Bookworm Transcripts

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I got some new podcasting gear, Joe.

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- Oh, fun podcasting gear for the win always.

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What is it?

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- I have this microphone on an Elgato low profile

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wave boom arm, which is really great

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'cause now I can just swing it out of the way like this.

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- Nice work.

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I saw these things when they first came out.

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I've tried to keep up with Elgato,

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Corsair, all the fun things that they do.

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And I saw their boom arms

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and they released a bunch of stuff.

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That was just one piece.

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- Yep.

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- Of what they released.

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And it looked super fascinating

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and I'm around much they are,

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but they look like they designed it really, really well,

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but that's standard for them.

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- Well, this low profile boom arm means it's basically

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like on top of the desk.

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It doesn't do the thing where it goes up

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and comes back down and sits on top of the keyboard

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and gets in the way we try to type,

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which is really what I like about.

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And I've had my eyes on one like this

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from OC White, which has been like $350

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and I could never justify spending that much money.

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This one was a hundred bucks and it's solid.

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I love it.

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I also got a HomeKit enabled surge protector,

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which the LEDs behind me are gonna be linked to.

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It's not, it's coming today.

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- Okay.

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- And that I'm going to program into the Stream Deck

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so that I can, right now I have to use the remote

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to turn those on, but I will be able to use my Elgato Stream Deck

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shortly to turn on the LEDs behind me as well.

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- Nice work.

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I've been trying to figure out how to get into a detached

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garage without having to have a remote or a key.

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So we'll see, we'll see.

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- That's what you do when you have a week off,

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you play with your office setup, which is perfectly fine

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and try to make it better.

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- Yep.

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(laughs)

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- It's like my office is amazing.

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I think it's really great.

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It's setup perfect.

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- What can I change?

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- Exactly.

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Exactly.

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I'm not leaving an unlocked lake.

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I'm not doing that.

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There's too much woodworking gear and cars and vehicles

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and stuff in there.

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Nope.

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(laughs)

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- I also, over the last week of my sabbatical,

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got the results back from my DNA test.

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- And where are you from?

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- Primarily France, apparently.

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(laughs)

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- What?

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- I would not have guessed your French, mostly.

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- That's like 69% or something like that.

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But the annoying part about the 23andMe test that I did was,

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it gives you the ancestry report,

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but it doesn't actually fill in the people.

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It has like a projected ancestry tree

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based off of other people who have accounts.

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- Okay.

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- But it really doesn't give you the family tree.

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Like these are your relatives based on your DNA.

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Like I thought maybe it would.

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They do have a premium subscription,

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$30 a year, to get additional reports.

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So maybe that stuff is added there.

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But this has been a follow up item for me

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for a couple of episodes now because I bought the test

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and then I sent it in and I was waiting on my results.

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So our results came back a little bit early.

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I was super excited to get them.

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And in the 23andMe app, you can go navigate

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through the different reports and things.

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And they analyze your DNA.

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So like do you have the variants that are predisposed

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to lay down set Alzheimer's or whatever,

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which I do not have those.

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But other than that,

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there really wasn't a whole lot of insight I got

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from these reports.

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I'm debating whether I want to sign up for this subscription

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just to see if there's something else cool to be gleaned there.

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But I kind of resent the fact that I would have to do that.

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So I spent a hundred bucks on the test.

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Just give me something useful.

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A lot of it is like you probably don't have a tendency

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towards overeating or you probably don't have a fear

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of heights based on your results,

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which is not what I was expecting at all.

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- Sure, sure.

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- My experience with the general statements

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that they've been making is like,

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you probably don't have this.

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You probably do have this, whatever is there,

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right about half the time.

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(laughs)

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So like, well, this is kind of pointless.

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- Yeah, I have a friend who did the full test

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and then did do the subscription

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and they send her occasionally new results.

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Like, this is more accurate now

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because we've figured out how to do this

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now that we have enough data.

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And because so many people are taking the test,

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she can learn more about her own,

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but it takes, you know, the extra 30 bucks a year

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to be able to get that.

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So I get why they do,

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when you first said there's a subscription,

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I was like, wait, what?

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How do you get a subscription on a one time test,

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but then it occurred to me, like,

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oh yeah, they do the repeating data thing

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where you can get more later on.

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So it makes sense, I suppose.

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- I suppose.

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Kind of disappointed by that one though.

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- Any subscriptions, can we?

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- Yeah, I'm not.

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- That you would need a subscription to get that?

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- Yeah, I'm not a, I don't know.

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I mean, I knew there was a premium report available

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available.

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I did not know it was a subscription

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and I was a little disappointed by the level of insight

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I got from the standard one, that's all.

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It's expecting a little bit more.

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- Sure.

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- But, oh well.

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- Gave me more for my money.

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- I've got two other action items here

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to follow up with.

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One is to walk around my house every day.

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For the most part, I have done this,

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while at my house I have done this.

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(laughs)

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- Yeah.

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- And this had nothing to do with the book.

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This was simply something that you had said

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in the last episode, so.

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- Yep.

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- Thanks to Joe.

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- Did you notice anything that changed as you did that?

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Did it point anything out or is just,

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oh, there's still a gutter on the house?

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- You pointed out that I need to do a better job of weeding.

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(laughs)

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- Sure.

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- It was like this part of the house,

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which is way in the back corner,

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no one ever goes over there

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and there's a bunch of weeds in the rock bed,

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which annoy me, so I've been pulling them.

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- Nice.

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There you go.

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It's at least helped you maintain your garden.

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- Your yard?

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- Your yard better.

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- My rocks?

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- Your rocks?

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- Yeah.

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(laughs)

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- You have clean rocks.

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- Yep.

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Exactly.

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Part of it is there was like a barrier thing.

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It just like rocks around the side of the house.

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There really isn't any plants back there at all,

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but the barrier has long since decayed,

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so there really isn't one at this point.

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And yeah, I don't like weeding.

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That's what I've discovered.

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- I don't either.

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I'm good with tremors and mowers

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and power equipment that make weeds go away.

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Also sprays.

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Sprays make weed goes away.

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- Yes, that is true.

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The other action I did my head was

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write down everything I'm unhappy with.

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I did not write down everything I'm unhappy with.

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I did write down a few things I'm unhappy with.

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- When I was reading this beforehand,

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like just kind of going through the outline

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so I could prep for today,

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I read this one,

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write down everything I'm unhappy with.

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And it occurred to me,

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I wonder if that's possible?

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Like, is that even doable

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to actually write everything you're unhappy with?

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'Cause there's always something you can discover more.

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- Probably not.

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And that's kind of why I aborted this one.

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There's a couple of specific things

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that I've just been mulling over

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is like, well, how do I change this specific thing?

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And then I just was looking for more things

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and I realized this is really unhealthy

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'cause it's just making me angry about how bad things are.

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They're really not that bad.

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It's just where I'm choosing to focus

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for the sake of an action item.

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Why am I doing this?

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- Yep.

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I have to say when you told me

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you were gonna shoot for this,

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I was like, I feel like this is gonna,

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the day that he chooses to do this

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is gonna be a bad day.

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Like whether you,

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so without that way or not,

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it's gonna end up that way.

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Like, that's what went through.

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- Yeah, that's accurate.

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So sorry, Brownawease, that tried,

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but this is where you and I are part ways.

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- It's true.

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- One thing I did figure out which has had the opposite effect.

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I actually enjoy this one a lot

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is I've been playing with this quick ad plugin for Obsidian.

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- Okay.

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- Which allows you to insert text

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after specific headings in certain notes.

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So you can format it to add it to the note

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in the Daily Notes folder,

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which is formatted with today's date,

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year, year, year, year, dash month, month, dash data.

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So that's what I use for my Daily Notes files.

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And then I've got different sections for learnings,

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journal entries and gratitude.

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And I've set up three separate actions

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so I can hit command P to open up the command palette,

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select quick ad learnings, whatever.

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It gives you a text box, you type it in,

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it formats that as the value token,

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puts it in a bulleted list,

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adds the appropriate tag and sticks it

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in the appropriate section inside the Daily Note.

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- Okay.

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- So I've been doing that with gratitude.

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It's helped me journal my gratitude

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at the end of the day a lot better.

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- Good work.

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- Yeah, it's available on mobile too,

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which has also been a big key in helping this to stick.

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So I think this is sort of an ancillary action item

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for me. - Sure, yeah.

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- Like doing the negative one

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showed me the importance of the positive one.

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So I've done a bunch of stuff to help me do that

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more frequently at the end of the day.

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I always do the Daily questions,

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like the tracker one to 10.

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That part is solid.

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That sticks.

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But then I figured out this part with the quick ad plugin

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in the command port,

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which also works on mobile obsidian.

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So I can do it from my phone at the end of the day

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if I haven't done it yet.

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And then I also created a shortcut,

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which simply just asks a yes or no question,

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but it runs through my end of the day routine.

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- Okay.

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- So the first thing it asks is,

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did you time block tomorrow, yes or no?

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Did you journal yes or no?

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Did you practice Spanish?

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Yes or no?

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Did you let the dog out?

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Yes or no?

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Did you set your clothes for tomorrow?

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Yes or no?

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Are you ready for bed?

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Yes or no?

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And then if you keep hitting yes,

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it takes you to the next one.

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If you hit no, it just aborts the whole thing.

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And this fires at 9.45 every night.

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And basically if I keep hitting yes, at the end,

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it says, okay, charge your phone and go to bed.

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(laughing)

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- Okay, nice.

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And does this data go anywhere?

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Or it's just a confirmation to you?

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- There's no data.

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It's just something that pops up in my face.

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- Okay.

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- And it goes on right before my do not disturb kicks in

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at 10 p.m.

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- Sure.

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- As a reminder of like, hey, start this evening routine

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if you haven't yet

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so that you can get in bed by 10 o'clock.

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- Sure.

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Now if you say no to any of those

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and then you go do it and come back,

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do you fire it manually and do it again?

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Or is this a one-time deal?

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- No, 'cause it's not a checklist.

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I'm not tracking whether I did these things.

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These are the things that have to get done

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before I go to bed.

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I do them.

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I just want to be triggered to do them.

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And I'm thinking just tapping yes is enough

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to get me through it.

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- Sure.

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- Where, yeah, I'm not trying to gather any data from it.

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It's really just a reminder for myself.

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- Okay, that sounds interesting.

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I don't think I would do this,

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but it sounds interesting.

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- It was pretty easy.

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I built it in like five minutes.

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- Yeah.

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- So it, I don't know if it's gonna stick or not,

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but I'm enjoying it at the moment.

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- It's funny.

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- Well, I don't really have any action items

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to follow up on from last time.

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So Joe's been busy rebuilding a house.

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Other than that, I barely got through this book

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and it had nothing to do with the book itself.

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It was purely time.

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And like I pulled 700 feet of electrical cable

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in our house this past week,

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which is the equivalent of rewiring 75% of the house.

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That's what that is.

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- Boy.

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- Super fun.

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So yes, I have no action items to follow up on here.

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- All right, well, let's jump into today's book then,

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which is The Art of the Idea by John Hunt.

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This is a different type of book.

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It's got an interesting binding.

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It's like a cardboard hardcover sort of binding.

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And yeah, what did you think of the visual style of this one?

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- Whenever I opened the box that it came in,

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my gut reaction was, did I order a kid's book?

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You know, like cardboard, kids books?

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Like that's what I thought it was.

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That was my, because when I saw it, which way was it,

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I don't remember, I think I saw the top of it.

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I don't remember, I saw the side of it.

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And if you were to look at the side of it,

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you can see like the cardboard is super thick

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on the front and back cover.

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But my eyes tricked me and made me think all of the pages

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were those real thick cardboard pages.

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Like, you know, a little kid's book.

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So whenever I picked it up and opened the first page

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and realized, oh, okay.

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Yeah, that's not what I was expecting.

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So it was a very interesting experience

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at the very beginning.

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- Yeah.

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There's actually two people who contributed to this.

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They have both of their like bio pages in the back.

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John Hunt is the author.

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And there's another guy who did all of the illustrations.

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And so it's broken down into 20 different chapters,

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no different parts, just a bunch of short chapters

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that speak to a specific idea.

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It's kind of like Seth Godin with the practice,

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except not nearly as clearly organized, I would argue.

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It feels a little bit more kind of all over the place.

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But since it's talking about ideas and where they come from,

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I don't think that's necessarily off brand either.

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- No, it made sense.

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I mean, it's like you're saying it bounces all over the place,

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but it doesn't feel like any of those

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really build on each other either.

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- True.

