Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

-Joe, have you heard of the remarkable?

00:00:02

-The remarkable.

00:00:04

-Oh, oh, oh, oh.

00:00:06

Is this like that tablet?

00:00:07

-It is.

00:00:08

-That I've seen Instagram, they're like,

00:00:10

desperately trying to get me to buy one of these.

00:00:12

Like, I see these ads constantly,

00:00:14

so I must fit their target audience really well.

00:00:17

-I would say you probably do.

00:00:19

I have one.

00:00:21

-Oh.

00:00:22

-I'm sorry.

00:00:23

-I'm super jealous.

00:00:24

See, this is all the more reason I need to come see you.

00:00:26

-Yep.

00:00:27

It's true.

00:00:28

-So the short version of this is it's an E-ink screen

00:00:33

that you can take notes using an Apple Pencil-style stylus.

00:00:39

And I say Apple Pencil just because that's the best styles

00:00:42

I've ever used up until this one.

00:00:44

And I don't think this one's a whole lot better.

00:00:48

There's-- it's a little bit different feel,

00:00:50

so I would say it is a little bit nicer than an Apple Pencil.

00:00:53

But the whole idea is that you can just take notes.

00:00:56

It's like permanently in good notes,

00:00:58

although it's black and white E-ink,

00:00:59

so you're not using it for sketched notes or anything like that.

00:01:04

It is simply an analog/digital note-taking device,

00:01:10

which, as Martin points out in the chat,

00:01:13

is cool, but the price.

00:01:16

-Yes.

00:01:17

Yes, is not small.

00:01:19

-Yeah.

00:01:20

So it's not going to replace an iPad.

00:01:23

It's more likely going to replace a notebook

00:01:25

if you were to have a bunch of meetings,

00:01:27

but I have a review unit and I am digging it.

00:01:31

Although, again, the use case here is very narrow,

00:01:35

so I'm not necessarily recommending you go drop 600 bucks

00:01:39

on this thing unless you're in a lot of meetings

00:01:40

and taking a lot of analog notes.

00:01:42

But I do like it and I do see why people go crazy over this thing.

00:01:47

-Yeah, I've seen this thing around for a while now

00:01:51

and have seriously considered pulling the trigger on it.

00:01:54

Many, many, many times, but even one of them I've looked at

00:01:58

is $300 and for Christmas, they've got $100 off on it,

00:02:03

so even at $200, I still haven't pulled the trigger on it

00:02:07

because I just don't see the justification

00:02:11

in swapping out my even inexpensive $20 notebook

00:02:15

for a $200 reusable notebook, essentially.

00:02:19

So that's fair.

00:02:21

As much as it seems really, really cool,

00:02:24

I don't think I'm going to do that.

00:02:25

Now, what I am potentially going to do,

00:02:28

have you seen the boogie boards,

00:02:29

like the kids' version of these things?

00:02:31

They're like 20 bucks on Amazon.

00:02:33

We just got one of those for my youngest

00:02:36

who just turned five, which I'm not sure how that happened.

00:02:39

But we got one for her and I told Becky,

00:02:42

he's like, "I kind of want one of these."

00:02:45

(laughs)

00:02:46

Because it's only one page, then you can write on it

00:02:49

and you push a button and it clears

00:02:51

and then you can do it again,

00:02:52

but it feels like you're writing on paper,

00:02:53

so like that I could maybe get behind.

00:02:56

That one, that one I might be okay with it, 20 bucks.

00:02:58

- Well, if you like the boogie board,

00:02:59

you'll like this thing.

00:03:00

This is like a big kid boogie board.

00:03:02

- I'm sure.

00:03:02

(laughs)

00:03:04

- Yes.

00:03:05

- Okay.

00:03:06

- Well, you decide you don't want it

00:03:07

(laughs)

00:03:08

and you don't have to send it back.

00:03:10

(laughs)

00:03:11

- All right, I'll keep that in mind.

00:03:13

We've only got one item here of follow-up.

00:03:15

So did you research how self-control

00:03:19

and ADHD tie together for you?

00:03:21

- Yeah, basically self-control doesn't exist

00:03:24

and you have to work in building it.

00:03:27

And oddly enough, I'm kind of itching

00:03:31

to get into today's book because I know

00:03:32

that there's actually quite a bit,

00:03:34

it doesn't call this out specifically,

00:03:36

but this particular topic I found,

00:03:39

maybe it's just the lens I was seeing it through.

00:03:41

It came up a lot.

00:03:42

So it's a thing that I'm still processing through.

00:03:46

I don't think I'm ever gonna finish processing that one

00:03:47

'cause I'm learning there's so many different facets to it,

00:03:51

but as far as a follow-up action item here,

00:03:55

I certainly did do this.

00:03:57

I just don't have any good answers to what I found.

00:04:01

- Okay.

00:04:02

- So there's a lot of work to be done basically.

00:04:05

The gist of it is a lot of brain training

00:04:08

is what I learned about,

00:04:09

but that's not a quick and easy thing to do.

00:04:12

- No, it is not.

00:04:14

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

00:04:18

- Yeah, 'cause it's probably gonna be long.

00:04:20

(laughs)

00:04:20

- There is that possibility.

00:04:22

I tried to keep the outline short.

00:04:27

So the book that we're discussing today

00:04:29

is "4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman."

00:04:32

And this is something that I picked to your amazement

00:04:37

and because I did not like the previous Oliver Berkman book

00:04:42

that we had gone through, which was the antidote, I believe.

00:04:46

And this one didn't feel like that one in,

00:04:51

to me anyways, maybe it was just the fact

00:04:54

that I really enjoyed the subject matter.

00:04:57

I don't know a whole lot about Oliver Berkman's story,

00:05:00

but he kind of explains throughout the course of this book

00:05:04

that he was #ProdictivityCoachGuy.

00:05:08

And he was telling people how to be more productive

00:05:13

and then this book is kind of like the Ecclesiastes version

00:05:17

of "Everything is Meaningless."

00:05:19

(laughs)

00:05:20

Even references that.

00:05:21

- That's a good way to describe it.

00:05:22

- Yeah, he even references the book of Ecclesiastes

00:05:24

at one point, but long before he got there,

00:05:27

that's what I was thinking of as he was going through this.

00:05:32

The title "4,000 Weeks," it points to the fact that

00:05:36

as a human, you have roughly 4,000 Weeks to Live,

00:05:40

which in the big scheme of things is really not all that much.

00:05:45

The book itself is broken down into, I guess, four parts.

00:05:50

Well, you could say two.

00:05:52

There's an introduction.

00:05:54

There's part one, which is choosing to choose.

00:05:57

There's six chapters there, I think.

00:05:58

Part two is beyond control, eight chapters there,

00:06:01

and then an afterword, which is beyond hope.

00:06:04

And for the outline, I kind of broke this down

00:06:05

into introduction, part one, part two, and then afterward.

00:06:09

And then I got several points underneath each of these,

00:06:12

but we're not gonna go through all 14 chapters

00:06:15

plus the introduction and afterward.

00:06:16

Sound good to you?

00:06:18

- Yeah, 'cause I was reading through this, I don't know,

00:06:21

an hour or so ago, before I started processing

00:06:24

what all I wanted to say today, and realized

00:06:26

you didn't mark out all the chapters for this one,

00:06:30

which is probably one, like that happens on Bookworm,

00:06:35

but it doesn't happen a lot.

00:06:37

Like we have a tendency to just run the chapters.

00:06:40

Maybe we skip some of them, but this time,

00:06:43

I kind of like the way you did this.

00:06:44

Just like, let's take some of the overarching themes

00:06:47

from each of these parts and talk about them.

00:06:49

- Sure.

00:06:50

- So good job. - Thank you.

00:06:51

I agree, I tend to, me specifically, I think,

00:06:55

try to stick to the outline of the books whenever possible.

00:06:58

- I'm a wild card.

00:06:59

- I feel like this one, they kind of blend together

00:07:03

fairly well.

00:07:04

That's not to say there aren't distinct points

00:07:07

and themes in each of the chapters,

00:07:09

but I feel like this reads more like a connected narrative

00:07:14

as opposed to individual sections or essays.

00:07:20

Let me just run through the names of the chapters here

00:07:23

so people are familiar with it.

00:07:24

Number one, the limit embracing life.

00:07:26

Number two, the efficiency trap.

00:07:28

Chapter three is facing finitude.

00:07:30

Chapter four becoming a better procrastinator.

00:07:33

Chapter five, the watermelon problem.

00:07:34

Chapter six, the intimate interpreter.

00:07:36

That's all part of part one.

00:07:38

And then part two, we never really have time.

00:07:41

Chapter eight, you are here.

00:07:42

Chapter nine, rediscovering rest.

00:07:44

Chapter 10, the impatient spiral.

00:07:45

Chapter 11 staying on the bus.

00:07:47

Chapter 12, the loneliness of digital nomad.

00:07:50

Chapter 13, cosmic insignificance therapy.

00:07:53

Chapter 14, the human disease.

00:07:56

And then the afterward being a short little thing

00:07:58

at the end.

00:08:00

I will say though, in terms of the general overall structure

00:08:03

of this book, I feel like the distinctions

00:08:05

between the two sections are well defined.

00:08:08

And I really like the way this ends with the five questions

00:08:12

to help you start to make the most of your finite time.

00:08:17

I am on a big asking the right questions kick.

00:08:21

Not in small part inspired by the sense making workshop

00:08:26

that I did with Nick Milo.

00:08:28

But as we were prepping for that,

00:08:30

we were kind of thinking through

00:08:32

what's the takeaway when it give people

00:08:34

and it's really just asking questions

00:08:37

to help you approach your problems

00:08:38

from different perspectives.

00:08:41

Kind of like the great mental models

00:08:44

back when we did that book.

00:08:46

And I've kind of continued that even after the workshop.

00:08:51

Bought a book called Personal Socrates

00:08:53

by the Baron Fig people.

00:08:54

Have you seen this one?

00:08:56

- I've seen it, have not been through it.

00:08:58

- It's basically a collection of questions

00:09:02

asked by famous successful people.

00:09:05

And the idea being like if you can ask these questions

00:09:08

and see how they applied them,

00:09:09

you can kind of do the same thing for yourself.

00:09:11

And hopefully live a life of meaning

00:09:14

which I think is kind of Oliver Berkman's big point

00:09:16

with all of this anyways.

00:09:17

So all that to say a long version of saying

00:09:19

I really like the fact that he gave you questions

00:09:22

at the end instead of a system

00:09:24

or a simple three step formula to live a better life,

00:09:28

et cetera, 'cause it's really not that simple.

00:09:31

- Right, yeah, I absolutely love that he did that.

00:09:35

And I also love that he didn't do that until the very end.

00:09:39

And when he did it, it was very, very brief.

00:09:43

But he also doesn't tell you how to do it,

00:09:44

when to do it, what order to do it in.

00:09:47

He just says, here's some questions to ask.

00:09:49

Figure it out, like that's basically what he does.

00:09:52

So I'm oddly enough a fan of that.

00:09:55

Usually I'm like, tell me exactly what you want me to do.

00:09:58

And then I'll try to do that.

00:09:59

In this case, like no, it was done well, I think.

00:10:01

- Yeah, agreed.

00:10:03

So let's jump into the introduction here,

00:10:05

which is titled in the long run, we're all dead.

00:10:09

It's a little bit of a funny title,

00:10:13

although it is very appropriate

00:10:15

given the subject matter of the book, I'd argue.

00:10:19

Again, this is where he lays out the baseline

00:10:22

for the title, the average lifespan is about 4,000 weeks.

00:10:25

He also kind of says in this introductory part

00:10:28

that since our time is short,

00:10:30

then our primary concern should be around

00:10:32

this whole concept of time management,

00:10:35

although in the next section, part one,

00:10:38

he's actually gonna explain how the way that we do that is wrong.

00:10:43

But right here, he talks about page 13, there's a quote,

00:10:48

he says, "Productivity is a trap."

00:10:49

Remember, he's a former productivity expert.

00:10:52

Productivity is a trap, becoming more efficient

00:10:54

just makes you feel more rushed

00:10:55

and trying to clear the decks simply makes them

00:10:57

fill up again faster.

00:10:59

And right away, when I read that, I'm hooked

00:11:04

because I feel like we can all relate to that

00:11:08

in some way, shape, or form, even if our,

00:11:11

like my work situation doesn't feel like that currently,

00:11:15

but I remember what that feels like.

00:11:17

I remember it very distinctly.

00:11:18

And I feel like I've been working hard to fight against that,

00:11:25

but with mixed success.

00:11:27

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

00:11:29

And then as he transitions out of this introductory section,

00:11:33

the big point he leaves you with is that whole idea

00:11:35

of work-life balance that you've heard about

00:11:37

from all these people, yeah, not only is that not a thing,

00:11:40

no one in the history of the universe has ever achieved that.

00:11:44

So just knock it off.

00:11:45

- And that's very refreshing and frustrating at the same time.

00:11:49

'Cause that's what you strive for, right?

00:11:52

Like I wanna make sure I spend the right amount of time

00:11:55

with my family, the right amount of time at work.

00:11:58

I wanna make sure I'm fully engaged in all of those.

00:12:01

If you wanna start using all the buzz words,

00:12:02

like you could totally do that.

00:12:04

I wanna be mindful at home.

00:12:05

I wanna be mindful at work.

00:12:06

I wanna be spending all of my time appropriately.

00:12:09

And as we go through this, even as I'm saying that,

00:12:13

I'm realizing like just saying the phrase,

00:12:15

spending my time feels very wrong.

00:12:18

Now that I've read this, and that's I think what he's trying

00:12:22

to do is set you up because the problem he has here

00:12:25

is he's trying to introduce a completely new way

00:12:28

of thinking about time.

00:12:30

And we have such a foundational view of it

00:12:33

that is so permeated through so many aspects

00:12:36

of just life in general, that it's really hard for us

00:12:40

to dismantle even our terminology, which goes through

00:12:44

so many different areas without us even realizing it.

00:12:46

It's hard to dismantle that set of semantics

00:12:49

without completely dismantling the way you even work.

00:12:53

So yes, it's a challenge and I'm glad that he set us up

00:12:58

and starts the process of like changing the way

00:13:00

we even save terms and save phrases

00:13:04

as we begin this whole journey through this thing.

00:13:07

- Yeah, this is the perfect setup

00:13:09

for everything that he is going to talk about.

00:13:12

I agree with you that that phrase in some ways

00:13:16

is refreshing, in some ways is unsettling.

00:13:18

Did you stop to ask yourself why that was?

00:13:23

- As a why it's unsettling.

00:13:25

I know that whenever I got through the introduction,

00:13:27

I set the book down and went and stared out the window

00:13:30

for about five minutes.

00:13:31

- Me too.

