Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

I have some sad news, Joe Bielig.

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Why?

00:00:04

Because the author of Flow, Mihaly, Cheek sent Mihaly,

00:00:09

passed away yesterday as we record this at age 88.

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Yes, it's true. I saw this as well, and I was sad.

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So Mihaly, rest in peace, sir.

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For those who are newer to Bookworm and have not gone back and listened to every old episode,

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which I'm not necessarily suggesting you do that.

00:00:28

Oh, I am. You definitely should do that.

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This is a name that popped up over and over and over and over again at the beginning of our Bookworm journey

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and kind of became a running joke for us that every time it was mentioned,

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we would note it.

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And it seemed like every single book was pointing back to his research on Flow.

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And we kind of dropped the ball with that too, because I know that he was mentioned in quite a few books.

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Even I'm trying to place it. I've seen his name in some of the more recent books,

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but we haven't called it out like we used to.

00:01:01

Like, I know we've skipped that.

00:01:03

So it does his name and his book Flow does continue to come up still.

00:01:09

I think rightly so. I mean, we did cover his book here on Bookworm.

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And yeah, he's had a huge impact on kind of the brain science and self-help world.

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It's kind of taken the place by storm.

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So yeah, he's a very influential name in the world of nonfiction books,

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especially in the genres that we tend to cover.

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Yeah, we did cover his book here.

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I'll put a link to the episode in the show notes for people who are interested in that.

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But it was a very influential book for me.

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The TLDR for the book is basically people are satisfied when they're challenged to do things

00:01:51

that are kind of just outside their current ability levels.

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And I remember reading that and being inspired to constantly be challenging myself to do hard things,

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which has been a theme as we've gone through other books like Grit, for example, by Angela Duckworth.

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But Mihaly was the person that I heard it from first.

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And it really impacted me when I heard it.

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So he will be missed. He has another book by the way on creativity.

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I was thinking about picking that one just out of respect for Mihaly for next time.

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But I think I've got something else I'd rather read instead.

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Yeah.

00:02:32

Sure.

00:02:33

So yes, Mihaly has passed.

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And from what I can tell, it was a life well lived.

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88 years old.

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That's pretty good.

00:02:40

I've also got my fancy keyboard that I have teased for the last several episodes.

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It's a keychron Q1 and it is awesome.

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Now the big difference in this, you were sending me pictures of this.

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Was it earlier this week? Last week, I don't remember now.

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And the big difference that I can tell because I have a keychron as well,

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but they're older ones.

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They have like the aluminum shell around the outside and then the keys have like this inset platform.

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If I can tell if my brain is working correctly, the Q1, it brings out all up.

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So it's a level playing field across the whole thing.

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So it's aluminum between all the keys and it's a flat plate there.

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Is that the main difference or is there more to it?

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Kind of. So that is a difference.

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I hadn't actually even noticed that until you called it out.

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But I think just cost savings wise, the older ones.

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Yeah, they have the aluminum shell around the outside and everything just sits inside of it.

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This one is kind of custom cut for the 75% keyboard.

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The big difference is that this thing is probably twice as heavy as the 10 keyless,

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which is bigger that it replaced. It is solid.

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And I think it's kind of like keychron's step up keyboard from the rest of their line.

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So the keychron is a fine mechanical keyboard, especially if you put new switches and new keycaps on it.

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But this thing is a whole nother level.

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I bought the brass plate and replaced that.

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I put in Zileos V2 switches, which are even better than the Holy Panda's in my opinion.

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And then I put that extended 2048 MT3 keycap set that I got from drop on here.

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And it's awesome. It feels very different.

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It feels a lot more solid, but the sound feels more like a ping than it does like a thunk.

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So it takes some getting used to, but now that I'm used to it, I absolutely adore this keyboard.

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And this is, I think, is like the top of the line for me unless I learn how to solder.

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So this is probably my keyboard forever now, because I'm not going to solder anything.

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That's what I want to do. This is why I've held out on some of the bigger, like fancier keyboards.

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Because like you're saying, people don't realize that if you get into mechanical keyboards,

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weight is actually a very big factor in these things.

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Because if you have a lot of weight, for whatever reason, it just stabilizes the keyboard so much

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that it just has a much nicer feel to it.

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Calling out Zileos over top of Holy Panda's is quite a statement.

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It is.

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That's in some circles and fighting words there.

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Well, I'm so confident in that assessment that I have sold my previous keyboard with the Holy Panda's in it.

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I still have another keyboard, but I no longer have the Holy Panda's.

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I don't even want to say that. I am shocked. Just absolutely shocked.

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I think I've still got a couple because they come in sets of 30.

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So next time we get together, I've got a couple extra Zileos and a couple extra Holy Panda's left over.

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So you can compare them side by side. The Zileos, I've heard it described as more of a rounded bump.

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And I feel like that's accurate, but I couldn't describe to you what that actually feels like compared to the Holy Panda.

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I just know it feels awesome on this keyboard.

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And I much prefer these switches, not just because they're new.

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This feels like home for me. Famous last words.

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Of course. Of course. I think my next keyboard is probably a full custom build.

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Like full soldered on and such. But you get into that and you start looking at building in your full custom keyboard

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and getting all of the weight and all the size and everything exactly like you want.

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I mean, you're talking maybe four or $500 to get into that.

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I mean, it is not a cheap ordeal. Before the switch is in the keycaps.

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That's just the shell and everything else.

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Which is the difference here for me, I think, when it comes to pens and keyboards.

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Because I've heard with both of these hobbies people saying, "Well, you never just end with just one.

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You get a collection and you rotate through them."

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I have no desire to rotate through keyboards.

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Yeah, that I... No.

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Which is why I've got my keychron. It's like the only one I use.

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So, yes, I've got two more I should probably sell right now because I haven't used them in years at this point.

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Do it. Get a Q1. You'll never go back.

00:07:17

It's too narrow. There's not enough there yet. I've got a 10 key list now and it does fine.

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But I definitely miss the number bed.

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Sure. One other thing I want to throw out here at the beginning because we didn't have any follow up from the last episode.

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We didn't have any action items following Courage's Calling, although that was a phenomenal book.

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One of the "courageous things" I have done and I use that hesitantly because this really isn't all that big a deal.

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But it felt like a big deal to me was committing to doing my newsletter on a regular basis.

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And I tweeted yesterday, I've been doing it now every couple of weeks.

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I've got four issues that I've done.

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And for the most part, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

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I called out my assistant who's helping me format these and get them out the door in the first one.

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And I got a bunch of people writing in saying, "Thank you for getting this man writing again."

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But my brain focuses on the people who unsubscribed since I started sending the newsletter.

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And it just is kind of interesting to me that I know I shouldn't go look at that stuff.

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But that's what my brain wants to go look at anyways.

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And it focuses on the names I recognize on that list that don't want to hear from me anymore.

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Why don't they want to hear from me when literally I'm getting nothing but positive responses for the most part.

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But I tend to latch onto the ones that are, for whatever reason, maybe has nothing to do with me.

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Just decided to unsubscribe.

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But I did figure out with ConvertKit, they have this really cool feature.

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So you can actually go read the newsletters online.

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They have a public feed.

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And you can read them, then decide if you want to subscribe to them.

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So I've been having a lot of fun doing these.

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I sent one out this week on August Landmescer.

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We talked about him in the last book.

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So I kind of formulated some thoughts about that, put it into a newsletter, and I'll put the link in the show notes that people want to check that out.

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But this has really been a fun venture for me.

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And it was something that people have been telling me I should be doing this more frequently for a very long time.

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So people very close to me have encouraged me to be writing this for a very long time.

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And I have been dragging my feet.

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And I don't know what I was so scared of.

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But Ryan Holiday's book gave me another push that, "Yeah, this is absolutely something I should be doing."

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So kind of follow up related.

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Just wanted to share that with folks.

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Good job.

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I've enjoyed the newsletter.

00:10:00

So there's that.

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I'm glad you're doing it.

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Steven's glad you're doing it.

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See, there you go.

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[laughs]

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Whenever people give you words and they actually communicate straight to you, they're saying positive things.

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When they're not bold enough to actually reach out and say anything, they just hit the unsubscribe button

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and silently try to get out of the list.

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Don't tell you why.

00:10:25

So one is better than the other, Mike.

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[laughs]

00:10:29

Yeah, and I share it, I guess, just to share that as much as we read these books and as much as I know not to go there,

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I still struggle with some of this stuff, just like everybody else.

00:10:42

All right, should we jump into today's book?

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Sure.

00:10:47

All right, so today's book is A Minute to Think by Juliet Funt.

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I met Juliet Funt.

