Bookworm Transcripts

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How are you sir?

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I am much better than yesterday, so thanks for agreeing to move this. My voice probably still sounds a little funky, but

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Only slightly like I at least I can only pick up

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cool bits

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Did you have a cold like a bad vocal issue?

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Yes

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I never really got like

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full-on flu type sick, but basically was

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completely drained and

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Yeah without being too gross or graphic my my voice was affected

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Yeah, I've I've had a lot of meetings at our church lately and

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the main

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Pastor that I've had most those meetings with hasn't been there for the last week because he's been out with the flu

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So I don't know how many times I meet everybody else it's supposed to be in the meeting. I was like yes

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He needs to stay away like go away mister. I don't I don't want to be anywhere near you right now

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That's the last thing I want is the flu, right?

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Well fortunately through the magic of internet you are still not able to catch my cold, so

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good well in theory the last company I worked for was a virtual company and I am

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convinced that

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Somehow I would still catch colds from people. I don't know

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Someone would be

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Talking about how they had something massive and it was completely wrecking their lives and then

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It seemed like a couple days later. I would come down with it. What on earth this is

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I work from home. I should not be able to pick these things up nearly as frequently as

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If you're in like a you know cubicle nation

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Just the way it goes sometimes they just kind of sweep the whole Midwest I think

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Yeah, that's uh, I think a big part of it is in the Midwest right now. It doesn't know whether it wants to be fall or winter

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Yeah, what's with that?

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It was like 65 and sunny the other day and that's kind of when I first started noticing this and now today it's like 35 degrees

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Yes, and there's frost on everything this morning, so

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Welcome to Midwest weather

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And I'll apologize in advance for any gross noises I make that you may have to edit out

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You okay? All right

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That's fine with me. I don't have any of my own coughs and pauses. I edit out

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All right

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Do you want to jump into our follow-up?

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Yeah, let's do it. So

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You've got a couple of them here first, so let's uh, yeah

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the first one of those

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From the last show I had put down that I wanted to start writing down

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What my long-term?

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Expectate

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Expectations Wow that was kind of it was one of those I don't know if I'm saying this right moments

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So writing down my long-term expectations on commitments or in my case projects

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whenever I create them and I

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Started doing this, but I haven't closed any of those yet, so I don't really have

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much to report on that one other than I have started collecting that information and

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the

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If you're for the listeners here if you haven't

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listen to the last episode what I'm getting at there is that

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We talked about how if you write down what you expect and how you

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Plan for a project to end if you write down what you think the end of that project will look like and then compare that to

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How it actually turned out at the end of that process that you can learn an awful lot about yourself and how you

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Operate and how you think so that's the idea behind what I'm doing and I have started the first half of that mic and have not finished

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Any of those projects to know how it works?

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That's a very appropriate

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Pre podcast follow-up given what we're talking about today. I know I know it's

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interesting so that's

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Yeah, that'll make sense later

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the second one that I have down is the daily rule of three and

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The concept there is that writing down your and people talk about this in the productivity space quite a bit the three MIT's or most

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important tasks and I just started doing it on paper effort in a couple articles about that process here lately

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But it's it's one that I've been doing and it has a lot of power. I think it's been working really well

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I'm this is one that I for sure will continue to do

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It seems like some of these action items Mike. I end up starting them. They're great for a couple three weeks

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And then I they're gone and this is one I think is gonna stick for quite a while because it's been extremely helpful

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cool

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So my turn, huh? Yes, I'm done you go. Okay, so my first follow-up item was to know my strengths

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Which my version of doing that was gonna take the strengths finder assessment which I did

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so my top five strengths according to strengths finder 2.0 are

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achiever input

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strategic

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learner and

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responsibility

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So I have to now read through the book and identify

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What those actually mean I have a little bit of a vague idea of what they mean

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But I want to dive into the specifics and then also I'm gonna make my wife take this as well

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See that's what we did my wife and I both took it and that was it's extremely helpful to see that

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I think because you get to understand how each other

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thinks and operates and there's I mean there's a marriage conversation for you if you want one right

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Yeah, so that's that's the idea

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follow up to the follow-up I guess would be

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That I actually researched my strengths a little bit more and then also Rachel takes the

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Assessment and then we talk about our similarities and differences

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and how we can become a better team of

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family team

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Knowing what we know about how each other each other works

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So you don't have to put all of that for follow-up

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Next time know that I am moving forward on this one

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The second one to I'm moving forward on this one, but this one doesn't even have a definition of done from

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If you're following the agile scrum methodology, you'd be very very angry when you see my follow-up for this one

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Which is just take responsibility for relationships

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But I have noticed that as I have

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Emphasized this when there is friction in a real in a

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relationship and in the past maybe I would have because I tend to see things very black and white it's either right or it's wrong and

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So kind of what I've learned here along with some other things that I've read and some other experiences that I've had is that?

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Sometimes the right thing is being willing to say that you were wrong

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Even if you don't really feel that you were wrong

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Because there's always two sides to every story and the relationship or the person is more important

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than you being right all the time and

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So I've taken that approach a couple times

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And I think there's been a couple situations where if I would not have remembered this

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That would have changed how I responded in those situations and I would have gotten the same

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friction that I have always gotten but I was able to avoid some of that because I

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Took this approach and it's not gonna happen all the time

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I'm gonna make mistakes there's gonna be times where even though I've said this now publicly on a podcast and

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There's a bunch of people who can take me to task for this when they see me mess up

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including my wife who listens

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I do believe that there is gonna be

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I've already seen it and I believe is gonna continue to be

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Progress in this direction as long as as I I keep this

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Keep this in front of me. I guess if that makes sense

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I had a wise mentor at one point that I had a great conversation with but he

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He made the point because I was talking about some relationships that I was struggling with and there were there

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Was some things that the other person had done that made things quite difficult and he told me is like you know what?

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You go through that relationship and there might be some strain there

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It may not be your fault, but you can be responsible like it may not be your you may not be the one who caused it

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You're not the one at fault there

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But you can make a decision on what you're gonna do with it

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That's something I've struggled with for a long time, but it's something that always comes to mind whenever I talk about or hear someone talk about

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relationships and responsibility with them, but it just seems to me that there's a big difference between you know

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Who is the one who actually caused the issue?

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Versus who's the one who's gonna take responsibility for doing something about it?

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Do you get the difference between those two? Yeah, absolutely and I love the way that you described that way better than when I did it

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I've had a couple years to marinate on that one. Yeah, that makes the makes perfect sense and

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That's something that I've seen played out in Asian efficiency and one of the things that I really like about the company is they take that approach

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It doesn't matter who

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caused the issue

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Let's just figure out how to fix it right then like you're saying with the responsibility

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What you're saying is not taking responsibility for yes, I did this thing wrong so I can be punished but

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Being willing to jump in and help be a part of the solution

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And I think so much of taking responsibility and making decisions on what you do

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Can tie in quite well with the book that we read for today's podcast?

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Which how'd you like that segue?

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nicely done

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So this was your choice, so I'll let you introduce it

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All right, so yeah, we read the 12 week year and you know, I don't have a book in front of me

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So I don't have the author. Why do you do that?

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I'm sorry gosh Mike. Oh

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You know what this is my my brain being sick. I can just go to the notes that I took for this yes Brian Moran and

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Michael

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Lenington

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Yes, okay

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so

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Yeah, and most of the books that I pick they've been things that I've

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Have heard about for a long time and the authors. I'm pretty well familiar with them

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This one I was not this was one that actually I've seen a lot of people talk about inside the Asian efficiency dojo

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in fact, there's a lot of people who

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publicly post

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Their 12 week year progress inside the dojo said other dojo members can hold them accountable for what they are actually getting done

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But I had no idea really what to expect with this

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other than I've heard lots and lots of good things from the community about this and

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Decided that I should probably

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Find out what the all the buzz was about

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So what better way to do that than to drag you into it with me Joe?