00:13:31

(laughing)

00:13:32

- It's like, it was hard to grasp like what just happened.

00:13:37

I haven't had that experience reading in a book

00:13:41

in a very long time where I've had to set it down

00:13:44

and process it in the moment.

00:13:46

Like generally, I'm a very fast mover

00:13:50

when it comes to just thoughts in general

00:13:53

and going through this first,

00:13:57

just the introduction, I was like,

00:13:58

I, ugh, what just happened?

00:14:01

I need to stop.

00:14:02

Like I couldn't get my head around it

00:14:05

which is frustrating because I normally catch on to things

00:14:08

very quickly I feel.

00:14:09

So yeah, I needed to stop on this one.

00:14:12

(laughing)

00:14:13

- Yep, so did I, which is why the first

00:14:16

bullet point that I added in the next part here.

00:14:19

So let's go into part one, choosing to choose.

00:14:22

And my first bullet point here is on self-worth

00:14:25

and time management because there's a point

00:14:29

in this chapter where he says that your self-worth

00:14:34

shouldn't be tied up on or into how you spend your time.

00:14:39

And that is maybe a radical idea

00:14:45

because he's also talking about how we don't have time,

00:14:50

we don't make time, we are time.

00:14:52

And so if you believe that how you spend your time

00:14:57

is ultimately the thing that you're going to be held

00:15:00

accountable for at the end of your life,

00:15:03

this kind of puts you into existential crisis mode, I feel.

00:15:08

- Yep, I went for a walk with a dog after this one.

00:15:11

(laughing)

00:15:13

You're gonna catch that theme.

00:15:14

There's a lot of Joe stopping on this one.

00:15:16

I only finished this just this morning,

00:15:18

but it had nothing to do with being interested in the book.

00:15:20

It was just trying to get the, that's why I say,

00:15:24

like trying to get those foundational views of time

00:15:27

and wrapping my brain around what he's talking about here

00:15:30

because he's absolutely right.

00:15:32

Like so much of the way that I view whether or not

00:15:36

my day was successful is how I spent my time.

00:15:40

Not necessarily like what did I accomplish

00:15:42

and who did I impact and what struggles did I work through.

00:15:45

Like none of that matters.

00:15:47

It's how much time did I spend goofing off

00:15:49

and how much time was I productive

00:15:51

and did I do the right things with that time?

00:15:55

Like without me realizing it so much of self-worth

00:15:59

and the way I value my own daily success

00:16:02

is tied up in time management, which I'm terrible at,

00:16:05

of course, but I really had to stop and just,

00:16:09

okay, if that's wrong to value myself based

00:16:13

on how I spend time, like the ramifications of that are large.

00:16:17

- Yes, they are.

00:16:18

- Which of course we're gonna get into even more.

00:16:21

But yes, this existential crises happen a lot

00:16:26

with this book I found.

00:16:27

- It's true, it's true.

00:16:29

Although in this first chapter, he also talks about

00:16:33

task orientation as opposed to, I guess time orientation

00:16:37

where task orientation is that the rhythms of life

00:16:41

emerge organically from the tasks themselves

00:16:43

instead of a timeline.

00:16:45

And he mentions that babies are the ultimate task-oriented

00:16:48

beings and they don't care how long anything takes.

00:16:50

All they know is this is the thing

00:16:52

that's important right now.

00:16:54

So in some ways he's holding that up as an ideal,

00:16:57

like that's what we should be like.

00:16:59

But since time became a resource to be used

00:17:03

and people have had to coordinate their efforts

00:17:07

to show up at work at the same time

00:17:09

and all that kind of stuff, you have to measure it

00:17:14

in a different way.

00:17:16

And you combine that with the fundamental problem,

00:17:21

since time became a resource to be used,

00:17:23

people began berating themselves for wasting it.

00:17:25

The fundamental problem here is that this attitude

00:17:29

sets up a rigged game that you can never win.

00:17:32

And so the whole point of this first chapter

00:17:34

is confronting how limited your time is.

00:17:38

And that can be painful when you admit

00:17:41

that you can't do it all.

00:17:44

And even for myself knowing that we're gonna get on,

00:17:49

we're gonna record this podcast,

00:17:50

and we're gonna talk about this.

00:17:52

On one level, I'm thinking to myself,

00:17:55

well yeah, obviously, I know that you can't try to do

00:17:58

everything I've given people that same advice,

00:18:00

like say no, limit your options.

00:18:03

But then you look at your own life

00:18:05

and the way that you try to cram more stuff in

00:18:08

and you realize you may know this,

00:18:11

but you don't really know this.

00:18:13

Understanding it intellectually

00:18:14

and actually applying it are two very different things.

00:18:19

- Yes, this whole, just being aware

00:18:22

that your life is finite.

00:18:24

He does get into that, I don't remember which chapter it is.

00:18:27

So it's probably good we're not going through specific chapters,

00:18:29

but he gets into the view that there was an eternity,

00:18:34

is an eternity, so there's a life after death.

00:18:37

And how if you live as if there's life after death,

00:18:42

then what you do here on earth is such a small piece

00:18:45

of the bigger picture that it really doesn't matter

00:18:47

what you do.

00:18:48

It's not that big a deal, you've got infinite time

00:18:52

to spend doing whatever you like.

00:18:54

So how you spend the next, you know,

00:18:58

100 years if you're lucky, really doesn't matter.

00:19:01

However, if you believe there is no eternity,

00:19:04

then you're left with maybe 100 years

00:19:08

to spend doing whatever you'd like.

00:19:11

And that can lead to a crisis of fitting everything in

00:19:15

because you don't have forever

00:19:18

to choose the things you need to do.

00:19:20

And that leads us down this path of spending time wisely

00:19:24

and making sure, you know,

00:19:26

experience all the things, travel the world,

00:19:28

see everything.

00:19:29

And that's where we end up finding ourselves today, right?

00:19:33

Like that's a very common viewpoint that people have,

00:19:36

is trying to make sure you fit as much

00:19:37

in the whole bucket list thing.

00:19:39

The things you wanna do before you die

00:19:41

and trying to crank through as much of that

00:19:43

as you possibly can in order to have a life

00:19:46

of fully lived experiences with no downtime.

00:19:51

And it seems like that's the life

00:19:54

that we put on a pedestal, right?

00:19:55

Like that's what we see everyone doing

00:19:57

and that's what we shoot for.

00:19:59

But when you talk to those people, they're not always happy.

00:20:02

And there's oftentimes a lot of regrets

00:20:04

that come with choosing that lifestyle.

00:20:07

- Which makes sense.

00:20:08

I mean, we both know that,

00:20:10

have read other books I think that I've spoken to that.

00:20:13

The people who look so successful,

00:20:16

sometimes they're the most miserable

00:20:18

because they can't get the thing that they really want.

00:20:21

Maybe that's control their schedule or whatever.

00:20:24

But the thing that really got me in this section

00:20:28

was this phrase that I hear you say all the time,

00:20:30

what needs doing.

00:20:32

And he says that what needs doing

00:20:36

always expands to fill the time available.

00:20:38

And that again, we've heard Parkinson's Law.

00:20:41

But when you think about the fact

00:20:44

that there will always be more things that need doing

00:20:49

and the things that really need doing

00:20:52

are going to eat up all the time

00:20:54

that you have available,

00:20:56

then it's easy to see why we measure,

00:21:00

well, what did I actually get done at the end of the day?

00:21:04

And he's basically saying,

00:21:05

this is a miserable cycle that you gotta break out of.

00:21:09

And he shares a story of Sisyphus,

00:21:12

which is the Greek legend where he was sentenced

00:21:14

to push a rock up the hill

00:21:15

and then he'd watch it tumble back down again.

00:21:17

So he does that over and over and over for eternity.

00:21:19

And then says the modern equivalent of this

00:21:21

is emptying your email inbox.

00:21:23

And he immediately saying it fill up again.

00:21:25

And I don't think he's wrong.

00:21:27

I really like the analogy.

00:21:30

So the efficiency trap getting into the second point

00:21:34

here in the outline,

00:21:35

the efficiency trap comes from this second chapter.

00:21:39

This is where you have too much to do.

00:21:42

So you try to fit more in,

00:21:44

which results in even more to do.

00:21:47

And I have recognized this.

00:21:50

I actually wrote a post a while back.

00:21:52

I'll see if I can dig it up and put it in the show notes

00:21:56

from a focused episode that David and I were talking through.

00:21:58

And I realized that the reason you want to become more efficient

00:22:03

for a lot of people, it's in a work situation,

00:22:06

you feel overwhelmed.

00:22:07

So you get things done faster and now you've got this space.

00:22:10

But then usually your reward for getting things done

00:22:14

more efficiently is that you have more work to do.

00:22:17

And I don't know a real great way for fighting back against that

00:22:22

and kind of what he's saying in this book,

00:22:24

which is again, kind of uncomfortable,

00:22:28

but in certain ways refreshing is like, just stop fighting it.

00:22:32

That's the way it works.

00:22:33

Just deal with it.

00:22:35

- Yes.

00:22:36

And that's tough to do.

00:22:38

I was trying to process like,

00:22:41

what's a real world example of this happening?

00:22:45

And the only one I could think of is like my day job

00:22:48

with what I do at the church,

00:22:51

which is all the tech stuff, right?

00:22:52

So we've got tons of videos and podcasts and stuff

00:22:55

that we're regularly pushing out,

00:22:58

but we've got our live stream, we've got Sunday morning,

00:23:00

we've got classes, we got all sorts of stuff, right?

00:23:02

And there's an ever growing number of things

00:23:06

that we could produce.

00:23:08

If we just take like the content that we create as a church,

00:23:11

that list of podcasts and videos that we create

00:23:14

could be infinitely large.

00:23:17

So I regularly have these conversations

00:23:19

of what we won't do.

00:23:22

And I have some very clearly laid out lines for me

00:23:26

that then gets relayed to our staff

00:23:27

as far as what I will and I won't publish.

00:23:31

And that list of things that I won't publish

00:23:34

is much longer than the things that I will.

00:23:37

So that by itself seems to then kind of force the issue

00:23:42

of we're not gonna do things.

00:23:46

And that means that like right now I'm at a sweet spot

00:23:48

where the staffing that I have

00:23:51

can produce what we want to produce right now

00:23:53

without overworking anyone in the process.

00:23:57

So like we've found a good balance there,

00:23:59

but we used to produce more than we do right now.

00:24:02

And we backed off because we set those limits.

00:24:04

But without those limits, we could go,

00:24:06

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait too far.

00:24:08

It can still be a problem.

00:24:10

So that's the closest thing I've been able to come up with.

00:24:13

It was like how to scale this stuff back.

00:24:14

But you're right, if you give yourself two months

00:24:18

to create things, hey guess what?

00:24:20

It's gonna take that full two months.

00:24:21

If you give yourself 20 minutes, it'll take that 20 minutes.

00:24:25

So just saying like if I get something done early,

00:24:28

well forget that it's not gonna happen.

00:24:31

Rarely is that gonna happen.

00:24:34

Rarely is it gonna happen, but then also that's not

00:24:39

necessarily a bad thing.

00:24:41

The issue is in coming to grips with the fact

00:24:46

that regardless of what the ideal is,

00:24:51

you're never going to hit it, I would argue.

00:24:54

I've been kind of brewing on this even before

00:24:58

we read this book.

00:24:59

I had a newsletter that I sent out about finding time

00:25:03

versus making time and kind of the thing

00:25:07

that I landed on was redeeming the time

00:25:09

from the verse in Ephesians where redeem means

00:25:14

to buy back and ransom from loss.

00:25:17

And reading this book in particular,

00:25:20

this section, what he's basically saying is like

00:25:23

all your time is lost anyways.

00:25:25

So when you think about it from that perspective,

00:25:29

going into your day, like you can have your plan,

00:25:32

you can time block things and that's great.

00:25:33

Like you're trying to redeem as much time as possible.

00:25:36

But when you recognize that it's all awash anyways

00:25:40

and you don't feel the pressure,

00:25:41

like I have to redeem eight hours worth of time

00:25:44

or find eight hours worth of time, whatever happens, happens.

00:25:49

And maybe, you know, I only was able to redeem

00:25:51

a couple of hours today and on my best days,

00:25:54

I can redeem 10 hours, whatever.

00:25:57

The goal is the intentionality, but recognizing that

00:26:00

it's never a resource that I had in the first place.

00:26:04

I'm just doing my best to get as much of it as I can

00:26:07

in the moment.

00:26:08

And then at the end of the day,

00:26:10

there's a reset button that gets hit

00:26:12

and you try again tomorrow.

00:26:14

But you don't beat yourself up if you didn't have

00:26:17

a killer day and you don't spend too much time

00:26:20

celebrating if you did.

00:26:22

I feel like attaching to either of those outcomes

00:26:25

is kind of what sets you up for failure

00:26:28

as he's talking about it at the beginning of this book.

00:26:31

- There's so many places I feel like I could take that,

00:26:33

but I know that as time has gone on,

00:26:37

like I've learned a lot about how I spend or use my days.

00:26:42

And especially lately, I've been coming back a lot

00:26:48

to the days that I had on the farm

00:26:52

and what we did there because it wasn't time-based at all.

00:26:57

I mean, meals were, but it wasn't based on at noon,

00:27:02

we were gonna stop at,

00:27:04

you know, it was always like, well,

00:27:07

when that fence is done, let's meet up at the house

00:27:10

and we'll grab lunch.

00:27:12

That might be two o'clock, that might be 11 o'clock.

00:27:15

Like you have, it didn't matter.

00:27:17

It was always task-based.

00:27:19

And you always had another task you could do,

00:27:24

but the question was always like,

00:27:25

which of those need to be done before another group

00:27:29

of tasks sneaks up on you and you have to work on those?

00:27:32

Like you have to have a lot of equipment maintained

00:27:35

before spring gets here so you can plant.

00:27:37

Like you don't wanna be trying to plant

00:27:38

when the equipment's not ready to go.

00:27:40

Like that's the type of management that we did,

00:27:44

but even that, like I could see even some of what he's

00:27:48

railing against here, even in some of that mentality.

00:27:51

So it makes you stop and process so many things.

00:27:55

- Yes it does.

00:27:58

And it's a healthy perspective shift, I would argue,

00:28:02

although we'll get into that, I think, in part two.

00:28:07

But coming back to this efficiency trap and choosing,

00:28:12

you've got this menu of things, you can't do it all.

00:28:18

So in essence, kind of what you're doing

00:28:21

is you're prioritizing, this is the thing I'm gonna do first

00:28:24

and then I'm gonna do this thing.

00:28:25

And at some point along the line of prioritizing things,

00:28:28

you're not gonna get to it all.

00:28:30

I'm being okay with that.

00:28:32

I feel like that is a skill to be developed

00:28:37

and kind of the phrase he uses in chapter three

00:28:41

is that your entire life is borrowed time.