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Well, didn't meet her.

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I saw her at the Entre Leadership Summit that I went to several years ago and didn't make the connection until this book was recommended to me by some people in my mastermind group who said it was one of the more impactful books that they had read this year.

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Her big thing is this idea of white space, which is very much like the margin that we studied when we read Richard Swenson's book.

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And it's packaged a lot differently, so if you didn't like margin but you like that idea, maybe this is the book for you.

00:11:32

Yeah, that's probably a good way to say it, because this has a very different feel as far as how it's written and the way that the content is presented is significantly different than margin I feel.

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And I think in some ways that's good, in some ways I don't think it's as good, but I think it definitely has its place and you can come at it from different ways, of course.

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Yeah, I think this is one that I don't think I would have picked, Mike, but I'm glad that you did.

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So it's informed a lot of things for me lately and has been a very positive read on my end anyway, and it's good timing.

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So thanks for that.

00:12:16

Sure, so now I'm curious, how has it influenced things on your end?

00:12:20

Yeah, so we've been talking about this whole daily routine thing, like I've been having that put off, like still processing that and such, and starting to get that in a place where I like it as far as like what happens when I first get up in the morning.

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What happens when I get home?

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What do we do at night after dinner and such?

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Like that's all something that I'm processing my way through, and this comes at a good time because it means that I'm still like trying to nail that down, and some of my routine stuff involves like going outside and taking a break from things.

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And this is like, here's some ways to do that in a lot of new arenas that I haven't really thought about. Here's some ways to create these pauses, and we'll obviously talk about that in some more detail.

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But yes, I'm seeing how a minute to think here is fitting in really well with that whole daily routine redesign on my end.

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So yeah, it's worked out well.

00:13:22

Cool.

00:13:23

Let's get into the content of the book then. It's broken down into three parts, of course.

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The first part is the culture of instability. There are two chapters in that part.

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Then in part two, that's the white space way. There are four chapters, and part three is applying the principles.

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And in this part, there are five chapters. So if I've done my math correctly, there are 11 chapters altogether.

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And I think I'd like to try to tackle these in order.

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It didn't seem like that number was so high, we needed to cherry pick specific sections of it.

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And none of them are real big or real meaty, I should say. I feel like they kind of blend together.

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So what do you think just tackle these one by one?

00:14:15

I think so. I think we just start because let me preface this with, I feel like she laid this out really well.

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It is a three part book, but I think it needed it.

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Yep.

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And it builds on itself very well, I think. So I think we just start at the top and go through it. It makes sense to me.

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All right. Well, let's do that then. So the first chapter here is the missing element.

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And this is basically talking about white space.

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And she begins by talking about spaces, the thing that's needed to keep a fire burning.

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She talks about some of the payoffs that come with white spaces and the fact that we've kind of gotten used to just filling up any sort of pause that we have in our hearts.

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And she talks about the fact that we have a lot of things that we have in our schedule, which I don't disagree with.

00:15:06

I think she's correct in that assessment.

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I also think out of all of the books that we have read this introduction in this first chapter felt a little bit.

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So she's trying to get us to realize what these, the lack of white space is doing to us emotionally, but even like the stories that she chose with this.

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I don't know. I guess I just appreciate a little bit more direct approach to the problem at hand than trying to sell it with a sensationalized story.

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I'm not trying to say that she was saying a bunch of things that weren't true. I just think it's a very different style than something like the extended mind by Annie Murphy Paul.

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And I definitely like that style a little bit better. This one felt a little bit chaotic to me and it made me kind of nervous and stressed as I started reading this book, even though it had nothing to do with what I was going through, just the content that I was reading if that makes any sense.

00:16:10

Yeah, yeah it does, because I've been trying to place, let me say this that I really like the content of the book, the way that she worked her way through it, kind of fell off.

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And I couldn't quite nail down what it is. So I'm glad you brought that up because I couldn't place it.

00:16:27

And now that you're saying that, it's making me realize that it does feel a little bit like it's almost like she's attempting to do the Seth Godin, the practice style.

00:16:36

We've mentioned that a few times where he has these real short, like one page chapters almost, and there's a whole bunch of them.

00:16:43

It almost feels like she wants to do that, but isn't willing to commit to it. And she ends up with these chapters that have a lot of like subsections in them, but she doesn't call them out as subsections, even though that's kind of what they are.

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So it doesn't feel like they flow super well, and thus you end up jumping topics pretty quick, even within the one overarching topic, which for an ADD brain kind of works.

00:17:06

But I know that it needs to flow cohesively and it just didn't quite get all of that done, and that might be some of the anxiety almost.

00:17:16

Anxiety is a strong word for that, but you get the point that I'm saying.

00:17:21

I don't think it's the wrong word necessarily. It has a lot of baggage now though.

00:17:27

It does.

00:17:28

So it's not like this chapter is going to cause you to transition into some mental health issues that you must get resolved, but it doesn't help calm the chaos at this point.

00:17:44

Again, this is the first part, the culture of instability. She's trying to agitate the pain point at this stage in the book.

00:17:53

Let me ask this question. Sorry to interrupt. She calls out in, is it the introduction, first chapter? I think it's the introduction where she does a lot of speaking, of course, and she claims that she has this bit where she explains a normal day for a normal American,

00:18:11

which is super fast-paced and she does it so fast that it gives you anxiety and it's intentionally doing that.

00:18:18

Does she speak that fast the whole time through it, not having not seen her, you have? Does she speak like that?

00:18:24

And this is just a written form of that speaking style, or is it just different?

00:18:29

That's a good point. I don't remember that bit from when I saw her maybe that was not part of the Ancha Leadership presentation.

00:18:37

Possibly, I know. I thought she was a pretty polished presenter when I saw her. I didn't make the connection that was the same person who wrote this book that I had selected until after I had selected it.

00:18:53

But that bit at the beginning, she's talking so fast that you can't even tell what she's saying is what she's describing and the introduction, I think it was.

00:19:03

And I don't think that's necessarily what she's trying to do here. It doesn't feel like it's coming too fast. It just feels like it's not that effective at, again, she's agitating the pain point.

00:19:18

Maybe this is a little bit unfair at this point, but she's telling some personal stories of times when she's felt that way.

00:19:26

And you do feel empathy and sympathy for her being in that situation. But also, I had a little bit of trouble relating to it, and I didn't really want to.

00:19:41

So at the beginning of the book, that's kind of the point where if I was writing a book, I want to make sure that I am directly connecting with my reader.

00:19:52

And because of the tact that she has taken here to paint what feels like an extreme scenario, and I know for some people it's not going to be that extreme.

00:20:01

It's going to be reality every single day, but for me, it just felt like a stretch, and I felt like I didn't appreciate what she was trying to make me feel.

00:20:10

And at that point, I'm kind of in this spot where do I want to continue with this uncomfortable book or not? It's bookworm, so I got to.

00:20:18

But if you're picking and choosing the things that you are going to read, I think there's a good chance at that point that I'm just like, well, sorry, I'm out.

00:20:27

Which I think there's a lot of good stuff later on in the book, so it's kind of a shame that I felt that way.

00:20:33

Yeah, I know that whenever, because this whole being too busy thing that many of us have experienced, it's definitely something authors like to talk about.

00:20:45

And I think a lot of times we have authors who come from that's hectic, crazy chaos life.

00:20:51

And I don't want to downplay this because I know that a lot of people do have that life, but honestly, I don't know very many people who have it that bad.

00:21:03

It's still, like people are still too busy, I think, but not at the level that a lot of people like to put into these books.

00:21:11

And I can't quite figure out if that's because they're trying to sensationalize it a little bit. They're picking the extreme to make up points, which is fine.

00:21:21

But I don't think that's the norm anymore. I definitely think it was at one point, especially since all the COVID piece changing the way the workplace has existed between that

00:21:39

and a combination of just a lot of people are tired of being too busy. And that's becoming, I think, more common.

00:21:48

Because of that, I think it maybe doesn't quite apply as universally as it used to, even though a lot of authors haven't quite moved on from it yet, because it is, I mean, it is, of course, a great story and it kind of draws you in.

00:22:02

It's like, "Oh, yeah, I was up and grabbed a granola bar on my way out because I didn't have time because I was too tired and just left late, and in my head, I'm thinking, "Well, go better earlier."

00:22:11

That was my first reaction to that. But people don't do that, I guess? I don't know.

00:22:18

So anyway, I think it's possible that our culture is moving on from that, and it's just not as universal as it used to be.

00:22:25

That's a good point, because anytime you read a book, you're reading the author's thoughts about a topic at a specific moment in time. It's a snapshot. It's not their whole philosophy if you were to talk to them this exact moment.