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- Which is very reminiscent of the Seth Godin practice

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book as well, 'cause there's a lot of that

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that like you can open it, find a section and start

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and you're fine.

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There's not really groundwork to build up to that.

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The only place that that might fall down

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where that concept is crippled is the first chapter,

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probably where he kind of entered,

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or maybe not the first chapter,

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but maybe the introduction to the book.

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Like you'd have to kind of read that to set the stage

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for ideas in general.

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And then you could jump in pretty much anywhere.

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But at the same time, I don't know when I've read a book

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where the introduction doesn't set up the rest of the book

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and people don't read it first

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and people would read it later.

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So that would be a bit strange as well.

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Thus, you can pick it up and go, that's my point.

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- Yeah, you can pick it up just about anywhere

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and any of one of these would be like a self-contained idea.

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I do think they tie together, but they don't necessarily

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build on each other like you were saying.

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I feel the way he starts and the way he ends are very good.

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It feels like you're coming to closure with the book itself,

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but let's just jump into some of these sections.

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I added some to the outline here.

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We're basically picking and choosing specific ones.

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And if there's anything else you want to add to this.

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- No, subscribe.

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- Okay, cool.

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Because there's 20 of them.

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I didn't want to cover all 20.

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So I picked out, what are they, eight here?

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And some of these are just a couple of pages.

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So the first chapter, I think is a really good one.

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It's titled, "You Get Sunrise or Sunset People."

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A sun-riser is someone who gives out energy.

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A sun-setter is somebody who sucks energy.

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And I really like that definition.

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I'd not heard it put that way before,

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but I can totally see people in my life

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who fit those different categories.

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And it sounds kind of bad to do this,

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but I'm also the guy who did the action item

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of ranking every relationship in my life

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from minus, minus to plus, plus, plus.

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So I'm all about this idea.

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- Yeah, I could see that.

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When I first saw the chapter title,

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my brain made the connection of people

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who get up early in the morning

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and have ideas and people who have ideas

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before they go to bed.

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That's where I thought he was gonna go with it.

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And then it was not that at all.

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That wasn't even touched here,

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but that's where I was going with it.

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But sunrise and sunset people,

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I think that's a really cool way to say that basically,

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it's, you know, are the ideas and the energy side

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of it starting the conversation

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or the ending the conversation as far as

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like social conversation, I guess, in general.

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But the hope is you'd be a sunrise person,

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not an energy sucker.

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Don't be an energy sucker.

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- That would be the hope, correct.

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So I am familiar with this concept.

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Again, this comes back to emotional intelligence,

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surprise, surprise.

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I just posted it in the YouTube chat.

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We'll put it in the show notes as well.

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The, there is an article that I've been familiar with

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for a long time by Michael Hyatt called,

00:17:26

"Don't hire people unless the batteries are included."

00:17:30

And he's talking about this from a corporate perspective

00:17:35

where you want to hire people who have their own energy source,

00:17:38

which he calls those with batteries.

00:17:41

And by the way, he says he got this

00:17:43

from Dan Sullivan's 10x Talk podcast,

00:17:46

which Dan Sullivan is the unique ability guy.

00:17:50

The, so unique ability 2.0 is the thing that I went through.

00:17:54

He also has some crazy beliefs about living to be 150

00:17:58

or something like that, but this 10x Talk podcast,

00:18:00

this is actually a pretty good one.

00:18:02

I don't think it's one where I would recommend

00:18:04

you go listen to every new episode.

00:18:06

I seem to just kind of rehash a bunch of old stuff,

00:18:08

but some of the conversations that they have on there are

00:18:11

have been really eye opening for me as well.

00:18:13

So I just want to point that out.

00:18:15

You know, Michael Hyatt is saying he got this from that,

00:18:17

that podcast.

00:18:18

It's he's kind of recommending it.

00:18:19

I would second that recommendation

00:18:22

if you're into this, this type of stuff.

00:18:25

But the article is basically saying there are people

00:18:28

that have their own batteries.

00:18:31

They bring life to any work group that they're a part of.

00:18:33

And then there are those that just stuck the life

00:18:35

out of every group that they're a part of.

00:18:37

They enjoy and create drama.

00:18:38

They gossip and backbite.

00:18:39

They complain about everything.

00:18:40

They need constant supervision.

00:18:41

They won't accept responsibility.

00:18:44

You know, and yeah, your mind will instantly start labeling

00:18:48

some people that you work with.

00:18:50

I'm sure that fit into this.

00:18:51

Yeah, of course.

00:18:52

(laughing)

00:18:54

Or having the past anyways.

00:18:56

I think there's a little bit of danger here

00:18:59

in just kind of looking for people

00:19:02

that you don't necessarily click with.

00:19:03

'Cause some of this I think is personality driven

00:19:05

too.

00:19:05

That's where like the Colby assessment can come in.

00:19:08

You know, I may have a very different learning style

00:19:10

or working style as a high fact finder

00:19:14

that somebody who is a high quick start.

00:19:15

And that is naturally going to cause some friction as well.

00:19:19

But I do think that this analogy,

00:19:23

you can say this a bunch of different ways.

00:19:25

And there is a lot of truth to this.

00:19:27

Don't be the person that nobody wants to work with

00:19:31

because you just make things harder.

00:19:33

I couldn't help but see how this was connected

00:19:36

to like growth mindset.

00:19:38

That comes up almost every episode it feels like.

00:19:41

And with the growth mindset,

00:19:43

like obviously you think that you can get better.

00:19:45

Like that's the core.

00:19:47

Do you think you can get better or not?

00:19:49

That's the core piece of that.

00:19:51

And when you're talking about a sunrise person

00:19:54

who has the energy piece that they can give off

00:19:56

and it goes to other people,

00:19:57

it generally means they think they can get better

00:20:00

because they know that they can give it to other people.

00:20:04

I don't know how well I do with this

00:20:06

but I try to make sure that whenever I'm working

00:20:09

with the growing team that I'm overseeing,

00:20:14

it's a thing that I try to make sure

00:20:17

that I'm giving the energy to people

00:20:19

to use this terminology.

00:20:21

But I'm trying to make sure that they're empowered

00:20:23

to do their own thing.

00:20:24

And that I can encourage them to have

00:20:27

that growth mindset as well.

00:20:29

But it's kind of like giving the energy to folks

00:20:33

and the energy you're giving is the growth mindset.

00:20:36

Like that's kind of how my brain translated that

00:20:39

and connected it versus when you have people

00:20:42

who have a fixed mindset

00:20:44

and they don't think they can get better at things

00:20:46

and they think they're just dealt the cards that they have

00:20:49

and they can't improve them.

00:20:52

It seems like those people tend to be the ones

00:20:54

that try to suck energy or become crazy makers

00:20:57

as another book I read that wasn't on bookworm I think said.

00:21:02

So the crazy makers tend to be the sunset people

00:21:07

but I feel like they're also the fixed mindset people as well.

00:21:10

Now I'm not certain how well that's connected,

00:21:13

the growth fixed sunrise sunset concept

00:21:17

but it's an idea to use that

00:21:22

that I'm starting to consider

00:21:25

because it just seems like those are connected in some way.

00:21:28

- Yeah, well tying it back to ideas

00:21:30

that's obviously the goal of this book, right?

00:21:35

So the people who are sun setters,

00:21:39

he says that they don't kill ideas

00:21:40

but they suck the oxygen from around them.

00:21:43

So basically you're leaving them to die.

00:21:46

- Yes.

00:21:48

- Which I think there's some truth in that.

00:21:51

So is what it is

00:21:54

but yeah, don't be that person.

00:21:58

I love this whole concept of ideas

00:22:01

and where they come from

00:22:03

which is why I picked this book to begin with.

00:22:05

And the next section I wanted to talk about is number three,

00:22:09

ideas have moods.

00:22:12

And the first thing that really stood out to me

00:22:14

from this section is that ideas can't be bossed into existence.

00:22:19

In other words, you can't force it

00:22:22

which I agree with that.

00:22:25

I also somewhat in practicality disagree with it

00:22:29

because I do think that creativity is a little bit

00:22:32

like a formula and we've talked about this before,

00:22:35

we're still like an artist, Austin Cleon.

00:22:38

How if you collect the right dots

00:22:42

then whatever comes out is kind of the natural outcome

00:22:46

of the dots that you've collected.

00:22:47

So you don't have to judge the output.

00:22:50

I do think there's truth to that as well

00:22:52

but I love this whole concept here

00:22:55

about allowing your ideas to germinate.

00:22:58

And page 34, he says, if you allow these ideas to germinate

00:23:01

a little, you also stand a good chance

00:23:03

of them developing their own kinetic energy.

00:23:06

It says ideas love to bounce off one another.

00:23:08

And I am very curious about how to make this happen.

00:23:14

I think one way to do it would be to collaborate with someone.

00:23:19

We have a version of this I think right now

00:23:21

or we're recording bookworm

00:23:23

but I've also just released an obsidian course

00:23:26

through the sweet setup.

00:23:26

So can you make these ideas bounce on your own, do you think?

00:23:31

- I think so, but that's me with an overactive brain

00:23:36

and I know that for me,

00:23:41

whenever I need to stretch beyond where I'm currently at,

00:23:49

I consume things I don't normally consume mentally,

00:23:53

meaning watching intellectual YouTube videos

00:23:57

from somebody I haven't watched them from before

00:23:59

or picking up a book that has a belief system

00:24:04

that isn't my own or is outside of what I would consider fact,

00:24:10

I guess, and combine that with silence in some form.

00:24:19

That's my go to methodology, even house stuff.

00:24:24

Whenever you're doing construction things,

00:24:28

you run into problems all the time,

00:24:31

you always find things or you have to try to figure out

00:24:33

how to make things work that you weren't planning on.

00:24:36

And when I'm working with other people on those problems

00:24:41

and we get to a point where I realize

00:24:43

we're not coming up with an answer very quickly here,

00:24:46

my default is let's go do something else

00:24:49

and come back to it in say 30 minutes to an hour.

00:24:53

Like let's go do some other small thing,

00:24:56

completely unrelated and come back to it.

00:24:59

Whether that's going for a walk, taking the dog out,

00:25:03

hammering nails, whatever it is,

00:25:05

trying to do something else,

00:25:07

that to me is the percolation method

00:25:10

in order to get those ideas to bounce off

00:25:12

of the new stuff that I've been capturing.

00:25:15

That's my go to method.

00:25:18

I don't know if that's what you're asking,

00:25:19

but that seems to be, at least for me, my process.

00:25:23

- Sure, so you get them to bounce by mode switching,

00:25:28

it sounds like.

00:25:29

- Yeah, that's a piece of it, yeah.

00:25:31

You have to mode switch for a certain amount of time

00:25:34

and then give yourself the space

00:25:36

from the area that you're trying to get an idea within.

00:25:40

- I agree with that.

00:25:41

I think that's a very effective way to do it.

00:25:43

I also have just been fascinated with this idea

00:25:48

of note making inside of Obsidian.

00:25:51

I got an email today as we record this,

00:25:54

there's the bell from writer Carol,

00:25:57

the Bullet Journal Method, where he references a book

00:25:59

which I tried to buy, but you cannot get it at the moment.

00:26:03

It's by Edgar Wright, it was written in 1963

00:26:08

and it talks about note making versus note taking.

00:26:12

And the book was on individual study habits,

00:26:16

but I can't find it anywhere.

00:26:18

I can't find an electronic version,

00:26:20

I can't find one that I can order off of Amazon,

00:26:22

and I really wish I could get that

00:26:24

because I love those classic books

00:26:27

that speak to these ideas that are kind of hot right now.

00:26:30

And I think with note making specifically,

00:26:33

that's popularized by something like Obsidian

00:26:36

with the graph view and the bouncing things around

00:26:40

between the different ideas.

00:26:41

And I think there's a way to make this work.

00:26:44

I shouldn't say it that way,

00:26:45

I know there's a way to make this work.

00:26:47

I'm curious to figure out what the best way is

00:26:50

for this to work.

00:26:53

Kind of the way I've landed on right now

00:26:55

is I've got these MOCs where you can name them

00:26:58

whatever you want, they're the active notes, right?

00:27:00

And that's where you're collecting inputs

00:27:02

and you're kind of synthesizing things

00:27:04

and interjecting your own opinions

00:27:07

and the process of doing that helps me

00:27:09

solidify my thoughts on them.

00:27:11

Particular topic.

00:27:13

And I'll include links to other relevant notes

00:27:17

and I'll use that graph view to bounce back and forth,

00:27:19

sometimes kind of like I do with the cross-reference system

00:27:23

I built with the sermon sketch notes that I do.

