked about masterminds.

01:20:53

I know we've talked about it before.

01:20:55

When you brought it up in this chapter,

01:20:58

did it do anything in you?

01:21:01

Like, yeah, I want to be a part of a group like that?

01:21:06

- No.

01:21:07

- I didn't think it would.

01:21:08

(laughing)

01:21:11

- I see a lot of people talk about the benefits of masterminds.

01:21:15

I know that there are certain personalities

01:21:20

and people who think that they're the end all be all,

01:21:24

and they might be for some people.

01:21:28

I think my issue is that I generally don't enjoy

01:21:33

the process of hearing other people talk about

01:21:36

how good things are going in their businesses and such.

01:21:39

- That is valid, that is valid.

01:21:41

- And that's what a lot of, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot

01:21:44

of them tend to be that way, which they're not all

01:21:48

and they're not all, and that's not necessarily bad.

01:21:51

I just don't have the patience for that.

01:21:53

- Sure.

01:21:54

- And I would rather do like a one-on-one coaching deal

01:21:59

or having like two people specifically.

01:22:02

If I were to go to a quote unquote mastermind

01:22:06

where it's me and maybe two or three other people

01:22:08

and it's us focusing on one other person's business

01:22:11

and we're trying to help that one person that whole time,

01:22:13

then yeah, that's a very different thing.

01:22:15

If I'm going into a scenario where I've got four or five

01:22:18

people looking at my business to help me figure out

01:22:20

how to do it better, that's a different thing.

01:22:22

I think those are both very valid and good things to do.

01:22:25

But most masterminds that I've participated in,

01:22:28

seen and such, it's round robin where you go around

01:22:31

and you're switching roles midstream, which can work,

01:22:35

but I feel like everybody gets like 15 minutes or so

01:22:37

and to me 15 minutes is nowhere near enough

01:22:39

to get anywhere solid.

01:22:41

Like you're basically just getting an intro

01:22:43

when that intro is not what I need.

01:22:45

- Sure.

01:22:46

- And I need to go much, much deeper than that,

01:22:48

which means that to me to have a round robin mastermind

01:22:52

that has the value that I'm trying to get out of it,

01:22:54

it needs to be like four to five hours

01:22:55

and nobody's gonna take the time for that.

01:22:58

- I would.

01:22:59

(laughs)

01:22:59

- I'm sure you would, but that's not something

01:23:01

I wanna commit to and I don't have that kind of time

01:23:04

to devote to something like that.

01:23:05

- Yeah.

01:23:06

- So if I want that feedback, like he's talking about

01:23:10

for masterminds, I'm going to seek out a coach

01:23:13

in some form, which I've done in a few cases,

01:23:15

but that's probably the route I would take.

01:23:17

- That's an interesting alternative, I think,

01:23:20

because you're right, the mastermind group

01:23:24

that you join is gonna be important

01:23:28

and kind of everybody's expectations going into it.

01:23:31

And I also don't think his definition

01:23:33

of a mastermind group necessarily

01:23:35

is the default definition for a mastermind group.

01:23:38

The example that he uses is the genius network

01:23:42

that Joe Polish does, and he's connected with Dan Sullivan

01:23:47

and the strategic coach, unique ability stuff.

01:23:52

I know somebody who was a part of that mastermind group,

01:23:55

it's $25,000 a year and they do call it a mastermind group.

01:24:00

They meet four times a year

01:24:01

and they probably have those hot seat sessions

01:24:03

that you were describing.

01:24:05

One additional detail I got out of reading this

01:24:08

was that if you don't 10x your investment

01:24:13

in the first year you can't join the next year,

01:24:16

which I thought was interesting,

01:24:17

I'm gonna have to go back and ask my friend

01:24:18

if he's still a member or not.

01:24:20

- Yep, yep.

01:24:21

- 'Cause I remember him coming back

01:24:24

from one of those meetings and talking about

01:24:27

the connections that he had made,

01:24:30

and that gets into the collaboration piece of this.