00:28:44

And I like that a lot.

00:28:46

I think that fits very well with, at least in my own head,

00:28:49

this whole idea of redeeming the time

00:28:50

because whatever I can get is a bonus.

00:28:55

It's the cherry on top.

00:28:57

I'm not owed anything.

00:28:59

None of us are guaranteed tomorrow

00:29:01

and it's uncomfortable to think about those types of questions

00:29:05

because we think we're really important.

00:29:10

And kind of the case he's making at the beginning

00:29:12

of the book here is that you're really not.

00:29:14

If you look at the totality of human existence,

00:29:19

you're one small blip.

00:29:21

And yeah, we wanna do as much good as we can

00:29:24

and the time that we have with whatever resources we have.

00:29:28

I feel like on the surface,

00:29:31

this book can seem to combat some of these

00:29:34

purpose, mission, books, like the second mountain

00:29:37

by David Brooks, but I actually think it complements it

00:29:40

really well because when you think about

00:29:43

the second mountain in particular,

00:29:44

the first mountain's all about you,

00:29:46

then you get to the top and you're like,

00:29:47

is this it in the second mountain you realize also

00:29:49

when I should have been climbing the whole time

00:29:51

and that's the one that is about helping other people.

00:29:54

So recognizing that you're not gonna be able

00:29:57

to help everybody, but just do the best you can

00:30:00

with what you have and let the chips fall where they may,

00:30:03

that eliminates, at least when I was reading through this,

00:30:06

it eliminates all the pressure to follow through

00:30:09

and achieve certain outcomes.

00:30:12

It's like, yeah, I'll try to do this.

00:30:13

I'll create the plans because it'll give me the intentionality

00:30:16

but I'm not gonna get so attached to the plan

00:30:19

that the outcome is something that I feel like

00:30:21

I absolutely must create or conjure up.

00:30:25

I'm gonna give myself permission to be like,

00:30:27

oh, well, that didn't work or the universe

00:30:30

had a different plan and that's okay.

00:30:31

I guess I'll try something else.

00:30:33

And that's actually very freeing.

00:30:35

- Yeah, the whole finitude thing that he gets into is like,

00:30:39

you can't do everything.

00:30:41

You and I have both talked to and coached

00:30:43

and been around people who have or have been

00:30:47

the people with these really long to-do lists

00:30:49

where they have a task management tool

00:30:52

that's loaded up with thousands of tasks.

00:30:54

And I know that I've at least personally done

00:30:58

some online video workshops and such

00:31:00

and coached folks where someone always asks the questions.

00:31:05

Like I have this huge list and I can't seem to get

00:31:10

through it all each day.

00:31:12

And the assumption behind that question is that

00:31:16

there's some method that they haven't found

00:31:20

that will solve that problem.

00:31:22

When the real problem is you're trying to do everything

00:31:26

and I can't figure out how to tell you

00:31:29

other than tell you point blank that you can't do everything.

00:31:33

So you have to choose which of those you're going to do.

00:31:37

I remember specifically I was doing one specific workshop

00:31:40

with a friend and someone spoke up during the Q and A

00:31:44

at the end, I'm not gonna point out all this

00:31:45

as you could go find it, it is public.

00:31:47

But this person just asked, like I've got a dashboard

00:31:52

in this task management tool that is about 300 tasks long.

00:31:57

And it was broken up between tasks like move the files

00:32:02

from one folder to another.

00:32:04

And then another one could be take out the trash.

00:32:06

And then another one was like almost a full project

00:32:08

in itself as he rattled off what these were.

00:32:11

And what went through my head was a whole bunch of stuff.

00:32:13

Like why are you putting all of that on that list?

00:32:15

Like move a file from one place to the other.

00:32:18

Like it would take me longer to type that task in

00:32:20

and put it in the tool than it would to actually do it.

00:32:23

So you're tracking way, way, way, way too much here.

00:32:27

But you haven't chosen the big overarching things

00:32:31

that you are gonna focus on.

00:32:32

Like that's the main problem.

00:32:34

I think you and I both might have over time

00:32:37

stopped tracking so much stuff to do

00:32:41

and have borderline just moved to tracking big projects

00:32:45

and let the other stuff work itself out.

00:32:47

That might be because of the whole habit focus

00:32:49

that you and I tend to have.

00:32:50

But yes.

00:32:51

- I think that's linked to be honest.

00:32:54

And I think it's the right approach as I read this book.

00:32:58

- Yeah.

00:32:59

- Because if you're gonna try to manage all your tasks

00:33:02

in a task management system, that's fine.

00:33:06

I mean, there's stuff that needs to be done

00:33:07

at a specific time.

00:33:09

You can attach a deadline to it.

00:33:10

Use your computer to surface the right things

00:33:12

at the right time.

00:33:13

I understand all that.

00:33:14

There's a lot of value in that.

00:33:15

That's what computers are good for.

00:33:17

But I also don't feel quite as bad about not needing that

00:33:21

in order to get my work done.

00:33:23

And in the back of my mind, a year ago,

00:33:26

I was thinking to myself, well, am I really working

00:33:29

the right way if I don't have all these things

00:33:31

managing the task manager and I don't have like this

00:33:34

proof that I'm shipping these things?

00:33:36

But ultimately the proof is that the stuff gets out there.

00:33:38

There's an output to a lot of the work that I do.

00:33:41

And so I'm okay with not having all of that stuff

00:33:46

in neat little buckets that the computer can recognize.

00:33:50

Because ultimately what it's supposed to do is help me

00:33:53

do the right thing at the right time,

00:33:55

which I think is what Oliver Berkman would say.

00:33:58

That's the goal of anything.

00:34:00

Later in the part two, he talks about the moments

00:34:02

and we'll get into stuff like that.

00:34:04

But as it pertains to what's the right thing to do right now,

00:34:08

this kind of gets into the next point.

00:34:09

So the third bullet I got here is getting better

00:34:12

at procrastinating.

00:34:14

I recall the procrastinate on purpose book

00:34:18

that we read by Rory Vaden.

00:34:19

And I know neither of us really liked that book a ton.

00:34:22

But as I was reading this chapter four

00:34:24

and becoming a better procrastinator,

00:34:26

it reminded me of that book and made me realize

00:34:30

there is an argument to be made for this.

00:34:35

Not that I want to go back and reread it,

00:34:37

but I feel like this does add more validity

00:34:41

to Rory Vaden's approach.

00:34:44

I think you and I both kind of bristle

00:34:45

that the fact of procrastinate,

00:34:47

that's a bad thing.

00:34:49

There is bad procrastination,

00:34:51

which is refusing to confront your limitations.

00:34:53

That's how Oliver Berkman defines it.

00:34:55

And I thought that was great.

00:34:56

I'd never heard it described that way.

00:34:58

But when I read that, I was like,

00:34:59

"Ah yes, that makes perfect sense."

00:35:03

- I was gonna say that's the piece

00:35:04

that I think I resonated the most

00:35:06

within this first part,

00:35:08

was that I oftentimes don't act on things

00:35:13

because I feel like I have to choose

00:35:16

or I feel like I'm not going to do it very well

00:35:21

or that I don't have the skills

00:35:22

or I'm not gonna be able to complete it

00:35:25

in the amount of time I have.

00:35:25

Like there's so many different ways you can come at this,

00:35:27

but I tend to procrastinate on things in a bad way

00:35:32

because I haven't confronted some of that finitude

00:35:36

or that lack of willingness to find or dedicate time.

00:35:41

However you wanna say it,

00:35:42

I don't even know how to reference this stuff anymore.

00:35:44

I'm like, but you get what I'm saying.

00:35:46

Like I don't know how to,

00:35:48

like I haven't confronted any of those.

00:35:50

Like I haven't embraced that mentality

00:35:53

that I have a finite amount of time here.

00:35:56

So then I do procrastinate,

00:35:57

which seems backwards when you first,

00:36:00

like when I'm saying this, like I feel like,

00:36:02

well obviously that would be a great motivator.

00:36:04

Wouldn't it?

00:36:05

Maybe it's a demotorvator and I don't understand

00:36:07

how that actually happens,

00:36:08

but Oliver seems to get it.

00:36:11

But this is one of those points where I worked through this

00:36:15

and the way he explained it made a lot of sense,

00:36:18

but trying to rearticulate it as the challenge here

00:36:21

'cause I feel like he phrased it really, really well

00:36:23

in the book.

00:36:24

- He did.

00:36:25

You know, he said that the goal of time management

00:36:27

is helping you neglect the right things.

00:36:31

And that's the phrase that hearkened back

00:36:34

to Rory Vaden's book for me

00:36:37

because that was all about the thing

00:36:39

that is really important to do that.

00:36:40

Everything else procrastinate.

00:36:43

And when you think about it in that simple of terms,

00:36:45

it sounds ridiculous.

00:36:47

Like why in the world would you do that?

00:36:49

It sounds really stressful.

00:36:52

But it's only stressful I think

00:36:54

if you're trying to do all the things.

00:36:58

And even I think there's a distinction to be made

00:37:00

between trying to do all the things

00:37:03

and feeling pressure to complete all the things.

00:37:08

He tells in this chapter the story of Frank Kafka

00:37:12

who fell in love with this lady

00:37:15

and he had a career as a banker.

00:37:17

He wanted to get married.

00:37:19

He wanted to be a writer.

00:37:21

And he kind of bounced back and forth

00:37:22

between all these things.

00:37:23

He was engaged.

00:37:24

He broke it off.

00:37:25

He was engaged again.

00:37:27

And this guy just sounds completely miserable

00:37:30

because he's not okay with giving up any of the possibilities.

00:37:35

It's like if I were to continue to hold on

00:37:39

to the hope that someday I will be a professional athlete

00:37:44

because I played sports in college, right?

00:37:48

That ship has sailed.

00:37:49

And sometimes you think about that and you're like,

00:37:51

ah, that's kind of sad.

00:37:52

I used to really like basketball and tennis

00:37:55

and all these things.

00:37:57

But actually it's only sad for a second.

00:37:59

And then you're like, no, it's way better now.

00:38:02

And even that statement I recognize,

00:38:05

like that's kind of a confirmation bias

00:38:07

and like I'm happy with the way that things turned out.

00:38:09

And maybe not everybody is.

00:38:12

Maybe you do beat yourself up over.

00:38:14

I had this door that I could have walked through

00:38:17

and maybe I should have,

00:38:19

but Oliver Berkman would say essentially

00:38:22

just come to terms with the fact that that door is closed.

00:38:25

Close it and move on.

00:38:27

Don't continue to dredge that up in the past.

00:38:30

Just you've made your choice, stick with your choice,

00:38:33

stick with it until the conclusion of it.

00:38:36

If this is really something that's important to you

00:38:37

and don't just be tossed back and forth

00:38:40

between all of these different competing priorities.

00:38:43

And that's, I understand a lot easier said than done,

00:38:47

but he also talks in this chapter about the reality

00:38:51

of that big rock analogy is that you've got more big rocks

00:38:55

and you can fit in your jar.

00:38:56

So don't scrutinize, did I eliminate the right rock?

00:39:01

Just fit the things in there that you can,

00:39:04

chuck the ones that don't and move on.

00:39:06

There'll be other opportunities.

00:39:10

There'll be other options that present themselves.

00:39:13

I feel like that's something that we stress out about is,

00:39:17

well, this might be my one shot at doing something

00:39:20

important or big or rewarding or whatever.

00:39:24

No, it's not.

00:39:26

You might, you can't see down the road

00:39:29

and you can't see where the other doors are gonna open,

00:39:31

but it's not once you make this choice,

00:39:34

you live with it for the entirety of your human existence.

00:39:38

You are gonna have more flexibility and more options

00:39:41

to reevaluate things in the future.

00:39:44

- Yeah, I feel like you're skirting around the piece

00:39:47

in this chapter about settling.

00:39:49

- Yes.

00:39:49

- And how settling is generally thought of

00:39:53

as a negative thing.

00:39:54

Like when I say the word settle,

00:39:56

my guess is in your mind you're thinking,

00:39:59

oh, you didn't get the best.

00:40:01

Well, maybe, but I also have to keep in mind

00:40:06

that by not settling, and in this case, not choosing,

00:40:11

as is the story for Kafka,

00:40:14

by not settling, you are settling.

00:40:17

You're choosing not to settle and thus prolonging.

00:40:21

So you can see this with people who don't settle down

00:40:26

and get married, who don't settle on a specific partner

00:40:31

that always like, there might be somebody else

00:40:34

that's better out there and they move in together,

00:40:37

you learn a lot about the other person,

00:40:39

you realize, well, there's not this perfect combination

00:40:42

of qualities in this person, but I'm sure

00:40:44

that that exists somewhere else.

00:40:47

So I'm gonna move on and then not settle.

00:40:50

That's an extreme version.

00:40:51

Like you can take it so many other ways,

00:40:53

like artists not settling to ship something,

00:40:56

like always perfecting something and never turning it loose,

00:40:59

not settling into a specific career,

00:41:03

but always choosing different jobs

00:41:04

and floating from thing to thing.

00:41:06

Like that's the same concept.

00:41:08

You're not settling down to that one thing,

00:41:12

but at the same time, and I know there are like

00:41:17

some information gathers and people like wanna research

00:41:20

all the things and learn everything that is about that.

00:41:22

My wife does this.

00:41:24

Well, check every review, wants to know every option

00:41:27

and wants to get the absolute best in something.

00:41:30

Like that's okay in some things,

00:41:32

but in absolutely everything, it's paralyzing.

00:41:35

And you end up spending all of your time

00:41:37

in that research mode and trying to find the best thing,

00:41:40

which is sad, honestly, if you start really diving into it,

00:41:43

how much time are you spending?

00:41:45

How much effort are you putting into that

00:41:47

when you could have made the decision early on

00:41:49

and probably be just as happy

00:41:52

with something that you quote unquote settled on

00:41:55

and didn't spend all that time putting the effort into it.

00:41:58

So I really love that part.

00:42:00

Maybe that's just me who tends to jump to decisions

00:42:03

very, very quickly.

00:42:05

That one, like I can change my mind later, but that one.

00:42:09

- Yep.

00:42:09

- I do that very quickly.

00:42:11

- Yeah, and he would argue that's the right approach

00:42:13

because you're right, the whole settling issue,

00:42:16

he talks about how the person who is always

00:42:19

looking for a better romantic partner

00:42:22

actually does not get the depth of the human relationship

00:42:26

that they are craving by settling for someone

00:42:30

and staying married to them for 50 years.

00:42:33

And that's just one example.

00:42:34

You did a great job of listing a whole bunch of other arenas

00:42:37

where this could manifest.

00:42:40

But I also feel like this kind of leads

00:42:42

into the fourth point here too.