00:27:25

But I'm curious to understand

00:27:29

how this works at like a neuroscience level,

00:27:34

how your brain fuses these things together.

00:27:37

I can see the results,

00:27:39

I can see that when I get an idea,

00:27:42

I need to put it somewhere as like a holding tank

00:27:44

and just let it percolate for a while

00:27:47

and I'll come back to it and I'll look at it

00:27:48

and I'll see what else is relevant for that particular idea.

00:27:52

And sometimes I'll get inspired and see connections

00:27:54

and I'll add those.

00:27:56

But I'm wondering, you know, he talks in different sections

00:28:00

in this book about all of the different factors

00:28:02

that contribute to the life cycle of an idea.

00:28:05

And I'm kind of trying to figure out,

00:28:07

you know, what are the levers I can pull

00:28:10

in my idea greenhouse to give these things

00:28:15

the best chance of survival.

00:28:17

And one of the best things I think he could do

00:28:18

is just talk to other people about it,

00:28:20

which is what he's saying in this chapter.

00:28:21

But I think there's a maybe somewhat more limited

00:28:25

in terms of effectiveness version of this

00:28:27

at an individual level as well.

00:28:29

- Something I've obviously been doing tons of construction

00:28:34

and stuff and rebuilding our house.

00:28:36

And it's been fascinating to me to see the process

00:28:41

that I'm going through in managing that.

00:28:44

So I'm the general contractor on it.

00:28:46

And very briefly, I've got it down to studs

00:28:49

and framing in a lot of the house.

00:28:51

So basically you've got the whole thing being redone.

00:28:55

So it's like building a new house.

00:28:57

Sometimes I think building a new house

00:28:58

would have been easier.

00:29:00

(laughs)

00:29:01

So there's that.

00:29:02

- New construction is easier than reconstruction.

00:29:04

- It kind of is, yeah.

00:29:06

But going through that process

00:29:10

has forced me to stretch beyond my normal project

00:29:14

management systems personally.

00:29:18

And is therefore putting me in a spot

00:29:21

where I can see where I have failed in doing so previously.

00:29:26

And I think what you're talking about

00:29:29

with like how do you come up with these ideas?

00:29:32

Putting yourself in spots

00:29:33

where you have to become very uncomfortable.

00:29:36

Like the process of calling a whole bunch of subcontractors

00:29:39

and borderline harassing them in order to get schedules

00:29:42

and budgets and things on time and in place.

00:29:46

Like that is not me at all, but I'm forced into that.

00:29:50

And that has put me in a spot where I'm a lot better

00:29:53

on the phone than I used to be.

00:29:55

Just within the last two months.

00:29:57

And I've gotten to where I'm a lot better

00:29:59

at hoping other people do the work and service

00:30:02

that I'm asking them to do.

00:30:04

So it's forced me to think about things a lot differently.

00:30:09

And whenever I've gone deep into something, it's brand new.

00:30:14

Like I have to learn things about a house

00:30:16

that are very, very detailed and kind of subtle.

00:30:19

And that has then led me to having connections between

00:30:24

how do you rewire a breaker box for your house?

00:30:28

And there are ways I've been learning

00:30:30

that that's connected to how we choose books for bookworm.

00:30:34

And as weird as that is to say,

00:30:37

whenever I've done my walks at night

00:30:39

and whenever I've gone deep into these new skills,

00:30:43

like finding those connecting points seems to just happen

00:30:47

when I give myself the space to let that happen.

00:30:51

But it only happens when I'm pushing myself

00:30:55

beyond my normal limits, which is a little alarming

00:30:59

when you think about how many people like to find

00:31:02

their content little zone of life and habits and rituals

00:31:06

and they don't wanna stretch outside of those

00:31:08

and don't wanna try to learn a new skill and push

00:31:12

because they're not gonna have those revelations ever

00:31:15

if obviously not regularly.

00:31:19

So I don't know, I think there's a lot

00:31:21

that could come from this process.

00:31:24

But I think like what you're saying,

00:31:25

trying to develop ideas and figure out how to do that,

00:31:30

there are so many ways you can do it.

00:31:34

Like that's some of why this book exists, I would say,

00:31:37

is because there's so many different avenues

00:31:39

by which you can come up with them

00:31:41

that it's hard to nail down what that process actually is.

00:31:45

- Yeah, that's true.

00:31:46

And I don't think that if their goal is to give you

00:31:49

a formula or a system at the end of it

00:31:52

that they do a good job of doing that.

00:31:53

I don't think that's necessarily their intention.

00:31:56

I feel like the arc of this is convincing you

00:31:58

of the importance of it.

00:32:00

The next one here kind of speaks to the error

00:32:05

in the standard way that we collect things

00:32:10

and maybe think of them as ideas.

00:32:13

But the next chapter I wanna talk about is number six.

00:32:15

I Google therefore I am not.

00:32:18

This reminds me of liminal thinking,

00:32:22

Dave Gray where he talks about how the internet

00:32:25

is a grocery store for facts.

00:32:27

I have used that quote so many times.

00:32:30

I love that.

00:32:31

That's such a brilliant description.

00:32:33

'Cause it's so true that you can find a fact

00:32:37

that supports any ridiculous argument

00:32:41

you want to make online.

00:32:43

And that's what people do.

00:32:45

They cherry pick a couple of individual facts

00:32:50

and they say there.

00:32:50

My argument is solid.

00:32:53

No, no it's not.

00:32:55

I remember a conversation we had on Bookworm

00:32:57

where you were collecting data

00:32:59

and you were saying that I could make the data say

00:33:02

whatever I wanted to say.

00:33:04

- Yep.

00:33:05

- So the thing that in this chapter stands out to me

00:33:10

is this differentiation between notes and mindless data.

00:33:15

And as I'm thinking about notes and note making

00:33:18

and managing ideas, I can see how I have shifted

00:33:22

over the years back in the day when I was

00:33:25

having everything you never note.

00:33:27

I was jotting everything down from all of the meetings

00:33:32

that we were having and I could go back

00:33:34

and I could find something that somebody had said years ago.

00:33:38

And that's great.

00:33:38

I used that a couple of times.

00:33:41

But that's not the most valuable form of the note taking.

00:33:45

I've come to understand it.

00:33:48

That is in my opinion looking back now

00:33:50

kind of mindless data.

00:33:53

And it makes me a little bit frustrated

00:33:57

when I look back at that old stuff

00:33:58

and I'm like, why did you write all this down?

00:34:01

(laughing)

00:34:02

This was a complete waste of time.

00:34:04

- Yeah.

00:34:05

- You should have been jotting down other things

00:34:07

which I would consider now to be more important.

00:34:11

And really the whole idea from this chapter is

00:34:15

like if you're taking notes,

00:34:16

even notes from a book that you read,

00:34:18

if you're just jotting down something smart

00:34:21

that somebody says, that's not the same thing

00:34:25

as capturing an idea.

00:34:28

He talks about in this section

00:34:31

that having lots of information

00:34:33

doesn't make you any more clever.

00:34:36

And he says on page 51,

00:34:38

that ideas don't come from existing facts

00:34:40

but from the holes that you drill through them.

00:34:43

So you have to take the more to addler approach,

00:34:47

have this conversation with this person

00:34:49

that you're reading this book about,

00:34:51

understand their arguments,

00:34:52

and then try to figure out where they could be wrong,

00:34:56

formulate your own response to that.

00:34:58

That's where the ideas really come from.

00:35:00

- Yeah, it's, as you're talking about

00:35:03

note making and capturing ideas and such,

00:35:05

I just wanna point out that this book

00:35:07

doesn't really talk about idea management,

00:35:10

and idea capturing is talking about idea generation, really.

00:35:15

Like that's, I think important

00:35:16

because I was under the impression

00:35:18

that I was gonna get at least some direction

00:35:21

about idea management so much so that

00:35:24

over the last week as I was reading this,

00:35:25

I was maybe halfway through it or so.

00:35:28

I still thought that piece was coming

00:35:31

and I had someone who saw the book

00:35:33

said, what's that about?

00:35:34

It's like, that's summing up with ideas

00:35:36

and managing those ideas and, you know,

00:35:39

keeping track of them, externalizing them

00:35:41

from your brain that way you can review those

00:35:43

and come up with even more ideas.

00:35:45

And their comment was idea management.

00:35:48

Like you capture those and write them all down

00:35:51

and keep track of them.

00:35:54

Yeah, that's the concept.

00:35:55

I said, oh, I'm too busy acting on my ideas to do that.

00:35:59

And that kinda struck me like, hm, that's fascinating.

00:36:03

Well, okay, sure, I suppose,

00:36:06

but I didn't get a chance to delve into that much deeper

00:36:10

and it was just kinda left there,

00:36:11

but I haven't been able to get that comment out of my head

00:36:14

since having that conversation.

00:36:16

Too busy acting on ideas to write them down

00:36:19

and manage them, like that's,

00:36:22

and it's just interesting.

00:36:23

So I haven't figured out what I think about that one yet.

00:36:26

(laughs)

00:36:27

- Well, I can tell you, it makes me cringe.

00:36:29

- I'm sure, I'm sure.

00:36:30

- How, man, what's your initial reaction

00:36:35

to something like that?

00:36:37

- If it was from someone who was not regularly coming up

00:36:42

with things and creating and being successful with new things,

00:36:49

if it was from someone who just worked a nine to five

00:36:52

and really didn't do anything outside of that,

00:36:54

I probably would have just tossed it away.

00:36:56

But this person regularly starts new businesses,

00:36:59

turns around sells them and starts new ones again.

00:37:02

So I don't know what to do with that

00:37:05

because they seem to be a credible person with this idea.

00:37:10

So I don't know, Mike.

00:37:13

I mean, I write a lot of things down like ideas, obviously.

00:37:19

I can't say that I review them regularly,

00:37:22

nowhere near as regularly as you do.

00:37:25

And I guess I just haven't figured out

00:37:28

where to go with that concept yet.

00:37:30

- Well, I mean, the thing that scares me about that approach

00:37:35

is that I tend to have more ideas

00:37:40

than I can take action on.

00:37:42

So maybe if you don't have that many ideas,

00:37:48

that approach is fine.

00:37:51

Or maybe there's some internal filter

00:37:54

that that person uses to get rid of all the ones

00:37:56

that they know aren't really the ones

00:37:59

that are gonna hit the mark

00:38:00

and they just never really thought through

00:38:02

what that process is for themselves.

00:38:05

I do think based on some research that we've done,

00:38:09

surveys and things at this week's setup

00:38:11

that having more ideas than time

00:38:15

is a pretty big problem for people.

00:38:18

So I'm gonna recommend to anybody

00:38:23

don't just act on an idea of the moment that you have it

00:38:26

because otherwise you're not gonna,

00:38:30

you're never gonna feel caught up.

00:38:32

You're never gonna be able to take action

00:38:33

on everything that you feel you should be taking action on.

00:38:36

There's always gonna be something

00:38:37

that's gonna fall through the cracks.

00:38:39

You're gonna quickly find yourself in that place where,

00:38:40

oh, just one more thing, just one more thing,

00:38:42

just one more thing.

00:38:43

So that I don't think is healthy,

00:38:46

but also that makes me wonder if it is possible

00:38:51

to just limit a little bit the input of ideas.

00:38:56

I'm not sure I would want to do that.

00:39:00

I think I would rather just capture a whole bunch of things

00:39:03

down in my notebook, which is actually my process.

00:39:06

I jot things down when I think of them.

00:39:09

And then at the end of the day,

00:39:10

I transfer over the stuff that's really important,

00:39:14

but nine out of the 10 things that I capture

00:39:16

inside of drafts or my notebook don't end up

00:39:21

in obsidian, which is where they live for me.

00:39:24

And then that's kind of my greenhouse where I incubate them.

00:39:28

- Yeah, I suspect in this case,

00:39:30

now I know this person and I know that he regularly,

00:39:35

he's one of these people that whenever he's acting

00:39:40

on something, it's his entire life that goes into it.

00:39:45

And then when it's ready to be sold, he sells it

00:39:49

and he's immediately onto the next thing.

00:39:53

My suspicion is kind of like what Blake and Martin are

00:39:58

talking about in the chat is like the concept of triaging

00:40:01

and choosing what to act on.

00:40:03

I suspect that he's insanely good at that

00:40:06

and knows that he's gonna have thousands of ideas

00:40:12

but can tell when the one that like,

00:40:17

can tell when he needs to act on one that comes up.

00:40:21

Like he knows which one to move on next immediately.

00:40:24

Like he's just incredibly good at making that decision.