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Well, I'm glad you did

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And I should point out I did this book a little differently Mike

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I

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Because typically when I read these I finish it like the day or two before

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we're gonna record and

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given

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The last one we did managing oneself

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That one was so short and I was able to read it so quick that I actually read this one

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before I read that one and

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Part of the reason I did that is because I knew there's a lot of people to get super excited about this and

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A lot of people have their methods of putting it in place and I see a lot of the reports

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Cuz I do some stuff in the dojo as well and it's it's a fun community

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But I see those posts and I was curious what they were so I was kind of anxious to get to this book

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So I think if you hadn't picked it I might have

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at some point and

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So anyway, what I'm getting at is that I finished reading this one about three weeks ago

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Instead of two or three days ago and part of the reason I wanted to do that it was intentional

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It wasn't just because I had some extra time

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But it was because I wanted to make an attempt

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I knew ahead of time I was gonna try to put this in place and

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I wanted to get a little bit of familiarity with working the actual system

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Before we had a chance to talk about it. Maybe that'll ruin my opinion on it

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Maybe not, but it was at least something I did a little different. I wanted to pose that before we jumped in

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Nice. Yeah, so I mean you've taken it farther than I have then I finished reading this book actually last week

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When I was traveling to the well at the time that we're recording this

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Last week I had attended the Sean West conference and the Sean West conference was awesome

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the whole idea was think bigger and I met a lot of people there a lot of very interesting people who are doing a lot of very interesting things and

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Sean West or Sean McCabe is the guy behind it. He has really built a really

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really solid and very encouraging

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Community there as well. So it was kind of cool to be it was a small conference is only like a hundred people

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but a bunch of people that were in the same space and

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As I'm attending that conference thinking bigger. I'm reading at the same time finishing reading at the same time this

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12-week year and a lot of synergy between those two a lot of the same

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approaches and even some of the messaging so

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Little bit different approach than yours because I haven't implemented it yet

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but I'm super excited about this and I

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Definitely I'm going to we'll get to our takeaways. I guess at the end

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But definitely gonna apply at least parts of this

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So let me let me start here

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I know you put the thing about the vision

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but I want to just share this quote from page three which I thought was awesome and

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This should be really at the beginning of every single one of these books that we read or something like this

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It says one of our clients is a large insurance agency with more than 2,000 agents within the company

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There is one agent who is a perennial top producer year in and year out as you might expect over the years other agents

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Have asked if he would share his approach with them without hesitation the top producer would take time out of his busy schedule and walk them

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Through exactly what he did to create his success. Do you know how many people replicated his success?

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You guessed it zero. He now refuses to share his secret because no one follows through with what he teaches them

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My response to that was amen brother

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It really set the tone for the whole book that we're gonna share this with you

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And that's I think this is cool in in book format. This is I

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Mean there's there's different avenues that this information can take you can learn stuff by listening to a podcast

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You can learn stuff by reading a book you can learn stuff by going to a conference

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You can learn stuff by taking a video course and this I thought was very appropriate

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It's right at the beginning and he's basically saying look

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We could do this one-on-one with you and teach you all this stuff because we've done that with other people and we know that this works

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But if it doesn't work, it's because you're not doing anything with it not because that something wrong with the method

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So it's like are you gonna take this seriously or not?

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You know if you want results, then you've got to follow through

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Which really is the principle behind?

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any of the books I'd say that we've read so far and I think maybe

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slightly

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Under the surface of bookworm. That's kind of what we're doing with the podcast at least you and I participating in it anyway

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For us, it's it's more of okay

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Here's a book I've read and then let's talk about it and then make a plan on what we're gonna do with it as opposed to just

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Something new to know more information to store into our brains like do something about it, right?

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Yep, absolutely. I think I put it as synthesize what I'm learning. Yeah. Yeah, so to kind of

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Help people understand 12-week year and what that is

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it's a process of

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obviously 12 weeks and

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in this book Brian and Michael take us through the process of understanding how a 12 week period so three months is

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better as a planning

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time segment as

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opposed to a full 12 month year

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so if you get the translation there 12 months down into 12 weeks and the premise is that you can get four times as much stuff done in a

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year if you take an entire year and condense it down into

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12 weeks and

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Part of the rationale that they give for being able to do that is that?

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so many

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Organizations and corporations and groups in general

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Everybody wants to put goals at 12 years. We like to use the calendar year

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It never works like I've been through I don't know how many times I've put these things together at different companies or even for myself and

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Most of the work ends up getting done

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October and November December because you see the end of the year coming at old crud now

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I got to get this done and

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That sense of urgency is what they're trying to take advantage of and duplicate four times over in a year as opposed to just that last

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12 week period in the year

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Yeah, the key phrase is do away with annualized thinking and replace it with periodization and

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The idea behind that is that periodization like you were talking about is a short enough time frame where it's still

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It's still elicits action

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You can't afford to put things off for a week or two

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Because if you view it as a 12 week segment, that's like one sixth of your time now that you've wasted

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Whereas if you were taking the whole calendar year a week or two on no big deal

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I've still got 11 months to accomplish this so breaking it down into those smaller

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sprints if you will it's kind of like in between

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Personal application of the scrum project management philosophy if you want to think of it that way where it's not like every two weeks or anything like that

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But definitely some of the same principles apply where you don't want to just take a look at the big picture

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Because if you do it that way like you said you're gonna put it put things off and you're not going to

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Take action on them and he talks about the reason why this is on page four. He says we don't have a knowledge problem

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We have an execution problem

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It's not what you know. It's not even who you know

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It's what you implement that counts and a lot of people he says in the book know what to do

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They just don't do it. Yeah. Yeah, and I think this is a lot of what

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Corporations try to do so coming from that corporate background. We did the annual goals and

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In one case I was setting my annual goals that needed to be done by December

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but I was setting them in I think it was September is when I was setting them and

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That was just luck of how I shifted positions and everything else and I still hit my goals even though they were

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They were probably a full 12 month worth of goals

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But I still managed to do them in three and a half months. So it's like okay that all that'll make you stop and think about

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if I can pull that off then

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What happens the other six seven months out of the year like what am I doing that amount of time?

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It just seems like so many times people try to put together, you know, New Year's resolutions and you get the the full-on

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Mission for the year. It just seems like most of the time they fail

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I don't know why I've got that sense. It just seems like whenever that stuff comes up. It just doesn't it doesn't stick

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No, you're right

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I mean at Asian efficiency we we teach rituals and that's because habits have a

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somewhat negative connotation because they don't stick and

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Especially like New Year's resolutions

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Come January 1st the gym will be full with all the people who made resolutions that they're gonna work out

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And they're gonna be healthy this year, but within three weeks

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It's dwindled by 80% and it's back to the the regulars and that's because

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you don't create the

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Consistency that you need to keep moving forward with these things and that's what that's the main thrust of this book is you're gonna

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You're gonna work backwards

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You're gonna talk of from what you really want to accomplish over this 12 week period

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And then you're gonna identify what you want to accomplish each of those weeks

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But then really what it comes down to is are you going to create the space on your calendar because all of the things you have to do

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Are gonna take place within this context of time

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So if it's not on your calendar, it really doesn't exist. You're not going to do it

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You're going to have an intention to do it

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But you're not gonna follow through and just like those people who leave the gym at the end of January

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You know you're not gonna actually get your butt

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To the place where you can actually put in the work, right?

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So I really liked that approach and I think if you take that approach it really isn't that hard

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It's just you have to build a build up that routine that ritual of consistently doing those little things that are gonna produce the results

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And then that's where the compound effect kicks in because if you do those little things over and over and over again

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You will see the results

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Jumping back a little bit if you go to the beginning of this book and we see this in a lot of the books

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We've read Mike and this is why I wrote it down. It seems like a

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very large percentage of these books that we've read talk about

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Developing your mission finding your vision in life or developing your life goals like

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Okay, let's let's notice the theme here across all these books. What's the recurring thread?

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you have to know why you exist and I think if you look at the sheer volume of times that we've run across us even in the

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Short period that we've been doing this podcast the number of books that we've gone through which really isn't that many?

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I mean compared to what some people read in a year or what probably what most people read in here

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It's pretty significant, but in the grand scheme of things. This is what number 14. It's like it's really not 14 books

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It's really not that many books and even in that

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They're calling out how important this life mission is which would make you think this is quite important

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Maybe I should finally figure this out

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Right. Yeah, he says on

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page 21 that a passion crisis is really a vision crisis that you've lost your why and

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the whole the whole thrust of the conference that I went to

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Was I mean that the theme of the conference was think bigger and one of the things that Sean McCabe said during his

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During his session is that you have to normalize your vision?