01:24:34

'Cause he says collaboration is the physical act

01:24:36

of making new and novel connections.

01:24:37

And I think this can apply to networking,

01:24:39

it could also apply to ideas.

01:24:42

And I think there's some maybe accidental overlap here

01:24:47

with these terms of mastermind and collaboration.

01:24:53

I do think the biggest value a mastermind group can have

01:24:57

is helping you see things the right way,

01:25:00

pointing out the weak spots.

01:25:01

If you're in a situation where you're actually getting

01:25:04

legitimate feedback and you're not just praising

01:25:07

everybody for the stuff that's going right,

01:25:09

I don't think that's helpful,

01:25:11

but I also recognize that that's what a lot

01:25:15

of people wanna hear, so.

01:25:16

(laughs)

01:25:17

Whatever, it's just not for me.

01:25:20

The collaboration piece though,

01:25:23

I think there's a lot of value in this too.

01:25:25

Maybe this is worth maintaining those connections

01:25:28

even if you thought it was a mastermind

01:25:30

and you discover it's actually a collaborative group

01:25:33

because he says one plus one off and equals 10

01:25:36

when it comes to collaboration,

01:25:37

especially if you have people from diverse viewpoints,

01:25:40

different perspectives who can help you see things

01:25:43

in a different way.

01:25:45

He talks about the stages of conscious evolution

01:25:48

where you're socializing, everything is calculated

01:25:50

to avoid fear and anxiety, second level self-authoring,

01:25:54

where everything is to further your own agenda.

01:25:56

And then the last level that almost nobody gets to

01:25:58

is the transforming self where you both value an agenda

01:26:03

and are wary of it.

01:26:04

I feel like that's where the collaboration,

01:26:05

the different perspectives can come in

01:26:07

as they can help you see the weak spots

01:26:09

and not just identify the weak spots

01:26:12

but can help you build a better solution

01:26:17

because they are coming at the problem

01:26:19

from a different perspective.

01:26:21

I don't think I have a collaborative group

01:26:25

that I am actively a part of,

01:26:26

although maybe my mastermind group

01:26:28

kinda gets into this a little bit.

01:26:30

I don't know, but I feel like these are two

01:26:33

very different ideas.

01:26:34

And if you were able to be a part of two different groups

01:26:38

with these distinct purposes,

01:26:39

that would probably be the best implementation of this.

01:26:42

But I don't know.

01:26:44

Do you have any interest in collaborating

01:26:46

given your current work responsibilities?

01:26:50

Like, does this appeal to you at all?

01:26:53

- Yes, very much so.

01:26:55

To me, this is very, very different than a mastermind group.

01:26:57

Like the whole mastermind group versus a collaborative group.

01:27:00

But I don't think I took the collaborative group

01:27:04

as a set group of people that regularly rotates.

01:27:08

I didn't take it that way at all

01:27:09

'cause I feel like I kind of do this.

01:27:12

Like whenever I have people on as a guest for analog J out,

01:27:16

well, that's a collaborative scenario.

01:27:18

- That's true.

01:27:19

- I have a different podcast that I guest on.

01:27:23

That's a collaborative deal.

01:27:25

If I, you get what I'm saying,

01:27:27

like anytime I make a connection,

01:27:30

whenever I've been on Mac Power users in the past,

01:27:32

like, well, that's me collaborating with David and Steven.

01:27:35

Like, that's the way that those work.

01:27:38

So whenever I do those, like to me,

01:27:40

that's building a collaboration network.

01:27:44

Like this is a group of people that I can collaborate with

01:27:47

on different temporary projects.

01:27:50

To me, that's what he was getting at.

01:27:52

But I could see how you take it as a set group

01:27:56

that rotates and collaborates inside itself.

01:27:59

I could see that as well.

01:28:00

- Well, I think these are both process driven solutions

01:28:04

to the problem of how do I get outside perspectives?