00:22:44

And I don't know exactly when this book was written. I don't have it in front of me, so I can't look up the publishing date. Do you have it?

00:22:52

I don't know. I'm getting tired of the "everything is crazy" story too. But there's going to be people I know who this is their first experience to it, and they're going to feel like, "Oh, yeah, Julia, she's reading my mail. She has exactly what I need. She's describing my situation to a T. It just was not effective for me."

00:23:18

Let's go on to the second chapter here if you're cool with that. Chapter two is the false God of busyness. And this is continuing to paint a picture of the way things are by default, and it's not going to work that way. We need to do something different.

00:23:37

I didn't jot down a whole lot from this beginning part here, either of these chapters. The one thing I got in this section is that I did not know that her father, Alan Funt, was the guy behind candid camera back in the day.

00:23:54

I read that. It's like, "Whoa, wait a second. Hold on." It's like so many things just clicked.

00:24:01

The world's first reality TV show, maybe? I don't know. Possibly. I don't know.

00:24:08

So I think that's an interesting tidbit, because if that is the world that she's familiar with, that's probably very different than the work world that you and I have any experience with.

00:24:21

Even people who work in a corporate environment, that's not Hollywood. It's probably a whole other level of stress and lack of white space.

00:24:32

So I'm trying to take into consideration at this point now that maybe she has a more extreme picture of this than I do because I've been able to make my own schedule for the last several years.

00:24:47

But even coming from corporate, like at the height of crazy for me, I would, on an absolutely terrible day, and I used that word specifically in this case, I would be up at 4am on a plane by 6, which is an hour and 15 minute drive.

00:25:09

Do that, man. Joe's not getting to the airport very early. That's what that is. I would be on a plane. I would fly somewhere, but I was on the phone or emailing or something in the process while I was on the plane.

00:25:24

I would have a meeting in the vehicle on our way to whatever our destination is, which was a meeting in itself most of the time, and then we would be back on a plane to fly home or headed to a hotel to do some form of it. I mean, it was just constant all day long.

00:25:39

Even though it was constant from like 4am till about 11 o'clock that night, I don't feel like it was as hectic and chaotic as some of what she's spelling out here, and I know it's not as chaotic as folks in Hollywood can deal with at times, just from having read some of those schedules.

00:25:57

So even that ridiculous, I've got no time really even to eat all day long. Doesn't really seem to be super bad, but even that wasn't constant. It wasn't every day.

00:26:09

I mean, we still had periods where we weren't running nonstop like that. So I don't know. Maybe there's a whole nother level. If there is, I pray I never experience it.

00:26:21

Exactly. Exactly. And it's kind of weird that as you're progressing through the book, you are almost a, feel like you have to apologize for the fact that you're not under this extreme stress that the author assumes you are.

00:26:39

So it feels weird.

00:26:43

Which kind of begs the question, whenever you write a book or you write in general, write a blog or a newsletter, whatever it is, when you're doing that, one of the first things you need to do is consider the audience, like who are you writing it to?

00:26:58

And in this particular case, she's writing to a specific audience. It's possible we're simply the wrong readers for it. It could be. That's an option.

00:27:09

Based on everything I saw, marketing-wise looked like we were though. So.

00:27:14

Correct. Yeah, I'm not arguing with that. It might possibly be a disconnect between the way it was marketed, the way it was written.

00:27:21

Maybe that's the assumption still that the people that they're marketing to is us. It's just that they consider us wrong on one side or the other. I don't know. I'm not sure what that is, but you're right. I think there is something a little bit off there.

00:27:36

And there's good stuff in the rest of this book. It's just these first two chapters where it's kind of like, "Is this for me?"

00:27:43

One thing I do think was kind of cool in the second chapter, she says, "Did I do enough?" is the wrong question. And that is kind of getting back to how most people define productivity as, "What did I actually accomplish? What did I do?"

00:28:00

I don't like that. One of the things that Chris Bailey told us when he was on the Focus Podcast a while back is that if you intend to watch Netflix all day, then watching Netflix all day is the most productive thing you can do.

00:28:17

It's when you have a long list of other things that you wanted to get done and you end up watching Netflix all day anyways as a way to escape it, that's where you get into trouble. So I think true productivity, in my opinion, is more along the lines of, "Did I follow through on the intentions that I set?"

00:28:35

Not, "Did I crank out X number of words?" It's not quantifiable. You can't say, "I have shipped this," or, "X number of widgets," and so therefore, today was #productive. I think that's the wrong measure.

00:28:52

And I do think that white space definitely helps with maintaining your intentionality. And she does say at the end of this chapter, by the way, that we need behavioral changes, not just logistical changes, so it's more than just a process problem.

00:29:06

It's not once we understand all this stuff, then everything's just going to click into place because, of course, we're smart. We'll make the adjustments. No.

00:29:16

Yeah, that's what you just said. It makes a lot of sense, and it really hits home and such for me because so much of processing systems and logistics and such, that's a lot of what we focus on in the world of productivity.

00:29:35

I mean, it's what people write about. It's what a lot of video courses are geared around. But having gone through what I just did in the last three, three and a half months with a house remodel in such a short time, what I learned in that process was so much around how the tools that I use really don't matter at all.

00:29:58

And I could get all into, should I be using OmniFocus for managing the house or to do it? Or can I do it in an obsidian? My wife had used Basecamp, I had used Basecamp, we needed to be able to share it together. Didn't have time to think it through, she knew it, I knew it.

00:30:12

Here you go, make a checklist for this week, done. That was it. I mean, there was no need for a morning stand-up or a weekly reconnect.

00:30:23

It was just, okay, what do you got going on in the next two or three days? Or I would realize that something was happening that was going to impact her next three weeks.

00:30:32

So like, okay, Beck, here's the thing you got to know. And then we would go through that. But that might be Tuesday afternoon, it might be Wednesday morning, it could be Saturday afternoon, like you never knew when that was going to be necessary.

00:30:44

And yet the whole project worked really, really well. And we didn't miss any deadlines in that process over that three and a half months, which is unheard of with a remodel of this scale in that time frame.

00:30:56

So I'm kind of shocked, but from a productivity stance in like a getting things done world, not the book, just a, yeah, whenever I think about it in that way, I realize that so much of these systems and processes, at least for me,

00:31:12

are sometimes just like pillars that we put up because we feel like we should, instead of realizing, okay, what is it? Like, am I being intentional with what I'm doing today?

00:31:23

And I don't know that the whole three month process has taught me a ton and that so much of what I felt like I needed to do in order to be quote unquote productive.

00:31:35

It's really unnecessary and just makes me feel better about it. So I completely agree.

00:31:43

I felt very guilty when I started doing my hybrid analog stuff. I won't say bullet journal because it's not a bullet journal, I admit that.

00:31:57

Oh, I gave you grief for it. You could say it. It's okay. Basically what I do is I time block my day and I write down the five things up to five things, no more than five things.

00:32:07

I am going to try to do today. And I've got stuff I got to publish for podcasts for the sweet setup, whatever. I don't manage any of those as projects.

00:32:19

I don't break them down into the individual steps. I just put a few things down on paper and then I don't worry about the rest.

00:32:28

I haven't really used a task manager in like two years and I feel bad about that. Why do I feel bad about that? I'm publishing the things.

00:32:38

This week I wrote five articles, five articles for this week's setup that are going to be published the next week when we're on sabbatical and the week we get back.

00:32:47

That's a very productive week, but I have no record of how I managed all these things inside of a task manager.

00:32:56

And why does it matter? As long as you have the support system to do what you need to do, I think a lot of people, myself included, can get bogged down in the details.

00:33:09

And when you do that, you don't end up doing the work. You end up fiddling with things. So I do think there is a place for a task manager.

00:33:19

And I do want to figure out the right one for me to use. I have a thought as to what that's going to look like.

00:33:25

I'm going to play around with some stuff while I'm on sabbatical here. I understand the review, looking at the things, making sure that what you're doing is the right things.

00:33:33

I understand all that. And I do think that there's a version of that I should be doing, but it's not the canonical GTD one where I'm absolutely looking at everything because that just feels like this huge mental burden to me.

00:33:46

And even the thought of looking at everything makes me feel exhausted to the point where I don't want to sit down and write the thing that I know I need to do next.

00:33:55

That's the whole idea. What are we going to do next?

00:33:58

Actually, that's a great place to jump into the next section if you're cool with that.

00:34:03

That's perfect. Okay. So chapter three in part. So back up a second. Part two is the white space way. And the first chapter in the white space way is chapter three, the strategic pause.

00:34:17

And the strategic pause talks about having a break in what you're doing so you can think about what you're going to do next.