00:40:28

I don't think I'm that good at that

00:40:32

and I'm also not like the two things going on there

00:40:34

is he's really good at choosing

00:40:36

but he's also really good at focus.

00:40:39

So he's got those two things happening.

00:40:43

I feel like I'm decent at choosing and terrible at focus.

00:40:48

So that process doesn't work for me

00:40:52

now that I'm processing this out loud.

00:40:55

So I would suspect that this is a bad thing for most

00:40:58

because they don't have those two.

00:41:00

Most people don't have both of those going for them.

00:41:04

That's I think my point.

00:41:05

- Sure, maybe the size of the idea filters in here too.

00:41:11

I mean, that kind of gets into the next section.

00:41:15

Number eight is incremental change is fine

00:41:17

if you're a glacier, which I picked this one specifically

00:41:22

because I think it flies in the face

00:41:25

of some of the habit stuff that we've read.

00:41:28

He didn't actually say this in the book

00:41:30

but kind of my reconciliation of this

00:41:33

with atomic habits, tiny habits, all that kind of stuff

00:41:37

is that your ideas should be big

00:41:39

but your actions should be small.

00:41:42

Again, that doesn't fit exactly

00:41:45

with the guy who's building and selling businesses

00:41:49

that you're talking about.

00:41:51

Although maybe it does.

00:41:53

Maybe what I would define as a big idea

00:41:56

is really a small idea to that person

00:41:59

because they've done it so many times.

00:42:01

I don't know, I suppose size is relative here

00:42:04

when you're talking about ideas

00:42:06

but I'm curious what you think about this.

00:42:09

Thinking big but acting small.

00:42:11

I feel like this is the only path forward for me.

00:42:14

- Yeah, I think there's two things.

00:42:17

The relative piece is absolutely true

00:42:20

because I've consulted with churches

00:42:23

on how to do a technology infrastructure in their church.

00:42:28

Whether that's networking or audio video doesn't matter.

00:42:32

Take your pick.

00:42:33

But whenever I've consulted with them,

00:42:36

I'm always asking two things, what's your budget?

00:42:39

And how many people are coming here?

00:42:42

Because those two dictate what scale we're talking about

00:42:46

because the scale that I operate on here at our church

00:42:51

is much, much larger than most churches out there.

00:42:55

And I go to churches who are much bigger than us

00:43:00

to learn where my next steps are.

00:43:03

So if you're asking me to help design the technology,

00:43:06

call it the video structure for your church,

00:43:10

those are gonna be my questions.

00:43:11

What's your budget and how much are we talking about?

00:43:14

Because the idea that I'm gonna put together for you

00:43:17

could either be 14 cameras and like three video switchers

00:43:22

and a 10 computer setup,

00:43:24

or it could be one computer and one camera.

00:43:28

Like the scale of that idea that we're gonna put together

00:43:31

is gonna be drastically different

00:43:33

depending on the situation.

00:43:35

So I think that relativity piece there is important.

00:43:39

But I also am intrigued by this concept of like big ideas

00:43:43

and small actions because I feel like some ideas

00:43:48

require massive action to even start.

00:43:53

- And sounds very grant card donutish.

00:43:56

- It does.

00:43:57

Yeah.

00:43:58

And Richard Branson and like all sorts of like,

00:44:02

you wanna start an airline company?

00:44:03

Sure, just buy a $10,000 plane ticket.

00:44:05

Like that's not a small thing.

00:44:07

Like sure.

00:44:09

But that's, maybe it was more than that.

00:44:14

I'm drawing a blank on the number at this point,

00:44:16

but actions should be small.

00:44:18

I mean, obviously that's reminiscent of atomic habits

00:44:23

or tiny habits or changer routines and rituals.

00:44:27

Like it's obviously reminiscent of that.

00:44:30

But I can't help but think there are times

00:44:32

when massive action is required.

00:44:34

I mean, take the house thing and just start it on.

00:44:36

Like if I were to do small actions for that big idea,

00:44:41

I'd be without a house here before too long.

00:44:43

So that won't work.

00:44:46

That's requiring extremely massive action

00:44:48

in a very short timeframe.

00:44:50

- I think I would argue that if you took

00:44:52

this massive action approach, though,

00:44:55

as soon as you got done with this,

00:44:56

you found another house to do the same thing.

00:44:58

At some point in the very head of the future,

00:44:59

you won't have a house any way.

00:45:02

- Not gonna happen.

00:45:04

Yeah, I've talked to a few folks,

00:45:06

one of which was our real estate agent that helped us buy it.

00:45:09

And he's like, man, if you ever wanted to flip houses,

00:45:12

you guys would be amazing at this.

00:45:13

I'm like, nope, this is a one and done scenario.

00:45:17

This is not happening again.

00:45:20

So yes, I think you're absolutely right.

00:45:21

The massive action thing, I think can work,

00:45:24

but it's a short term thing.

00:45:26

It's not an ongoing piece.

00:45:28

So maybe the time period is important here.

00:45:31

If we're talking about small actions versus massive action,

00:45:33

I'm not sure which would be applied in each case.

00:45:38

- That kind of leads into the next section, though,

00:45:42

or the next question that I would ask would be,

00:45:45

well, how do you know which one is the one

00:45:47

that you're supposed to put massive action behind?

00:45:50

- Yeah.

00:45:51

- You can't put massive action behind every idea.

00:45:54

So there must be some sort of criteria

00:45:58

for determining which of these ideas are the good ones.

00:46:03

And good is a very subjective term as well

00:46:06

based off of maybe how complex they are.

00:46:09

Do you have the knowledge that you need to do this thing?

00:46:12

Can you get the knowledge that you need?

00:46:14

Do you have the time and the energy and the capability

00:46:18

to do this?

00:46:19

Do you need to bring an outside help?

00:46:20

Can you bring in the help that you need?

00:46:23

Is it cost prohibitive?

00:46:25

I mean, there's so many other things

00:46:28

that could basically rule out any of these big ideas

00:46:33

that you should take massive action on.

00:46:36

I guess that's the part that I am struggling with

00:46:39

after reading this 'cause this book is kind of,

00:46:41

I would argue, about creating a culture

00:46:44

where these ideas can be birthed.

00:46:46

So you don't kill them prematurely.

00:46:49

So you are constantly getting them,

00:46:52

but then there really isn't a whole lot in terms of,

00:46:55

okay, so this is the process that you follow

00:46:58

in terms of making this a reality.

00:47:00

And I understand why because that's gonna be

00:47:02

very, very different.

00:47:03

An idea that I am collecting to write an article

00:47:07

is very different than your idea to redo your house.

00:47:10

Yeah, yeah, 'cause we've, I mean,

00:47:12

let's take this to the next step.

00:47:15

So we've been collecting ideas of projects

00:47:18

to do on the house, right?

00:47:21

And the scale of collecting ideas for articles to write,

00:47:26

each of those is a project, right?

00:47:28

There's hundreds of actions that go into that,

00:47:30

especially at the scale of the suite setup.

00:47:32

The projects that I'm collecting ideas for are,

00:47:37

do I take out this wall?

00:47:39

Do I move the garage door six feet to one side?

00:47:44

Do I tear a wall out in the garage and add a doorway?

00:47:47

Like these are not a--

00:47:49

What happens if I theoretically find a giant wasp nest

00:47:52

in the city?

00:47:53

Exactly, yes, which happened.

00:47:55

(laughs)

00:47:58

If I, you know, and each of those has runoff projects

00:48:03

that come with it.

00:48:05

And a prime example, we decided to take, you know,

00:48:09

a certain ceiling out of the house.

00:48:10

Well, that then dictated a wall coming down.

00:48:12

It dictated changing the ventilation in the attic.

00:48:15

It meant rerunning wiring in there.

00:48:17

It meant redoing lighting and it meant redoing duct work.

00:48:21

All because we decided to take a ceiling out.

00:48:24

So you never know, in this particular case,

00:48:27

I never know when a small project becomes one massive project.

00:48:31

So you don't know that.

00:48:33

But those ideas that we're collecting

00:48:36

for what to do on the house, I know,

00:48:38

each of those isn't a one to,

00:48:42

it's not a seven to 10 day project like an article can be,

00:48:45

or shorter for an article.

00:48:47

It's a three month project of nights and weekends.

00:48:51

That's what that is.

00:48:52

So saying yes to a project isn't a small thing in that case.

00:48:57

But if I was collecting ideas for books to read,

00:49:01

like we've talked about on Bookworm,

00:49:02

because we run through books so fast,

00:49:05

the decision factor, like how important that decision

00:49:08

is on what book we're gonna do next is very, very small.

00:49:11

Because we know we're only gonna spend two weeks with it.

00:49:14

Now, if it was a two year process

00:49:16

and we were gonna dissect every sentence

00:49:17

of the entire book,

00:49:20

that would be a much bigger decision.

00:49:21

We would spend a lot more time on it

00:49:23

and it would be a much more involved process.

00:49:26

So deciding on those ideas is,

00:49:29

but that's like a whole nother topic.

00:49:31

It's not even covered in this.

00:49:33

How deciding which ones to act on,

00:49:35

this is just coming up with this.

00:49:36

- This is like the first part of a series.

00:49:38

- It's so true.

00:49:39

- So true.

00:49:40

- Could be a potential series.

00:49:41

Yeah, and deciding what to write on,

00:49:44

I mean, it's not always just like small stakes.

00:49:49

What article am I going to publish?

00:49:51

I think a bigger version of this,

00:49:53

but still very much in that format for me

00:49:56

would be the decision to create the obsidian course.

00:50:00

Because for a long time,

00:50:01

I was messing around with Rome,

00:50:04

and then I started playing around with obsidian,

00:50:06

and then I saw some things happen in the app,

00:50:11

eco space, whatever.

00:50:13

And I was like, you know,

00:50:15

I think obsidian's gonna be a big thing for a long time.

00:50:18

If we built a course right now,

00:50:23

we could be ever known essentials for obsidian.

00:50:27

And I use that as an example,

00:50:28

just because I've met Brett Kelly,

00:50:30

and I know how he wrote that one book,

00:50:32

and then it kind of catapulted him

00:50:34

and set him on a totally different career trajectory,

00:50:38

because it was the right thing at the right time.

00:50:41

So I had a feeling like obsidian is the thing

00:50:44

we should be focusing on right now,

00:50:47

but I really didn't know that,

00:50:50

and I wanna know like,

00:50:52

what are the things that contributed to that hunch basically?

00:50:56

Can I quantify that?

00:50:57

If I could create an idea scorecard

00:50:59

to rate my ideas as I have them,

00:51:02

what would be on there?

00:51:03

And I honestly don't know.

00:51:06

I was hoping to get a little bit of clarity

00:51:07

at the end of this book,

00:51:08

but I don't think really, really happened.

00:51:12

This particular section on incremental change

00:51:14

being fine if you're a glacier,

00:51:16

the big inspiration for me from this

00:51:18

is just to think a little bit bigger.

00:51:20

I think I tend to focus on things

00:51:24

that I can see clearly in the horizon,

00:51:27

but a big idea you really don't know,

00:51:30

it's out there always.

00:51:32

And so I think I tend to gravitate towards

00:51:36

what is safe and knowable.

00:51:38

So I don't have an actual,

00:51:39

I'm associated with that.

00:51:40

I actually don't think I have any action items

00:51:42

for this entire book.

00:51:43

- Yeah, I don't either,

00:51:44

but I think what you're saying makes sense

00:51:47

because we tend to try to come up with,

00:51:49

like you're saying, coming up with bigger ideas.

00:51:51

We tend to try to come up with ideas for bookworm books

00:51:55

or ideas for video courses, et cetera, et cetera,

00:51:59

but those are all ideas designed to fill time

00:52:04

that we're already devoted to doing that type of task.

00:52:09

And I think there's a big difference

00:52:11

between coming up with ideas

00:52:12

for an already dedicated time slot

00:52:16

and coming up with ideas that require a lifestyle change.

00:52:20

- Sure, yep.

00:52:21

- And dictate a change in time priorities.

00:52:24

So whenever you're trying to come up with big ideas,

00:52:29

like that generally, at least the way I started

00:52:34

to think about this was designed to help you think

00:52:38

about how would your life change

00:52:41

if you were to have an idea that would then change

00:52:44

other people's lives?

00:52:45

Like those are the ideas I think that he's encouraging us

00:52:49

to try to develop the ones that would require a change

00:52:53

of not only how I live, but the people around me

00:52:56

and the people that I'm connected to.