01:28:09

And I think the guests on analog J that could be

01:28:12

a collaborative group, although I think there's a danger

01:28:15

of it not being a collaborative group

01:28:18

where you do just seek out the people who are just like you

01:28:22

and saying the same things as you

01:28:24

and you get on the microphone and talk about

01:28:28

the benefits of the bullet journal system, right?

01:28:31

And I just use that just to pick on you,

01:28:33

but you could do the same thing with me, with Obsidian.

01:28:36

We've all got these different bubbles of belief

01:28:38

going back to the Luminal Thinking book.

01:28:41

And so how do you bust out of that?

01:28:42

I feel like it takes some very intentional connecting

01:28:47

with people who wouldn't just naturally be hanging out

01:28:51

the same places that you would be.

01:28:54

If I'm a Mac fan and I'm listening to MPU,

01:28:58

I mean, this is a stupid example,

01:29:00

but it's probably worthwhile if I wanna be able

01:29:05

to speak intelligently about the tech space in general

01:29:08

to go pay attention to what's going on

01:29:11

in the Windows world and on Android,

01:29:13

even though I don't wanna be there, right?

01:29:15

And that's just if I were to decide

01:29:17

that's the thing I wanna do.

01:29:18

You have to decide for yourself,

01:29:19

but going into those other places can be uncomfortable.

01:29:24

- So you haven't kept up with Windows 11,

01:29:26

that's what you're doing.

01:29:27

- That is exactly what I'm telling you,

01:29:29

and I am okay with that.

01:29:30

- Wow.

01:29:31

(laughs)

01:29:32

Well, if you follow their every other cycle,

01:29:34

Windows 11 will be a flop, so we'll see.

01:29:36

(laughs)

01:29:38

- Yeah, and I just picked that one

01:29:39

because I feel like there's not a whole lot of risk there.

01:29:43

I think a lot of the other camps

01:29:45

that people would self-identify with,

01:29:47

maybe are a little bit more emotionally charged,

01:29:49

but that's honestly where there'd be the most value

01:29:52

in figuring out how to collaborate anyways.

01:29:55

- Sure, sure.

01:29:57

- Makes sense.

01:29:58

- All right, so that's the book.

01:29:59

Then there's a conclusion where he tells a little bit

01:30:01

of his story.

01:30:03

It sounds kind of interesting.

01:30:04

He grew up and was having trouble dealing

01:30:07

with a divorce of his parents,

01:30:10

was playing a bunch of video games,

01:30:11

eating a lot of pizza,

01:30:13

and then just decided enough of this,

01:30:15

I'm gonna change my life,

01:30:16

changed his environment, move somewhere else,

01:30:18

came back a couple years later,

01:30:20

and everybody in his hometown basically tried

01:30:23

to drag him back to where he was.

01:30:26

And I think there's a possibility that

01:30:30

you come back home and people are naturally,

01:30:35

or people are legitimately excited about the change

01:30:38

in your life, but I think it's definitely possible

01:30:41

that you get the reaction that he got,

01:30:43

which is like, oh, you're always gonna be this way,

01:30:46

'cause this is the way you were when you left.

01:30:48

And in that case, you know,

01:30:49

can't blame him for getting out of there.

01:30:52

A couple other pivotal points when he decided

01:30:56

he wanted to write this book.

01:30:58

They adopted some foster children, I believe,

01:31:02

which is cool, he talks about how this is really,

01:31:05

really stressful, and I don't know how this is gonna happen,

01:31:08

but they figure out a way to make it work.

01:31:10

And that encourages me just the conclusion here

01:31:14

about his story, like these different things

01:31:19

that make you uncomfortable, they're not necessarily bad.

01:31:23

I have to admit, I was thinking about this

01:31:26

when I shared with you before we hit record

01:31:29

that since we recorded last time,

01:31:32

I have agreed to help coach my son's middle school soccer team.

01:31:37

I haven't coached in, it's gotta be 15, 20 years.

01:31:42

And I knew they needed a coach,

01:31:44

they're, both of them are on the middle school team,

01:31:46

one is in eighth grade, one's in sixth grade.