00:42:44

So the fourth thing in the outline is distractions

00:42:46

and avoiding limitations.

00:42:48

Because if you are constantly looking for better options,

00:42:53

like you were talking about,

00:42:55

your wife always doing the research.

00:42:57

And I do the research too.

00:42:58

And the thing with doing the research is you always think,

00:43:03

well, there's gotta be like one other option,

00:43:05

one other product somewhere that falls

00:43:07

in this sweet spot of this thing

00:43:08

that I know exactly what I'm looking for.

00:43:11

That's gonna check all of the boxes.

00:43:13

And if you can never quite get there,

00:43:17

I'll just continue to research.

00:43:18

(laughs)

00:43:20

And I'll know exactly what I'm looking for,

00:43:22

but I'll never be able to get it, right?

00:43:24

So that is not a great solution,

00:43:27

especially when you combine that with chapter five.

00:43:29

He talks about the watermelon problem

00:43:31

and that gets into social media and all that kind of stuff.

00:43:35

There's a quote in there from Tristan Harris,

00:43:37

I don't wanna spend a whole lot of time

00:43:38

on this particular piece of it.

00:43:40

But every time you open a social media app,

00:43:42

he says, "There are a thousand people

00:43:44

"on the other side of the screen paid to keep you there."

00:43:47

And that's exactly what happens

00:43:48

with the online research.

00:43:51

As soon as you start researching that stuff pretty soon,

00:43:54

you see the ads from your Amazon searches

00:43:56

and every single Google search you do,

00:43:59

every single website you visit,

00:44:01

you see those ads for those things

00:44:03

that you saw that one time and you were considering,

00:44:06

"Hey, don't you think you really ought to get this thing?

00:44:09

"You need this thing."

00:44:11

So this is pretty insidious how all this stuff works

00:44:15

with our brains that are craving the distractions.

00:44:18

And it's interesting because chapter six,

00:44:20

he talks about the reason that we seek these distractions

00:44:25

is because they help us cope with our finitude,

00:44:28

not in a good way, but that's what we do

00:44:33

because when we are looking for the distractions,

00:44:37

when we are considering all the options, right?

00:44:40

That's how we frame it in a positive way.

00:44:43

We're doing our research

00:44:44

'cause no one wants to make an uninformed decision

00:44:46

and waste their money or their time or whatever.

00:44:47

So we'll waste all of our time and money

00:44:50

doing all the research.

00:44:52

That appears in the moment to remove our limits.

00:44:56

And I can totally see how we trick ourselves

00:44:59

into thinking that.

00:45:02

But ultimately his point is that distractions

00:45:04

are just the places that we go to seek relief

00:45:06

from the discomfort of confronting our own limitations.

00:45:09

So again, he's not beating around the bush here at all.

00:45:13

He's just saying the issue is you're not gonna be able

00:45:15

to do all the things, so just deal with it.

00:45:18

- Or you may not feel like you can do them well enough.

00:45:21

- Sure, yeah.

00:45:22

- I know he brought that point out here too.

00:45:24

And if you've got a task that you don't feel

00:45:27

like you're well suited to do at the level

00:45:31

that you want to do it,

00:45:32

that can then lead you to trying to find

00:45:34

a distraction as well.

00:45:37

I recently did this with, and I didn't know I was doing it,

00:45:40

but I found myself oddly enough on social media

00:45:44

more than I normally was.

00:45:46

And I was in my email inbox a lot more than normal

00:45:49

and having read this section recently,

00:45:52

I kind of paused, it's like, okay, why am I bouncing

00:45:56

from thing to thing?

00:45:57

And it occurred to me that I had a video

00:46:00

that I needed to edit for a Sunday morning announcement,

00:46:04

which is kind of a rah-rah sort of thing.

00:46:07

And I needed to get that video edited,

00:46:10

but I hadn't figured out what story to tell

00:46:12

with the footage that I had for it.

00:46:14

I'd already collected all the interview footage

00:46:16

I needed for it, and I had all the B-roll

00:46:18

and stuff I needed for it,

00:46:19

but I was not certain of what story to tell

00:46:22

with what I had.

00:46:23

I didn't know how to put that together.

00:46:26

Instead of spending time trying to figure out

00:46:27

how to do that, and actually looking through it all,

00:46:29

and just kind of formulating a plan,

00:46:32

it was way easier to just acknowledge

00:46:34

or try to escape that and spend time in a world

00:46:38

other than the real world here,

00:46:41

and assume that I've got an infinite amount of time

00:46:44

to do that and just put it off.

00:46:46

Well, I ended up getting it done like two days

00:46:48

before it needed to be done, which was like

00:46:50

the absolute latest it possibly could get done.

00:46:53

And that was the only reason it got done at that time.

00:46:56

But in retrospect, looking at that,

00:46:59

it was more of my concern with not doing a good job

00:47:02

on the video, not knowing what to do,

00:47:04

not defining any of that,

00:47:06

and then just trying to ignore that fact

00:47:09

by stepping somewhere else,

00:47:10

and finding any distraction I could possibly find

00:47:13

to put off doing it at all.

00:47:14

That's the uncomfortable part, right?

00:47:16

'Cause chapter five is all about the machine

00:47:19

that's designed to steal your attention,

00:47:21

but then he ends it by saying,

00:47:23

"Much of the time we give into distraction willingly."

00:47:27

Oh yeah, I definitely, I sought it out, yes.

00:47:30

- Yep, and we've all been there

00:47:31

where we were procrastinating on this thing

00:47:33

we know we need to do,

00:47:34

and then the minute that we decide to do it,

00:47:36

it takes way less time than we thought,

00:47:38

and we beat ourselves up,

00:47:40

why was I putting this thing off so much?

00:47:43

But in chapter six, he kind of explains why that is.

00:47:45

He says more often than not,

00:47:46

we don't feel like doing what needs doing,

00:47:49

but we're attracted to the things that don't.

00:47:52

And I feel this statement maybe flies in the face

00:47:57

of some of the dopamine driven,

00:48:00

eat the ice cream, not the frog first stuff

00:48:04

that I have heard in terms of the ADHD stuff.

00:48:07

And I don't know enough to speak to this directly,

00:48:11

but I hear Oliver Berkman saying this,

00:48:13

and I feel like maybe this is forcing everybody

00:48:17

at some level to recognize the fact that

00:48:21

you're never gonna make that thing look attractive enough

00:48:25

to do it every single time,

00:48:27

something that needs doing, needs doing.

00:48:29

How do you feel about this?

00:48:31

- Yeah, I've recently gone through your podcast with,

00:48:35

I don't remember his name.

00:48:36

- Jesse Anderson.

00:48:37

- About ADHD, yeah.

00:48:38

So as of like the last week I finished going through

00:48:42

that podcast that you did with Sparky and him.

00:48:45

And obviously like I resonate with Jesse a lot on it,

00:48:49

and I know that having read this now

00:48:52

and gone through this part at least,

00:48:54

maybe a week ago now,

00:48:56

that for me seeing all of these distractions,

00:48:59

being aware that,

00:49:01

'cause one of the big tenets of ADD is that we're time blind.

00:49:06

Like there's now and not now,

00:49:08

that's really how I tend to think of time.

00:49:11

Even though that's completely absurd,

00:49:13

like the whole planning ahead thing

00:49:14

is just something I'm terrible at.

00:49:16

And I know a lot of ADHD people are like that.

00:49:20

And at the same point,

00:49:22

like going through this and realizing

00:49:25

how I tend to seek out distractions,

00:49:28

like there's the whole dopamine thing,

00:49:30

like ADHD brains don't produce as much,

00:49:32

so you tend to seek out more of it than most people.

00:49:35

And just knowing that,

00:49:38

so many things go through my brains,

00:49:39

like one that could be an actual chemical imbalance

00:49:43

that needs to be helped.

00:49:46

But I also can't help but process the thought

00:49:49

that there might be some training that has caused that as well.

00:49:54

I don't know that that's true.

00:49:56

I'm not a scientist,

00:49:56

like I'm not a neuroscientist of course,

00:49:58

but I can't help but think that there's maybe

00:50:01

some behavioral things that have led to that over time.

00:50:05

And trying to fight against that could be helpful.

00:50:08

Now obviously,

00:50:09

if you wanna be completely point blank,

00:50:11

fighting against it really wouldn't hurt anyone,

00:50:14

but I feel like the ADD brain has a little bit more

00:50:18

to fight against by default.

00:50:20

- Sure.

00:50:21

- And me personally, just knowing that whenever I'm,

00:50:25

like if I find myself distracting myself,

00:50:28

this at least has taught me to try to ask the question,

00:50:31

why am I feeling like I have infinite time right now?

00:50:36

And that's not true.

00:50:38

And trying to confront that.

00:50:39

Like that little questioning piece right there,

00:50:43

at least has helped me in the last week.

00:50:44

I don't know if that'll stand over time, of course,

00:50:47

but I feel like this is at least touching on that territory.

00:50:51

It's kind of like what I was talking about early on

00:50:53

with the follow up of self control and ADHD.

00:50:56

Like there's something here that connects those.

00:51:00

I don't know that I've processed it quite well enough

00:51:02

to be able to say definitively like in my case,

00:51:04

what that means,

00:51:05

but I know there's at least a connection here.

00:51:08

I don't know if that's what you're getting at, but.

00:51:09

- Yeah, no, I think if I could summarize it,

00:51:12

basically what you're saying is that maybe the 80 HD brain

00:51:17

versus a neurotypical brain, the ADHD brain

00:51:20

does have a little bit more of an obstacle to overcome,

00:51:24

but ultimately it sounds like the thing is not to remove

00:51:29

the unpleasantness of the task

00:51:31

because if Oliver Berkman is right,

00:51:33

you're never gonna do that anyways.

00:51:36

So do what you can to make things more attractive,

00:51:40

get the dopamine hit, whatever,

00:51:42

but also recognize that you're never gonna make it

00:51:45

completely go away because as Oliver Berkman says,

00:51:47

you're gonna find it unpleasant constraining your focus

00:51:49

to what matters no matter what.

00:51:51

And I think that's the thing that kind of bothered me,

00:51:54

not about the book, but just about the whole idea

00:51:58

of finding the thing, do what you love.

00:52:02

You never have to work a day in your life.

00:52:03

That whole sort of a thing.

00:52:05

Because the minute that you go from doing something for fun

00:52:08

to doing something for a job,

00:52:10

you find yourself resisting doing the thing

00:52:13

because you have to instead of you get to,

00:52:17

which sounds ridiculous.

00:52:18

The task itself hasn't changed at all.

00:52:21

And so I've been thinking about that.

00:52:22

Like why is that?

00:52:23

And I think Oliver Berkman kind of nails it right there.

00:52:27

- I had a lot of those where it's like,

00:52:29

I've been trying to like, I've been processing,

00:52:32

like thinking about things around this for a long time.

00:52:35

And then Berkman just comes in and like,

00:52:37

oh, here's what's going on.

00:52:39

Oh, thanks for that dude.

00:52:42

- Yep.

00:52:42

And then also I think that kind of sets the stage

00:52:45

for the next thing here.

00:52:47

So let's go into part two, which is beyond control.

00:52:50

And the first point I jotted down was enjoying the moment

00:52:53

versus capturing for the future,

00:52:55

which is kind of getting at what we were sort of just talking

00:52:59

about now versus doing something maybe distasteful right now

00:53:04

because it's going to give you future benefit, future gain.

00:53:09

I think of the Dave Ramsey quote,

00:53:11

"Pay now, play later," or "play now, pay later."

00:53:14

And Oliver Berkman, I think what take issue

00:53:17

with that statement, (laughs)

00:53:20

because that's the traditional approach.

00:53:23

And we can fall into this trap

00:53:28

where we'll do these things now

00:53:31

because it's going to set us up for that moment

00:53:33

in the future when we transition from where we are now

00:53:37

to where we finally think we should be.

00:53:41

And once we arrive, then things will get easier

00:53:46

that when I finally arrive, mind,

00:53:51

there's actually a name for that,

00:53:52

which I discovered when I was doing some research

00:53:55

for a recent focused episode.

00:53:57

It's called Arrival Fallacy.

00:53:59

You've got that point, that destination.

00:54:03

Once I finally do this thing, then everything is just

00:54:07

going to smooth out and the path forward

00:54:09

is going to become clear and that never happens.

00:54:13

So Oliver Berkman would say, "Quit, putting off

00:54:16

all of the enjoyment of now

00:54:20

and just kicking the can down the road believing that

00:54:22

at some point it's all going to click into place

00:54:24

and you'll be happy.

00:54:25

Figure out how to be happy in the moment.

00:54:28

Figure out how to live for now

00:54:30

because you can never be truly certain of the future."

00:54:34

Now, this got me thinking.

00:54:37

And one of the things he talks about in chapter eight,

00:54:41

which is titled, "You Are Here" is the Rosetta Stone

00:54:45

at some Egyptian Museum and it sounds like he was there

00:54:49

and he saw all these people walking by it,

00:54:52

taking pictures of it with their phones

00:54:54

so they could remember it later

00:54:57

and just thinking to himself, "They're missing it now."

00:55:00

(laughs)

00:55:02

And I kind of thought maybe the place to jump off here

00:55:06

in terms of this discussion of being in the moment

00:55:08

versus being in the future is just that specific scenario.

00:55:13

Do you tend to be the type of person who just enjoys

00:55:16

the moment, you know, maybe your kids are doing something goofy

00:55:19

and you're just going to soak in the expression on their faces

00:55:23

or are you, I got to capture this

00:55:25

because I'll look at these pictures years later

00:55:29

and I'll really be glad that I have these.

00:55:32

- Yeah, I actually have to have this conversation a lot,

00:55:35

which is weird, but if you run AV for funerals,

00:55:40

this conversation comes up frequently

00:55:44

because what's the very first thing that happens

00:55:48

when you walk into a funeral or like a visitation of sorts?

00:55:52

There's always the slideshow, right?

00:55:54

There's always the looping pictures, videos of the deceased

00:55:59

and that never struck me, like this point of enjoying

00:56:03

the moment versus capturing for the future,

00:56:05

that never struck me, has never struck me as profoundly

00:56:09

as it did when I ran sound for the funeral

00:56:12

of a seven year old little girl

00:56:14

and mom and dad brought me a thumb drive

00:56:19

with 800 photos of her on that thumb drive

00:56:24

and they wanted them to be played

00:56:27

and they said they wanted to hopefully wanted

00:56:29

to get through it a couple times before the service started.

00:56:33

I normally put pictures on loop at like seven seconds,

00:56:36

like it's up for seven seconds and then it goes on to the next.

00:56:39

If you work out the math on that,

00:56:41

you don't have time to go through that but like once

00:56:45

in the span of a visitation

00:56:48

and it occurred to me whenever I was walking through that

00:56:51

and talking through it with them,

00:56:53

it's like I have too many here to share.