00:34:28

She's still painting this picture of time pressure at this point and ties it to weaker cognitive performance, which is not a surprise, I think, to either you or myself.

00:34:40

She talks about some of the uses for those strategic pauses, which that's like the very first version of white space here.

00:34:49

And she advocates for a tactic known as the wedge, which I thought this is actually pretty brilliant.

00:34:56

And the way this is framed, I feel like this is very applicable to just about anybody who would read this, which again is why it's weird in the first two chapters that I felt like this maybe was the wrong book for me.

00:35:08

So the wedge is a small portion of white space that's inserted between two activities and it's designed to help you have the space to answer the question.

00:35:17

So what's next? Because when you end something, you have two options. You can think about what you'll do next or you can just start doing something.

00:35:25

And I have fallen into the trap of just start doing something. I feel that is the thing that contributes to the fatigue and the overall feeling of I'm so busy, even if you're not that busy, even if you're not doing that many things, it can feel like you're completely overwhelmed because you're just looking for something, anything to do next and you are instantly trying to fill that space.

00:35:49

So deliberately pausing and asking the question, what is the thing for me to do next? I feel like that's a very practical, tactical strategy that anybody can employ.

00:36:03

Yeah, I have two thoughts on this. One is this is genius and I learned this significantly in a house remodel and I'm probably going to be bringing up the house remodel for a while now. Just brace yourselves for that.

00:36:18

I learned it because whenever I would finish framing the stairwell, let's take that. I got to learn how to put in stringers and treads and all sorts of stuff.

00:36:29

And as I was finishing up the stairwell, it occurred to me that, okay, what's the next thing? I have the list of the stuff that needs done on the house before we can move in because we had been adding things to it.

00:36:43

Well, that has to be done before we're comfortable moving into the house. We've been capturing that stuff into base camp and whenever I would finish a big project, like the stairwell, okay, well, I could put a floor in the kitchen.

00:36:59

I could put a ceiling on in the family room. I could put lights in in this room. I could this. I could that. But there's a whole order of operations that Becky can't get into paint until this is done. And I can't do X until Y is done.

00:37:14

I can't put carpet and stuff down until there's a subfloor in the room. Like there's all of these things that are dependent on each other. And I would regularly talk at one of my girls.

00:37:24

Like here are the things I've got. Like I can't do this until that and I can't do that until this. And then Emma's like, what are you talking about? I don't know what this is.

00:37:33

Like I just need you to listen at me. Like you don't have to understand what I'm saying. I just need you to listen.

00:37:39

So, but the funny thing with that is my kids now can tell you what the process is for removing load bearing walls is and what the four parts of a stairwell are and like they can explain this stuff to you now.

00:37:50

So it's kind of funny. But anyway, I would have to pause at the end of these things before I could determine what the next thing is I needed to do.

00:38:00

And that was before I'd read this book. That was not something I had connected as a result of this, but it helped me understand why that was helpful.

00:38:08

So that's part one of this. Part two is as an ADD person, this is super dangerous.

00:38:14

Like here, you're giving me an excuse to not just jump into the next thing without thinking about it, which means that I could probably think about trying to fair out what the next task is going to be for a couple hours before I actually move on to the next one.

00:38:29

So it's good and bad, I think, in my case.

00:38:33

So I think if it's intentional, if you follow the way that she's calling it out here in that process, what the next thing is and not just take a break.

00:38:44

Those are two very different things, but you're strategically pausing so that you can determine what the next thing you should be focusing on and being intentional about it.

00:38:54

That's I think the part that matters here. That one, I can get behind.

00:38:58

Yeah, and there's a creativity aspect to this too. She shares a quote by D. Hock that says, "Make an empty space in any corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it," which is very interesting to me, but not really the topic of this book.

00:39:12

So we'll have to unpack that one a separate time, I think.

00:39:17

Yep, yep, but the whole topic of creativity, where ideas come from, how do you make the most of them? That's really fascinating to me and reading this book has reinforced an idea that white space or margin is essential for that sort of thing.

00:39:34

You need to have the ability to let your mind wander a little bit. If it's constantly trying to figure out what's next because you have a task list that's too long, then it's being forced to operate at a level much lower than what it's capable of.

00:39:51

It's kind of like when David Allen talks about how your mind is for having ideas, not holding them, but you try to remember to do everything in your head anyways.

00:40:01

It's not made for that, and it's really bad at that. And then that affects your whole view of yourself and your abilities.

00:40:09

I'm just a worthless person because I can't even pay attention long enough to, "Well, no, you're doing it wrong." So what it comes down to.

00:40:19

The next chapter here is the Theives of Time. This is chapter four. And the four Theives of Time are linked to what she calls the four drives.

00:40:32

And I think these are central to the book, so let's just talk about these real quickly. There is Drive, Excellence, Information, and Activity. Those are the four drives.

00:40:45

The four Theives are versions of those. So for Drive, the Thief is Overdrive, for Excellence, the Thief is Perfection, for Information, the Thief is Overload, for Action, the Thief is Frenzy.

00:40:57

And I found the con and the truth for each one of these to be very helpful. So I wanted to find these real quick.

00:41:04

The con for Drive or Overdrive is that we should take on as much as we can handle. The truth is being selective about goals brings higher quality of output. Get into Excellence/Perfection.

00:41:15

The con is every touch point deserves to be optimized. The truth is we lose time and energy mired in unnecessary detail.

00:41:21

When you get into information and overload, the con is there's no such thing as having too much knowledge.

00:41:26

The truth is that our human brains can assume only so much information. And then the last one, Activity or Frenzy, the con is that busy and productive are the same. The truth always being emotion can limit thought and it pleads us.

00:41:39

So I thought it would be interesting to talk about how these four Theives or four drives pertain to us.

00:41:49

So which Thief out of these four, Overdrive, Perfection, Overload and Frenzy, speaks to you the most?

00:41:57

Activity, I know that's not the word you used, but the...

00:42:01

Frenzy?

00:42:02

Because I thought of it as, yeah, so the Drive/Excellent's information activity, because that's how she tends to refer to them. Like the Thief of Drive, the Thief of Excellence.

00:42:11

Like that's how she refers to them after that. So that's how I wrote it down. But Thief of Activity or Frenzy being the con version of that.

00:42:18

I think that's probably my biggest one. Short of that, I think Drive is the secondary to that. But that one probably could be connected.

00:42:28

In some way, I noticed that, like if you really want to deep dive these things, there are some connections between them and they can kind of bleed into each other.

00:42:38

But I feel like the activity side, the frenzy side of it is where I tend to land. Some of that I think is because with me learning how my brain works, I've been slowly realizing that if I take too much of a break between tasks that I will end up on YouTube for too long, or play a game, or I don't know what, for a ridiculous amount of time.

00:43:04

And to combat that, I've just kind of been training myself to not stop at all. And just, what's the next thing? Like, what's next on the list?

00:43:13

Which is, I think she calls out. It's easy whenever you've got the task list and you've got everything externalized to just look at the next thing and run with it.

00:43:23

And I've been slowly kind of training myself to do that because it's not my tendency. And that has led me down this path of now being in this potential frenzy mode, which I'm not sure I would say I'm completely in a frenzy mode all the time.

00:43:39

But it's a fair amount of time, I would say, just because I don't stop very often. But yeah, that's probably my big one, the whole activity frenzy thing.

00:43:48

Nice. And I like the word that you use their tendency because she makes the point in this chapter that our response to these thieves is often not a choice but a reflex.

00:43:57

So, step one is recognizing what that reflex is going to be. And then you can start to try to develop new habits through behavioral change, which, that seems like a minor thing to reframe habits as behavioral change.

00:44:14

But it's one that I'm recognizing is more and more important. So something like atomic habits. James Clear does talk about this. So I'm not trying to say like he's trying to dupe us or anything.

00:44:28

But the title, atomic habits, and when people think of habits, they think of just tiny little things, whereas tiny habits, at the very beginning at BJ Fogg is the researcher that atomic habits is based off of so he's really unpacking behavioral change in general.

00:44:45

So habits is the thing that people are like, "Oh, this is approachable. I will go study this." But once they get there, there's a whole lot more to making it work in terms of behavioral change.

00:44:58

And it's a bigger deal than I feel the title of either of those books really kind of promises. And again, I'm not trying to say that they're trying to do people or anything.

00:45:10

But I'm not trying to say that they're trying to do it. I'm trying to say that they're trying to do it. I'm trying to say that they're trying to do it.

00:45:19

I'm trying to say that they're trying to do it. I'm trying to say that they're trying to do it. I'm trying to say that they're trying to do it.