01:31:48

So it's kind of a unique opportunity that I can, you know,

01:31:52

be with both of them and do something that we all enjoy,

01:31:56

have a good time together.

01:31:57

But coaching is a big responsibility,

01:32:00

and when I heard they were looking for a coach,

01:32:02

I'm like, nope, nope, nope, way.

01:32:04

And then Rachel's like, well,

01:32:05

why don't you just talk to the coach?

01:32:06

He's a pretty easygoing guy, maybe, you know,

01:32:09

you can just help out a little bit here and there.

01:32:12

So I talked to him, and very first thing I said is like,

01:32:14

okay, so you wanna have practices,

01:32:15

Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

01:32:17

Like a new Mondays, Thursdays will never work.

01:32:20

Fridays will only work about half of the time.

01:32:22

If you're still interested, let's talk.

01:32:24

He's like, oh yeah, no problem.

01:32:26

(laughs)

01:32:28

So going back to, you know, the limiting beliefs,

01:32:31

and this is an example of like I said,

01:32:32

I've identified some of these,

01:32:34

but I haven't written them all down.

01:32:35

That was a limiting belief that I had going into this was,

01:32:38

well, they're gonna want a coach

01:32:40

who's gonna be there every single time.

01:32:42

And that's not me, so I just shouldn't even bother.

01:32:47

But once the conversation was forced upon me

01:32:50

and I basically laid out, you know,

01:32:52

what I wanted to have happen and say,

01:32:55

I completely understand if you want somebody more committed

01:32:58

and no hard feelings if this just isn't gonna work,

01:33:01

they're like, no, no, we'd love to have you.

01:33:03

So it's kind of like the best of both worlds for me.

01:33:05

I get to be involved on my own terms

01:33:07

and not completely blow up our lives

01:33:10

and our schedule and the process.

01:33:12

- Good job, Mike.

01:33:13

- Hey, thanks.

01:33:15

Anything else about this book?

01:33:16

- No, I think I'm good.

01:33:18

- All right, well, let's talk about action items.

01:33:22

I will go first.

01:33:25

There is chapter 14, "Never Forget Where You Came From,"

01:33:27

where he talks about the,

01:33:30

this is kind of where he talks about his story

01:33:33

and overcoming his environment, switching environments.

01:33:38

But he talks about the narratives that families tell

01:33:41

about themselves and he says it's valuable

01:33:45

to learn your history and your roots,

01:33:46

just be learning about your history

01:33:48

doesn't mean you have to repeat it.

01:33:50

So I actually bought on Prime Day,

01:33:53

one of those DNA tests that is supposed to give you

01:33:58

like your health analysis, but also your ancestry.

01:34:02

And it is sitting in a drawer upstairs.

01:34:04

So before the next episode,

01:34:06

I am going to take that DNA test

01:34:08

and hopefully have the results.

01:34:11

- Nice, nice.

01:34:13

- I'm also going, yeah, it should be interesting.

01:34:16

I also want to, from the Find Unique collaborators,

01:34:19

I want to make a list of who I am collaborating with.

01:34:24

And some of this is easy.

01:34:28

You know, I'm collaborating with Joe when we do bookworm.

01:34:30

I'm collaborating with David Sparks when we do focused,

01:34:33

but I want to make a list of the people

01:34:36

that I am collaborating with or have collaborated with

01:34:40

in the recent past and the projected takeaway from this

01:34:44

is I'm going to recognize I have a little bit bigger network

01:34:48

maybe than I thought I did, which would be good for me

01:34:52

because I still feel like I don't really have

01:34:55

a whole lot of name recognition

01:34:59

and I get nervous about reaching out to somebody.

01:35:03

He's like, oh, they don't know who I am, you know,

01:35:05

that sort of thing.

01:35:06

But when I sit and think about the people that I've worked with

01:35:09

and the stuff that I've been able to make,

01:35:12

I'm pretty proud of the results.