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You want a goal which is as big as it can be instill inspire action, but then you have to

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Verbally state this goal over and over and over again. So one of the things it's kind of like a not an inside joke

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But it's something that like him and his team will will do is they'll just casually say a million dollars is not a lot of money

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Because they want to get to the point where they believe that a million dollars is not a lot of money because their vision is so much bigger than that

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But if you don't have that vision or your vision isn't big enough

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then

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It's not going to inspire you to to take action on it and

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They talked a lot about maybe we'll add this to the list at some point the the 10x rule

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by Grant Cardone and basically the premise

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There and then what Sean was saying from the stages

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whatever your goal is

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10x it

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Make it really really big because the sky is the limit when it comes to what you are capable of like you were talking about you accomplished a year's worth of

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Projects or objectives in three months

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That is sustainable, but you have to set up the framework and that's what the 12 week year comes in to help you do that

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And it's the vision that's going to keep you driving towards the point where you actually accomplish that I

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Think if you go into

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The details of the 12 week year

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So if we just kind of walk through that process because I think it'll the rest of this will make a lot more sense because most of our notes are around

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How to actually accomplish this as opposed to what it is

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so I think

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going through the actual process

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the way I interpreted it Mike and and all the listeners is that

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What you need to do is figure out what your goals are going to be for the 12 weeks

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So you've set aside when you're gonna start you go through all of your areas in your life

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So we've talked about like areas of responsibility and life hotspots in the past

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You go through those

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Determine what your life goal is for those areas and then based on those

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set goals for the next 12 weeks and

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Don't just stop there actually plan out what needs to happen each week to get you there

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And if you do that whole process and then each week review what it is you need to do that week in order to hit those goals

00:25:38

You profit like there's the end of it like that's the whole process and something I wrote down here is that

00:25:44

the

00:25:46

12 week year to me seems to translate extremely well to

00:25:50

The horizon three if you go to getting things done transfer over other systems

00:25:55

The horizon three process within GTD in theory is if I'm recalling correctly

00:26:03

It's roughly your one year

00:26:05

Like I've heard David Allen say I think in the past like nine months to like 14 15 month

00:26:11

goals

00:26:13

But to me it seems like if you translate that down to 12 weeks and work with it from there

00:26:19

It seems to work really well at least in my experience over the last three weeks

00:26:23

Just using it for that process. It was a pretty easy and seamless

00:26:30

Transition for me anyway, but that's okay. I've been rambling here for a little bit

00:26:34

But to me, that's how that whole 12 week year process works and how it can translate into like my current system

00:26:42

Which I'm pretty heavy on GTD

00:26:46

Yeah, I don't make sense. Yes, that makes a lot of sense

00:26:49

And I think really though that you could apply the 12 week year concept to whatever

00:26:53

However far you want to go whichever horizon you want to use and then you can can work backwards from there

00:27:00

So it just seems like so many of the the

00:27:03

Systems and the methodologies out there they talk a lot about the day-to-day

00:27:07

That seems like most of what they're taught like here are the tips and tricks on how to get your day in place

00:27:13

But this is bigger than that. It's this I think this is the first real true

00:27:17

real true the real

00:27:21

base

00:27:22

System I've ever seen that's specifically geared towards something beyond today

00:27:28

I think

00:27:31

Yeah, that's that's interesting. I didn't I didn't

00:27:34

Really see that when I read through it, but I can I could see where that would that would make sense

00:27:41

Really though what I think the benefit of the 12 week year is I mean

00:27:46

So if you were to read the book what you're gonna see is some some stuff that you can implement in how you plan your week

00:27:53

Things that you can add to your calendar explicitly that will help you

00:27:58

accomplish

00:28:00

What you want to accomplish by the end of the 12 week period?

00:28:03

And there's a lot of details there, but essentially that's what it is and then that 12 week period

00:28:11

Really what you want to do is you want to consistently stack

00:28:14

successful 12 week periods on top of one another and

00:28:18

You could extend that out as far as you want you could extend that out nine months you go extend that out 14 months

00:28:24

You could extend that out a lot further. I think one of the things that I

00:28:28

heard

00:28:30

recently was

00:28:32

Picture yourself in 20 years, but not just at a broad

00:28:37

general sense, but

00:28:40

20 years from now what does successful Joe Buleg do when he wakes up in the morning?

00:28:46

What does his daily routine look like where does he live? What kind of card is he drive?

00:28:51

What sort of marriage does he have like really picture the details and?

00:28:56

create that vivid picture of where you want to get to in the future and

00:29:02

I think 20 years is is great like that's far enough out there where you can really apply some

00:29:09

Of that some of those big goals like you could you could say well in six months

00:29:13

I want to be able to do this, but that's not realistic

00:29:15

So 20 20 years is as far enough out there where you can really think big but then when it comes to implementation to get there

00:29:21

All you've got to do then is you've got to follow through and you've got to work the system

00:29:26

And you've got to consistently do the right things like that is not only plausible. It is probable like you want to get to the point where?

00:29:34

That goal is not something. That's just way out there

00:29:39

One of the things this is from later on in the book

00:29:41

but

00:29:43

There's a process that he he talks about you go through when you have these these these big goals

00:29:49

I think it's from page 81. He says first. It's impossible then it's possible then it's probable then it's a given

00:29:56

So you don't ask how but you ask what if and then next you ask how might I?

00:30:02

So you don't want to start asking that too soon

00:30:07

But you want to frame it in a way where this is not just some wild pipe dream where yeah

00:30:13

Be great if I won the lottery sort of a thing

00:30:14

but you have to really get to the point where you believe that this is possible and

00:30:19

from the context of this book it's the 12-week year if you implement this and

00:30:23

Ultimately that the devil's in the details like will you actually follow through with this because if you follow through with it

00:30:30

You will get the results. It's it's simple, but it's not easy like all you have to do is

00:30:37

Do what you know you're supposed to do and if you do that consistently

00:30:40

But most people won't then you will get the results and the 12-week year kind of gives you the framework that you need

00:30:46

To to create the space to do that

00:30:48

I think that's something I struggle with

00:30:51

Okay, I wrote this plan down am I gonna stick to it like I make a commitment with

00:30:56

Somebody else it's on my calendar and it'll happen period like that's it's not a negotiable

00:31:02

I will do whatever I can in order to make sure that that happens if I make a commitment and involve somebody else

00:31:07

That's just the way it works if I do the same thing for myself

00:31:11

For some reason it's okay to alter that or just not do it and

00:31:17

Convincing myself to follow through on it

00:31:20

That's a lot of the tricks and the tips that I always try to figure out is okay

00:31:25

How can I force myself to do what I've planned because if I follow the plan I'm good, but I don't always stick

00:31:32

True to it like I always seem to want to

00:31:34

float with it

00:31:36

Right, but if you if you do follow through with it

00:31:39

Then once you once you do do it then that gives you confidence that you can do it again

00:31:43

Right, that's where the neuroplasticity thing that I wrote down

00:31:47

Comes in on page 23. He defines the neuroplasticity as our brains ability to change and it does so based on how you use it

00:31:55

So that's why the 12 week concept is so important because you have to stretch yourself and push yourself for those 12 weeks

00:32:03

But at the end of those 12 weeks once you get there you are now in a better position to do that again

00:32:11

So if you consistently do that you are consistently pushing what your brain and your body is capable of doing

00:32:19

You will see growth and this will become easier and easier

00:32:24

It's interesting that you brought up the neuroplasticity thing because then

00:32:28

We'll talk about this later the book that we're reading following this

00:32:32

I've started getting into that and it covers that quite a bit

00:32:36

It's interesting

00:32:38

Yeah, I haven't haven't started that one yet, but I've seen this play out at least I believe I have in in my own life where

00:32:46

Like I've told my story before where I started getting up at 5 a.m. To start writing

00:32:52

and then I would go into the office and then I would go to a coffee shop and it works some more and

00:32:56

Sometimes I get the response like well, how could you do that?

00:33:02

Like I don't believe that I could physically put in that much time

00:33:06

every day and

00:33:08

It wasn't that I just all of a sudden decided okay. I'm going to I'm gonna put in this huge amount of effort

00:33:15

First of all like you were talking about the beginning. I had a vision

00:33:18

I knew that I wanted a future where I could work remote and I could have a flexible schedule

00:33:23

And if I decided that on this given day

00:33:25

I wanted to go on a field trip with my boys because we homeschool that I could decide that

00:33:30

That was really important to me that that was the driving force behind everything is I pictured the time and the day the situation

00:33:38

Where I had that flexibility

00:33:41

But then it was doing just a little bit more and a little bit beyond what I

00:33:47

Had been capable of previously so for anyone who knew me in college getting up at 5 a.m. That was

00:33:55

Not something that I was capable of

00:33:57

Bedtime not a time right I was definitely a night owl and so the fact that like I became a morning person that

00:34:05

blew some people's minds

00:34:08

but

00:34:09

That's it's the vision that that drove that and then it's just getting up five minutes earlier five minutes earlier five minutes earlier

00:34:15

And then you consistently get up five minutes earlier pretty soon getting up at 5 a.m. Is easy and then

00:34:21

once you

00:34:22

Start going to the to the coffee shop in my case to write for an hour

00:34:26

You know you get done first time you're like wow that really was hard

00:34:30

I can't believe that I wrote for a whole hour, you know a couple weeks later

00:34:34

You're like oh man the hours up already. I wish I could write for two more hours because I'm in the zone

00:34:38

you know, so

00:34:41

I've seen where like just for me personally and

00:34:45

The type of creative work that I'm involved in

00:34:48

I believe that I've seen that in my own life the neuroplasticity and my ability to produce not only

00:34:55

At a consistent level for a long period

00:34:59

But also kind of going back to like the whole deep work conversation like the journalistic approach kind of on demand