00:52:58

Those are the size of ideas that I think he's encouraging us

00:53:01

to come up with, not necessarily,

00:53:05

how do I come up with a Siri shortcut

00:53:07

to unlock and lock my door automatically for me?

00:53:11

Those are fun ideas, but fairly insignificant and minor

00:53:16

if inconsequential at all.

00:53:18

- So my ideas aren't good enough?

00:53:21

Is that what you're saying?

00:53:21

- Exactly, some ideas just aren't cut.

00:53:24

(laughing)

00:53:26

All right, well that kinda leads into the next one.

00:53:29

Chapter 11 has the longest title in the book.

00:53:31

It says, "An idea is a paradigm shifting moment

00:53:34

"that for projects future potential

00:53:36

"in an initially ethereal but progressively tangible manner."

00:53:40

So that title alone--

00:53:43

- Couldn't shorten that one down at all, come on.

00:53:45

- Yeah, I think that was deliberate,

00:53:48

but I think that does kind of speak to what we were just

00:53:52

talking about of how they define an idea.

00:53:54

They're not thinking of how can I improve my workflow

00:53:58

or thinking of how can I completely change my career?

00:54:01

- Yes.

00:54:03

- Which is, I don't know, a little bit scarier,

00:54:07

but also the topic that I'm not quite as interested in,

00:54:12

to be honest, because I feel like those types of ideas,

00:54:17

you can get them different places,

00:54:21

but it's really, really hard to judge or grade them well.

00:54:26

Whereas an idea for,

00:54:30

this is how I view the world,

00:54:33

whether it comes out in an article or just,

00:54:37

something that I internally work through,

00:54:41

I feel like that has more tangible everyday benefit

00:54:46

as it pertains to not just reading,

00:54:50

although that's primarily,

00:54:52

I think the source of new information for you and I

00:54:56

when we're collecting these ideas,

00:54:58

but it could be YouTube videos, it could be podcasts.

00:55:01

I think books are a higher quality source

00:55:04

than maybe some other places that people look for ideas,

00:55:08

but that's just me.

00:55:10

This whole section though,

00:55:12

talks about being a faux intellectual,

00:55:14

and this is the thing I wanted to bring up here.

00:55:17

I think if I am honest with myself,

00:55:20

I need to watch that I don't fall into this.

00:55:25

He describes faux intellectual as someone

00:55:27

who doesn't want to have new ideas,

00:55:29

but wants to discuss them.

00:55:31

So I think that's where the action items

00:55:34

are helpful with Bookworm,

00:55:36

because it would be very easy if we didn't have any action items

00:55:39

to just talk about the things every other week

00:55:44

and then not do anything about them.

00:55:47

And you could argue that we still don't do anything about them

00:55:49

because we fail on our action items frequently,

00:55:51

but at least we try.

00:55:53

- That's true, but there's also the intellectual side

00:55:57

of talking about your own ideas,

00:56:00

but I think what he's referring to in the faux intellectual

00:56:05

is that of people who are talking about other people's ideas

00:56:08

and not their own.

00:56:10

And more critiquing what other people have come up with

00:56:15

as opposed to being a source of those to begin with.

00:56:22

I saw this in corporate all the time,

00:56:24

which we'll talk about thought police here in a bit,

00:56:26

but in corporate it was pretty common for us

00:56:29

to do these brainstorming sessions,

00:56:31

which I always thought were hilarious

00:56:33

because there were some ideas that weren't allowed.

00:56:37

And if an idea that wasn't allowed was brought up

00:56:41

as a potential solution to whatever it is we were trying

00:56:45

to solve, somebody in there was the faux intellectual

00:56:48

who would just sit and critique everything

00:56:50

that came out of somebody's mouth.

00:56:52

And you're not being helpful here when you're doing that

00:56:57

because they felt like they needed to talk about

00:57:00

all these ideas, but they would always find something wrong

00:57:03

with them.

00:57:04

- Sure.

00:57:05

- And that was forever the thing that was happening,

00:57:08

but I think that's what he's referring to

00:57:09

in a faux intellectual, just that they're not necessarily

00:57:14

being the source of the topic of conversation,

00:57:19

but they wanna talk about what everybody else is talking

00:57:21

about, even though they're not necessarily helping

00:57:25

the conversation, which is where he had the comment

00:57:28

and there's like people are regularly interrupting

00:57:31

these faux intellectuals whenever they're in the middle

00:57:33

of their discussion.

00:57:34

So what you're saying is like you're trying to like

00:57:39

complete the thoughts for them because they can put

00:57:43

all the thoughts together themselves

00:57:45

because they don't actually understand what's happening.

00:57:47

They're just trying to be, you know,

00:57:49

a voice in the conversation.

00:57:51

- There's a phrase in here that really challenged me,

00:57:55

says you can be a good thinker and a poor speaker,

00:57:59

which means the inverse is also true.

00:58:02

You can be a poor thinker, but a good speaker.

00:58:06

And talks about faux intellectuals making simple things

00:58:11

sound complicated, whereas a good idea does the opposite.

00:58:15

It makes complicated things seem simple.

00:58:19

And I think I need to be on guard for this,

00:58:24

where I'm not just talking about somebody else's idea.

00:58:28

I mean, Bookworm is built on this premise.

00:58:31

We read these books with ideas that other people have,

00:58:34

and then we talk about them.

00:58:35

- Yes.

00:58:36

- So this is the platform for faux intellectuals

00:58:39

if there ever was one.

00:58:40

(laughs)

00:58:43

But I think one thing that helps with that

00:58:45

is the Mortimer Adler, how to read a book approach.

00:58:47

We've read enough books that we're not just talking

00:58:50

about the idea and isolation inside of the book,

00:58:52

we're comparing it against other things

00:58:54

that we've read and heard and trying to figure out,

00:58:57

where is the truth based off of all of these thoughts

00:59:00

that we've collected over the years.

00:59:02

That's the biggest takeaway from Bookworm for me,

00:59:04

is just the sheer volume of the books that we've read,

00:59:07

and how I don't get sucked into any one book being,

00:59:10

oh, this is the complete answer.

00:59:12

This is the answer to life, the universe,

00:59:15

and everything, reference to a fiction book there

00:59:19

for those who caught it.

00:59:21

- 42.

00:59:21

- Right.

00:59:23

But I think I probably do slip into this from time to time.

00:59:27

So I wanna make sure that, especially with my Toastmasters

00:59:30

training, I feel like I am a fairly decent communicator,

00:59:34

and I don't want to let that mask pour thinking.

00:59:38

I want to make sure that I have thought through things

00:59:41

before I even open my mouth.

00:59:43

- Yeah, I know that it's regularly a thing.

00:59:47

This will sound terrible at funerals.

00:59:52

If you go to a lot of funerals, you tend to see patterns,

00:59:55

and when you run the AV equipment for funerals,

00:59:59

you go to a lot of funerals.

01:00:01

So it's not uncommon that there's like an open mic period

01:00:06

during a funeral for family reflections,

01:00:12

and you always know who the people are,

01:00:16

who have good ideas, articulated them ahead of time,

01:00:19

wrote their outline, wrote their notes,

01:00:21

and then worked on how to present that,

01:00:24

knowing that they're gonna be emotional during that time.

01:00:27

And then you have the people who wrote their notes

01:00:31

in the lobby before they went up there,

01:00:34

and it's always way long,

01:00:36

and you're not really sure what they're talking about,

01:00:39

and sometimes you're wondering if they're talking

01:00:40

about the deceased or not,

01:00:42

and it's just not connected at all.

01:00:45

So you absolutely can be a good speaker with good ideas,

01:00:50

but you can also be a good speaker with bad ideas,

01:00:53

or have good ideas and be a bad speaker.

01:00:54

Like you can be any of those.

01:00:56

- Or be a poor speaker and a poor thinker,

01:00:58

and just go up to the microphone 'cause everybody else is.

01:01:00

- Correct, and that's the worst.

01:01:03

Please don't do that.

01:01:04

Oh, those are fun.

01:01:06

Those are super fun.

01:01:08

- Right, well, that's all I wanna talk about with that one.

01:01:11

Let's move on to the next one 'cause you mentioned it.

01:01:13

Number 13 is think about the thought police,

01:01:16

and the thought police, basically,

01:01:18

if you change as disrespectful,

01:01:21

I like that term disrespectful.

01:01:23

If I'm honest with myself,

01:01:27

I can locate specific points where I have viewed change

01:01:32

as unnecessary and disrespectful,

01:01:35

especially when it's instigated from some place

01:01:37

that you don't expect it to come from.

01:01:41

And I'm curious, he mentions in here

01:01:44

that when a group elevates conventional wisdom,

01:01:46

it's hard to get a new idea past them.

01:01:48

In that instance, they are acting as the thought police.

01:01:53

So where do you let conventional wisdom win?

01:01:57

And where have you caught yourself acting

01:01:59

as the thought police?

01:02:01

- I'm not sure where I've done that.

01:02:03

I'm usually the one inflicting change.

01:02:05

So I don't know where I sit in on this.

01:02:08

Like the question you put in the outline,

01:02:13

what areas do you let conventional wisdom win?

01:02:17

I think, in my case, I tend to let conventional wisdom win

01:02:22

when it's a known,

01:02:24

and I don't have time to figure out what an alternative is.

01:02:29

There's a lot of time involved in that.

01:02:31

If I have infinite time, I will,

01:02:34

and if I don't wanna go with conventional wisdom

01:02:37

and I have all the time in the world,

01:02:39

I will agonize over finding the loophole in the puzzle

01:02:42

to try to work my way around it.

01:02:43

Like I will find the solution somewhere,

01:02:46

somehow I will find it.

01:02:49

And that's me, but I also know,

01:02:54

being the one who inflicts the change,

01:02:57

I know that it's a process that I have to go through

01:03:00

to help people accept that change,

01:03:03

because conventional wisdom is being challenged

01:03:06

and I'm about to remove it from their lives

01:03:09

in whatever area,

01:03:12

whether it's email or a calendaring or chat systems,

01:03:15

who knows?

01:03:16

But that's me, so I don't know,

01:03:19

I don't know how I fit in on this.

01:03:21

I am generally one that likes change,

01:03:24

so I don't feel like I fight it very often.

01:03:27

I don't know.

01:03:28

This one, I don't have answers on this one.

01:03:32

Okay, well, I think for me,

01:03:35

I, when I engage with a group,

01:03:39

I try to very quickly figure out what all of the norms are.

01:03:44

Last two working experiences with Asian deficiency

01:03:48

and then Blanc Media, very different.

01:03:51

There's strengths and weaknesses with each of the approaches.

01:03:56

I know it's gonna be different going from one to the other,

01:03:59

so I go into it, just trying to like feel out

01:04:02

what are the rules that everybody's playing by here.

01:04:05

Once I figure out what those rules are,

01:04:09

I don't like those rules to be challenged.

01:04:13

So when someone new comes in and says,

01:04:15

"Hey, we should do this."

01:04:17

My initial reaction is, "No, no, no, no,

01:04:20

"the culture is this."

01:04:21

Like, just don't fight it, just swim this direction.

01:04:27

And so I think that's a spot where I could do a better job

01:04:31

of not defaulting to conventional wisdom.

01:04:34

Conventional meaning,

01:04:36

this is the culture of the organization

01:04:38

in just the way things are.

01:04:40

Usually when I come into a situation,

01:04:44

I am fairly eager to try to make some changes.

01:04:49

If I see something that I consider,

01:04:52

like this is a problem or this is,

01:04:53

there's a better way to do this,

01:04:55

I'll float those ideas and I'll kind of see

01:04:58

how they're received and see what happens with those.

01:05:03

But what I absolutely can't stand personally

01:05:07

for some reason is someone to say,

01:05:11

"Oh yeah, that's a great idea.

01:05:13

"Let's do that."

01:05:15

And then nothing happens.

01:05:16

To me, that's worse than a personal insult.

01:05:19

I don't know why I get so upset with that,

01:05:22

but I really do.

01:05:24

It's like, let's just let our yes be yes,

01:05:27

our no-be-no, if you really don't like this idea,

01:05:29

that's fine.

01:05:31

I can take that.

01:05:32

I'll play by your rules,

01:05:34

but don't tell me we're gonna do something

01:05:37

and then not do that.

01:05:39

To me, that's like lying to my face.

01:05:42

It's like, when I put it that way,

01:05:46

this isn't consciously what's going on,

01:05:48

but I think maybe I'm sort of judging the character

01:05:54

of the person I'm interacting with when that happens.

01:05:58

Which again, this is my problem, not theirs.

01:06:01

I need to get over this.

01:06:03

I understand that, but this is how my brain works.