01:35:15

So just having that list, I think, will be good to go back

01:35:19

and look at periodically.

01:35:21

- Sure, yeah.

01:35:22

- And then the last one is I want to create

01:35:24

a weekly planning template in Obsidian

01:35:28

as we talked about.

01:35:29

- I gotta get the bell out.

01:35:30

- Yeah, you do.

01:35:31

- I'll get it out here.

01:35:33

- All right, what about you?

01:35:36

- I have three of them here

01:35:38

and I've talked about two of them already.

01:35:41

So the morning and evening walks piece

01:35:44

is one that I've brought out

01:35:47

that I've been kind of working towards.

01:35:50

The other one was the journaling and the morning piece

01:35:52

and possibly the weekly, I'm gonna try it this upcoming weekend

01:35:55

and just see how that goes.

01:35:57

And if it works out great, I'll probably try to continue it.

01:36:00

If it doesn't, then I'll abandon it

01:36:02

but do that particular piece.

01:36:05

And then one chapter item that we didn't talk about

01:36:09

that I have an action item from is,

01:36:11

there's a section in the,

01:36:13

I think it's the second to last chapter

01:36:15

where he's talking about the mastermind's collaboration piece

01:36:18

but he also mentions rotating environments.

01:36:21

And I know some people do this for work and personal

01:36:25

or different types of work that they do.

01:36:27

Like they've got a desk that they go to and they write

01:36:29

and then they've got another area they go to

01:36:31

for recording video and they have these different environments

01:36:34

that make things easier.

01:36:35

And I'm kind of wanting to work out something

01:36:39

along those lines where I've got a couple different

01:36:41

like base workstations.

01:36:44

Some of that's because I've got this IT assistant

01:36:47

who works in the same space as my current desk

01:36:49

and I love him, he does a lot of great work

01:36:52

but he just needs to ask questions about everything.

01:36:56

So I love you Joel, but he's,

01:36:59

sometimes I gotta go work somewhere else

01:37:01

'cause he'll do fine, doesn't need my input

01:37:03

but if I'm here he will ask for it consistently.

01:37:06

So haven't got him to stop that part yet

01:37:08

and he knows he does it, he just doesn't realize it

01:37:10

until it's like 30 minutes into it.

01:37:12

So anyway, I gotta find a different area

01:37:14

so I can try to do a little bit of a rotating environment setup.

01:37:19

So yeah, those three, the morning and evening walks,

01:37:22

the journaling in the morning

01:37:23

and then the different workstations.

01:37:25

Nice.

01:37:26

- That's what I got.

01:37:27

- That one I liked to the rotating environments,

01:37:30

I actually kind of had that as an action item

01:37:34

but have already worked through a schedule

01:37:36

where I can go to the coworking space

01:37:38

and just break up the routine.

01:37:40

- Oh sure, sure, yeah.

01:37:42

- I do think that's a valuable action item though

01:37:45

and that chapter is really good, I agree.

01:37:49

- Yep, it's a good one.

01:37:50

- All right, so style and rating, my book,

01:37:53

so I guess I go first.

01:37:56

We talked at the beginning about how this

01:37:59

is your standard three part book

01:38:01

but it's laid out a little bit differently

01:38:04

than what I was expecting, which is a good thing.

01:38:08

It also, the headline, the book title is very click baity

01:38:13

and so I feel like that tempered my expectations going into it.

01:38:19

I sort of chose it with the,

01:38:23

I don't wanna say I expected it to be bad

01:38:25

but there was definitely in my mind the possibility

01:38:27

that this could go south quickly.

01:38:30

- Yeah.

01:38:31

- But that's not what happened.

01:38:33

I feel like Benjamin Hardy is a very good writer,

01:38:36

very entertaining, lots of research being done with this,

01:38:39

quoted a lot of the other books that we've read.

01:38:42

If I were to nitpick this,

01:38:44

I think one thing I would say is that he does

01:38:49

what I would probably do if I were to try to write a book

01:38:52

which is quote too many people.