00:35:05

And I really don't know how to explain this but I know that I'm not the only person who is able to do that

00:35:12

I think it was

00:35:13

Stephen King

00:35:15

Who talked about maybe from like the War of Art by Stephen Pressfield is like

00:35:20

The of an amateur rights when they feel inspired a professional rights regardless or something like that

00:35:27

I'm messing up the boat, but like you just show up and you do it and it gets easier I

00:35:32

Think it was Drew Kaufman at one point he had an article that he wrote about how he

00:35:42

Goes to a coffee shop in the morning grabs an espresso and he writes and then the next day

00:35:47

He goes to a coffee shop he grabs an espresso and he writes and doing that every single day

00:35:52

meant that eventually his mind just

00:35:56

Followed the pattern and if he had an espresso he immediately started thinking in writing mode

00:36:01

It just starts to work that way and it's interesting how our brains adapt to things like that

00:36:07

I think is extremely helpful obviously

00:36:09

It's something that can help us to develop a habit that's good if we're willing to let it

00:36:15

But it can also go the negative way of course

00:36:17

You get into some infinity apps that just go on and on and on and you got this really bad habit and you end up

00:36:23

Losing a lot of time

00:36:25

But I think if you're able to leverage the power of that you end up

00:36:29

Being able to do is like what you're talking about building these habits where your mind just takes over and it just it

00:36:34

This is what comes next and this is what I do and that's what

00:36:39

Brian and Michael talk a little bit about this with time blocking

00:36:43

They brought it's hard to go through a book like this and them not talk about time management in any capacity

00:36:50

I don't think we've been through a book yet that doesn't at least touch it in some way

00:36:53

But they go through and they spell out three different ways of or three different types of time blocks

00:36:59

one of which he calls it

00:37:02

strategic blocks which I translated to a deep work session

00:37:06

Because he in the book he calls it as a three-hour block of uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each week

00:37:12

To me, it's like okay if you get three hours within a week, that's fine

00:37:15

But there are other ways to do these deep work sessions

00:37:19

You know I do smaller ones every single day because that works out better for me

00:37:22

And I think that's probably the way you are too. That's why the the daily thing works out

00:37:27

Well because he ended up just building in the habit

00:37:29

Yeah, I think you're you're probably writing that's how I read it at first too was that that strategic block is a

00:37:36

deep work block I

00:37:38

started

00:37:39

Thinking about that a little bit more though and

00:37:42

I'm thinking that as I implement this in my own calendar

00:37:46

I want to try because most of my day is built up into those deep work blocks

00:37:51

They're maybe not three hours at length

00:37:53

But I want to try to squeeze in a three-hour quote-unquote strategic block

00:37:57

Where I am literally just thinking big picture about all the things

00:38:02

because I tend to get

00:38:05

nose to the grindstone I've got my task list. I know what needs to get done and

00:38:09

I don't do a very good job a lot of times of taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture

00:38:16

And I think if you're gonna develop a big vision

00:38:18

You need time and space to do that you need time and space to connect the

00:38:23

the dots in that that way where

00:38:27

Sometimes at least in my own life. I don't I don't actually do that

00:38:32

So I'm gonna try and implement that strategic block as literally strategy

00:38:36

Thinking about what is the big picture goal for this area of my life look like

00:38:42

See that's interesting because I'm sitting here reading that paragraph again and just to make sure I understand it and he spells out that the

00:38:51

purpose is to focus all of your energy on pre-planned

00:38:55

task

00:38:57

So strategic and money-making activities

00:39:00

So I think by definition you're right, but I like the idea

00:39:04

Yeah, I think big block basically if you would have been that way

00:39:08

No, I follow that. I think why I'm not seeing it that way is because I do that

00:39:14

high-level

00:39:17

Processing during my weekly review every Friday. So we're recording this on a Friday. I just did it here four or five hours ago and

00:39:25

That's something that I do

00:39:28

once a week every week already

00:39:30

So I probably didn't think about it that way because to me it would be something completely different

00:39:35

It's like oh, I already do that part. I'm gonna do something completely separate from that

00:39:40

So how long does it take you to do your your weekly review?

00:39:43

It's about an hour and a half

00:39:46

Okay, so you probably have a little bit more time than the average person. I think who would yeah

00:39:52

I've talked to I think it's about 30 45 minutes for most

00:39:56

Right and so that's really the the thing for me that makes it not fit into that

00:40:02

That period is that my weekly reviews will tend to be like an hour at the most

00:40:07

And I do think that there is a lot of value in just

00:40:12

Giving yourself space to think big

00:40:16

one of the things that Sean McCabe does is he has

00:40:20

what he calls a

00:40:22

Badical and he started doing this and he's implemented it now where everybody on his team does the same thing

00:40:29

Where they will work for six weeks and every seventh week they'll take the entire week off

00:40:35

And he said that the first time that he did it

00:40:38

It felt like a vacation the second time that he did it felt like it came way too soon and

00:40:45

Didn't want to do it because he had more work to do

00:40:48

And then the third time that he did it was kind of when it clicked and he said that everybody on the team is kind of

00:40:52

Experienced the same thing and really the reason behind the sabbatical is that you have a whole week in this case

00:41:00

To just think and that's where a lot of the good ideas come from that drive the business forward

00:41:06

I completely agree with you. I think I just have a completely different way of coming at it

00:41:14

That because part of what I have within my weekly review is

00:41:19

specific actions and and in this case someday maybe lists

00:41:24

along with some other meta lists that are

00:41:27

Designed to call that out like that's the point of those is to say okay. Here are all the things I'm doing in my business

00:41:34

awesome

00:41:37

Are those the right things?

00:41:39

in some cases no in some cases yes and

00:41:43

It forces me to make some of those decisions

00:41:46

But some of what you're referring to like the creative piece

00:41:50

That's another one of the time blocks that he tells us to put in as these breakout blocks

00:41:54

To make time to let your mind wander is kind of how I

00:41:58

Correlated it

00:42:00

The other one that he calls out is buffer blocks

00:42:02

Which I translated to our maintenance day that we were talking about from the productivity project

00:42:08

Of having that time set out to just keep everything you know clear everything to neutral to use those terms

00:42:13

But I think between those two and I get what you're saying for the strategic thinking process

00:42:19

I think I just incorporate that elsewhere and I want to use

00:42:22

What I'm calling these strategic blocks or in this to me there are a deep work session to focus on the work that I've planned for

00:42:30

the 12 week goals

00:42:32

That's how I'm seeing them and I think that's only because

00:42:36

Some of those other pieces I've already got in place

00:42:39

Sure, that makes sense and honestly, I think the breakout block you defined it as mind wandering

00:42:46

That is probably

00:42:49

Your your breakout block is probably similar to my

00:42:52

strategic block in that sense

00:42:54

But I want to use my breakout block specifically one of my previous action items was find more time to play

00:43:00

I have to force myself

00:43:03

Sometimes it is we all do this well

00:43:07

And it's hard because like the work that I do I do

00:43:12

Honestly enjoy so

00:43:15

It's hard like

00:43:18

It sounds really lame to say that my work is fun, but it really is

00:43:23

Well, yeah, when was this this is probably been two months ago or something at this point my wife was gone on

00:43:29

A retreat so what did I do when she was gone at night? I was writing code. It's what I do all day long

00:43:34

I was writing code so I could rebuild the theme on my own website. It's like really Joe really right so my breakout block is

00:43:42

When I say play like something that I can do for fun that it is a complete break from

00:43:50

My day-to-day work

00:43:52

So three hours doing something

00:43:56

Other than work during normal business hours is how YouTube

00:44:00

Right well, I'd I guess I mean for me maybe YouTube would be good because I'd never go on there

00:44:05

but so that's that's how I'm the finding the breakout block and I guess just for

00:44:10

listeners who maybe aren't familiar with how like this gets implemented basically he says do a strategic block

00:44:16

Which is three hours of uninterrupted time very important distinction here no calls no emails

00:44:21

So if you have your email open you are not in a strategic block because you will get interrupted exactly

00:44:27

So that's a three hour block that happens once a week the buffer blocks are one hour blocks that

00:44:32

Happened twice a day. I've found this to be really intriguing

00:44:38

We launched an email course recently at Asian efficiency where we made the outrageous claim that will help you process

00:44:46

Solve your email in 30 minutes a day or less, which I do honestly believe is doable no matter

00:44:51

How much email you get if you have the right systems in place you can get it down to that

00:44:55

timeframe

00:44:57

And I've gotten pretty good at managing email in a short period of time

00:45:00

But there's lots of other things like emptying my other inboxes consistently

00:45:05

That I forget about or I neglect and so these buffer blocks are a great idea in my opinion