00:45:27

So what I mean is excellence/perfection. When I read these kinds and truths, every touch point deserves to be optimized. I've definitely taken this too far before.

00:45:38

And I think my wife is the one who gets annoyed with this the most. So I'm always like, "Well, I'll just optimize this. Let's make this system at home so that we never have to deal with this again."

00:45:50

And the truth part of this, we lose time and energy mired in unnecessary detail. I recognize that and I get frustrated with that when we've already talked about this.

00:46:04

We've already decided about the right course of action is for this. Why are we talking about it again? This is a complete waste of time.

00:46:09

That's where my brain goes.

00:46:12

But at that point, I want to put a pin in that right there and I want to jump into the next chapter here because I feel like this is where the answer is for me anyways regarding these four thieves.

00:46:23

So chapter five is the simplification questions. And there are key questions here for each one of these thieves. The one for excellence and this just totally fits for me is where is good enough, good enough.

00:46:41

Because past me would have said nothing is good enough. Everything must be the best we can possibly make it. And that is impossible.

00:46:52

So just understanding this, where are the areas that I'm not trying to pretend that this problem doesn't exist.

00:47:03

But I'm recognizing there are diminishing returns when it comes to my ability to change this by myself, because almost all of the systems that I see that I could optimize involve other people and therefore are more complicated.

00:47:22

If it was just me, I can take responsibility for something being broken. And yeah, okay, let's just make an adjustment. Let's fix it with the whole personal retreat handbook is all about is recognizing like where I'm messing up and what I can do to do differently.

00:47:35

But I've learned other people don't like it when you say, Hey, you should do this differently.

00:47:41

So do what I can do, not worry about the rest. And after I've done my part, be like, you know what, that's good enough. That's, that's the path forward for Mike.

00:47:51

It makes me happy to hear you say this, because I feel like the whole perfectionist side of you eats at you in a lot of ways. So, like, I love the level of quality that you strive for in a lot of things.

00:48:03

Like I see your video courses and such and like I can tell you've spent hours and hours and hours on those. And if you compare those with some other folks in the productivity space who don't do that, yes, yours are more polished, of course, Mike.

00:48:19

But sometimes I wonder if it would have been okay if you'd cut two or three hours out of that 20 hours that you put on the video, because I'm not sure that we would see it.

00:48:30

Like it would still feel super polished. For sure. But I don't know that. I don't know that for certain. Like this is, I say that knowing that a lot of what I do is finding good enough.

00:48:41

And whenever I'm, it's even in simple things. Like we built a rack mount video distribution system in one of our rooms. And that whole thing has to have a lot of cables that come in and out.

00:48:56

You talk about cable management. It's a mess. And what I ended up doing was finding a way to coil things up and then zip tie them to a little cavity that I put in the back so that it's all hidden that you really can't get to.

00:49:10

Unless you're like taking screws out and such. So it's hidden. But certain areas of that thing look terrible. But the user interface side of it is super clean and easy.

00:49:21

Now, I could go through the process. I know how to make all that cable stuff look super nice and be super easy to trace and super easy to edit in the future.

00:49:33

But I'm going to spend an extra 15, 20 hours on the thing to do that. And no one's going to see it but me. And it's not going to save me 20 hours in the future ever.

00:49:47

Because it only takes me a minute to trace a cable through what I have now. So it's going to take a long time before that's a thing. So it's not worth it.

00:49:57

So finding good enough is something I've been forced into doing for a long time. But that's also not something I struggle with at all. That's a thing that I do a lot. And I could tell by your face like some of what I was explaining.

00:50:10

It would drive you crazy to see what I've done in the backside of this thing. And it's probably okay that it drives some people crazy. But that's not my thing.

00:50:20

What I really struggle with here is the, so the simplification question here that we're talking about for the thief of activity or frenzy is what deserves my attention.

00:50:33

That one is difficult for me. Super bad because, oh, well there's this thing that just propped up. I'm going to go get that done now so that I don't ever have to record it.

00:50:45

Or keep track of it in any way. It can just be done and gone. That's a lot of my tendency. And she does talk about the urgency thing which is next.

00:50:55

But that whole side of things is one that I struggle with because one it's partly my job to deal with that stuff. And two, it makes me feel like I'm doing a lot of really good things.

00:51:07

And it makes me feel like I've had a really productive day. But whenever I go home at night, I realize that I spent two and a half hours trying to get a printer to work that they're only going to use occasionally.

00:51:20

And it's probably not going to make that big of a difference when they should probably just wait the extra five minutes and use the original printer. Don't know.

00:51:28

So that's a thing that I sometimes get caught on. Should I be doing this right now? Even whenever I get into it and figure out how long it's going to take me to solve it.

00:51:40

Does it really deserve my attention right now? That's a question I don't ask very often and definitely should. So here we are, Mike.

00:51:51

The other key questions here just to round this out for drive is, is there anything I can let go of and information and what do I truly need to know? But yeah, that's the whole point is that these key questions are supposed to be difficult for you.

00:52:06

And you force yourself to come up with an answer. Interesting to me that there's these four different camps that you can land in reminded me of when we did the four tendencies.

00:52:18

And there was no assessment associated with this one, but both you and I had no trouble identifying which one of these is the one for us.

00:52:29

And I remember my issues with that first assessment from the four tendencies and just makes me think that maybe that's unnecessary.

00:52:39

Maybe it's almost a detriment. Like if you paint somebody into a corner that doesn't resonate with them, then they're missing out on something that they're missing.

00:52:47

Or they're missing out on something that they actually could apply from your book side note there.

00:52:52

Yeah, and it also means that you tend to trust the assessment because we assume that there's been a lot of thought, time and research done to make that assessment accurate.

00:53:02

And if it's not 100% accurate, but it puts us in a category that doesn't quite seem to fit, we don't feel like we can tell the assessment that it's wrong.

00:53:12

Whereas when you're just told to read these four things, and which one do you resonate with?

00:53:17

Well, if what I come up with doesn't quite feel like it fits, that's my fault, not the assessment's fault.

00:53:24

So I don't have anything to complain about. That's true. One other thing I want to call out from this section is effort justification.

00:53:30

This I have come face to face with just in the last couple of weeks.

00:53:35

I think this is a trap that people can fall into maybe, especially people in the drive category, but effort justification is cognitive dissonance where we want to believe there was a good reason for putting all the work into something difficult or taxing.

00:53:48

So as it pertains to planning your work and working your plan, you can get to the end of the work cycle and you can say, well, there were all these other things that we did and we should count those towards the what we shipped, you know, that's effort justification.

00:54:04

It wasn't important enough for you to recognize it at the beginning of the work cycle and then you got distracted by something else and you want to justify the work and the time that you put into it.

00:54:14

Maybe it was worthwhile. Maybe it wasn't. But that is a cognitive bias. There's a disconnect there. Recognize that.

00:54:21

Well, let's just pick better plans. Ideally, you know, we're identifying what we need to do and then we're working on it.

00:54:26

The other thing here with an action item for me is the six week delusion. You can always find time in the future. I've heard this before. We discount the value of our future time, but the way she described this really resonated with me this time.

00:54:39

If you can't find time now, why would you want to in the future? So my action item is just to be more cautious about committing to future dates because I totally do this.

00:54:48

It's like, well, can I schedule a meeting? Well, can't this week? How about a couple weeks from now? And that's always my default. And I want to insert a wedge there before I just throw out, "Hey, why don't we plan this further out into the future? Do I really want to do this?" And if the answer is no, then just say no.

00:55:07

Don't kick it out into the future because I tend to do that a lot.

00:55:12

I never do that. All right, Chapter six, hallucinated urgency. The main point here at the very beginning of this chapter is that time is not moving faster. You are moving faster.

00:55:29

So again, use the wedge here to defeat urgency. She has a phrase here which I thought was very interesting. I never heard it describe this way before, but makes it makes a lot of sense. Every email you send has babies, especially these CC people. It makes a lot of sense.

00:55:51

And then the other thing that really stood out to me from this is the yellow list. She talks about it, which is kind of a place where you park items to be decided later. I totally want to do this.

00:56:03

When you're yellow list lengthens, that's the time she says to schedule a time to meet with somebody or batch communication, etc. So I have another action item here, which is not to call it a yellow list, but basically create those lists of notes to process different thoughts inside of absorption.

00:56:20

And then the list of notes inside of obsidian is likely the place this is going to be. But for example, every once in a while, Sean and I have a one on one where we talk about different things. I need answers from him and I have a list where I just jot all the things I need answers from Sean.

00:56:35

And when we talk, that's when I get him. And I have a lot of other opportunities to do that sort of thing with other people specifically in my life, but even just like big decisions that I have to make, a yellow list could be just jotting down every thought that I have around this decision.