01:38:56

I feel like every single chapter,

01:38:58

he's quoting another book and another source

01:39:00

and somebody who said this thing this particular way

01:39:02

and some of the best advice that I got was,

01:39:05

you know this stuff, you've been around this stuff long enough,

01:39:09

you can make these ideas your own.

01:39:11

It doesn't mean you're taking somebody else's idea

01:39:13

and you're putting your name on it

01:39:15

but you are synthesizing the idea

01:39:17

and you're applying your own spin to it

01:39:19

and you don't feel like you have to give someone else credit

01:39:24

for the work that you're doing.

01:39:27

And that is inherently ingrained in me.

01:39:30

I think I've shared this story before

01:39:31

about how when I was a freshman in college,

01:39:33

I got in trouble because I cited a source wrong

01:39:36

for a book report of all things.

01:39:38

It stemmed from a relationship with a professor

01:39:41

who really wanted to get me

01:39:43

and I can't say that I blame them.

01:39:44

I was a little bit of a jerk in that class.

01:39:47

But anyways, that really stung me.

01:39:50

They gave me a zero on the paper

01:39:52

so they're gonna take me to academic court,

01:39:54

get me thrown out of school, whatever.

01:39:56

I'm like, you know, I didn't plagiarize that paper.

01:39:58

It's a book report for crying out loud.

01:40:00

(laughs)

01:40:01

But that stuck with me.

01:40:03

And I feel like he kind of takes the same approach

01:40:07

in this particular book where, yeah,

01:40:10

maybe you've heard these things from other places

01:40:13

but you don't need to just regurgitate

01:40:17

what Carol Dweck has said

01:40:19

and what Ari Maisel has said

01:40:21

and all of these other people have said,

01:40:24

I wanna know what you have to say.

01:40:26

I wanna know what you think about this.

01:40:28

So I feel like it could have been a little bit more direct.

01:40:33

It could have been a little bit more

01:40:35

like just owning this idea.

01:40:37

I can totally empathize with not wanting

01:40:41

to rip off somebody else's unique idea as your own though.

01:40:44

I think some of that comes from a little bit

01:40:47

of a lack of self-confidence though.

01:40:49

That's the only thing really I can point out

01:40:51

that I wish would have been different

01:40:53

about this particular book.

01:40:54

I love the descriptions of the environment,

01:40:57

determining your actions.

01:40:59

I feel like the first section just sets the stage

01:41:01

really, really well.

01:41:02

I feel like no matter where you are

01:41:04

in your productivity journey,

01:41:05

you're gonna find something out of this.

01:41:10

The only other thing I can say about it is

01:41:13

that I don't know that there is anything completely

01:41:16

life-changing here for us having gone through this.

01:41:20

I feel like if we would have sat down

01:41:23

and thought about what does it mean

01:41:26

if willpower doesn't work?

01:41:28

Well, it means this is true and that is true.

01:41:30

We probably could have arrived at a lot of the message

01:41:33

that he is putting forth in this book.

01:41:36

Doesn't mean it's necessarily bad,

01:41:38

but it's not completely radical either.

01:41:41

Once you wrap your head around the title,

01:41:44

a lot of this stuff kind of seems a little bit

01:41:47

of common sense, the forcing functions

01:41:51

and leveraging the sunk cost fallacy and stuff like that.

01:41:56

I mean, it's really well done,

01:41:58

but it's not one of those books that I'm gonna recommend

01:42:03

to everybody that they read this.

01:42:06

I'm gonna rate it at 4.0.

01:42:09

I do think it's valuable.

01:42:11

I think the biggest value it has is in context

01:42:15

with other books that we have read,

01:42:17

like the willpower instinct.

01:42:20

I'm not quite sure if I just read this in isolation,

01:42:25

if it's gonna have the same sort of impact.