00:45:13

To make sure that I follow through with all the administrative stuff that I have to do at any given day because if I don't build these in

00:45:20

My tendency is going to be to just continue to work on the business building tasks

00:45:25

But these admin type tests are important and so the buffer blocks and I've put them at the beginning at the end of my day

00:45:32

Those are gonna I believe really helped me follow through and all the maintenance stuff and then the last one the breakout block

00:45:38

This is a three hour spent on something other than work during normal business hours

00:45:43

So interpret that how you will but that's a three hour block that happens once a week as well

00:45:48

And out of all of that the thing that I caught was that Mike doesn't clear his inbox is daily

00:45:53

Nope, I clear my email inbox daily, but I have a draft inbox and an IVL inbox where I will

00:46:02

I'll capture things and I do not go through and process those

00:46:08

All the time well when I capture them usually I'll capture them there and then a

00:46:13

Lot of times what'll happen is oh, I know what this is so now that I've captured it here muscle memory

00:46:18

I'm gonna send this to the appropriate bucket, but then what do I do with that stuff like I let it sit there and

00:46:23

It's not very often that I go through and I clear out my envy alt because they're just text files

00:46:29

They don't take up any room and and Valt I can search and find things really fast

00:46:32

And really what I just need is the ability to open it and capture something really quickly so it serves its purpose

00:46:38

but the

00:46:41

I don't know like there's something

00:46:44

Something OCD in me that likes to have clean inboxes all the time even though these ones

00:46:50

I'm not really looking at I just open them up when I need to capture something

00:46:54

I really like the thought of having everything in there

00:46:58

cleaned out and reset and there's just a little bit of

00:47:02

I don't want to say anxiety, but look if I go into giraffes and I see that there's 120 things in there

00:47:08

My initial reaction is did I take care of everything?

00:47:11

So I tried to periodically I was asking cuz I clear mine out twice a day

00:47:16

Yeah, I can't I can't leave them because then I'm if I don't keep them clear

00:47:22

I can't know for sure that

00:47:25

There's not something I've missed

00:47:29

Like I have to make sure that I keep things cleaned out

00:47:32

Otherwise, there's a chance that whenever I'm going through and I'm doing my work I

00:47:37

Should be doing something else, but I haven't processed it correctly

00:47:41

Right and it depends what you use those for I mean a lot of times the stuff that I capture there is

00:47:46

Ideas for things that I want to do sometime maybe in the future or there's a book that I want to read at some point

00:47:53

You know there's a podcast that I want to listen to they're not generally time sensitive things if they are tasked

00:47:59

Then I'll send them an Omni focus right away

00:48:01

But I do like to go through and clean those out

00:48:05

Thing is I do that whenever I get a chance to which is more like once a week as opposed to every day

00:48:12

I think there's a benefit to doing it every day. I just don't create the time to do that because

00:48:17

When I am when I am a nose down and in my work

00:48:21

It seems to me at that specific moment that it is more valuable

00:48:26

That I make a little bit more progress on whatever project I'm working on

00:48:29

Then I take the 15 minutes to go through my envy all or drafts inbox if that makes sense

00:48:35

Yeah, okay, so two points here one I only spend ten minutes on this a day

00:48:40

So five minutes in the morning and five at the end of my day, so it's not like it's a huge

00:48:43

time

00:48:46

commitment to pull that off and

00:48:48

Two I think part of that is that like part of the reason is because a lot of like the ideas and just

00:48:54

snippets of this would work well for this project like all of those types of little bits of information I tend to

00:49:01

Have systems in place through specifically through drafts

00:49:05

So that whenever I collect those they end up where they belong. So there's not there's really not any processing for those

00:49:13

To me like they just go exactly where they need to go and I'm done that might be why

00:49:18

I'm because I think maybe I should go look

00:49:21

I think I've only got five inboxes that I clear twice a day and it's like Omni focus dropbox I

00:49:27

Can't even think of them right now because it's checklist. I don't think about it. Let's go through the checklist Mike

00:49:32

Right

00:49:34

Well, here's here's really the idea behind this

00:49:37

from the 12 week year on

00:49:39

Page 55 he talks about failing in our focus. I

00:49:44

Tend to know that maybe I take the same approach to envy Elton drafts that other people take to email

00:49:51

But because what I put in there is not other people oriented

00:49:55

I feel like it's not a big deal if I don't get to those right away, but

00:49:59

And page 55 he talks about feeling the focus and he says in an effort to not miss anything

00:50:04

We miss everything. So I don't want to go through and think about all of those random ideas that I had

00:50:13

Every single day. I would rather focus on getting this specific video done for the email course or whatever

00:50:18

that

00:50:20

I don't want to be distracted by all of those little things. So

00:50:23

That's probably another piece to it is that I consciously choose not to go through all those things all the time

00:50:29

But like I said, I really do believe that there is some value to going through it regularly

00:50:34

And I think the big thing for me is that I've never created the time to do that and so the buffer blocks

00:50:39

That's a real logical one that I could build that in

00:50:42

Email is another one that fits inside of those buffer blocks

00:50:46

Social media account management would fall under there too if you use that for any sort of business purpose as opposed to just killing time on Facebook

00:50:54

Yeah, I I really have to think through some of the other buffer block activities

00:51:00

But I really do like the idea of having a block at the beginning and the end of my day where I can

00:51:05

Make sure that all the details are taken care of and then also if I get

00:51:11

If I get stuck in a project and I'm and I want that to bleed over a little bit

00:51:16

I've got a little bit more of a margin at the end of my day where I could I could get that done as opposed to I'm gonna work till

00:51:22

Five, you know, I'm gonna work till four and then from four to five

00:51:25

I've got this buffer or margin where I can either go in and clear out the email inbox

00:51:31

Envy alt drafts, whatever I can make some progress on those things or if I need that extra hour to continue to work on this project

00:51:37

Because I absolutely need to get it done. I have a little bit of time built in where I can do that and that whole idea of margin I think is

00:51:44

uh, really really important

00:51:46

Oh, yeah, easy

00:51:47

Especially if you schedule a little bit of that around like the strategic blocks or deep work sessions or whatever you want to call those times in the day

00:51:54

uh with

00:51:57

Those buffer zones one specifically that I've put in place and I did this

00:52:01

It was before I read this book. It's probably been a month and a half ago now

00:52:05

It's because of one of these books we've read at this point, but it wasn't tied. I think to one

00:52:09

In particular, I think it was kind of a combination of them

00:52:13

But uh, we had the the one about the shutdown ritual

00:52:16

At one point and I did put that in place, but I put it in place at four in the afternoon

00:52:21

And I get off work at five. Well, it only takes

00:52:24

You know 15 minutes or so to shut everything down and that does include my inbox processing mic

00:52:30

Uh, but I do shut down there at four o'clock. Well, that means that

00:52:35

You know easy. I'm done with that by four 30. So then I've got 30 minutes after I've

00:52:40

Quote unquote shut down

00:52:43

To do pretty much whatever and that just becomes a buffer zone and I've just treated it as well if I get done early

00:52:50

That's time to read and it's kind of free time. It just lets me float or you know get buffer

00:52:55

Sure, yeah, that that makes a lot of sense

00:52:59

I mean the whole idea of margin you can implement this a lot of different ways and in fact later on in the book

00:53:04

He talks about well, what do you do with the other four weeks of the year?

00:53:08

What do you do with the 13th week?

00:53:10

Because if you were to really boil it down in those 52 weeks in a year if you do the 12 week year or four times

00:53:15

You've got four extra weeks there. So he says use the 13th week as a margin

00:53:20

Where if you don't get everything

00:53:23

Done in those 12 weeks that you had planned you've got extra space

00:53:28

Where that stuff can overlap a little bit and you can actually dot the eyes across the teas and get that done

00:53:33

I think that that is a really key principle and actually that's another book that maybe we could cover on the podcast at some time

00:53:39

Sometimes but one that I read that was really influential was it's actually titled margin by Richard swenson

00:53:46

He's a psychology professor

00:53:48

And the whole idea is that people are

00:53:51

Overcommitted they they

00:53:53

They overestimate

00:53:55

How efficient they are with their time and then when they overcommit themselves

00:53:58

Like they just they get stuck in the emergency scan modality that david elan talks about like that's the root cause of it

00:54:05

Is that we try to schedule every single minute of every single day and we give ourselves no margin for when things don't go exactly

00:54:13

According to plan and that is when the crap hits the fans so to speak

00:54:17

Yeah, I prefer to think of the 13th week as vacation

00:54:21

That's what I would like it's like I saw that they were talking about the 13th week. I was like oh, yeah

00:54:27

I hadn't done the math

00:54:29

on 12 12 weeks time for

00:54:31

Uh, it's like oh, yeah, there is an extra week in there. What do I get to do during that week?