00:56:49

And then before I make the decision, I'm reviewing that yellow list, looking at everything together and figuring out what all of the pros and cons are. So I think this has a lot of value for me.

00:57:00

Yeah, I'm going to maintain what I'm currently doing. I don't think I'll call it a yellow list, but I use drafts to just dump things into. And then I process those later.

00:57:11

Just to call it out because I think it would maybe help people, but the yellow list, the reason it's called a yellow list is because the app icon for the notes app on an iPhone is yellow.

00:57:23

And that was what this whole process was started on. It's like you could just tap the yellow button and then drop things into this note about things you need to decide on later.

00:57:32

I mean, it's ultimately just a capture tool is really what we're talking about. But yes, I do this in drafts and I'm probably just going to keep doing that.

00:57:43

Yeah, it's a good spot to do it for sure. Another tactic from this section, this really isn't the tip section, but this is kind of where some of the more relevant stuff happened for me.

00:57:58

When it comes to email, there's a phrase she uses here, don't check email constantly, but check it predictably.

00:58:07

I feel like that is very well put. And that is a one sentence summary of, I think what I have tried to advise people to do with email for a very long time.

00:58:19

And it kind of eliminates a lot of the pushback, well, I got to be connected because my boss, my clients, whatever are expecting a response.

00:58:28

Yeah, I'm not telling you not to respond to them. I'm just telling you not to respond the moment that they send you an email, like have a little bit of a white space there, insert a wedge, and you can define for yourself what the wedge is.

00:58:43

And I think a lot of people, once you reach agreement on what this is going to look like for you, this can totally work.

00:58:50

It's probably a good place to jump into Chapter 7, since you're talking about email.

00:58:54

Yes, Chapter 7, the tool that turned on us, talking about email, absolutely. Have you seen the social dilemma?

00:59:04

Yes, I highly recommend that to many, many people. And if you haven't watched the social dilemma, Tristan Harris, you need to go watch it.

00:59:11

I agree. Yeah, it's on Netflix. We've talked about Tristan Harris before. I don't really want to get into all of that stuff.

00:59:20

Again, that's not the purpose of this particular episode, but that is the place to find out more about this tool that turned on us.

00:59:31

I feel you can't do it justice in one chapter of 250 page book. She tries. She does a decent job.

00:59:42

Yeah. But that's the place that I would point to. She does talk about two core email disciplines here, touching it less and composing it better.

00:59:52

She talks about the characteristics of well written emails, which I think are great. Clarity, brevity, and punch.

00:59:59

But the real motivator about disconnecting from email as much as you can, which I think that's step one for just about everybody,

01:00:09

is really understand the psychological stuff that's going on with your, I don't want to say addiction, but kind of like the connection that you feel you need to have to this kind of stuff.

01:00:22

It could be social media too. This is a work context. She does like white space training and consulting with corporations is my understanding.

01:00:31

So she's walking into a workplace and the thing they're going to be connected to is email and probably slack at this point to one of those instant communication methods.

01:00:41

But yeah, you got to break that twitch.

01:00:45

I have an action item from this one because I know you've bemoaned my email practices in the past.

01:00:51

And I'm one that I tend to have my email applications open all day long as in when I say open, I mean they're launched.

01:01:01

They're not in front of me very often, but I leave them launched because I have a weird way of using a computer and I've learned that like I don't leave windows open all the time,

01:01:13

I use the hide feature of a Mac. I've been told that very few people use that and they may take that away at some point.

01:01:20

If they do that, I don't even know what I'm going to do. Like I will recreate it somehow, but that's a thing I use constantly.

01:01:28

So anyway, emails launched all day long, but I think what I need to do is find a dedicated time to reply to emails.

01:01:36

I have quite a few things I need to be aware of when they come in through the day four or five times throughout the day,

01:01:42

which I know is actually not that many times compared to most people, but trying to find a dedicated time to reply to those.

01:01:50

I suspected it's the end of my day because I don't want to use my good thinking time to write email replies. Maybe I should? I don't know.

01:01:58

But my goal is to towards the end of the day get through my email replies as least as much as I can in the time I'll give it.

01:02:06

So that's something I really, really need to do. I'm bad at email.

01:02:10

Somewhat intentionally, mostly not intentionally.

01:02:15

If you were to be intentionally bad at email, that is perfectly legitimate, in my opinion.

01:02:20

It is, however, this is not perfectly legitimate the way I'm doing it, so there's that.

01:02:25

All right, next chapter is how the best teams talk.

01:02:30

And I feel like this is kind of getting into maybe the root of the issue when it comes to email is there's no intention behind the communication.

01:02:43

It's just I'm going to cover my butt and send this email to everybody so that I can go back and say, well, I told you so if the crap hits the fan.

01:02:51

And that's not that's not helpful.

01:02:55

So there's a lot of cultural stuff I feel like in workplaces that can be adjusted here, but how the best teams talk is interesting to me.

01:03:05

I found this grid this 2D versus 3D content to be very effective.

01:03:12

2D versus 3D, basically the axes here are the message in the medium and 2D is usually simple.

01:03:22

Yes or no fact driven communications.

01:03:25

So yes or no exactly what it sounds like.

01:03:28

Can I do this or is it okay?

01:03:31

And this is the place where mediums like text email and online chats kind of kind of thrive is like I just need a quick response from somebody.

01:03:41

But then there's the 3D, which is where there's nuance, there's emotion, there's opportunity for creative thinking.

01:03:48

Don't try to do this via email.

01:03:51

And she describes this really well I think where we exchange critical cues through tone pace and gesture.

01:03:56

So the medium she recommends for the 3D stuff is like phone calls, video chats or face to face communication.

01:04:02

And I feel that most of the miscommunication from my experience in the business world, limited experience, is simply trying to use the wrong medium for the message that's trying to be communicated.

01:04:22

And she lays it out in this 2x2 grid and it makes it seem so simple, so straightforward.

01:04:30

And I don't know I think she's probably right.

01:04:34

I think it is pretty straightforward.

01:04:36

I also think this is really hard to get people to understand this and it makes me question why that is.

01:04:43

I think there is I'm so glad you brought up the 2D versus 3D thing because it really struck our chord with me in that explanation.

01:04:51

I'm not sure if I had seen it before and forgot about it.

01:04:53

I had an inkling that that had happened before, but 2D being, you know, everything it's 2 dimensional of course.

01:05:00

Basically you're not in person, you can't see the person, you can't physically see the 3rd dimension.

01:05:05

But the kicker here is that when you have something simple like you're saying, slack and email can do wonders.

01:05:13

Like did you get this report done?

01:05:15

Yes or no, there's no point in me trying to have a meeting with you or get in person to get the answer to that question.

01:05:22

Or where is the link to do this process?

01:05:25

Where's the how-to document to set up a new server?

01:05:28

Like where is that?

01:05:29

That is something that could very easily be done over slack.

01:05:32

Where it falls down is the realm of how do you feel about filling the blank?

01:05:38

How do you feel about hiring a new admin for some department?

01:05:43

The very worst is when you forward a message and you just say, thoughts?

01:05:47

Question mark?

01:05:49

Correct, yes.

01:05:51

People love to throw thoughts question mark on something.

01:05:54

And that, it doesn't work.

01:05:56

And it's because you're now requiring me to spend a significant amount of time not only thinking it through and bouncing thoughts off of me or someone else, but you also have to articulate it in an email and get it back and hope that somebody's going to read it.

01:06:11

As usually happens, it's not going to be read in its entirety and will be skimmed at best.

01:06:18

So it doesn't work when it's anything complex.

01:06:22

So therefore you need to find a way to be live and do synchronous communication in order to accomplish that communication effectively.

01:06:34

But I don't think many people realize that and I think it's because slack and email is so quick and easy that the asker can very easily get the question out and puts the onus on the answer to that.

01:06:49

You just punt it.

01:06:50

Initial request.

01:07:04

If someone who I've never met emailed me and said, "Hey, would you help me understand what the best philosophy for starting a new blog or website is? What is the best methodology for doing that?"

01:07:21

I'm probably not going to respond at all.

01:07:26

I'm not going to respond because it's going to require a significant amount of time. There's a lot of subtleties and nuances with that. You're not going to get a response from me on that.

01:07:38

Now, if Mike sent that to me, I would probably say, "Great question. Let's talk about that next time after our bookworm recording."

01:07:47

And we would just plan on an extra 30 minutes or something after a recording to work through that question. Mike's not going to ask me that question because he's better at it than I am. So there's that.