01:42:28

And I also, when I got done with this book,

01:42:33

it wasn't something where it was,

01:42:36

I don't know, like mindset specifically

01:42:39

or even something like grit,

01:42:42

man search for meaning definitely,

01:42:44

you get done and there's almost like an emotional high

01:42:47

from reading the book and you're excited about,

01:42:50

I now see the path forward.

01:42:52

I don't feel like I got that from this book.

01:42:55

I feel like I got a lot of information

01:42:58

about environments and some motivational tactics

01:43:03

that I could deploy carefully in specific situations,

01:43:08

but it wasn't the kind of thing that you get done with it

01:43:14

and you're like, let's go storm the castle sort of a thing.

01:43:17

Not that every book needs to be that way,

01:43:19

but just in terms of like the books that we've read

01:43:22

for Bookworm and the lasting impact that they have,

01:43:25

I'm not sure this one sticks around for a real long time.

01:43:30

- Sure, no, that makes sense.

01:43:32

It does, it does.

01:43:34

Well, I just wanna say like he started off the book

01:43:36

by talking about Victor Frankel and I thought, hmm.

01:43:40

- Yes, he did.

01:43:40

- That's a pretty solid start to a book.

01:43:43

And then shortly after he mentions Frankel,

01:43:45

he gets into Carol Dweck and then Carol Dweck comes up

01:43:47

multiple times throughout the book.

01:43:49

But there's also a few points in here.

01:43:51

You know how sometimes we, you know, down grade a book

01:43:54

because there's a section that they feel,

01:43:57

that we feel like they should have expanded on.

01:44:00

It's like, well, yes, but there's a whole nother book on that.

01:44:03

So they probably didn't need to, and like we make that comment.

01:44:07

I feel like fairly often.

01:44:09

Well, he does have a couple places,

01:44:12

at least a handful of places in this book where he's like,

01:44:14

if you wanna read more about this, go check out these.

01:44:17

And I remember whenever we were reading how to read a book,

01:44:22

that thing keeps coming up.

01:44:24

Like I don't know how that book keeps coming up, but it does.

01:44:28

And it's like whenever you're choosing what book to read next,

01:44:31

like if you were to make the list of books that were recommended

01:44:34

or mentioned inside the one you're currently reading

01:44:36

and then go read those, like you end up with this massive network

01:44:39

of books to read, it seems like a lot of books

01:44:42

that I don't do that.

01:44:44

They do once in a while, they'll mention one or two books,

01:44:46

but not like 12 or 15 or 20.

01:44:49

This one, there's a lot of books recommended in it,

01:44:51

which is kind of a throwback, I feel,

01:44:54

to kind of the older way of writing

01:44:56

that just isn't done as much today.

01:44:59

Now, I think you're absolutely right.

01:45:01

He doesn't really own this and pose a whole new thing

01:45:06

that's his own idea.

01:45:08

He does outsource the credit to a lot of people,

01:45:13

which is fine, but I feel like he, I think you're right.

01:45:17

I think he needs to own it to some degree.

01:45:20

I think he nailed it.

01:45:21

I think it's a 4.0 book.

01:45:23

I do, although I feel like this has potential

01:45:28

to be a how to read a book scenario

01:45:30

where this could come up more often in the future,

01:45:34

but it just doesn't feel like it will right now.

01:45:36

'Cause I feel like this is the type of thing

01:45:37

that we've kind of been coming to already.

01:45:39

So it doesn't feel groundbreaking to us,

01:45:42

but I feel like to somebody who's still trying to figure out

01:45:45

how to set their mindset and figure out

01:45:47

how to do the self-help concept,

01:45:48

this could be a very revolutionary book for them.

01:45:51

So to us and for Bookworm, I don't think it fits that,

01:45:55

but I think this could be one that I would recommend

01:45:57

to people who are fairly new to the space though.

01:45:59

Like I feel like it could be helpful in that scenario.

01:46:01

So anyway, I'll agree with you 4.0.

01:46:04

That's where I'll land on it.

01:46:05

- All right, so let's put willpower doesn't work

01:46:10

on the shelf.