00:56:56

Now, well, those are all of our important moments.

00:56:59

I'm not arguing that.

00:57:00

I'm disconnected from what the meaning is of those photos.

00:57:05

I'm purely from a technological stance telling you

00:57:08

that we need to make your visitation twice as long

00:57:10

if you want to go through that whole thing twice.

00:57:13

That prompted a whole conversation about

00:57:16

should we have taken so many pictures

00:57:18

which is not a conversation I want to be in

00:57:20

with a set of parents who just lost their seven year old girl

00:57:23

of them trying to decide did they take too many pictures

00:57:26

versus enjoying those moments.

00:57:28

And I definitely float on when it comes to kids anyway,

00:57:32

I float on the side of enjoying the moment,

00:57:35

maybe a bit far because I regularly find myself,

00:57:39

like Becky will ask me, like,

00:57:40

do you have some pictures that we could put in

00:57:42

a Christmas card?

00:57:43

Like, I think I took a picture of the girls

00:57:47

about a month ago.

00:57:48

- The struggle is real.

00:57:49

- That's my-- - We went with something.

00:57:51

- Yeah, I don't.

00:57:53

And it's not because I don't want pictures of my kids,

00:57:55

it's just that I'm too busy playing with them

00:57:58

or doing something with them,

00:58:00

that it feels weird to take my phone out

00:58:01

and take pictures of them.

00:58:03

And so as far as kids go,

00:58:06

I definitely find myself, like, in the moment.

00:58:08

But where this shifts gears is when you start thinking

00:58:12

about like how I've, along with my wife,

00:58:15

like how we have set up our life just in general,

00:58:18

because so much of what we've decided to do now

00:58:20

versus later is like putting off fun things

00:58:25

or things we would do as a family or putting off,

00:58:28

I'm drawing a blank on what those would be right now.

00:58:30

We put off decisions for later

00:58:33

because we're waiting for something to arrive.

00:58:36

Like we're gonna have more time in the future

00:58:38

for jumping on the trampoline

00:58:40

after we get this project done.

00:58:42

Like, well, when that project's done,

00:58:44

we're gonna add two more probably.

00:58:46

So that's never gonna happen.

00:58:47

So we'll jump on the trampoline now.

00:58:49

Like that's, that's, I think something that I struggle with

00:58:52

is choosing what those projects are,

00:58:54

not so much like capturing.

00:58:56

But like you're saying, the Rosetta Stone piece,

00:58:59

that slaps you in the face with the thing of like,

00:59:02

do embrace the nature you're around

00:59:04

versus taking pictures of it.

00:59:06

I'm talking too long right now.

00:59:07

But yes, I think you get my point.

00:59:09

- Yeah, I think I probably am in the same camp

00:59:13

as you are where I don't document stuff.

00:59:17

People might argue enough.

00:59:19

And as a result, I don't have a huge photo library

00:59:22

that I can go back through.

00:59:24

But also, I'm not through it yet,

00:59:28

but I don't have any remorse or regret.

00:59:31

Like I missed a section of my kids' lives

00:59:35

'cause I've done my best to redeem as much time

00:59:40

as I can in each stage.

00:59:41

And I am, for whatever weird reason, completely okay

00:59:44

with them growing up and walking into the next one.

00:59:47

I don't have that.

00:59:48

Like, oh, I wish they would stay little

00:59:50

because I really like the way Adelaide can't say marshmallow.

00:59:54

So she says farm fellow and it's really cute.

00:59:56

And I don't ever want that to change.

00:59:58

Like it's gonna change.

00:59:59

But the next season's gonna be special in its own right.

01:00:03

And I think if I was so attached to preserving

01:00:08

the way things currently are,

01:00:09

and not forgetting this memory,

01:00:13

I would be pulling out my phone more often

01:00:15

and trying to record those little moments.

01:00:18

Part of it, I think, is every time I try to do that,

01:00:20

the moment is immediately over for me

01:00:22

because my kids are all like, I wanna see, I wanna see.

01:00:24

(laughs)

01:00:26

- Exactly.

01:00:26

You can't take a picture of it

01:00:27

'cause the whole thing's done after that.

01:00:29

They wanna see what the picture's done.

01:00:30

- Exactly.

01:00:31

So let's just enjoy it for what it is.

01:00:35

And I think that's kind of what Oliver Berkman would advise.

01:00:39

He also says in chapter eight,

01:00:41

he defines, he calls a casual catastrophe,

01:00:44

which is the belief that the proof of rightness

01:00:46

or wrongness of some way of bringing up your kids

01:00:49

is the kind of adult that it produces.

01:00:51

And he uses a couple of extreme examples

01:00:53

on opposite ends for this,

01:00:55

which I thought was pretty effective the way that he did it.

01:00:59

I also have to wrestle with myself.

01:01:02

I want to be in the moment.

01:01:04

I want to enjoy the process

01:01:08

and not procrastinate for lack of a better term.

01:01:13

Well, the real payoff is gonna be when they're adults

01:01:16

and they've left home

01:01:17

and they have what they need to make their own decisions.

01:01:21

But if I'm real with myself,

01:01:23

I don't know how you avoid falling into that sort of thing.

01:01:26

I don't know that it's necessarily bad

01:01:27

to fall into that sort of thing.

01:01:28

I think it's okay to think about that.

01:01:30

I think the line is where if that's all the value

01:01:34

and you just continually put off today

01:01:37

in belief that it's gonna produce a better tomorrow.

01:01:41

And there's a couple different factors

01:01:43

that go into this.

01:01:44

In the previous chapter, he talks about worry

01:01:46

and worries the mind's attempt to generate

01:01:48

a feeling of security about the future.

01:01:50

Consider all the options, right?

01:01:52

Worst case scenario, all that kind of stuff.

01:01:55

But then also, I think you can apply this outside

01:01:58

of the kid context in just the habits and the routines

01:02:02

that you embrace.

01:02:04

So the next point on the outline here is hiking

01:02:07

for hiking's sake because he talks about that

01:02:10

as the thing where you're gonna go

01:02:12

and you're gonna hike and there is no end goal

01:02:15

for I'm gonna become a better hiker.

01:02:18

Whereas for me, for example, when I started running,

01:02:22

it was so that I could run a half marathon

01:02:25

and I have shared before about how my whole thinking

01:02:28

on that has changed and it's not prepping for a race,

01:02:32

it's learning to enjoy the process being in the moment.

01:02:35

But when he's talking about hiking,

01:02:36

I immediately thought of you and your hikes in the morning

01:02:39

slash evening, are you still doing those?

01:02:42

Yeah, took the dog out this morning.

01:02:44

Yep.

01:02:44

Planning to do so tonight, but it gets cold sometimes,

01:02:48

but I still do it.

01:02:49

(laughing)

01:02:49

Does get cold, but is he defining that accurately

01:02:54

in chapter nine when he's talking about rediscovering rest

01:02:57

where you just do it because you enjoy doing it

01:03:01

and maybe you enjoy different things about it,

01:03:03

maybe you enjoy the fresh air, maybe you do feel,

01:03:06

you enjoy the cold, the brisk walks,

01:03:10

before it gets really freezing here in the Midwest.

01:03:13

Maybe it's the clarity that comes from

01:03:16

just thinking about things as you feel the crunch

01:03:19

of the leaves underneath your feet or whatever,

01:03:21

but I'm kind of curious if you don't mind

01:03:24

kind of elaborating on this process

01:03:26

and what it is you enjoy about it

01:03:28

and how that's, 'cause I'm assuming this is one way

01:03:31

that you're kind of practicing what he's talking about here.

01:03:35

Yeah, and if we go to last week,

01:03:37

there was a perfect day that illustrates

01:03:40

this, there was a day that I got up

01:03:42

and I don't always check the weather

01:03:45

before I go outside to see what temperature it is,

01:03:47

I usually step outside, see what it feels like

01:03:50

and then that dictates, is this a scarf morning?

01:03:52

Is this a throw seven layers of something

01:03:55

over my head morning?

01:03:56

Like that's kind of what I decide.

01:04:00

And that morning I stepped out and it was cold,

01:04:05

there was a slight breeze which made it even worse

01:04:08

and I went through another like fleece line,

01:04:11

something over top of what I had on,

01:04:13

threw on a scarf, ski mask, like the whole thing

01:04:16

and then grabbed the dog and we went for a walk

01:04:19

out in the back of the woods.

01:04:20

When I got back I found out it was negative 13 that morning

01:04:23

when I went outside.

01:04:24

So the windshield I think was negative 19,

01:04:27

something like, oh wait, it was cold,

01:04:29

it was a cold one, but it didn't occur to me

01:04:31

until after I got back that I guess it was super cold.

01:04:36

But what I find is when I go on those walks,

01:04:40

and this is why I find myself doing it regardless

01:04:43

of weather, I even went out one morning when I was raining

01:04:46

and I do it because one, I like going for the walk,

01:04:51

it's fun to take the dog out, he loves getting out,

01:04:53

he doesn't get to, like he can go in the back woods

01:04:56

like that, but he won't on his own

01:04:58

'cause he's eight pounds, a little scared

01:05:01

of the woods I guess.

01:05:02

So he likes to go out with you

01:05:05

and I like taking him out, but there's all sorts

01:05:10

of things happen, one, it calms my brain,

01:05:12

two, it's similar to, there's a story later on

01:05:17

where they talk, there's an art teacher

01:05:20

who has their students pick a piece of art

01:05:22

and go stare at it for three hours.

01:05:24

- I love that, yeah.

01:05:25

- Which, I love the concept, I don't wanna do that,

01:05:28

by the way, like I would love to have done it,

01:05:32

but I don't wanna do it.

01:05:33

(laughs)

01:05:35

But there's something along those lines

01:05:38

that happens when you go out into the same set of woods

01:05:42

on the same set of trails every single day.

01:05:45

And one of those is similar to what you and I've talked

01:05:47

about in the past, you've learned what's going on

01:05:49

so you know when things are out of order

01:05:51

and what to do with them, like this is why

01:05:52

you power washed your house, right?

01:05:54

You saw that it was dirty and you didn't realize

01:05:55

it was dirty until you walked around every day.

01:05:57

That thing does happen when you walk these trails,

01:06:01

but also you start to notice things

01:06:03

that have been there the whole time

01:06:05

you just didn't realize they were there.

01:06:07

I noticed this morning when I went out

01:06:09

that there's a cedar tree, often a corner of the woods

01:06:13

that I hadn't noticed before.

01:06:14

I've walked these woods well over 100 times now

01:06:18

and have never noticed this tree,

01:06:20

which is in the corner of the lot,

01:06:22

that I walk within 15 feet of.

01:06:24

It's like that's what I'm talking about,

01:06:26

like you start to see things more and that's enjoyable.

01:06:30

Like there's something with that that's fun

01:06:33

to just always explore new things.

01:06:35

Like he says in this chapter in this section,

01:06:37

"You're never going to be a top notch hiker.

01:06:42

Like you can't be the best at hiking."

01:06:44

Like it's walking.

01:06:45

Like from the time you're four,

01:06:47

you've pretty much got the art of walking mastered.

01:06:50

Like this is just the way it is.

01:06:53

So hiking is something that people do not necessarily

01:06:56

to get better at hiking, but because they like hiking.

01:07:00

You know, another example is I had a,

01:07:02

the electrical contractor that came into our house

01:07:04

to do the inspections.

01:07:05

I got to talking to him about completely non-electrical things,

01:07:08

but he was explaining how he burns wood

01:07:11

for heat in his house.

01:07:12

And one of his favorite things to do is split wood.

01:07:15

Like people talk about how that's such a waste of time,

01:07:18

you shouldn't be burning wood, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:07:20

But it gets you outside.

01:07:22

It gives you space to think.

01:07:24

It gives you a physical activity to do

01:07:28

and it's okay to just like doing that.

01:07:30

As much as we like to bemoan physical labor that's like that,

01:07:35

it can be fun for its own.

01:07:37

It's like, I don't know if this is answering what you're after,

01:07:39

but I know that the walks that I go on,

01:07:42

at least once a day, if not twice a day,

01:07:44

generally it's twice a day,

01:07:46

they have so many different aspects to it

01:07:48

that it's hard to say how much value is in them

01:07:51

because it's also just fun.

01:07:53

It's just something I like doing.

01:07:55

It's okay.

01:07:56

Like I don't feel like it has to have some productive

01:08:00

rationale behind it, even though I think it does

01:08:02

and I can probably justify it that way.

01:08:04

- I think he would agree with you

01:08:06

'cause in chapter nine he talks about,

01:08:09

and this is one of the things I jettled down to my mind,

01:08:10

"Notify all, why do we feel the need to defend our leisure

01:08:13

in terms of productivity?"

01:08:15

- Yes, yes, we totally do.

01:08:19

Like even us with reading books, right?

01:08:21

Well, we get good lessons out of those,

01:08:24

but it's fun.

01:08:25

- Yep.

01:08:27

And that can be enough.

01:08:29

If it's fun.

01:08:31

And that's kind of the difference between a real hobby

01:08:36

and I guess what Mike Curly would call a jobby.

01:08:40

Something that you do for fun,

01:08:42

but you also get in his terms,

01:08:45

he gets paid for it.

01:08:46

Like the Panatic podcast, for example, is a jobby.

01:08:49

He likes fountain pens,

01:08:50

but the fact that he has this podcast,

01:08:53

they do sponsors and things like that,

01:08:56

that changes the interaction with the hobby itself for him.

01:09:01

And that's why he's gotten into mechanical keyboards

01:09:04

and doesn't wanna start a mechanical keyboards podcast

01:09:08

because he likes the disconnect there

01:09:11

of having this thing not have the pressure

01:09:15

to be producing something.

01:09:16

And I feel like that is very legitimate.

01:09:20

Hobbies, Oliver Berkman says,

01:09:21

"Are free from the pressure to be good at them."

01:09:24

So proficiency does not matter.

01:09:26

You can just enjoy chopping wood.

01:09:28

You can enjoy going for a hike.

01:09:30

And I feel like this is one of those things

01:09:32

that I need to spend some time considering

01:09:35

where can I make some adjustments

01:09:38

and just enjoy doing the thing

01:09:40

as opposed to trying to be good at it.

01:09:41

One of the areas that I've been forced to make

01:09:43

that adjustment is in running

01:09:46

because I realized after my first or second race,

01:09:49

I am not fast.

01:09:51

I am not built to be a runner.

01:09:54

So I am never going to win.

01:09:57

And that is completely fine,

01:09:58

just because I enjoy doing it.

01:10:01

But I feel like there are other areas

01:10:03

where I can just enjoy the process

01:10:06

and not feel like I need to be good at it.

01:10:09

And so one of the,

01:10:11

my one action item from this entire book

01:10:14

comes from chapter eight.