01:06:06

And so this is what I'm fighting against

01:06:08

is my own internal thought police.

01:06:10

- Yep.

01:06:12

Yeah, I know that we give David Allen a lot of grief

01:06:15

and getting things done with GTD,

01:06:17

but one of the tenants that I've loved

01:06:21

and regularly hold up to is what's the next action.

01:06:26

Until you define what that next action is,

01:06:29

it's just an idea.

01:06:30

You can't say it's a project that's in motion

01:06:32

until you've defined that step.

01:06:35

And every time I've had an idea and someone says,

01:06:40

"Hey, that's great, we should do that."

01:06:42

I make sure the next sentence out of my mouth

01:06:45

is an encouragement to figure out

01:06:47

what the first step is to make that happen.

01:06:50

And usually it's a question of,

01:06:53

"Sure, that's great.

01:06:54

So are you taking that?

01:06:55

Are you gonna make that phone call?

01:06:57

Am I gonna make that phone call?

01:06:58

Who's got the lead on this?

01:06:59

What's the next step and when should that be done?"

01:07:01

Like those are the questions that I immediately jump to

01:07:05

because I know if you don't, it's just gone.

01:07:08

It just is.

01:07:10

I've had this, I don't know how many times,

01:07:12

we've got a couple new members on our staff

01:07:15

that say, "You know, I know things have been done

01:07:17

this way a long time, but I think we should,"

01:07:19

like, "Okay, great.

01:07:21

If you think that's what should be done,

01:07:22

I'm not saying I agree with you that that should be done

01:07:25

'cause I'm like Mike in this case

01:07:26

and saying, "Well, I know how the culture works here,

01:07:28

so I don't think that's gonna fly,

01:07:29

but you're welcome to try."

01:07:31

And whenever we go down that path,

01:07:34

like, "Okay, if you think that's a great idea,

01:07:37

here are the four people you need to talk to,

01:07:39

you're welcome to do that at your leisure,

01:07:42

I don't care 'cause I don't see this.

01:07:44

Like this is not something that resonates with me,

01:07:46

so you're not gonna get me fired up to help you,

01:07:50

in this case, at least not when you're,

01:07:53

when you're start time here at the office

01:07:58

was two weeks ago, like,

01:08:00

you're not gonna get my support

01:08:01

for some big culture change after you've been here

01:08:03

for two weeks and don't understand how our current culture works,

01:08:05

but here are the steps you need to take

01:08:09

if you think that's the right path.

01:08:11

And sometimes just defining what those next steps are

01:08:16

is all it takes for them to realize

01:08:19

that it's a much bigger deal than what they thought it was.

01:08:22

I had this just earlier this morning,

01:08:24

I had somebody in that we were walking around,

01:08:26

there's an event coming up that they're gonna run

01:08:29

and they had an idea that they wanted,

01:08:32

it was completely different than what we normally do

01:08:33

and involved, you know, the sound systems, like, "It's fine."

01:08:37

And it's like, "I wanna do this particular process,

01:08:42

"but it requires some timing."

01:08:43

It's like, "Sure, that's great, we haven't done that before,

01:08:45

"but if you wanna do that, here are the steps

01:08:48

"it would take to make that happen."

01:08:50

And if you wanna take all those steps,

01:08:53

that's fine, we can go down that path,

01:08:55

but you just need to know what you're asking.

01:08:57

Like, "I'm just gonna spell out, here's what that means."

01:09:01

Immediately, like, "Oh, that's not, it's just a very minor detail,

01:09:04

"it's not worth all that."

01:09:05

Okay, great, so we won't do that.

01:09:08

So, maybe that's just me, if I define what the process is

01:09:12

to make something happen and it's not a simple thing,

01:09:16

it goes away very quickly.

01:09:18

I don't know how I got on that or where that was going,

01:09:20

but I thought it was fun.

01:09:22

- I think there's some sort of balance

01:09:25

to be struck there though,

01:09:27

because I think there is a possibility

01:09:32

that the process could be simpler.

01:09:36

And in a lot of instances,

01:09:39

especially when you've done it this way

01:09:42

for low these many years,

01:09:45

it's easy to just say, "Oh, this is hard and complicated."

01:09:49

An outside perspective is the perfect one to say,

01:09:52

"Hey, this is how this could be simpler."

01:09:55

So, I don't know what I'm struggling with

01:10:00

is balancing, yeah, this is everything

01:10:05

that's gonna be required based off of my experience

01:10:09

to make this happen with the new person's optimism.

01:10:14

Like, "Oh, we could just do it like this."

01:10:18

Maybe my initial reaction is to resist that

01:10:22

and be like, "No, probably not."

01:10:25

- Yeah.

01:10:26

- But I also don't want to be the wet blanket

01:10:29

for every new idea.

01:10:31

- Yes.

01:10:32

- So, yes.

01:10:33

But there's also an emotional side to this too.

01:10:36

And like, okay, so take that example this morning.

01:10:40

I know, like, if I spent some time,

01:10:43

I could probably find a simpler way to make that happen,

01:10:46

but I really don't want to.

01:10:48

So, my gut reaction is to explain how complex it is.

01:10:54

- Sure.

01:10:55

- Because I don't want to do it.

01:10:57

But if it were my event and I wanted it to happen,

01:11:02

I would find a way to make that simple.

01:11:04

Like, there's that emotional side that's involved here.

01:11:08

Now, in this case, I didn't know this person ahead of time.

01:11:12

So, I don't really have any back and forth with them.

01:11:16

It's just one case.

01:11:17

This happens all the time.

01:11:18

I do this all the time.

01:11:20

- So--

01:11:20

- It happens all the time.

01:11:21

And I would argue you're on either end of this all the time.

01:11:24

- Yes.

01:11:25

- Regularly, yeah.

01:11:27

And there's a lot of cases where it's something

01:11:29

I'm trying to get done.

01:11:31

And I know that somebody just explained it to me

01:11:35

in the most complicated way.

01:11:37

But me knowing that that's what people do,

01:11:40

I look for loopholes in what they just explained.

01:11:43

Okay, you said this and this,

01:11:46

but that step right there could be shortcut.

01:11:49

And then that other two thirds you told me

01:11:50

was super complex goes away.

01:11:52

Like, that's what I look for.

01:11:54

But that's because I know I do that.

01:11:56

So--

01:11:57

- Yeah, and that's the balance that I think is healthy to find

01:12:03

in any organization, any workplace,

01:12:08

any ministry team.

01:12:11

- Yeah.

01:12:11

- Wherever you've got a group of people

01:12:13

who are trying to do something together,

01:12:16

there's gotta be this give and take

01:12:19

between this is the way things are

01:12:22

and allowing the new ideas and the potential shortcuts,

01:12:27

like giving them space to entertain those as possibilities.

01:12:32

- Yeah.

01:12:34

- It's easy when you have too much to do

01:12:36

and not enough time to do it in

01:12:37

to just throw that under the rug and stomp it out

01:12:41

and be like, no, we don't have time to even consider that.

01:12:44

'Cause we have these other things that need to be done.

01:12:47

And I find myself being guilty of both ends of this.

01:12:52

I've also been guilty of the one,

01:12:53

well, we can just do this.

01:12:54

Like, it'll be simple.

01:12:55

No, it's not that simple.

01:12:56

What do you mean it's not that simple?

01:12:57

Sure it is, let's just do it.

01:12:58

(laughing)

01:13:00

So--

01:13:01

- That never happens.

01:13:02

- Yeah.

01:13:03

But that kind of leads into the next one here

01:13:06

because number 14, it says, this just in, we're mortal.

01:13:09

This talks about the lifespan of ideas.

01:13:12

So when you're talking about being on either end

01:13:16

of that spectrum, somebody floating an idea

01:13:18

and you just coming back with a complicated process,

01:13:20

this is the way we actually do things around here.

01:13:22

Or vice versa, you're floating this idea

01:13:25

as someone says, no, it's too complicated

01:13:26

and you're trying to challenge that

01:13:28

and make something a little bit simpler.

01:13:30

I think the tendency from the folks

01:13:35

who are just trying to move on with the process

01:13:39

is to say, now's not the time to disrupt things.

01:13:44

But the counter-argument to that is that this idea

01:13:51

has life right now and it's not always going to have life

01:13:55

because the lifespan of ideas is not infinite.

01:13:59

So I've also been thinking about this

01:14:03

where timing factors into an idea

01:14:06

and whether it is successful

01:14:10

and how do you properly determine

01:14:13

what is the right time for an idea?

01:14:15

I don't think about this a whole lot

01:14:17

in terms of just my internal stuff.

01:14:19

I throw things that I think might be valuable someday

01:14:22

into obsidian and then I'll play with them.

01:14:25

If not, they'll die, whatever.

01:14:27

That just means that it wasn't that good of an idea.

01:14:30

But this gets complicated when you work with other people

01:14:33

and you don't want to be the person

01:14:37

who is constantly challenging people to change things

01:14:39

'cause no one's gonna like that.

01:14:40

Or constantly being the one who's like,

01:14:43

no, we're not gonna change things

01:14:44

'cause that will kill youthful enthusiasm

01:14:47

for somebody new to your team or organization as well.

01:14:51

- For timing of ideas, this is something

01:14:54

I think about a lot actually.

01:14:57

And I say that because I tend to have thoughts

01:15:02

about how certain individuals, volunteers, teammates,

01:15:07

departments, I tend to think about how they could improve

01:15:12

different things and just off the top of my head,

01:15:15

I can think of like four or five big departmental changes

01:15:20

that I want to recommend at some point.

01:15:23

But the people and the situations aren't ready

01:15:26

for those ideas yet.

01:15:27

And like if I take my video team,

01:15:30

like there's a certain level of video quality

01:15:33

that I wanna take us to, but they're not ready

01:15:36

for me to recommend that yet.

01:15:38

And if I were to recommend it now,

01:15:41

I know they would get excited about it,

01:15:44

but they're not ready skill wise for it.

01:15:47

And they need to spend at least a couple more years

01:15:52

with the trajectory that we're currently on

01:15:54

to get comfortable with where I just took them

01:15:58

before I can introduce that.

01:16:00

So it's not ready yet.

01:16:03

So you gotta sit on it and wait for that timing

01:16:06

because it's gonna be a train wreck if I try to do it now.

01:16:12

And that's the fascinating thing about this particular section

01:16:16

because sitting on it does not mean that you set it

01:16:21

on the back burner until later.

01:16:24

There's this concept of speed that's introduced

01:16:27

in this section on page 93.

01:16:29

He says, "Alo, we all complain about not having enough time.

01:16:33

Speed when properly managed can be your friend."

01:16:38

So he also says, "Idea has responded well

01:16:40

to a closed door and a deadline of implying

01:16:43

that these ideas don't really gain traction

01:16:46

until you've got some motivation to actually make them happen."

01:16:51

So when you are incubating them,

01:16:52

what you're trying to do is ride your bicycle very slowly

01:16:57

and not fall over.

01:16:58

(laughs)

01:16:59

- Yes.

01:17:00

- Well, at the same time, working out doing bench press

01:17:03

and curls on your upper body so that you can--

01:17:05

- Wow, you're moving so.

01:17:06

- Actually, yeah, yeah.

01:17:08

And this just seems, when I think about it that way,

01:17:11

if this seems really, really complicated

01:17:13

and it probably is overly complicated,

01:17:15

it probably doesn't need to be that complicated.

01:17:19

But I am fascinated by this whole concept

01:17:21

because I really do believe that the right thing

01:17:23

at the wrong time can be the wrong thing.

01:17:27

And I don't know what the solution is

01:17:29

but this definitely helped me think about

01:17:33

some different situations with some different teams

01:17:36

that I'm involved with

01:17:38

and how do you determine the right time for an idea?

01:17:43

Again, I don't necessarily have an answer to this

01:17:49

but this chapter, I think you could read it

01:17:53

and it could do one of two things.

01:17:54

One, it could kind of discourage you as an idea person.

01:17:58

Like, I gotta take action on these ideas now

01:18:00

otherwise they're gonna die.

01:18:02

There is some truth to that.

01:18:05

You could also be on the other end of that

01:18:08

and kind of recognize like when these ideas

01:18:11

become presented to you

01:18:14

that you can't just shove them in a box

01:18:17

and leave them to toilet later.

01:18:19

Every idea collection system I've seen

01:18:22

in the different companies and organizations

01:18:26

that I've been a part of,

01:18:27

that has been the problem with those idea buckets

01:18:31

is people put stuff in there

01:18:33

and then it never comes out.