00:54:35

Uh catch up or go have fun one of those two

00:54:38

Right. Yeah, exactly

00:54:41

Both of those are important

00:54:43

Yeah, I take the first half of it to catch up and take the last three or four days to

00:54:48

You know go play

00:54:51

right

00:54:52

Uh one thing that he talks about they talk about in

00:54:56

Uh the process of developing what you're going to do each week is the concept of lead and lag

00:55:04

Measures and keeping score

00:55:09

This is one that I immediately was drawn to because one we like to collect data and I've got a

00:55:16

Past data analysis person in me. So I've been in that world

00:55:22

So coming from that I was naturally drawn to this idea of keeping score

00:55:27

And there's been a couple books that have talked about that

00:55:29

I know that it came up in deep work at one point but

00:55:31

with the concept the concept here is that you are able to keep track of not only

00:55:38

the outcomes at the end of this and did you hit your goal or not but also keep track of

00:55:43

the lead measures so the process of getting into it

00:55:47

If you take you know exercising for example, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds

00:55:52

Uh if you've ever met me, I should not lose 10 pounds just saying

00:55:56

But say say I did if i'm going to lose 10 pounds then

00:56:01

The lead measures

00:56:04

Would be get to the gym, you know go for a run

00:56:07

You know those types of things and being able to keep score on what you're doing at the beginning of it versus

00:56:12

Did I actually lose 10 pounds or not at the end?

00:56:15

So there's the lead versus the lag is it leading you into the goal or is it after the goal?

00:56:21

And that's the concept of keeping scores

00:56:23

Making sure that you're able to keep track of the process

00:56:25

Both at the beginning and at the end because if you're cheating track at the beginning that can be a motivation to keep you going

00:56:31

And keep moving forward. So it's just this idea of how do you get the data on this?

00:56:37

To support are you making progress or not?

00:56:40

Right and that may be the best resource that i've found for identifying lead versus lag measures is

00:56:48

um, the four disciplines of execution by not steven covey. I forget his son

00:56:54

His son is the one who wrote it though

00:56:57

Uh, but the important difference there as it comes to keeping score is that everybody talks about the lead measures

00:57:05

The things that you do to get the results, but when it comes to keeping score you have to measure your score by those lag measures

00:57:12

So let's use me as an example because I could afford to lose 10 pounds

00:57:17

All right, the lead measures for me are

00:57:21

Getting to the gym five times a week for example and the lag measures how i'm going to keep score is

00:57:27

What do i weigh at the end of the 12 weeks how we're going to apply?

00:57:31

Exercise to uh to the 12 week year concept

00:57:35

And the lead measures are where the 12 week year stuff comes in like you're you're going to plan this stuff out

00:57:41

You're going to create the time on your calendar to do these things that you believe are going to lead you towards your goals

00:57:46

And then at the end of the 12 week period you're going to look at the lag measures

00:57:49

And that's how you're going to keep score

00:57:52

So very important distinction here when it comes to planning out your day

00:57:57

You have to make sure that it's the little things that you're going to do that are going to produce those compound results

00:58:03

And that's where the whole idea of work life balance comes in for a lot of people

00:58:09

And there's a quote in here that I really really liked by jack welch

00:58:12

He says there's no such thing as work life balance

00:58:15

There are work life choices and you make them and they have consequences

00:58:20

So the work life choices that you make as you're planning out your 12 week year

00:58:25

Are going to have consequences and those consequences are going to be the lag measures that you'll be able to tell

00:58:30

Yes, it's moving me towards my goals. No, this is not

00:58:33

Um, and on page 62 they talk about how life balance so work life balance if you want to think of it that way, but again

00:58:40

I don't really like

00:58:41

that

00:58:42

that distinction because

00:58:44

In terms of your time, there is no work versus life. There's just your life

00:58:48

Like you have to work within the time that you have given for your life

00:58:51

But it's up to you to make sure that everything is is balanced and there's enough attention being given to all the things

00:58:56

So he says on page 62 that life balance is about intentional

00:59:01

Imbalance

00:59:03

It's about consciously making choices and saying no to certain things that you're determining

00:59:08

Are not as important as some of those other things

00:59:12

And really you have to take the time to identify those things that are the right things

00:59:18

That's why he talks at the very beginning of the book about

00:59:21

the mission the vision the life goals

00:59:23

On page 5080 says each and every one of us has the god given ability to be great

00:59:28

What makes a champion is the discipline to do the extra things even when especially when

00:59:32

You don't feel like it

00:59:35

So this book I really like because I believe that it gives you the tools that you need

00:59:41

To 12 weeks at a time identify the things that you're going to say yes to identify the things that you're going to say no to

00:59:48

And then gives you the structure and the framework the the plan that you need to actually accomplish that

00:59:53

And then once again, obviously the results are going to vary

00:59:56

But it's only going to vary based on whether you follow through and you've identified the the right things

01:00:01

So I've been at this for about three weeks now

01:00:06

And going through the process now what I did Mike because I'm an omni-focused nerd

01:00:11

Is I just went through and replaced what I had in my

01:00:15

horizon three

01:00:17

project for

01:00:19

my getting things done process ended up just replacing that with

01:00:23

A list of the goals that I wanted to hit for the next 12 weeks

01:00:27

And then underneath of that I tend to use weak numbers on a lot of things

01:00:32

I don't know why so, you know, what week of the year are we into I think right now we're on 45

01:00:37

So there you go

01:00:40

If you if you follow those what I typically do is it's like, okay

01:00:44

I just spelled out for each of the goals that I have for the next 12 weeks

01:00:48

Here's what I need to hit each week in order to accomplish that goal

01:00:52

And part of the reason I did that was because it allows me to keep score

01:00:56

Because I can see very easily that I get these checked off or not

01:01:00

And at the same time I've got ways that I can use omni-focused to show me what each week I need to do

01:01:06

So I can easily get a list of what I need to do each week

01:01:09

so I've been at that for

01:01:11

at least three weeks now and

01:01:14

It's really odd how

01:01:16

Something as simple as putting together that goal for the next 12 weeks and then spelling out how to get there

01:01:21

It has this natural motivation that can come with it because you can see the little bits that you do

01:01:27

Each day and you can see the little bits that you accomplish each week

01:01:31

And then once a week going through or in my case, I end up looking at it daily

01:01:35

Just seeing how that relates back to my overall goals

01:01:39

Just naturally that's got a lot of power in it and it ends up compounding on itself

01:01:45

And you end up

01:01:48

Time it's all said and done

01:01:50

accomplishing a lot more so crazy enough even within the last three weeks

01:01:53

I can honestly say that just from pure numbers of things I've checked off in

01:01:59

My system. It's dramatically higher than what it has been or what it was the previous three weeks. So

01:02:05

If there's a testament to it

01:02:08

There you go. Now you may be an outlier because you've been applying a lot of these principles for a while

01:02:14

I wondered about that. Yeah

01:02:16

So I could totally anticipate somebody listening to this podcast saying oh, this sounds awesome

01:02:21

I'm going to implement this and going through

01:02:23

What they describe on page 72 is the emotional cycle of change

01:02:28

Which is kind of an inverse

01:02:30

bell curve if I'm remembering it right where there's five different steps

01:02:35

Number one is uninformed optimism and if you are just listening to the podcast now

01:02:40

You're like, yeah, this sounds great. I'm going to accomplish all this awesome stuff in the next 12 weeks

01:02:44

That's where you are

01:02:46

And then once you start going you stuff will become a little bit better defined and then you go into stage two

01:02:51

Which is informed pessimism?