01:10:16

And again, these kind of link together.

01:10:19

But as it pertains to the hobbies

01:10:21

and the disconnect of producing some future outcome,

01:10:25

I feel like working out falls into this too

01:10:28

where people, well, I'm going to suffer through the workout

01:10:30

because I'm going to lose the weight in the future.

01:10:33

And I've been working out long enough now

01:10:35

that I actually just enjoy going to work out.

01:10:37

And after breaking my hand,

01:10:40

you know, there are a bunch of things that I couldn't do.

01:10:42

And it really was kind of frustrating me.

01:10:45

I bought myself, by the way,

01:10:47

recently these lobster gloves.

01:10:49

You familiar with these?

01:10:51

- No.

01:10:52

- Do you will search for lobster gloves?

01:10:54

You'll see a whole bunch of examples.

01:10:55

And basically they are gloves

01:10:57

that allow you to have your fingers like together like this.

01:11:01

So I have to have my two fingers taped together still.

01:11:05

And I haven't been able to go running

01:11:07

because running gloves all are like individual fingers

01:11:10

with a flap that you fold over them.

01:11:12

So I found this pair of running gloves

01:11:14

that is lobster gloves.

01:11:15

So I can have my fingers bunched together

01:11:17

and these mitten type things and go running.

01:11:19

And again, you know, first time I've gone running

01:11:22

now in several weeks, not fast, slower than I was.

01:11:26

I am out of shape, but it felt so good.

01:11:29

And I'm kind of being forced with this finger injury

01:11:35

to a whole bunch of stuff that I was used to doing.

01:11:38

I wasn't able to do any more playing guitar as a,

01:11:40

another one, which I'm not going to be

01:11:44

Jimmy Hendrix or Eric Clapton.

01:11:46

But it's just something I really enjoy doing

01:11:48

and I haven't been able to do it for a while.

01:11:50

And so not being able to do certain things for a while

01:11:53

has forced me to change my approach to them

01:11:56

and really look forward to just the act

01:11:58

of being able to play some chords again on my guitar.

01:12:02

I'm really looking forward to that.

01:12:04

And I'm hoping that I don't lose that.

01:12:06

So the action item here is how am I in future chasing mindset

01:12:10

and what can I do about it?

01:12:12

- Yeah, that's a tough one too.

01:12:13

'Cause like we were talking about,

01:12:15

if you're capturing for the future,

01:12:16

like that's fairly easy to see,

01:12:20

but when you're always making decisions

01:12:23

based on what the future will be,

01:12:25

like that's the whole businessman

01:12:26

and the Mexican fisherman story that comes out.

01:12:29

It's like, well, what are you doing all day?

01:12:32

Well, I worked for a couple hours

01:12:34

and then I lay around and play songs and drink wine.

01:12:38

And you know this story, the businessman says,

01:12:41

well, you could do so much more, you could make so much.

01:12:43

Buy some boats and then after you retire,

01:12:45

then you can lay around and play music

01:12:48

and drink wine and such.

01:12:50

That's essentially what you're saying.

01:12:52

Like if you're always looking towards the future

01:12:54

and putting off the things like, yes,

01:12:58

I don't have to reiterate that.

01:13:00

- He does tell that a version of that story in this book too.

01:13:03

But one of the things that I appreciated about this book

01:13:05

was Oliver kind of alludes to some of these stories

01:13:09

without having to retell all the details

01:13:12

and the way he explains them,

01:13:14

he has a very specific angle he's approaching it from

01:13:17

and there's no misconstruing what he actually thinks

01:13:20

about that particular story.

01:13:22

- Yes. Yeah, he does have a lot of stories

01:13:24

he doesn't actually tell.

01:13:26

- Yeah, and which is fine because

01:13:28

I think he's kind of assuming you've heard this before

01:13:31

and I wanna just use that as a foundation

01:13:34

for a point that that's actually wrong.

01:13:36

There's a different way to do this.

01:13:38

One of the stats I thought was kind of crazy

01:13:40

was that the average country dweller in the 16th century

01:13:43

only worked about 150 days per year,

01:13:45

which sounds like, well, that's not as much as normal people

01:13:50

but still, there doesn't seem like a whole lot of time off

01:13:55

and then you think about 365 days in a year.

01:13:59

Yeah, you're working less than half of the year

01:14:02

and that sounds amazing.

01:14:05

(laughing)

01:14:07

- Yep, it does.

01:14:09

Becky and I just had this conversation

01:14:11

about being able to do different tasks

01:14:15

at different points in the day

01:14:17

and how whenever I'm doing work at the church

01:14:22

and on the computer, noon is my cutoff.

01:14:25

If I'm not done with making things

01:14:28

or working on the computer by noon,

01:14:30

it's not gonna happen in the afternoon.

01:14:32

So afternoons, I can easily do something like this

01:14:36

where I've got somebody else on, in this case,

01:14:39

we're on the computer together.

01:14:40

I can do that because somebody else is involved

01:14:43

and we can bounce things back and forth.

01:14:45

That works great.

01:14:46

But if I'm not with someone else,

01:14:49

then I've gotta make sure I'm pulling cable,

01:14:51

terminating cables, building stages.

01:14:54

I've gotta do something physical or I'm done.

01:14:57

I cannot keep going in the afternoon

01:15:00

and this came up 'cause Becky said basically the same thing.

01:15:03

I can do all the schoolwork stuff with the kids,

01:15:06

I can do all sorts of these things

01:15:07

but if I'm gonna do some of my hobby stuff

01:15:11

in the afternoon and it's not like something

01:15:14

physically taxing, just can't.

01:15:17

Doing bills and taxes and stuff

01:15:18

in the afternoon just is not gonna happen.

01:15:20

So there's something about that cutoff

01:15:23

around noon that happens and it's all about

01:15:26

just choosing when to do things.

01:15:28

How did I get on that?

01:15:29

I don't even know where I got that from.

01:15:30

- I think that's an interesting topic though.

01:15:33

I know there's books written about that specific thing.

01:15:37

- Oh yeah, just in the right time to do things.

01:15:40

I hadn't thought of it from that angle.

01:15:44

The big point he's making which resonated with me

01:15:47

is that we really could do with more leisure

01:15:51

and more rest because we don't live to work.

01:15:56

We work to live and if you are viewing your time off

01:16:02

as simply a way of recharging for the work,

01:16:07

you're kind of missing the point.

01:16:10

And it sounds obvious when you stayed it that way

01:16:13

but I found myself, if I'm honest,

01:16:15

kind of slipping into that as I was reading,

01:16:17

I'm like, huh, yeah, you know,

01:16:19

I could be a little bit more in the moment

01:16:22

and just enjoy the time off.

01:16:24

And timing is great because as we record this

01:16:26

end of the year, I got two weeks off,

01:16:29

week of Christmas and New Year's largely,

01:16:33

a few little projects like this one,

01:16:35

recording bookworm.

01:16:35

But so it's given me a lot to think about

01:16:39

and a lot to think about not just in terms of my own leisure

01:16:44

but the next point in the outline is this whole idea

01:16:48

of FICA and social time management.

01:16:50

Do you know what the word FICA means?

01:16:53

- No, I was trying to recall, I was looking

01:16:54

and I was like, where did that come from?

01:16:56

Did it come from here?

01:16:57

Did you put this in?

01:16:58

I don't recall it. - It actually comes

01:16:58

from here but it resonates with me

01:17:02

because there is actually a tea bar in Appleton

01:17:06

that I like called FICA.

01:17:08

And so they have the definition plastered on the wall

01:17:10

which is basically to enjoy a cup of tea, coffee,

01:17:14

whatever with friends.

01:17:15

And the point that he makes in the book is,

01:17:19

it's a Swedish term I believe and he couples it

01:17:22

very effectively, I would say, in chapter 12,

01:17:25

The Loneliness of a Digital Nomad with this Swedish study

01:17:28

that showed that people's happiness increased

01:17:31

not just from taking vacation but also how many other people

01:17:36

took vacation at the same time.

01:17:39

So in other words, people were happier

01:17:41

when other people were vacationing at the same time.

01:17:44

They were so that they could do things together.

01:17:47

And so he defines a Swedish FICA as a coordinated break

01:17:50

where everyone shares coffee and cake

01:17:52

and at whatever time in the afternoon,

01:17:54

I assume it's kind of probably like this a little bit.

01:17:57

I know have some friends who have gone to London

01:17:59

and they mentioned there's this specific tea time.

01:18:02

Everybody has tea at this specific time.

01:18:04

And as a tourist, there's limited value in that

01:18:06

because you're just breaking when everybody else is.

01:18:09

If you actually live there,

01:18:11

I think it's a little different because you're on a break,

01:18:15

your buddy's on a break and so you end up

01:18:18

just talking about things and enjoying that time together

01:18:22

and not feeling the pressure.

01:18:24

Like I've got 10 minutes before I have to get back to my job,

01:18:29

which is probably the American version of this is,

01:18:33

you know, we work eight hours a day

01:18:35

and you have a 10 minute break in the morning,

01:18:38

10 minute break in the afternoon of 30 minutes for lunch.

01:18:41

And your boss is breathing down your neck

01:18:43

if you take any longer than that.

01:18:48

And based on the description here in chapter 12,

01:18:51

I feel like the Swedes would probably think we're crazy

01:18:54

because this is a big important part of their day.

01:18:59

- Yeah, I recalled the whole thing with timing of tasks earlier.

01:19:04

It had to do with what you're talking about with leisure.

01:19:06

And it's because like if they had the 150 days

01:19:09

that they worked in the year

01:19:11

that they're really only using about half the year,

01:19:14

which would mean that if you really get good work

01:19:16

and half the day, you're kind of doing the same thing.

01:19:18

But that also can translate into what we're talking about

01:19:21

here with social time management

01:19:23

because there's so much of the work that we do

01:19:26

when you stop and you do lunch together.

01:19:28

Like if your company does a dedicated time

01:19:32

for a lunch break, which where I work does not,

01:19:35

everybody does it whenever they want.

01:19:37

But whenever you do that, you end up building friendships

01:19:40

and you have that social aspect.

01:19:42

And thus happiness goes up or in the Swedish study,

01:19:47

anti-depressant use goes down,

01:19:50

which I thought was a fascinating way to figure that out.

01:19:53

Anti-depressant use drops whenever holidays happen.

01:19:57

I suppose that makes sense,

01:19:59

but it also happens, it goes down the more people

01:20:03

that are having that holiday.

01:20:04

So if it's just like a random weekend

01:20:07

that you have with your family, that's one thing.

01:20:09

But if you have like a Christmas season,

01:20:11

it goes down even more.

01:20:13

So like those are things that,

01:20:15

I suppose we kind of know this,

01:20:17

but it's really, really interesting that that comes out

01:20:20

in this section about a digital nomad,

01:20:23

because like that's, at least in tech circles,

01:20:25

like that concept is almost elevated to the point where

01:20:29

like this is the dream.

01:20:30

- Yep, living the dream.

01:20:31

- This is the thing that people shoot for.

01:20:33

I wanna be able to work from anywhere, whenever I want.

01:20:37

But talk to the people who do that,

01:20:39

or have done it for even just one year.

01:20:42

And you'll hear about how lonely that experience is,

01:20:45

because you don't have schedules,

01:20:47

you don't have people who do it with you.

01:20:49

You're always in someplace new,

01:20:51

and you don't have deep rooted connections.

01:20:55

This is actually one reason that my wife and I are staying

01:20:59

in the area that we're at in Minnesota,

01:21:02

and trying to get us to move from it

01:21:03

would be very, very difficult.

01:21:05

Because even seven, eight years ago,

01:21:09

we debated moving to areas where there's more family,

01:21:12

but even then we decided like,

01:21:14

we've got friendships here, we're happy with where we're at,

01:21:17

and we're just going to send deep, deep roots here,

01:21:22

because we made that choice to send roots deep

01:21:26

instead of shallow and wide.

01:21:28

For the sake of having a more, I guess,

01:21:31

involved life and a more full life,

01:21:34

that's kind of the way that we would term it.

01:21:36

But it's not easy to do that.

01:21:39

You have to fight through some difficult things.

01:21:41

You have to go through not fun things

01:21:44

with other friends, but that's the point.

01:21:47

Like that's why.

01:21:49

That's the good thing.

01:21:51

I'm sorry if I described your life, Blake.

01:21:53

Digital moment, I don't want to be one.

01:21:55

- Well, this is very uncomfortable for me,

01:21:59

because I am maybe surprising to people

01:22:02

who listened to podcasts, but I am extremely introverted.

01:22:07

And for a long time, I thought like,

01:22:12

that was the ideal I got on vacation to nobody else.

01:22:16

I don't have to talk to anybody.

01:22:19

Yes, that's a win.

01:22:20

- Perfect, awesome.

01:22:23

Put that in the success column, let's move on.

01:22:25

- Yeah, I don't think that's true.

01:22:28

And I don't think that reading this book

01:22:31

was the tipping point for me in that,

01:22:33

but I've kind of slowly been coming to this realization

01:22:35

that community is much more important

01:22:39

than I initially thought it was.

01:22:42

And so this is just one more brick in the wall,

01:22:46

a layer in that argument for me,

01:22:50

but very articulately communicated

01:22:54

that as much as I don't want necessarily my personality

01:22:59

to be reliant on other people or be around other people,

01:23:04

that is ultimately why I'm here.

01:23:07

This is kind of getting back to life purpose,

01:23:12

mission statement stuff for me

01:23:15

and recognizing that I cannot do that

01:23:19

if I am a complete loner living in a cabin

01:23:22

in the middle of the woods.

01:23:24

- Right, yep.

01:23:25

- So I'm slowly coming around to the fact that,

01:23:29

this is just gonna become part of the process for me.

01:23:33

And that's okay, because at the heart of this

01:23:36

is this balance where we want control over our time, right?

01:23:41

That's the whole digital nomad thing is I can work

01:23:43

when I want, where I want.

01:23:45

But also the whole social FICA thing

01:23:49

is this whole concept of communal time management.

01:23:52

We all have to coordinate our schedules

01:23:53

so we can all take off together.

01:23:56

And those are not compatible ideas.

01:23:59

You have to, there's just some give and take here

01:24:01

and you have to kind of balance these two things.

01:24:05

And I feel like in the past I've aired too far

01:24:08

on the side of, well, I'm just gonna do my thing.

01:24:11

And never completely, by the way,

01:24:13

I'm not a digital nomad.

01:24:14

We're very involved with our church.

01:24:16

And so that one commitment means

01:24:20

that my schedule is not my own.

01:24:22

And sometimes I think in the past,

01:24:24

maybe I've resented that.

01:24:26

I wish that I could stack these things around

01:24:29

different time slots, yada, yada, yada.

01:24:31

I don't really feel that way anymore.