01:07:57

But that's the thing. If you're going to ask that question, you have to be willing to put in the time yourself, but choosing the right medium for that conversation is super important.

01:08:08

Yeah, and I think that's probably all I want to talk about from that particular section because there's a bunch more here. The next chapter. And this is Meetings Done Better, which there's a bunch of practical stuff in this one.

01:08:24

I guess we'll just run through some of this stuff.

01:08:27

I tell you're excited about this chapter.

01:08:29

Meetings suck. I'll just say that. But there's some good advice in this chapter for sure. So two places you recommend you insert white space with meetings are the moment before you invite somebody and the moment before you accept it.

01:08:44

And that makes a lot of sense because you don't want to just get a bunch of people in a meeting who don't necessarily need to be there, whether you don't need to be in the meeting that you're being invited to or don't waste other people's time and invite them to a meeting. They don't have to be at.

01:08:59

She mentions blocking off unavailable time on your calendar, which is something we've probably heard a hundred times, but she made the analogy of it's kind of like putting your jacket on a chair to reserve it. And I thought that was kind of brilliant.

01:09:13

Talks about putting five to ten minute gaps between your meetings, things like that, which if you're in meetings all day, every day, that could be a game changer, just that one little thing. Again, not something new.

01:09:23

But the thing that really got me from this section is the definition of absent presence, which we can definitely identify. Maybe we've been this person.

01:09:34

But absent presence is physically being in the room, but not being in the room.

01:09:40

And she explained a scenario where she thought the person she was talking to was in this category because she asked him a question and he was fiddling with his phone and he was actually getting an answer for her.

01:09:55

And then she realized, oh, he was actually paying attention to me the whole time. And that is where another action item for me comes in this phone narration, because if he would have just explained that he's looking through his email to get the answer to the question that she posed, then she doesn't feel put off like, oh, this guy's completely wasting my time.

01:10:16

So phone narration is simply describing what we're doing on our device out loud, which eliminates that absent presence. And this is something I want to do.

01:10:25

I feel like I slip into this, that exact scenario where I'm not just totally ignoring you when we're in a meeting, but it probably comes off that way sometimes because you've asked me a question and you've got me thinking and I'm trying to get an answer for you, but I don't

01:10:42

communicate that real well so I can totally see where other people are like, oh, Mike's just not paying attention to me. I don't want to do that. And so I want to practice this phone narration. Okay, let me just look for this thing real quick.

01:10:54

And I've already practiced this a couple of times and it has made a difference. It's not like I asked the person afterwards. Okay, so what were you thinking when we were in that situation, but just makes the interaction a little bit smoother.

01:11:07

Let me point out that this can also be a game changer with kids. If you're on your phone around your kids, telling them what you're checking does two things. One, it helps them realize that you're doing something that's potentially important.

01:11:21

And it also means that you have a little bit of accountability to not be cruising Twitter whenever you're around your kids. Like, that's an important thing. So, like, I have this as an action item as well.

01:11:33

Like, I've been trying to make sure I narrate what I'm doing to my kids whenever doing to my kids. Yeah, I just threw the kid on the couch.

01:11:42

There's definitely something I need to narrate whenever I'm on my phone. It's like, hey, let's check the weather for this afternoon. We'll find out if we can go bike riding or whatever it is.

01:11:52

And just explaining what I'm doing, it changes their attitude. I've found if I'm just on my phone and they don't know what I'm doing, they're like trying to get my attention.

01:12:03

But if I tell them I'm checking the weather so we can figure out what we're doing this afternoon, they usually get quiet and wait.

01:12:10

So, okay, I need to explain what I'm doing more because then you'll understand what's happening and you can connect with what I'm doing, not just Dads on his phone again.

01:12:22

So, I think there's a lot of value in this, not just in meetings, for sure.

01:12:27

Yeah, and that kind of jumps to the last chapter, the Life Beyond Work section. But before we get there, there is one more. Chapter 10 is the White Space team.

01:12:40

This doesn't have a whole lot of practical stuff for me in here, other than to recognize that there are norms that exist in any family, team, organization, or company.

01:12:55

And the culture is comprised of these norms. So, it's worth considering what are the norms, what are the things that people do by default.

01:13:09

And if we're not okay with that, then how are we going to change those?

01:13:13

Yes, culture is a big deal with this, I think, whether we realize it or not. If everybody else is running around crazy and never stopping, it's really easy to follow suit.

01:13:22

It's the whole, you are your friends, you're the average of, what is it, you're at the average of your three closest friends or something like that?

01:13:28

Yeah, people you spend the most time with?

01:13:29

I feel like depending, yeah, whoever you talk to, they may have a different number and a different way of saying it, but that's generally the thought process there.

01:13:38

But I think if you're able to be someone who can break that mold, be willing to talk about it and explain it a little bit.

01:13:47

I know that my circle of friends, that's fairly easy to do, but I don't know if they're always going to be open to those ideas, but I can at least discuss it with them.

01:13:59

So, trying to change that amongst your friends can be super, super helpful.

01:14:03

Yes, another thing to recognize from this chapter is the power distance.

01:14:09

And I think she's framing this in terms of the person who is reading this has the power and the people that they are trying to lead feel disconnected from them, but she says that asking for help can close that power distance.

01:14:22

Last chapter then is chapter 11, and that is life beyond work.

01:14:28

And this is the one where she's basically saying everything that I've been talking about also applies to every other area of your life, which I think is kind of sad to be honest that this, if you're talking about work life balance, work gets 10 of the chapters and then life gets the last one.

01:14:48

But I get it. I also recognize who she's working with and who her clients are.

01:14:54

Those are the people who need to hear this from a work context first.

01:14:57

So, I understand that and I can look past that, but this is important.

01:15:03

This should be more than just the 20 pages that she gave it at the end of the book, because this is really where it makes a difference in my opinion.

01:15:11

She talks in this section about the top five regrets of the dying. Number one in males is that I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

01:15:19

So, that's a whole separate topic, those top five regrets of the dying. I almost picked that book that she mentions there as the next one for me for Bookworm.

01:15:33

But I got something else instead. Big idea here though, I think is to recognize that white space is not just valuable in a work context and figure out where are all of the other places that I can apply this.

01:15:47

Obviously, like you were talking about your family, your kids, stuff like that.

01:15:52

As I was reading this section, I was realizing that the one on ones that I do with my kids every week.

01:15:57

So, every Thursday morning, we go to a coffee shop and I get coffee. They get hot chocolate except for Toby, who likes lattes now and cappuccinos.

01:16:05

Good job, Toby.

01:16:07

And we'll play games, chat, whatever. It's just like 45 minutes to an hour on Thursday mornings, but we do it every single week.

01:16:16

And that doesn't feel like white space for me, because it's one more thing I got to squeeze in in the middle of my work week,

01:16:24

but it's white space for my relationship with them.

01:16:28

And there are many, many, many, many times where something has come up and we've been able to have those meaningful conversations just because we created the space for that to happen,

01:16:42

which was the whole idea when we started doing that.

01:16:45

So, I thought that was kind of cool to see that being played out in my own life, not to paint this picture of like, I do this perfect, but just this is a win that I've had.

01:16:59

And go ahead and steal it and do it yourself. I don't care. You don't need to give me credit for the idea.

01:17:04

I want to defend her choice to spend most of her time talking about work here, because I know that many people spend so much time on work and trying to make sure that work is something that doesn't fall apart.

01:17:19

And it's such a vital part of obviously many people's finances and such that we focus on it a lot, but then our habits at work bleed over into home.

01:17:31

And it does happen pretty easy. So, if you're focused on trying to make your work life a little less chaotic, add the space in there, add the margin, add the white, add the pauses and such, if you're able to do that at work, I think it's going to have a tendency to bleed over into home as well.

01:17:50

Just because that's where we tend to focus so much, and I'm not saying that that relationship with work is healthy. I'm just saying that's normal. That I feel like is a fairly common thing.

01:18:02

I do that. I mean, the way and pace that things are going at work has a tendency to affect what's going on at home. And it's probably because we spend a lot of our best hours at work versus at home.

01:18:16

And we tend to spend a majority of our day at work versus at home, even though it may not actually add up that way. But it feels that way. So we tend to focus on it a lot.

01:18:28

But I feel like that's probably at least a piece of this imbalance, whether she realizes that or did it intentionally or not, I don't know.

01:18:36

But to me, it makes sense to focus on it that way, just because I do think it will, you know, edge its way into your home life for sure.

01:18:43

Yeah, I think that's that is fair. Yeah, start where you are with what you have. And if work is the most important thing at the moment.

01:18:50

And now I'm not saying you've decided it's the most important thing. It's been the default, most important thing because that's where all your time and energy is going.