01:02:53

Yep, so I know a little bit more it doesn't look like I'm in a

01:02:57

Look at the chart. It's a pretty steep fall too. Yes, very quick

01:03:01

And then the third step is the value of despair. This is where many people quit

01:03:07

Right bottom

01:03:08

They get to that point where they're just like I don't know how I'm going to

01:03:12

accomplish this

01:03:14

But if you push through that value of despair the next stage

01:03:18

Is informed optimism? So it's like same same concept like you're informed now you understand the details

01:03:25

But oh, hey now it looks like because I didn't quit

01:03:28

I might actually achieve this and then the last one is number five success and fulfillment

01:03:33

so

01:03:35

a word of encouragement to anybody who's going to listen to this and

01:03:39

Start implementing it. Hopefully you listen to this again in about six weeks

01:03:44

And you hear the same words like don't quit when you're in the valley of despair

01:03:47

Don't quit when things look bleak continue to trust the system and don't abandon the plan just because you're not seeing

01:03:55

the the results

01:03:57

They talk a lot about that about how you don't want to give up on the plan

01:04:02

You only want to give up on the plan when it's when it's the plan's fault

01:04:07

But sometimes you're not going to see the results and it's not the plan's fault

01:04:10

Sometimes the lack of results are your own fault

01:04:12

And so in that instance what you want to do is you want to keep going you do not want to

01:04:17

Give up on page 166 he calls it he talks about the difference between

01:04:23

Follier they call it and failure where you are going to fall you are going to

01:04:28

Mess up you are going to be in a position where it doesn't look like you're going to be able to achieve this

01:04:33

But he defines the difference fall your as falling and failure as letting go that's giving up in the valley of despair

01:04:41

There's a lot in there

01:04:44

Processing that this is an absolute lot and I think you're right. I've been at some of these tactics

01:04:51

like the the concept of scheduling different blocks of time and he there's there's a whole bunch that they go through

01:04:57

prior to the concept of the 12-week year and then again after that that

01:05:04

To be honest, I glossed over a lot of it. I didn't mean to it just kind of worked out that way

01:05:10

But the reason was that it's a lot of you know rinse and repeat for a lot of these other books and principles that we've talked about

01:05:19

Which which makes it hard to read for me, but it's still

01:05:22

Valuable if you've not been through that so I understand why it's there

01:05:26

It was just a part that you know if we weren't reading it for the show I probably would have skipped

01:05:31

Probably threw four chapters there, but you know all of that said the principles that they're talking about are highly valuable

01:05:38

And going through the process of the 12-week year itself

01:05:42

If you have some of these other

01:05:44

You know what your mission is you know how to develop your goals like I sat down

01:05:48

And in 20 minutes had cranked out what I thought my life goal for each of my areas of responsibility was going to be like it was pretty quick

01:05:55

and very easy for me to do that and

01:05:58

Doing that process is what made it possible for me to

01:06:01

Go ahead and put together some goals for the next 12 weeks and then develop what they were going to be

01:06:06

So I spent maybe an hour

01:06:08

Putting this whole thing together

01:06:10

And was able to just slip it right into the rest of how I do things

01:06:14

And get off to the races with it

01:06:16

So it was pretty easy for me to just drop it in and go

01:06:18

But I can easily see if you're not if you don't have that base structure in place

01:06:23

There's a lot of work to do just to get going

01:06:27

Whereas it took an hour for me. I could easily see it take a couple days just of working with it and thinking it through

01:06:33

To get going with it. Is that fair?

01:06:35

Yeah, definitely and there's going to be some trial and error

01:06:38

I think if you've never really done this before like i'm page 95 he talks about the five criteria of good plans

01:06:45

And so this is stuff that if you're from the if you're immersed in the productivity space

01:06:49

You've probably heard all of this stuff previously

01:06:52

But he lays it out or they lay it out rather succinctly number one

01:06:56

Make your plans specific and measurable you have to be able to measure whether they're successful

01:07:01

Number two state them positively. So this is a really important step for example

01:07:07

If you're a golfer and you're teeing off and you see a water hazard and you're thinking to yourself

01:07:13

Don't hit it in the water. Don't hit it in the water

01:07:15

Psychologically, it's proven you're probably going to hit it in the water because your brain can't differentiate between positive and negative

01:07:20

It's just seeing that the water is the thing that you're focusing on

01:07:24

So instead of saying like don't do this

01:07:26

You want to state your plans as positive

01:07:29

Number three ensure that they are a realistic stretch

01:07:33

So you want them to be able to be accomplished, but you also want them to not be easy

01:07:38

You want to be able to you want them you want to be able to have to push in order to accomplish that

01:07:44

Number four assign accountability and then number five be time-bound if you're looking at a 12 week

01:07:49

Period that one's pretty easy, but even if you've heard this stuff before there's some stuff like I gleaned

01:07:56

On page one on one there was a detail here that I never really

01:07:59

Caught before he says if you take the time to plan before you engage with the with a complex task

01:08:05

You reduce the overall time required to complete the task by as much as 20 percent

01:08:09

Which I thought was really really interesting

01:08:12

Number one because I'm kind of a data nerd I guess where we've talked before in the podcast

01:08:18

I like the ones like the willpower instinct where they have all the research studies to support what they're saying

01:08:22

So this is a quantifiable

01:08:25

Number that's attached to this where it's saying yes

01:08:27

You do want to plan this stuff before not because it seems like the right thing to do

01:08:31

But because it is statistically proven that it will be it will take 20 percent less time

01:08:37

If you follow through beforehand and you identify everything that needs to be done

01:08:41

so for the

01:08:44

For listeners who are wanting to get into programming or you are in

01:08:48

coding in some form pay attention to what what you're saying there because

01:08:54

This is something I do very regularly and it's something that I'm learning is

01:09:00

very particular and specific to quality programmers

01:09:03

Is that you will often take some time to think through

01:09:08

The functions and the methods that you're going to write

01:09:12

before you do it

01:09:14

Instead of just jumping in and writing something to see if it'll work

01:09:17

Because it seems like nine times out of ten if you stop and think about it

01:09:21

Before you jump into it, you actually come up with a better solution

01:09:24

That's one more optimized so it runs faster and cleaner

01:09:30

and two is less buggy and

01:09:32

You know, those are two

01:09:34

Gold standards that you shoot for as a programmer

01:09:37

so

01:09:39

If you take the time to step back and review something you're going to do before you jump into it

01:09:44

You save yourself a lot of headaches later on

01:09:47

Right. Yeah, definitely

01:09:50

and

01:09:52

I really like the whole emphasis of this in this whole book

01:09:56

on

01:09:57

You determining your own future and you can apply that to any arena you want whether it's

01:10:03

code or writing

01:10:06

or

01:10:07

Cranking widgets at a factory like literally

01:10:09

They place the onus on you

01:10:13

Over the next 12 weeks like if you want a different future

01:10:16

You can go ahead and you can create it in fact on page 138

01:10:20

It says that the future that you're going to live is the one that you are creating right now

01:10:23

at this very moment

01:10:25

Another thing to say is that a victim allows his success to be limited by external circumstances people or events

01:10:31

So i'll just use this example and I mean nothing negative by it

01:10:36

But it seems like there's a lot of people that I've met

01:10:39

Who are working a quote-unquote regular job and they they see what I do and they say oh, that's great

01:10:45

I would love the opportunity to do that, but it's just not going to happen for me

01:10:49

Like I I don't see how that could happen

01:10:51

And I would challenge them

01:10:54

I challenge you if you're listening to the podcast and that's you

01:10:56

Like what you've got to do if you want to change your situation is you have to start doing those little things for me

01:11:04

It was having a vision where I wanted to go and then what that looked like in terms of the day-to-day was

01:11:10

Making the choice to become a morning person

01:11:13

overcoming my natural

01:11:16

Adversity to waking up early and creating the space to do the writing

01:11:20

Which has led me to a point where I never thought that I would be I mean I never considered myself

01:11:26

A writer, but every opportunity I've gotten over the last couple of years

01:11:30

Has to do with things that I've written

01:11:34

so

01:11:36

Really the key here is that you can continue to do the things that you have always done

01:11:40

But you will continue to get the same results if that is the case

01:11:44

If you want a different future you have to change the things that you do day-to-day

01:11:49

And the 12-week year is a great way to do that on page 139

01:11:52

He says people earning a million dollars per year aren't working 10 times harder than people earning a hundred thousand dollars

01:11:58

In fact, they are sometimes working less, but they are working differently

01:12:01

So if you're not happy with the results that you've gotten

01:12:05

Change the process change the things that you are doing

01:12:10

And I think the 12-week year is a great way to start working differently if you want to see some different results

01:12:17

Ready for action items. Let's do it. So I have one

01:12:21

Try the 12-week year

01:12:24

Yeah, I think that

01:12:27

I mean you could break it down a little bit more, I guess

01:12:31

I that's kind of what I did like I've already implemented some of the time blocks

01:12:34

Right, I have not taken the whole 12-week period

01:12:38

I will though I will do it at January 1 or by January 1

01:12:42

I'm going to have my plan for the next 12 weeks

01:12:45

And it makes so much sense my wife and I did something similar to this a couple years ago where we had

01:12:52

A yearly goals then we broke it down into quarterly goals

01:12:56

And then even monthly goals from there

01:12:58

But this makes more sense to me than

01:13:02

Trying to have three separate sets of goals and making sure that they're lining up

01:13:06

Right. So yes, absolutely. I guess if you were to boil a ton to one thing it would definitely would be implement the 12-week year

01:13:12

Yeah, because it's really not that hard like

01:13:15

a lot of this book is the

01:13:17

Reasonings behind the principles that they're teaching and why things are going to work if you apply this

01:13:23

But the actual method is not that hard

01:13:27

Yeah, it was only I think maybe three chapters out of the entire book is the actual process the rest of it was

01:13:33

One explaining why you should do it and two explaining some of the mindsets and principles on how to get yourself to do work

01:13:40

like that

01:13:42

that seemed to be how it all panned out because

01:13:45

You know, I could write some things down of how to put

01:13:48

When am I going to do a strategic block of time?