01:18:36

So we're trying some new things actually

01:18:38

at Blanc Media and the suite set up

01:18:39

to try to take action on these ideas more quickly

01:18:43

because when you have them and you put them in there,

01:18:46

like that's usually when you have the best chance of it

01:18:49

actually translating into something positive

01:18:51

for the organization I feel.

01:18:53

And we've recognized that you throw stuff in there

01:18:56

and then six months later if you revisit it

01:18:57

you forget sometimes what even you were talking about

01:19:01

when you put it in there.

01:19:03

So I think if you're gonna try to do this with a team

01:19:08

there has to be a way to not just capture the ideas

01:19:12

but also to do something with them quickly

01:19:16

and then also maybe alongside that

01:19:19

you're actively choosing the ideas

01:19:21

that you're not going to be taking action on

01:19:24

which kind of comes back to that conversation

01:19:26

you were talking about the person you knew

01:19:27

who whenever they had an idea they built and sold a business

01:19:31

can't be that simple.

01:19:32

(laughs)

01:19:33

My head is like trying,

01:19:35

still trying to wrap around that statement.

01:19:37

Like there's gotta be a bunch of stuff you're saying no to

01:19:39

I mean that's what we read in every single book

01:19:41

'cause you have to say no.

01:19:43

So yeah there's gotta be a way to do that.

01:19:47

- I suspect in his case not to keep dredging that one up

01:19:52

but I suspect because my brain of course

01:19:55

has been processing that one since we talked about it earlier

01:19:58

but I wonder if there's some level of

01:20:02

he has a bunch of like the ideas that he would like to act on

01:20:06

in the future but doesn't write them down

01:20:11

because they're so interesting in his brain

01:20:13

he just goes over them many times mentally

01:20:17

and knows them that way as they come up

01:20:19

and he's actively building them just all in his brain

01:20:24

and whenever he sells a business

01:20:28

he's worked on it for so long

01:20:30

over the last two, three years

01:20:31

as he was building his other business

01:20:33

that he's ready to start moving on it

01:20:37

the moment he sells the one

01:20:38

and I wonder if he actually sells the first one

01:20:41

when he's ready to start the second one

01:20:43

just because he's tired of the first one.

01:20:46

These are my thoughts.

01:20:48

I don't know if any of this is true or not.

01:20:49

This is me speculating but.

01:20:51

- That's all it seems to me that's the also the type of person

01:20:55

who would argue they don't need a task manager

01:20:57

because they're just constantly thinking about something.

01:20:59

- He does like his is ridiculous too.

01:21:02

So he doesn't fit that, it's the problem.

01:21:07

Like this guy is not.

01:21:09

- I should see if I could have him on an interview

01:21:11

at some point, I don't know that he would do that.

01:21:13

- That'd be cool.

01:21:14

He's strange.

01:21:15

- Well the last section here,

01:21:19

I mean this maybe is a good lead way into this number 18

01:21:22

we don't know what we don't know until we do

01:21:24

what we don't usually do.

01:21:26

So my brain is breaking, thinking about

01:21:29

just taking action on every single idea

01:21:32

especially on the scale of starting and selling a business.

01:21:36

But I've never actually tried that.

01:21:38

And the very first page in this section on page 116

01:21:43

it's a bunch of garbled letters.

01:21:46

And the point with this exercise is a research study

01:21:54

that shows when you have the first letter

01:21:56

and the last letter of the word your brain

01:21:59

can kind of figure out what is in the middle.

01:22:03

And at first you start and you don't even realize

01:22:06

that you're starting to unscramble this text.

01:22:09

And after about four or five words in

01:22:11

I started to realize what was happening here

01:22:13

and they're like, oh, I can do this.

01:22:15

So let's just keep going.

01:22:16

And then they have a whole page of this

01:22:18

where they're talking about how this is what your brain

01:22:20

is actually doing.

01:22:21

So they kind of trick you into doing it at first

01:22:24

I feel like and then they say, see,

01:22:26

you didn't think you could do this

01:22:27

but your brain totally can do this

01:22:28

and there's research behind this.

01:22:31

I immediately thought of speed reading

01:22:35

after I had done this.

01:22:37

Ah, interesting, okay.

01:22:39

I've gone through the Revit Up Reading course

01:22:43

by Ebbie Mark's Beal before

01:22:46

and improved my reading speed and retention

01:22:50

by doing that, but I've never considered myself

01:22:53

a speed reader.

01:22:55

Okay, and Ebbie, I've interviewed her back

01:22:57

when I was with Asian Efficiency and the Productivity Show.

01:23:00

She would say, there's just different gears

01:23:02

that you click into in terms of how quickly you read something

01:23:07

and most people don't actively say,

01:23:12

I'm going into speed reading mode now

01:23:14

they're just reading more quickly.

01:23:16

They're going into gear, you know, gear five.

01:23:19

That I liked, I do think that when you are reading quickly,

01:23:24

what you are doing, especially if you're implementing

01:23:28

some of the practices that she talks about in that course

01:23:31

where you're just kind of systematically going through

01:23:33

the page like following your finger

01:23:35

as you're swiping it across the page

01:23:36

or you've got the note card and you're going down

01:23:38

and just uncovering more text,

01:23:41

you can force your brain to go quicker

01:23:43

than it thinks it can.

01:23:46

And my experience from going through that course

01:23:49

was even though I felt like I wasn't able to keep up,

01:23:52

you go through the quizzes at the end

01:23:53

and you find that you actually did remember

01:23:55

a bunch of what you read.

01:23:59

That's not my preferred method for going through books

01:24:01

for bookworm, you can't do that when you're taking notes

01:24:03

in a mind notifile.

01:24:04

But I think there is some truth to that,

01:24:09

just the practice and this is totally not the point

01:24:12

they were trying to make, but page 116,

01:24:15

I view that as evidence that speed reading

01:24:19

does actually work.

01:24:20

- I can't say I'm in a speed read,

01:24:22

like go through the speed reading thing,

01:24:23

but I think that,

01:24:25

so the title here, we don't know what we don't know

01:24:29

until we do what we don't usually do.

01:24:31

This is reminiscent of the chapter in the last book

01:24:35

of, you know, break your routines

01:24:37

and do something different.

01:24:38

It's the last one? - Yeah.

01:24:39

- Two ago.

01:24:40

When you do things different than you used to do

01:24:45

just to figure out things that you don't know,

01:24:49

I think we're very often surprised

01:24:52

at how far you can go with that.

01:24:54

I have never rewired a breaker box in my life, never.

01:24:58

And yet I understand electricity quite well

01:25:03

and jumping into a breaker box

01:25:06

to rewire a major portion of our house

01:25:10

was a little intimidating,

01:25:12

but when I stood and just looked at it for a little bit,

01:25:15

it occurred to me, oh yeah,

01:25:17

I know how this all works

01:25:18

and I know how I want this to work so that it's clean.

01:25:21

And that was the next piece of that shocking.

01:25:24

You guys in the chat.

01:25:26

The part that's always interesting is like,

01:25:30

and this goes back to what I was talking about earlier,

01:25:31

when you push yourself past the point of comfort,

01:25:34

when you go past that point,

01:25:36

you start to realize just how much you're capable of.

01:25:40

And it's usually a lot more than what you think you can do.

01:25:43

And despite the limits that we tend to put on ourselves,

01:25:47

you can go really, really far.

01:25:50

And I remember this specifically with our youngest daughter

01:25:54

last summer, we took our girls hiking up into some mountains

01:25:59

and at the time, Hazel was three

01:26:05

and had her up the mountain.

01:26:08

The kid hiked up this, I think it was like a four mile trail

01:26:12

up into the mountains, three years old,

01:26:14

and then we're coming back down.

01:26:16

Now, the way it was working coming back down,

01:26:19

like there was a very specific path.

01:26:20

Like you can, adults, we could just step down a rock.

01:26:23

She's three, like the rock is bigger than she is.

01:26:26

So you can't just step down when you're a three year old.

01:26:30

So what I told her, 'cause she was losing her mind with mom,

01:26:34

so mom was not the right person for this.

01:26:37

So like, follow me, Hazel, like, you walk where my feet go,

01:26:41

I will walk in a path that I know you can cover,

01:26:45

and I will go where I know you can get down this mountain.

01:26:49

So she starts following my steps

01:26:51

for about two and a half miles of this, which number one,

01:26:56

it's a lot harder workout for an adult

01:26:58

to take three year old steps coming down a mountain

01:27:02

than it is to just walk down rocks.

01:27:04

But she realized about halfway through that

01:27:09

that she could do this and that she could figure this out.

01:27:12

And although she was following my path every once in a while,

01:27:16

she would deviate from it because she saw a better way

01:27:18

that I hadn't seen.

01:27:20

And she started to feel that empowerment of,

01:27:22

I can do this because I hadn't been able to,

01:27:25

I don't wanna say trick, but I was able to show her

01:27:28

how she could do this and how she could go further

01:27:30

than what she was able to do.

01:27:33

Now, the fun part of that story is there was a five year old boy

01:27:36

in a family that was following us down this trail

01:27:39

who was just losing his mind because it was too hard.

01:27:42

And dad at one point said,

01:27:44

there's a little girl in front of you who's younger

01:27:46

than you that can do this.

01:27:47

Why can't you do this?

01:27:49

That boy instantly shifted gears

01:27:52

and was able to do it with no issues.

01:27:55

So anyway, my point is your brain can go much further

01:27:59

than you think it can if you're willing to push it.

01:28:02

- Nice.

01:28:03

I think that's a great place to wrap it up

01:28:05

and it gives me inspiration for my next bookworm book.

01:28:09

- Yeah.

01:28:10

Let's not go there yet.

01:28:12

- So not yet.

01:28:13

Is there any action items that you have from this book?

01:28:19

- No.

01:28:20

And I say that knowing that the concept

01:28:23

of coming up with ideas,

01:28:26

which is primarily what this is about,

01:28:28

like generating ideas,

01:28:30

this is one that we've talked about before.

01:28:32

And I feel like I've built really good systems for this.

01:28:36

Systems, habits,

01:28:38

I don't know what you want to call it,

01:28:39

but processes that do maybe routine--

01:28:42

- Daily rituals maybe.

01:28:44

- Whatever you want to call it, take your pick.

01:28:46

Yeah, daily rituals.

01:28:47

Like that process is one that I've worked on intentionally

01:28:52

and this just confirms that that's a lot of the right thing

01:28:57

that I should be doing.

01:28:58

So no, I don't have any action items for this.

01:29:01

- Sure.

01:29:02

- Sorry, fail.

01:29:03

- I don't have any action items either.

01:29:06

And I was a little surprised by that.

01:29:11

I started to think about why did I not jot down

01:29:15

any action items, even my generic,

01:29:19

no way to hold me accountable to them action items.

01:29:23

I'm so famous for on this podcast.

01:29:26

And I feel the big win with this book

01:29:30

is simply recognizing the environmental factors

01:29:35

that can kill an idea.

01:29:38

Do you think that's fair?

01:29:39

- But there's a lot of those.

01:29:41

I suppose, yeah.

01:29:42

- There is.

01:29:42

- If you go through this, you start to realize,

01:29:46

that's a good point.

01:29:47

I don't think it crossed my mind

01:29:48

that there are that many ways that ideas get suffocated.

01:29:53

So yeah, that's a good point.

01:29:54

- Yeah, I think almost every single one of these chapters

01:29:59

is kind of a warning against a specific thing

01:30:03

that could kill an idea.

01:30:06

Even like number 10, embrace diversity,

01:30:08

it will hug you back.

01:30:12

That is framed in a positive perspective

01:30:17

of embracing diversity.

01:30:18

But I think the place that it becomes applied

01:30:21

is when you recognize that you are in a culture

01:30:24

where there is a lack of diversity.

01:30:27

So I think every single one of these

01:30:29

with the exception of the last chapter

01:30:32

is watch out for this thing.

01:30:34

And I think there's value in that.

01:30:38

So I guess kind of getting into style and rating here,

01:30:41

this is not necessarily the book

01:30:44

that I thought it was going to be going into it.

01:30:48

But I did very much enjoy this.

01:30:50

And I think there's a lot of value to be had from this.

01:30:54

I think this is one of those books that I would

01:30:57

kind of recommend to just about anybody.

01:31:01

I think it's a very easy read.

01:31:02

I think it's a really cool format.

01:31:05

I think it's a very engaging read was kind of surprised

01:31:09

like I said that I didn't have anything super specific

01:31:12

that I wanted to change having gone through this.

01:31:15

But I think to your point, that's kind of the result

01:31:19

of us thinking about this topic for a while.