01:24:33

And I think this chapter in this section of the book

01:24:37

kind of explained to me why I'm starting to come around

01:24:42

on that.

01:24:42

- Yeah, I'll put my hat in the camp of hyper introverted.

01:24:47

You wouldn't really know that.

01:24:48

Even people who see me on Sunday morning

01:24:51

think I'm extroverted.

01:24:52

Like you got me so wrong.

01:24:54

Like, nope.

01:24:56

(laughing)

01:24:57

On the other end of the spectrum.

01:24:58

Definitely on the other end.

01:25:00

So it's not something I wanna go do.

01:25:03

Like even simple things like having another couple

01:25:05

over for dinner.

01:25:07

I naturally won't do that at all.

01:25:10

But my wife loves to do that.

01:25:12

And I'm aware that I always love having that happen.

01:25:16

But I always think I don't want it.

01:25:19

Even though it's exactly what I want.

01:25:21

So I always have to tell myself, like,

01:25:24

if I just start that process,

01:25:26

I will be very happy that I did it.

01:25:29

It's okay to be around other people.

01:25:31

They're not scary.

01:25:33

So I have to remind myself these things.

01:25:37

- I do too.

01:25:38

I do too.

01:25:38

(laughing)

01:25:40

Last thing that I wanted to talk about here,

01:25:44

and there's a lot more that we could talk about by the way,

01:25:46

but this is the one that really jumped out to me.

01:25:50

And this is kind of the whole theme

01:25:51

towards the end of the book here,

01:25:53

is that the universe doesn't care how well

01:25:56

you manage your time.

01:25:57

We kind of alluded to this a little bit

01:26:00

at the beginning how your life,

01:26:03

the big scheme of things is less important

01:26:06

than you think it is.

01:26:09

And that can be unsettling,

01:26:11

but ultimately it's a good thing.

01:26:14

And there's a whole chapter here,

01:26:15

chapter 13, called Cosmic Insignificance Therapy,

01:26:19

which basically is about how

01:26:24

doubting what you're doing with your life

01:26:26

while it's unsettling at first is actually not a bad thing.

01:26:29

This is when things seem to be too much,

01:26:33

you find souls in the fact that none of it

01:26:36

really matters all that much.

01:26:38

And maybe that's a little bit hard to understand,

01:26:42

but if I were to try to summarize this myself,

01:26:45

it's basically all of the things that you think

01:26:49

you have to do because they're so important.

01:26:51

If they don't get done,

01:26:52

it's not going to cause the universe to break.

01:26:55

And so they're really less important

01:26:57

than you make them out to be.

01:26:59

And again, I've been practicing this before you read the book

01:27:02

because I broke my hand.

01:27:04

And all the things that I thought,

01:27:06

oh, well, I need to do this and I need to do that.

01:27:08

I can't do them now.

01:27:10

And you know what?

01:27:11

It's okay.

01:27:13

I haven't been able to play guitar on the worship team.

01:27:16

And as much as I miss being up there playing my guitar,

01:27:19

worship team is doing just fine without me.

01:27:22

- Isn't that maddening?

01:27:26

(laughing)

01:27:26

- I should be careful how I say that

01:27:28

because people have told me, oh, we really miss you.

01:27:32

Wish you were up there.

01:27:33

And I understand that,

01:27:34

but I go to the services.

01:27:36

I'm down on the floor instead of up on the stage.

01:27:38

And it's fine.

01:27:41

It's jarring at first for me

01:27:44

because it's a totally different perspective.

01:27:46

Ultimately, I think it's a good thing

01:27:48

because it's forcing me not to hide behind my instrument

01:27:51

and the music so much.

01:27:52

But I guess the approach here is like,

01:27:58

we tend to think we're super, super important.

01:28:00

We'll never be replaced.

01:28:02

You're replaceable and that's okay.

01:28:04

I mean, that's actually kind of the goal

01:28:06

with discipleship and delegation is

01:28:09

you're gonna train somebody up to do something

01:28:12

so that it doesn't all have to be done by you anyways.

01:28:16

And you can do a good job in participating in that process

01:28:19

or you can completely neglect it

01:28:21

and people have to figure it out,

01:28:22

but you know what?

01:28:23

They're gonna figure it out regardless.

01:28:25

- Yeah, this particular chapter you're talking about,

01:28:27

is cosmic insignificance therapy.

01:28:30

This is one that Tim Ferriss,

01:28:33

did you see this?

01:28:34

He posted it to his podcast.

01:28:35

They read it for that.

01:28:37

I don't remember who read it.

01:28:38

I didn't listen to the podcast,

01:28:39

but I know it struck him enough that he says he had calm

01:28:43

for a few days afterwards just processing it.

01:28:47

And it struck him so much he talked to Oliver Berkman

01:28:51

and got his permission to post it.

01:28:54

So if you wanna listen to one of the chapters,

01:28:58

you could do that.

01:28:59

I also know, this is one that I understand

01:29:02

that it's very helpful to have this mindset

01:29:05

that it doesn't matter.

01:29:07

At the same time, being Christian,

01:29:10

I also struggle with that at the same point

01:29:13

because I feel like it does matter

01:29:15

'cause eternity, do I need to explain this?

01:29:18

But that's my viewpoint with it.

01:29:21

So on one hand, yep, absolutely.

01:29:25

Whether or not I do get the leaves cleaned up on the lawn,

01:29:29

it does not matter.

01:29:31

It might frustrate my neighbors,

01:29:32

it might frustrate me in the spring,

01:29:35

but it really doesn't matter.

01:29:37

At the same point, what you choose to do,

01:29:39

big picture-wise, really does matter, I find.

01:29:42

Whether it's going to have a huge impact on history.

01:29:47

I'm not concerned about,

01:29:49

I understand that some people are,

01:29:51

that they're afraid of that insignificance,

01:29:53

but I think maybe that's what he's getting at

01:29:56

as long as you're okay with the insignificance

01:29:58

of your life as a whole,

01:30:00

that part I could get on board with.

01:30:02

But anyway, I think you understand what I'm getting at.

01:30:05

- Yes.

01:30:05

- Listeners, I pray that you are.

01:30:07

And coming back around to that insignificance piece,

01:30:11

yes, it's super refreshing to hear someone say,

01:30:15

"It doesn't matter 'cause every other systems book

01:30:18

"and stuff we've come like,

01:30:19

"it makes a big deal what you choose for your mission in life."

01:30:22

And he's saying, "No, it doesn't."

01:30:23

So it's really helpful to have somebody

01:30:26

on the other side of that yelling match stand up here.

01:30:29

So it's a breath of fresh air, I think, in this case.

01:30:33

So I'm grateful for what he did

01:30:35

with this particular chapter in particular here.

01:30:38

- Yeah, and this is where the whole idea,

01:30:40

I mentioned at the beginning,

01:30:41

the Ecclesiastes approach, right?

01:30:44

Everything is meaningless.

01:30:45

This is in the Bible written by Solomon.

01:30:48

In some ways, the wisest man who ever lived, right?

01:30:52

He wrote a lot of different sections of the Bible

01:30:56

and which reflect different portions of his life.

01:30:59

You got the song of Solomon where you see his passion

01:31:02

and he writes Ecclesiastes, that's kind of like the bitter,

01:31:07

at least in the past, that's what I've always thought is,

01:31:08

like this is the bitter old man,

01:31:10

Solomon saying none of this stuff really matters.

01:31:14

But I have a different approach to that

01:31:15

having read this book because of having read it

01:31:18

by Oliver Berkman, instead of just dismissing that

01:31:22

and never really leaning into it,

01:31:23

I kind of wrestled with that question,

01:31:25

like how do you balance this stuff?

01:31:27

And I think where I've landed is, yeah, ultimately,

01:31:32

in terms of measuring output, your life doesn't have

01:31:37

as significant an impact as you think it does.

01:31:40

And maybe the part of this is American, by the way,

01:31:42

because of the rugged individualism we have

01:31:44

and we think we're the center of the universe.

01:31:47

Maybe in other cultures, other countries,

01:31:49

this isn't such a big issue.

01:31:52

But as it pertains to what you are alluding to,

01:31:56

living the Christian life,

01:31:58

dealing with the fact that we're gonna be held accountable

01:32:03

for what we have done, I actually feel this is very freeing

01:32:08

because you aren't on the hook for the results.

01:32:16

But you are on the hook, I would argue, for the intention.

01:32:21

And it kind of reminded me of the daily questions,

01:32:26

Marshall Goldsmith, that I, from the book,

01:32:28

triggers that we covered, which I still do my journaling

01:32:32

that way and it's simply, did I do my best

01:32:35

to fill in the blank?

01:32:37

If you do your best to make an impact in other people's lives,

01:32:42

but then don't hold yourself responsible

01:32:46

for the outcome of those people making

01:32:50

what you consider to be the right choices,

01:32:53

you can just do the thing, help the person,

01:32:56

be in the moment, and then when you're done, you're done.

01:33:00

And that actually sounds pretty awesome

01:33:04

as I think about that.

01:33:06

Like, I will do the best that I can

01:33:09

in the time that I am here to redeem the time

01:33:13

and live intentionally and do as much good as I can,

01:33:17

but also I'm not going to be constantly measuring

01:33:20

and asking myself, have I done enough?

01:33:24

Because what is enough?

01:33:26

It's always gonna be an arbitrary thing

01:33:29

that I have arrived at and as soon as you start measuring

01:33:32

enough, you start comparing it to other people

01:33:34

by the same measuring stick and you see other people

01:33:37

who are doing more, which gets you back into this rat race.

01:33:41

So uncomfortable to be considering some of these ideas,

01:33:45

but ultimately I think it's very healthy.

01:33:48

- It's usually how it goes, I think.

01:33:50

If you're willing to have a hard question

01:33:53

that you're gonna work through

01:33:54

or a difficult relationship or a situation to work through,

01:33:57

we don't like doing it, but you're almost universally

01:34:01

better off once you come through it.

01:34:03

- Yep, agreed, which I guess gets us to the afterward.

01:34:08

This is titled Beyond Hope

01:34:12

and at the beginning of the afterward,

01:34:15

it sounds very negative and depressing

01:34:19

because it's continuing this theme

01:34:22

of the world is broken, hope requires placing trust

01:34:25

in something outside of yourself.

01:34:27

And basically I think he's kind of advising you not to do that.

01:34:31

And I think that's where I would draw the line.

01:34:33

But also he kinda ends it very positively, I feel,

01:34:36

by encouraging us to become okay with things not being okay.

01:34:41

So only in terms of giving up hope is this negative

01:34:45

if you are hoping that everything will be completely fixed

01:34:49

within your lifetime.

01:34:51

When you don't feel like it has to be

01:34:53

when you're just focused on doing the good that you can

01:34:57

with the time that you have and making some impact,

01:35:01

but not trying to fulfill a quota or achieve an outcome

01:35:06

that's ultimately a very freeing approach to life,

01:35:11

I would argue.

01:35:12

- Yes, everything is meaningless.

01:35:14

You also skipped over the questions though.

01:35:16

- I did skip over the questions.

01:35:18

Should we run through these quick?

01:35:20

- I don't know, maybe we should tell people

01:35:22

you gotta buy the book from our link in order to do that.

01:35:25

- Sure.

01:35:26

- That would be mean, that would be mean.

01:35:28

No, it's the last chapter of the book

01:35:31

which he titled The Human Disease, that's a, yeah.

01:35:36

But he has five questions that are set up

01:35:40

to help bring this all to a little more of a concrete realm

01:35:45

to use his terms for it.

01:35:48

And I guess I'll just read these five questions.

01:35:52

Where in your life or your work are you currently

01:35:54

pursuing comfort when what's called for

01:35:57

is a little discomfort?

01:35:59

Not sure I wanna answer that one.

01:36:01

Number two, are you holding yourself to

01:36:03

and judging yourself by standards of productivity

01:36:06

or performance that are impossible to meet?

01:36:10

I will probably just answer that as yes,

01:36:12

and then move on to the next one.

01:36:13

In what ways have you yet to accept the fact

01:36:16

that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought

01:36:19

to be, that would be a hard one to confront.

01:36:23

In which areas of life are you still holding back

01:36:25

until you feel like you know what you're doing?

01:36:28

That might be that settling piece.

01:36:30

I mean, there's some of that in there as well.

01:36:32

And then the last one, how would you spend your days

01:36:34

differently if you didn't care so much

01:36:37

about seeing your actions reach fruition?

01:36:40

Which I think gets to, are you doing things

01:36:42

just for the sake of doing them

01:36:44

as opposed to always having a value-driven reason

01:36:47

for accomplishing something?

01:36:48

- Yeah, I think, you know, the chapter 13,

01:36:52

he talks about the Steve Jobs,

01:36:56

leave your dent in the universe thing.

01:36:58

And kinda he encourages us not to worry

01:37:00

about leaving a dent in the universe.

01:37:02

In the last chapter, he's encouraging us

01:37:06

just to do the next right thing

01:37:07

and to choose uncomfortable enlargement

01:37:10

over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.

01:37:13

And I love that phrase, I feel like you can apply

01:37:16

your own meaning to that.

01:37:17

It doesn't have to be a religious meaning necessarily.

01:37:21

But be willing to be uncomfortable,

01:37:24

but also be willing to be choosing to stay

01:37:27

in the moment and not thinking long-term all the time.

01:37:31

- Yeah, it brings you to the, it's okay to do things

01:37:33

for the sake of doing them.

01:37:35

- Yep, it's a very effective summary, I think.

01:37:37

- Yeah, totally is.

01:37:39

Yes.

01:37:40

- Cool, anything else?

01:37:42

- No, I think we've got an hour 45 here or so

01:37:45

as we're recording it anyway.

01:37:47

So I think we're good.

01:37:48

- All right, well, let's go to action items then.

01:37:51

I have one, which I recognize the moment

01:37:54

that I saw the thing inspire me.

01:37:57

I'm like, oh, this is one of those classic mic action items

01:38:00

that there's no way I'll be able to do.

01:38:03

So I immediately thought instead of having

01:38:05

a generic action item where I don't know

01:38:08

what sort of outcome will come from this,

01:38:10

I thought, I'll put this in the form of a question.

01:38:13

And really the action item then is asking myself

01:38:16

the question and seeing what comes out of it.

01:38:18

So the question, which I already mentioned,

01:38:20

how am I in future chasing mindset

01:38:22

and what can I do about it?

01:38:24

I'm gonna spend a little bit of thinking time

01:38:26

over the holidays considering that.

01:38:30

- Yeah, that's a good one.

01:38:31

Yeah, I've got one as well,

01:38:34

and that is to take those five questions

01:38:37

that I just read to you.

01:38:39

And I wanna put those into like a monthly questioning period.

01:38:44

And I know Mike, you do like regular periodic questions

01:38:48

that you'll answer, whether it's daily or so forth.