01:46:12

What's coming up next?

01:46:14

- Yeah, so next book up is "The Mountain is You"

01:46:18

by Brianna West, I think is how you say it

01:46:21

from what I looked up.

01:46:22

And this is about self-sabotage

01:46:25

and why we resist efforts to change.

01:46:30

And as I've talked to some folks about

01:46:33

the concept of self-sabotage,

01:46:35

I'm learning that pretty much everybody does this.

01:46:37

So we're gonna talk about sabotaging yourself

01:46:41

and stopping you from setting up your environment

01:46:44

to do things the way you think you should do

01:46:46

or that you want to do.

01:46:47

So there you go, "The Mountain is You," Brianna West.

01:46:50

And then what's the one you're gonna pick, Mike?

01:46:53

- So I have to give you some context

01:46:55

for the selection of this book.

01:46:57

I mentioned liminal thinking when we decided

01:47:02

we were gonna read that one.

01:47:03

When you just, when you pick that one,

01:47:05

I told it to my mastermind group

01:47:07

and there was one person in particular

01:47:09

who was very, very excited about that book.

01:47:12

And there are a couple other books

01:47:14

that he has recommended since then,

01:47:17

which are kind of all along the same vein.

01:47:19

This guy reads more books than we do put together.

01:47:23

So this, I feel like is a creative perspective

01:47:28

on using liminal thinking.

01:47:34

I am going to choose another recommendation

01:47:37

from that person, "The Art of the Idea" by John Hunt

01:47:40

and how it can change your life.

01:47:42

It's an illustrated edition, it says.

01:47:45

It's a hardcover though, it's not really a hardcover.

01:47:48

It's kind of a funky cardboard cover,

01:47:52

but it looks like a really neat looking book

01:47:58

and my hope is that this will build off

01:48:00

of the liminal thinking foundation

01:48:03

and kind of put a creative spin on it.

01:48:07

- Cool, sounds fun.

01:48:09

- Indeed.

01:48:10

- Super exciting.

01:48:11

- All right, gotta get book.

01:48:13

- I do not.

01:48:14

And I think already know the answer about you.

01:48:18

- I barely got through this one.

01:48:20

I finished it this morning, like this.

01:48:22

(laughs)

01:48:24

Talk about forcing functions.

01:48:26

(laughs)

01:48:28

That was definitely necessary for sure.

01:48:31

So thanks for having Bookworm in existence

01:48:33

that way I can keep reading in crazy times like this.

01:48:36

- Sure, all right.

01:48:38

Well, thank you everybody for putting up

01:48:40

with our technical difficulties today.

01:48:43

Thank you for supporting the show

01:48:45

by downloading and listening to it.

01:48:48

Thank you specifically to our Bookworm Club Premium members

01:48:52

who have chosen to support the show financially

01:48:56

and are willing to give us a couple bucks a month.

01:48:59

Really means a lot to us.

01:49:01

If you decide to do that,

01:49:02

you can go to club.bookworm.fm/membership to join.

01:49:09

And when you do, you get a couple of goodies.

01:49:11

You get a wallpaper that I designed.

01:49:14

You get access to the Mind Node files from the books

01:49:18

that I read.

01:49:19

There's some gap book episodes

01:49:20

that Joe had recorded a while back

01:49:23

and a special section on the club specifically

01:49:27

for the Premium members.

01:49:28

So thank you to everybody who has supported the show

01:49:31

in some way, shape, or form.

01:49:33

- Absolutely.

01:49:34

- And if you want to become somebody who is an avid reader,

01:49:39

the first thing you need to do is change your environment.

01:49:41

And you need to buy the mountain is you

01:49:44

and put it on your kitchen table

01:49:46

and read it over breakfast tomorrow.

01:49:48

That's your task.

01:49:49

That's what I'm gonna give it for you.

01:49:51

And then we'll cover that in a couple of weeks, all right?

01:49:53

And I expect you to be back here again.

01:49:56

All right, thanks team.