01:18:57

Then yeah, that's the place to start. Absolutely.

01:19:00

All right. Action items. I've got three of them here.

01:19:07

Number one is to be cautious about committing to future dates.

01:19:13

Number two is to create that yellow list to process my thoughts and obsidian. It's not going to be called the yellow list, but it's going to be many, many lists, different notes, basically.

01:19:24

I know you hate this term, but essentially this is like a map of content for different things, whether it's decisions or things I need to talk over with somebody.

01:19:34

That's that's the purpose of that. Nick Milo's talked about how the point where you decide that you need to create a map of content is called a mental squeeze point, where you just have trouble understanding what you really think about something.

01:19:50

That's the point where you transfer the stuff into the note and you figure it out. So that's exactly what I want to do.

01:19:55

And then the third one is practice phone narration, which I'm already starting to do and seeing some some fruit from that.

01:20:03

What do you got?

01:20:04

So I got two when I'm working on doing the email thing at the end of the day, figuring out how to make that work out well.

01:20:10

The other one is also phone narration, but I'm gearing that towards family time, not necessarily work time.

01:20:17

Part of that's because the times whenever I'm in meetings and such, like, I'm going to be on my phone quite a bit.

01:20:22

I'm not going to explain what I'm doing because I'm probably not paying attention in a lot of cases and that's intentional because the meeting is way too long and it's an area that I really don't need to know about.

01:20:31

Don't really shouldn't be there for. So I'll do something else. And people know that I'm doing that. It's very well known.

01:20:39

So I'm going to continue that one because I can get some other stuff done while they're talking about stuff that doesn't impact me at all.

01:20:46

So there's that.

01:20:47

So yeah, those are my two, the narration and email thing.

01:20:52

All right, style and rating, my book. So I go first, kind of talked about the style at the beginning.

01:21:02

And I want to call out here that it's only the beginning that I didn't really care for the style.

01:21:10

We spent quite a bit of time talking about that and it was two chapters out of 11.

01:21:15

So I want to clarify that the beginning of the book didn't start off real great for me, but I feel like it made a hard pivot after that and felt like this was a very approachable, well written book with some great stories and some great ways of defining things

01:21:34

that I was familiar with in new ways, which kind of helped crystallize some of these concepts for me. I had a couple of action items, which were not presented in a way where you must do this, which sometimes those action items are and I tend to push back against those

01:21:51

and be like, Nope, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to follow your system.

01:21:54

So the fact that she's just presenting these ideas and I felt it was very easy for me to call out a couple of action items. That was a positive here.

01:22:02

I will say that I don't feel like there's anything truly groundbreaking for me at this point in my journey from this book.

01:22:12

I totally understand if this is the first time you've heard about the concept of margin or white space, this could be absolutely transformational.

01:22:20

I'm not sure that I would recommend this over margin. I think it depends on the person. For some people margin is going to be easier to engage with.

01:22:33

For probably most people, this one is going to be easier to engage with.

01:22:39

So in terms of general recommendations, if you're just looking for something on the topic, this is probably the first place that I would look.

01:22:48

But if I understand you a little bit and you want to dig into more of the science behind the stuff, then margin is going to be the thing for you.

01:23:00

I think margin is probably better for me than this book is, but I understand why this book can resonate very well with some people who are wired a little bit differently.

01:23:13

I'm going to rate this 4.0, not anything against this book necessarily, just exactly what I said.

01:23:22

It doesn't feel transformational to me at this point in my productivity, self-help, business, leadership, whatever term you want to put their journey.

01:23:33

But I think it potentially could be for the right person. It's a well-written book with some insights.

01:23:42

I think just about anybody could get something from this book just doesn't feel like the thing that's really going to rock your world.

01:23:51

Well said, I think I like your comments on margin versus this one, because margins more about the concept and you're saying the science behind space.

01:24:03

This one, I feel like, is more practical, like tips and tricks sort of thing.

01:24:09

So if you want tips and tricks, this is probably the one you want. If you're a science nerd, pick up margin.

01:24:15

That's probably the good split point between those two, but I think this is an easy one to read.

01:24:22

It's somewhat disjointed mid-chapter like we were talking about earlier, but I don't feel like it detracts so much that it's a problem.

01:24:31

It's not one I feel like is easy to read before bed. Some of these books are, but this one's not.

01:24:37

And just like courage is calling. Don't read that one before bed because you're going to feel like you want to go start a fight at the end of the day, and that doesn't do well for bedtime.

01:24:47

So 4.0 is where it needs to be. I think it's a solid book. I'm glad to have read it. To me, it's more of a reminder.

01:24:56

There's not really anything in here that I felt like, "Oh, that's new. I never considered that before."

01:25:02

There's some analogies. There's some terminology that's kind of useful, like the phrases you're talking about with email, the one-liners and such that make it easier to explain things.

01:25:14

That's where some of the value comes in here, but again, none of that's completely new. Just a different way of saying the same, which is not bad.

01:25:24

Just nice to have the reminder, at least to me. Agreed. Awesome. Well, let's put a minute to think on the shelf. What's next, Joe?

01:25:34

So next, we're going to read So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport because I think it's about time. I mean, we've read all these other books.

01:25:42

Well, I haven't read this one. It's time we go back in time and read Cal Newport's book. I was thinking about this before we jumped on, but we've been reading a lot of books that are one, maybe two years old.

01:26:01

This one's obviously older than that. I don't remember when it was written, but we haven't gone back in time on some things for quite a while now.

01:26:10

So it'd be kind of a different way of doing it because we're usually like, "Okay, they wrote this in the middle of the pandemic."

01:26:17

We haven't had that whole conversation of, "Okay, well, when it was written, this was what was going on. We haven't had to have that conversation. This one's probably going to force us to do that a little bit."

01:26:26

Sure. Yeah, I loved this book when I read it. It must be like 10 years ago at this point. It's so really interesting to see if my perspective has changed at all on this.

01:26:37

I don't know. I'm excited about it. But what's after that, Mike?

01:26:40

After that is a book that was recommended to me via a Twitter thread in response to my newsletter Emotional Crisis Sound Tracks by John Aikoff.

01:26:58

The subtitle, I don't have it in front of me, the subtitle to this is basically "Don't Overthink Things."

01:27:05

I think this is going to be the perfect book for me right now. I also realized that we hadn't actually covered any John Aikoff books.

01:27:18

I couldn't believe that. Did you look this up? That's serious. We have a cover back up. I thought we had.

01:27:24

I'm pretty sure we haven't. I went through the catalog. Maybe I missed one. But the book's...

01:27:30

There's Start, there's Quitter, there's... What are the new ones?

01:27:37

Did we do start? That bugs me.

01:27:41

Yeah, just do a Google search for Bookworm, John Aikoff. I'm pretty sure we have not.

01:27:47

I feel like we need to address that. We're going to read Sound Tracks.

01:27:56

I'm a little dumbfounded by that one. I thought for sure we had covered that. I just pulled up the Bookworm list and then I searched the page for Aikoff.

01:28:04

Maybe a gapbook at some point.

01:28:07

I've obviously read his stuff, but I thought it was for Bookworm.

01:28:13

Well, that's interesting. There you go. Didn't expect that one.

01:28:17

Sound Tracks by John Aikoff. You got any gapbooks?

01:28:20

No, but I'm in the process of trying to figure out what one's going to be.

01:28:24

Which is a marked improvement. So there's that. You?

01:28:29

I do have a gapbook. Heck yes or no by Derek Sivers is the one I'm reading at the moment.

01:28:37

I've got a sabbatical coming up next week. I'm hoping to have at least one more gapbook for next time.

01:28:44

Cool. Sounds good.

01:28:46

All right. Thank you to everybody who has joined us live. Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members who support the show directly by contributing a couple bucks a month.

01:28:57

If you want to support the show, you can do that. You can go to Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:29:03

You get a couple of perks for that. You get the MyNote files from the books that we've read.

01:29:08

I take notes in these MyNote files and I post both the PDF and the MyNote versions.

01:29:13

So you can have those and use that as a starting point if you're reading along and add your own notes as you go.

01:29:19

I've also got a couple of gapbook episodes that Joe did back in the day.

01:29:23

And a Bookworm wallpaper that I created. So you get all that when you become a member of $5 a month or $50 a year.

01:29:30

Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:29:32

Super thankful to everybody who's joined us live. It's always fun to have folks in the chat who talk about what we're saying live because it does inform what we say sometimes.

01:29:41

So thank you to you. If you are one of those amazing members who are reading along with us, you need to pick up so good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport's.

01:29:52

And we'll talk with you about that in a couple of weeks.