01:38:52

I've not really done that outside of like a daily stance.

01:38:56

So doing, I thought about doing these on a daily stance,

01:38:58

but I feel like that's gonna get to be a bit much.

01:39:02

Weekly stuff never seems to work out well for me.

01:39:04

So I figured, well, the next chance I've got is monthly.

01:39:07

So I'm putting together those in like a monthly

01:39:10

template of sorts for some text files that all pull up

01:39:14

and run through on a monthly basis.

01:39:15

So that's my action item is to get that all set up.

01:39:18

- Cool, I like that a lot.

01:39:19

All right, style and rating, my book.

01:39:22

So I'll go first.

01:39:25

I am going to hesitantly rate this five stars.

01:39:30

And the reason I say hesitantly is because I feel

01:39:35

if you just read this book and you don't spend any time

01:39:40

considering the questions that he poses here,

01:39:45

there's a good chance this book will make you mad.

01:39:49

And rub you the wrong way.

01:39:51

But I think there is a ton of good that can come from

01:39:56

wrestling with some of these questions.

01:39:59

Maybe this is something that I have grown into

01:40:02

over the years where the stuff that I disagree with

01:40:08

or I'm uncomfortable with instead of just dismissing it

01:40:11

and I don't wanna be around that anymore.

01:40:13

I force myself to lean into it and get to the bottom of it.

01:40:18

And again, I read this book at the right time

01:40:21

because there was some other stuff going on in my life

01:40:23

that kind of complimented this, but I feel very good

01:40:27

about the resolution that I've come to having gone through this.

01:40:32

I've talked a little bit about this book to my wife

01:40:36

and planted some of the ideas and the reaction

01:40:39

is kind of exactly what I expected.

01:40:42

I present the first thing he says,

01:40:43

her eyes get real big, like I can't believe

01:40:47

that you think that's a good thing.

01:40:48

And then I kind of explain some of the arguments.

01:40:50

Oh, yeah, I get that now.

01:40:53

Like, oh, that's really good.

01:40:55

- Yeah, but I think you're crazy.

01:40:57

Oh, wait, actually, that's pretty smart.

01:40:59

- Yeah, so that's why I say hesitantly,

01:41:03

if all you did was skip to this part of the podcast

01:41:06

and listen to the reviews and you're gonna say,

01:41:09

oh, Mike rated this five stars.

01:41:11

I'm gonna pick up this book because Mike recommended it

01:41:13

and you read the first couple pages,

01:41:14

you're gonna be like, why in the world

01:41:16

is Mike recommending this book?

01:41:17

But I think the value comes in wrestling with it.

01:41:21

And I understand a lot of people don't just read

01:41:25

through the whole book like you and I do for Bookworm.

01:41:29

And if you don't do that,

01:41:31

then don't even bother picking this one up

01:41:33

because you're not going to enjoy it at the beginning.

01:41:37

But ultimately, I would argue this is one of those books

01:41:39

where the ideas that are presented

01:41:41

are really powerful, really important.

01:41:44

And ultimately, something I think everybody has

01:41:46

to wrestle with.

01:41:48

And we've heard over and over and over again,

01:41:52

be in the moment, you know,

01:41:54

today's all you get and I still have trouble

01:41:58

trying not to get too far out into the future

01:42:02

and thinking ahead too much, planning too much.

01:42:05

I feel like this book was the right thing

01:42:07

for the right time for me and for the right person

01:42:11

it absolutely could be.

01:42:12

I think there's a definite possibility

01:42:13

that you pick this up, you're not in the right space

01:42:15

to right headspace to receive the message

01:42:18

and you just completely write it off.

01:42:20

But I do think that everyone is going to come to this point

01:42:24

where they're going to have to wrestle with this.

01:42:25

Not just when you get to a midlife crisis by the way.

01:42:28

I think that this book is very applicable

01:42:30

no matter what stage of life you happen to find yourself in.

01:42:33

If you're older, if you're younger, whatever.

01:42:35

I do think this is a really good book.

01:42:37

I think it's really well written.

01:42:39

Oliver Berkman style in this book,

01:42:41

I feel very, very effective.

01:42:43

I don't remember liking his style that much

01:42:45

when we read the antidote.

01:42:46

But coupled with this message,

01:42:48

I just felt like this is great.

01:42:50

So I really enjoyed this book

01:42:53

and I think a lot of people should read it.

01:42:54

But again, there's a caveat, a huge asterisk with this.

01:42:57

You gotta go into it with an open mind.

01:42:59

If you don't, there's a good chance you'll hate it.

01:43:02

- I could see where you get the hesitation on it.

01:43:05

Again, I don't remember much of his style from the antidote.

01:43:10

But I know that in this one, his style is spot on.

01:43:14

I had a hard time putting it down,

01:43:17

at least until I reached an existential crisis yet again,

01:43:20

and needed to separate from it emotionally,

01:43:24

not because I needed to take a break from reading,

01:43:27

but just I can't keep going right now.

01:43:29

And like I said early on,

01:43:31

I don't know when the last time as I've had a book

01:43:34

that made me do that.

01:43:34

Maybe Man Search for Meaning.

01:43:36

Like it's something like that where it made me stop

01:43:40

for very different reasons, of course.

01:43:42

But this one made me, enforced me,

01:43:46

to reconnect some dots that I've previously connected.

01:43:51

And I had to erase some of those lines

01:43:54

that I had connecting some ideas from the past

01:43:57

as a result of this.

01:43:58

And I'm not doing that blindly.

01:44:02

I think what we've done over time is read enough books

01:44:05

that you can kind of tell if something's not going to fit

01:44:10

and shouldn't fit and you disagree with.

01:44:12

But as I read this,

01:44:14

I resonate with pretty much everything he has said.

01:44:18

I love the way he put his terminology together

01:44:21

and gave me language to talk about this.

01:44:24

Like I've mentioned really like it kind of messed

01:44:25

with my foundation of how I think about time.

01:44:28

And there've been quite a few times,

01:44:31

especially within the last week,

01:44:33

that I found myself choosing not to do something

01:44:37

because I realized it didn't matter in the long run.

01:44:40

And I think that's exactly the right response

01:44:42

to much of this book.

01:44:44

It's like, I could get onto the dog

01:44:47

for whatever it is he's doing at the time,

01:44:50

but does that really matter?

01:44:52

No, he's fine.

01:44:55

It's okay, get over it.

01:44:57

And that's what the dog,

01:44:58

I mean, you could do that with projects at work,

01:45:00

you could do that with vehicle repairs,

01:45:02

you could do it with all sorts of things.

01:45:04

And that is something that's refreshing

01:45:07

and it's something that I'm grateful for having

01:45:09

that mindset thrust upon me.

01:45:12

Because I feel like that does help

01:45:13

with the whole mindful be here now,

01:45:15

be a pay attention to what's happening now.

01:45:17

Don't focus on always trying to make things better

01:45:20

for the future and that's your sole focus.

01:45:22

Like that's refreshing and something I'm grateful

01:45:26

for having gone through.

01:45:27

There's a whole section here

01:45:28

we didn't even talk about with patients.

01:45:30

And I was very conflicted when I went through that

01:45:33

because I'm like that I tend to go through books

01:45:35

and I'm like, I'm trying to hustle through them

01:45:37

and don't wanna, 'cause I wanna know what the thing is

01:45:39

and I don't wanna take the time to read to get to it.

01:45:41

Like I wanna jump ahead.

01:45:43

And this one was weird because I really wanted

01:45:46

to get through it.

01:45:47

So I was very impatient with reading this,

01:45:49

but it forced me to stop at the same time.

01:45:51

So it was very weird.

01:45:53

It's like, I really wanna read this,

01:45:54

but I can't read this right now.

01:45:56

It's so strange.

01:45:58

I'm gonna join you at 5.0.

01:45:59

I think this does warrant that.

01:46:01

And I understand what you're saying with the hesitation

01:46:04

on recommending it.

01:46:06

I can see how have you not had a big background

01:46:11

in a lot of the productivity self-help world?

01:46:14

I can see how this maybe wouldn't qualify as a 5.0.

01:46:17

But giving our background, at least my background,

01:46:20

I feel like this is kind of messed with

01:46:23

a lot of a foundation that I need to have rocked in this case.

01:46:27

So I'm grateful for that.

01:46:30

And very happy that I have been forced

01:46:34

to go through this with you.

01:46:35

Again, I was debating picking this

01:46:38

and was shocked when you did.

01:46:40

So I'm glad that we went through it.

01:46:42

And I'm grateful that we did that.

01:46:43

So anyway, I loved his style.

01:46:45

I thought it was a fairly easy read to do,

01:46:48

like technically speaking, emotionally speaking,

01:46:50

that's a different thing.

01:46:51

But I think it does warrant the 5.0.

01:46:54

But again, I think you're probably right

01:46:55

in that hesitation on it though.

01:46:57

I think it could be misconstrued

01:47:00

if you don't commit to reading the whole thing.

01:47:03

So be patient, read the whole thing.

01:47:05

Don't jump ahead.

01:47:06

It's okay.

01:47:07

You'll be fine.

01:47:08

- Yep, completely agree.

01:47:09

You know, there are certain books

01:47:11

that you can just tell this is the author's life work.

01:47:16

Like their entire life has been leading up

01:47:19

to this message that they are communicating.

01:47:23

I feel like with James Clear, that's atomic habits.

01:47:27

And with Oliver Berkman, it's 4,000 weeks.

01:47:30

- Yes.

01:47:31

That's probably a good way to put it.

01:47:33

Yeah, I agree with that.

01:47:34

- All right, so let's put 4,000 weeks on the shelf.

01:47:38

What's next?

01:47:40

- Next is Thinking in Systems by Danella Meadows.

01:47:44

And I have a confirmation from somebody

01:47:46

that this is a really good book to use

01:47:48

as a basis for getting into systems thinking.

01:47:51

And having read 4,000 weeks now,

01:47:55

I'm hesitant on this one.

01:47:57

Again, I just finished Berkman's book this morning.

01:47:59

So I'm starting this one tonight.

01:48:01

So now I'm like, hmm, okay, we'll see how this goes.

01:48:05

This is either gonna be a really great contrast

01:48:06

or this is gonna be a mess.

01:48:08

It's gonna be one of those two, Mike.

01:48:09

- All right.

01:48:10

After that, I'm gonna pick another unexpected book.

01:48:15

I have heard some great things recently

01:48:19

about Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown.

01:48:22

- What?

01:48:23

You're breaking my brain.

01:48:25

(laughing)

01:48:27

- This one, I know we're not gonna be able

01:48:29

to take the traditional bookworm approach to it.

01:48:32

I think we're gonna have to just pick,

01:48:34

probably like we did with,

01:48:36

what was that, Rolf de Belly book?

01:48:38

Was it the art of thinking clearly,

01:48:40

all the different biases?

01:48:41

And we kind of picked our favorite ones

01:48:43

and talked about them.

01:48:44

I think we'll probably have to do the same sort of thing

01:48:46

for this book.

01:48:47

But this is at the top of every single chart everywhere.

01:48:52

I mean, if there was talking about life messages in a book,

01:48:56

like Brene Brown is a PhD,

01:48:58

this seems like the canonical work on emotions.

01:49:03

- Yep.

01:49:04

- And so I feel like I've just heard so much good press

01:49:07

about this particular book lately

01:49:10

that I wanna consider it with you.

01:49:13

- It's been a while, but we did her other book

01:49:15

during Greatly.

01:49:17

- Yep.

01:49:17

- And I don't remember that you had great opinions about it.

01:49:21

Does that sound right?

01:49:22

- I don't remember what I rated it.

01:49:24

I do remember the Teddy Roosevelt quote from that though,

01:49:28

which I really enjoyed, so.

01:49:30

- Yep, well, fun.

01:49:32

You are just messing with me lately.

01:49:34

I don't know what that's all about,

01:49:35

but I'm on board 'cause this one was another one

01:49:38

I was debating doing, so.

01:49:40

- Cool, so I'm leaning into the emotions.

01:49:43

Joe's talking about systems.

01:49:45

What is going on?

01:49:46

Cats and dogs living together.

01:49:48

- What's the world coming to?

01:49:51

- All right.

01:49:52

- Great, you got any gap books, Mike?

01:49:54

- You beat me to it.

01:49:55

I do not have a gap book.

01:49:56

Probably will, by the time we record again,

01:50:00

have read a gap book, but I don't have one currently, do you?

01:50:03

- I had to restart mine, which I wasn't expecting to do,

01:50:07

so I'm still in the middle of Take Back Your Family

01:50:09

by Jefferson Bethke, but I was talking about it

01:50:12

a little bit with my wife, and she's like,

01:50:14

I wanna read that with you, like together.

01:50:16

So then I started reading it out loud to her,

01:50:19

in the evenings whenever she's working on stuff

01:50:22

around the house and such, so.

01:50:24

I restarted it, which means now I gotta go back,

01:50:26

but my hope is we'll be done by it with it

01:50:29

for the next time.

01:50:30

Anyway, still on the one.

01:50:32

- All right, cool.

01:50:34

Well, thank you to everybody who joined us for recording live.

01:50:38

We had a great conversation in the chat today, pretty active.

01:50:41

If you want to join the conversation,

01:50:42

you can do so at youtube.com/bookwormfm.

01:50:48

Joe always tweets out via the Bookworm Twitter

01:50:53

when we're going to do the live recordings.

01:50:55

So follow Bookworm FM on Twitter

01:50:57

if you wanna know when those happen.

01:50:59

Also, thank you to everybody who supports the show directly

01:51:04

by contributing a couple bucks a month

01:51:06

to help us keep the lights on.

01:51:07

You can go to club.bookworm.fm to join the membership.

01:51:10

And when you do, for five bucks a month,

01:51:13

50 bucks a year, I believe,

01:51:15

you get access to a couple of bonuses,

01:51:17

some gap book episodes that Joe recorded,

01:51:19

a wallpaper I designed,

01:51:20

and all of the MindNote files that I take notes in.

01:51:25

I export those as MindNote files and also as PDFs.

01:51:29

So you can just download those for your own reference

01:51:32

or even import them into MindNote

01:51:34

if you happen to be an iOS/Mac user like me

01:51:37

and use those as the jumping off point

01:51:38

for taking your own notes in the books.

01:51:41

I had some people share that that's how they like to do that.

01:51:43

And I think that's a pretty cool idea.

01:51:45

So if you wanna join the awesome people

01:51:47

who are helping us to keep this thing going,

01:51:50

club.bookworm.fm.

01:51:52

- Love you people, you guys are awesome.

01:51:54

All right, if you're one of those that reads along with us,

01:51:57

you need a systems thinking book.

01:51:59

This is the time for you.

01:52:00

So pick up thinking and systems by Danella Meadows.

01:52:03

We'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.