01:31:23

If this is the first book that you're picking up

01:31:25

before liminal thinking, something like that,

01:31:28

maybe it hits you a little bit different.

01:31:31

I did have a bunch of things in my outline here

01:31:34

where it was like, oh, I wanna talk to Joe about this one.

01:31:38

So maybe those are the action items is like,

01:31:42

we just talked through a bunch of these things

01:31:46

in a podcast and that was really all the action

01:31:48

that was required there.

01:31:49

But I do think that my perspective on some of this stuff

01:31:53

has changed just from the result of this conversation.

01:31:57

And I think there's a lot of good stuff in here.

01:32:01

It's a very easy read.

01:32:02

It doesn't take a ton of time to get through this one.

01:32:05

I'm gonna rate this at four stars

01:32:10

because there wasn't anything in here

01:32:13

that felt really life changing to me.

01:32:16

But I do think there's a lot of good stuff in here.

01:32:21

And I think just about anybody can pick this up,

01:32:25

go through it and walk away from it

01:32:30

with a bit of a perspective change.

01:32:33

I think it would be very hard to go through this book

01:32:37

and not be changed in some way.

01:32:39

That's why I say looking at all these chapters

01:32:41

and kind of the warnings that they're sounding

01:32:44

in these different areas.

01:32:46

I feel even if you don't have any action items like you

01:32:48

and I do, they paint pictures of scenarios

01:32:51

that you can identify in your own life

01:32:53

and you can kind of put a flag in the ground

01:32:57

for the next time I'm in this sort of situation,

01:33:00

I might approach it a little bit differently.

01:33:01

Even if you don't have or articulate that specific thought,

01:33:05

I feel like your approach will be a little bit different

01:33:09

just from having gone through this.

01:33:10

So I think the style was really good.

01:33:13

The art is interesting, not exactly my thing,

01:33:18

but I do appreciate the originality of the design

01:33:22

and the cardboard cover and all that.

01:33:24

I feel like it works, it all kind of comes together.

01:33:27

So yeah, 4.0 is where I'm landed on this one

01:33:30

and this is kind of weird because typically the books

01:33:35

that I would blanket recommend to absolutely,

01:33:37

everybody tend to be the 5.0 is you gotta read this.

01:33:40

This will change your world.

01:33:42

This one is not that, but I feel has brought appeal.

01:33:47

So.

01:33:48

- Yeah, it's a good point.

01:33:49

And I like the comment on the style of the book

01:33:51

because let's go all the way back to the beginning.

01:33:54

When I picked it up, I thought it was a kids book.

01:33:57

Well, what do we know about kids in general?

01:34:02

They're super creative.

01:34:04

They haven't had all the norms and routines

01:34:07

and stuff to fall into so they will often regularly

01:34:11

break routine and come up with creative.

01:34:14

Why are you trying to walk across a bed

01:34:16

of acorns and bare feet?

01:34:18

What possessed you to try to do it?

01:34:21

Obviously you've got splinters in your feet.

01:34:22

You were walking across acorns in the parking lot.

01:34:25

Like, like, I don't know how you came up with this.

01:34:28

Anyway, kids in creativity are kind of a known

01:34:33

connecting point.

01:34:34

This having a slight throwback to kids books

01:34:39

probably isn't that far out of brand for this.

01:34:43

So I love that.

01:34:44

I love that they put that, those little touches are there

01:34:49

and I like that quite a bit.

01:34:52

This book, obviously like you said, it's easy to read.

01:34:54

I feel like this book, and I'm realizing this

01:34:58

because of this book, in that some books feel like

01:35:02

they're written in a way that they're easy to discuss.

01:35:06

Some books are written for me to process on my own time.

01:35:11

And this one, I didn't realize this to you

01:35:14

and I sat down and talked about it

01:35:16

because whenever I read this and I was processing it on my own,

01:35:19

it's like, you know, there's some cool things in here

01:35:22

but I really didn't think much about it.

01:35:24

It doesn't really change the way I process these things

01:35:27

but obviously as we process this stuff out loud

01:35:30

and with each other, like, oh yeah,

01:35:32

this book is really, really well set up for discussion

01:35:36

and it's really good for that.

01:35:39

So I suspect that this is one that, yeah,

01:35:43

I would agree with you.

01:35:44

It's one I would recommend to most people,

01:35:47

I don't know if I would blink it,

01:35:49

recommend it knowing that I've got some folks

01:35:51

that think the idea management thing is for the birds.

01:35:54

So, okay, I still don't, I gotta catch this guy

01:35:59

and have another conversation.

01:36:01

But anyway, this is one that,

01:36:04

I feel like if you're gonna read this,

01:36:07

it would be amazing to find somebody else to read it

01:36:09

alongside and then grab dinner or something

01:36:13

and talk about it, like do a book club thing with it.

01:36:16

Like it would be super cool to do that.

01:36:17

So this one I feel like is really well set up for that.

01:36:20

You can get a lot out of it if you read it on your own

01:36:24

but I do think it would be helpful to process it with someone.

01:36:27

Maybe that's just me showing my bias

01:36:28

towards being able to do with this with Mike every two weeks

01:36:31

but there's that.

01:36:34

4.0 is exactly where I feel it should be.

01:36:36

So that's where I will put it as well.

01:36:39

'Cause again, like it's not,

01:36:41

I don't feel like it's complete life changing

01:36:44

but I feel like it's important to know.

01:36:47

Yeah.

01:36:48

It's not gonna completely change the way you run meetings

01:36:52

or idea generation processes with your coworkers.

01:36:57

Like it's not gonna completely change that

01:36:58

but it will make you aware of how this process works

01:37:02

that could then have a second order consequence later

01:37:06

for how you react to someone else's idea

01:37:09

and how you process that.

01:37:10

So I don't think it's a direct correlation

01:37:12

but I think the second order on it would be super helpful

01:37:16

but again, one to one,

01:37:20

it's not gonna be a direct connection there.

01:37:22

That's what I'm trying to say.

01:37:24

There you go, 4.0.

01:37:25

Cool.

01:37:27

So let's put the art of the idea on the shelf.

01:37:31

What's next, Joe Buleg?

01:37:32

Yeah, so next we're gonna jump into Daily Rituals,

01:37:35

how artists work by Mason Curry

01:37:38

and I am starting this one tonight

01:37:40

so I haven't got a precursor on it

01:37:43

but I know that you have read this one before

01:37:46

and I know many people have told me

01:37:49

that this is a really good one to start

01:37:52

and being in a spot where a lot of my rituals and such

01:37:55

are about to change.

01:37:58

I really wanted to know how people do this

01:38:01

whole Daily Ritual concept as an artist.

01:38:04

So I figured I'd drag everybody along for the ride.

01:38:08

This'll be a fun one.

01:38:09

I am curious to see what this outline looks like.

01:38:12

I am terrified to see how this outline

01:38:14

is gonna come together.

01:38:16

I have already been trying to find,

01:38:17

I read the outline,

01:38:18

like the table of contents for this one

01:38:21

and I have no idea how we're gonna do this

01:38:24

but I gotta start processing how to do that one now

01:38:28

so that by the time we get there in two weeks,

01:38:30

we'll be okay.

01:38:31

(laughs)

01:38:32

Right.

01:38:33

All right, so Daily Rituals, then what Mike?

01:38:35

What'd you pick?

01:38:36

Well, you were talking about the different ways

01:38:40

that our brains can be pushed beyond

01:38:44

what we think we're capable of

01:38:47

and I have this book recommended to me

01:38:50

by David Sparks sitting on my bookshelf

01:38:54

and I think this is a perfect follow up

01:38:57

to this conversation,

01:38:59

which is a follow up to the liminal thinking conversation.

01:39:03

So I am picking The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul.

01:39:08

The subtitle is The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain.

01:39:15

In the description, it talks a little bit

01:39:17

about Daniel Goldman and emotional intelligence.

01:39:20

So I'll just to warn you,

01:39:22

but I think there's a whole lot more to be unpacked here.

01:39:27

This is just something I am fascinated about

01:39:32

at the moment and there's other books

01:39:34

that speak to this topic.

01:39:35

I have another one on my bookshelf called Brain Rules,

01:39:39

I believe, which I've read in the past,

01:39:42

but this whole neuroscience thing is

01:39:44

just an itch that needs to be scratched for me at the moment.

01:39:49

I feel like we've hit a groove of like,

01:39:51

okay, this one got me thinking about this,

01:39:52

which means I need to do this.

01:39:54

And then that got me thinking about X, Y, and Z.

01:39:57

So yes.

01:39:58

Which on that topic, if you want to read more books,

01:40:02

that's the way to do it, is to engage with the ones

01:40:05

that are interesting to you.

01:40:06

This one's longer, I'll let you know ahead of time.

01:40:09

It is 352 pages.

01:40:12

So it's gonna take a while,

01:40:14

but it is also an Amazon editors pick

01:40:16

for one of the best books of 2021 so far.

01:40:20

So kind of-- - Fascinating.

01:40:22

- Highly acclaimed. - Sure.

01:40:24

- If you will.

01:40:25

- All right, start that one early.

01:40:27

Cool, cool. - Yep.

01:40:29

- All right, what's on the gap book list, Mike?

01:40:31

You got one this time?

01:40:32

- I certainly do not.

01:40:33

Forget that.

01:40:34

- I do. - Okay.

01:40:36

- I have this book.

01:40:38

I'm not finished with it yet,

01:40:39

but it is called "Analog Church" by J. Kim.

01:40:44

- Okay.

01:40:45

- And this is basically about how in the Christian circles

01:40:50

that you and I are a part of,

01:40:55

there is this tendency to embrace technology

01:40:58

and be relevant as it pertains to the culture.

01:41:03

And I think there is some value in that,

01:41:06

but this is basically saying that in a digital culture,

01:41:11

what people are wanting and needing is analog connection.

01:41:16

And so this guy has a kind of fascinating background

01:41:20

where he's been a part of all these different styles

01:41:22

of churches, big mega churches with multiple campuses,

01:41:26

and kind of recognizing that all of these technology tools,

01:41:31

like we've kind of lost the plot

01:41:32

in some of the implementation of these.

01:41:36

He was at the beginning of the book,

01:41:38

he talks about giving a message.

01:41:41

And one of the tech guys is like,

01:41:42

make sure that you look directly into the camera

01:41:45

so that the people at the other campuses

01:41:48

feel like you're connecting with them.

01:41:49

And he was just kind of heartbroken.

01:41:51

He's like, "I don't even see these people.

01:41:52

"I'm not really connecting with them."

01:41:54

(laughing)

01:41:56

So it's got me thinking.

01:41:59

- Yeah, I need to pick this one up

01:42:02

based on what you just described

01:42:03

because I spent a lot of time making sure our tech

01:42:06

is all about bringing people together

01:42:08

and not helping people be isolated.

01:42:11

That's a core tenant that I have

01:42:13

for the tech side of this church.

01:42:14

So that's-- - In the introduction,

01:42:17

he references Jerry Turkle and Kale Newport.

01:42:20

- Okay, I'm sold on it.

01:42:24

(laughing)

01:42:25

Oh, like I said, I do not have GAP books,

01:42:28

but thanks everybody who joined us today.

01:42:30

That's for sure.

01:42:31

- Thank you to our Bookworm Club Premium Members as well,

01:42:35

who are willing to support us financially,

01:42:37

help us keep the lights on,

01:42:39

pay for somebody else to edit these podcast episodes now,

01:42:42

which is pretty great.

01:42:44

If you want to join, you can go to bookworm.fm/membership

01:42:48

and you get a couple of perks.

01:42:50

You get some GAP Book episodes that Joe did

01:42:52

before he started remodeling a house

01:42:54

and you get the Mind Node files from all the books

01:42:57

that I read and I upload to the club,

01:42:59

there's both the PDF versions and also the Mind Node versions.

01:43:03

So you can download them if you have Mind Node yourself

01:43:06

and you can kind of make them your own.

01:43:09

There's also a cool wallpaper,

01:43:12

which I designed a while back

01:43:13

and I didn't think that was that great,

01:43:15

but people seem to like it, so.

01:43:17

(laughing)

01:43:18

- Yeah.

01:43:19

- Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:43:20

- There you go.

01:43:21

- There you go.

01:43:22

Awesome.

01:43:23

Well, if you are wanting to read books,

01:43:24

get more ideas, develop ideas,

01:43:28

be amazing ideas, you need to read books

01:43:30

and the best one you can pick up right now

01:43:33

is Daily Rituals by Mason Curry

01:43:35

and then join us in two weeks and we will cover it together.