01:13:50

When am I going to put in buffer and breakout blocks?

01:13:52

I already do a lot of that like that's that would be

01:13:55

cop-out I think because it's not

01:13:58

It's not anything different than what I'm already doing and that's why I think just implement the 12-week year

01:14:04

Oddly enough the way I timed it and part of the reason I was

01:14:07

Itching to get into it is because I knew

01:14:11

The base on the timing that if I jumped into it when I did it worked out to where the end of my 12 year

01:14:17

uh 12 week year

01:14:20

equated to the end of the calendar year

01:14:23

That's why I jumped in when I did

01:14:26

Uh, so that means that at the end of december my 12 week year is up

01:14:30

So that's why I jumped in early partially just because pure math and I'm weird and I'm type a like that and I like it to be clean

01:14:38

so

01:14:40

That would have made sense if I would have realized that a few weeks earlier, but yeah

01:14:44

Math is something I've always enjoyed in in college. I took advanced calculus based physics. Yep weird. I know

01:14:54

Uh sports economics

01:14:58

There you go

01:15:02

So I thought this is pretty easy to read. I mean it's an easy book for I think just about anybody to pick up and go through

01:15:06

They explain things quite simply and in a way that's easy to comprehend

01:15:12

So I thought it was a simple they've got a good style

01:15:14

Yeah, I I really like the the style the only thing I would say is I was a little bit distracted sometimes

01:15:22

Um, I don't feel that this one is as well written as so many other books that we've read

01:15:28

Which really has nothing to do with the takeaways that you will get from this

01:15:32

But it was a little bit distracting for me because sometimes I'd read sentences and be like, well wait that

01:15:36

That's not grammatically correct. Yes. I did notice that in a few cases. So it's like oh you guys

01:15:42

What you have here is good, but I feel like you've not been a writer for long

01:15:47

Yeah, which again like I am not a writer

01:15:52

Maybe I am now I guess since i've been doing it for a little while, but i've never

01:15:55

Never considered myself a writer like I really can't hold that against them

01:16:00

But just being like completely transparent. That's the only thing I saw in this book is that sometimes

01:16:05

I would lose track of what they were saying because of how they said it

01:16:08

Yeah, I'm not a part of the grammar police force. So I'm not one to

01:16:12

Like I don't really get upset when I see things like that. I just chalk it up to

01:16:17

Their learning

01:16:20

Right. Oh, and and it's encouraging to me because I notice it's like oh, yeah, that's not like you don't use a semicolon like that

01:16:26

That doesn't work like I'll notice those, but it's like, oh, yeah, I know how that works

01:16:32

Right

01:16:33

Yeah, but overall I would say it's a really really good book. It's very very actionable

01:16:38

It is not hard to read at all

01:16:41

And I think it's applicable to just about anybody

01:16:44

So unless like you've heard about the 12 week year concept before and are already applying it

01:16:50

I would say this is definitely worth your time

01:16:53

It's not

01:16:55

Again the concepts are great

01:16:58

But it's not like the best book that we've ever read so for that reason alone. I'm gonna say 4.5

01:17:04

Yeah, I'm gonna give it a four

01:17:07

Just because there's a lot of things that I feel like could have been

01:17:10

Written better or a little more in depth. It's a kind of it's a fairly short book

01:17:15

and

01:17:17

It seemed like they were trying to stretch to put it into a book at times

01:17:21

so

01:17:23

I just

01:17:24

There's some things that just don't quite feel right with it, but that's that's where I landed

01:17:28

So you got a four and a half. I got a four oh

01:17:31

It's a four and a quarter

01:17:34

overall

01:17:37

So upcoming books

01:17:39

I

01:17:40

So my choice coming next I picked brain chains. This is one that's been recommended a handful of times

01:17:44

Uh, people have been itching to get us to go through this and I have started reading this

01:17:49

Uh, I'm excited to talk about this one

01:17:52

There's gonna be a lot to talk about for this one Mike

01:17:54

Nice. Yeah, I I've had this one honestly this one was gifted to me a while ago and uh

01:18:00

I've been meaning to dig into it, but haven't yet

01:18:04

So I'm excited about this one as well, but I believe that this one is going to be one of the more meatier books that we've we've yeah

01:18:10

Yes, I agree

01:18:13

This one I won't be like I've gotten to where I read books in about a week

01:18:17

This one will not be done in a week guarantee

01:18:21

Right. Yeah, this one looks pretty substantial

01:18:24

Um, and then the one after that

01:18:26

It I saw this on the recommended list and this was actually one that I had bought a while back

01:18:31

uh, I was in

01:18:34

Or near the chicago area for a wedding one time and I saw this bookstore across the street

01:18:39

So naturally I had to go and they sold books by the pound

01:18:44

So yeah, it's this cool little little bookshop

01:18:48

uh near the

01:18:50

Northwest university campus

01:18:52

And yeah, like you could go and you could pick out as many books as you want and then like it was so much per pound

01:18:57

It was like a fish market for books

01:18:59

That's crazy. I know

01:19:01

Wow, I you need 11. Oh, that sounds like fun. I know our library sells books by the bag

01:19:06

I think it's like four dollars a bag or something like that. Okay

01:19:10

But it's like grocery sack type

01:19:12

But anyway, yeah, so one of the ones that I picked up there because I could buy books by the pound

01:19:17

Was the checklist manifesto?

01:19:19

Just because I thought the concept sounded a lot of sounded uh, very interesting

01:19:24

When was this?

01:19:25

Uh, this was maybe

01:19:27

Four or five months ago. Okay. I was thinking maybe you're gonna say four or five years ago

01:19:32

And I was thinking well, did you get it before you got into productivity? I was curious

01:19:37

No, but I bought it because I just bought everything that that looked interesting at the at the store

01:19:44

It's like a good one by the pound

01:19:46

And uh, it's been on my shelf for a while and uh, I keep I keep looking at it

01:19:50

I'm like, oh, I need to need to read that because I've heard a little bit of stuff in the broactivity space about

01:19:54

The power of making lists and checking things off

01:19:57

And I've not really been able to articulate it really well to some of the other people in my life where I'm kind of like preaching the

01:20:04

uh preaching the the the benefits of omni focus and stuff like that people

01:20:08

Well, why should I do that? Like I think this book is gonna have the reasoning behind

01:20:13

Mm-hmm. All of the whole approach that that I use

01:20:16

in validation for things that I've done and then also maybe it'll tweak some of the

01:20:20

Some of the processes and the day-to-day stuff and how I implement it. So

01:20:24

Um, yeah, I'm looking forward to this and it's by a tool go one day

01:20:28

Is that how you say it? That's about as close as I could get with it. Okay. Sorry if I mispronounce your your name mr. Go one day

01:20:36

I'm excited about that one as well. I've been a list maker for a long time

01:20:40

And I'm getting more and more into checklists. So I'm kind of curious to see

01:20:44

See if I could do it better or what the I guess I don't think I could fully comprehend or well

01:20:50

Maybe I can comprehend but I can't articulate how

01:20:53

Not like what the value is behind it. But this is uh, this is kind of an odd case here, Mike

01:20:57

We've got these two books are both ones that were recommended to us

01:21:00

So that's that's kind of fun. It's fun that we can start to pick up some of these that other folks are interested in

01:21:05

So, you know for the listeners

01:21:07

If there's one that you want us to get into that we haven't jumped into yet the way that we got those

01:21:11

Recommendations is through the website. So bookworm.fm

01:21:15

You can go there in the sidebar

01:21:16

There's a link for recommend a book or if you want bookworm.fm/recommend so that's how you can get there

01:21:22

And if you want to see the ones that we have had recommended or the ones we've finished some of them that we're planning

01:21:27

To get through same place

01:21:30

Slash list you can see the book list

01:21:33

On our website as well. So both of those are out there and that's where we're keeping track of all the books in our queue

01:21:39

And if you enjoy bookworm and you would be willing to do us a small favor

01:21:45

We would really appreciate it

01:21:47

If you would go over to itunes and leave us a review because that will help more people

01:21:53

Find out about the show and hopefully more people can can benefit

01:21:57

from

01:21:59

from going through the podcast book club together

01:22:02

So

01:22:03

Awesome. So again, the next book up is brain chains

01:22:06

If you're into a heady

01:22:09

Long read and you can keep up with us in two weeks. This one will I think it's

01:22:13

460 some pages long so it's a long one

01:22:17

So if you want to follow along with us you can pick that one up or if you want to skip this one

01:22:20

The next one up is the checklist manifesto, but coming up next is brain chain

01:22:25

So if you want to read along

01:22:26

We'll jump into that one and we will talk with you next time