Bookworm Transcripts

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So something pretty cool happened last week Joe. I know and this is pretty cool

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I'm excited about it. Yeah Blake is on to us in the chat here Ali Abdall mentioned

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Bookworm in a YouTube video

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Which I will paste the link here in the the chat to the chapter where he starts talking about this

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the bummer about this is that I didn't know about this for a couple of days and

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By the time I found out about it

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I was at dinner with my wife and I got a text message from my friend saying dude

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Ali Abdall just named dropped bookworm. I immediately went to look and realized

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That is team I had had linked to the wrong bookworm

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So first couple of days when hundred thousand plus people were watching the video

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It was pointing to our old nemesis KCRW

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See we we let up too soon Joe we stop the fight too soon and

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Then we did it came back to bite us

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It's totally dead. Yep, then here we are but alas at least we were acknowledged

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So if you have found us through Ollie welcome welcome to bookworm. Glad to have you on board

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Yeah, welcome to the team. Thank you Ollie for the mention that was super cool to see and

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It got sorted out. It was very responsive

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Team fixed it right away. So and it's super cool to know that Ollie Abdall listens to bookworm

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I've been a fan of Ollie's for quite a while

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Heard him on different podcasts and followed some of his YouTube stuff

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I'm not big into YouTube, but he's one of the few people that I watch what he makes because I think it's really really good

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I remember him making the notion tracker video back in the day

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That was the thing that actually made notion click for me when I was using it for some editorial stuff and kind of influences

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A lot of the things that we do editorial wise with notion at the the sweet setup, but super super cool and

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Yeah, thank you for the for the mention. It's always kind of interesting to me because it's not a big

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We're not a big podcast

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I mean the other people on that list are like the Tim Ferris shows and things like that and everyone's in a while

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I'll

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Hear somebody share something or see somebody link something like Andre Chaperone actually was another one who had a post and

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He's the guy behind the tiny little business

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Website and had a list of his favorite podcast. I saw a bookworm on there one time like well that that's super cool

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I've been literally following you for a very long time. It's it's awesome to see that

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People who I appreciate, you know, they appreciate some of the stuff that we do always always warms the conchles of my heart

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The conchles of your heart nice nice

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Yeah, it is a little it's it's a strange feeling when you have people who you admire you look up to and consider a

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strong mentor of yours from a distance

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Invert it and start

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Paying attention to you like it's such a weird feeling

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Yeah, so I have a word for those people they are my internet heroes and I've used that term for quite a while and

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When I first started using it my wife would kind of roll her eyes at me

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but it's interesting because I have

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Since I started using that term been able to connect with and meet several of my internet heroes

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Yeah, and I want to pay that forward, you know when when I have the opportunity to

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Pull somebody else up. I want to take advantage of that that kind of sparked that because

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Blake was mentioning I guess I got to watch what I say now. Yeah

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Always watch what you say you never know it's true. It's true

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so

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That was cool. No, it also school follow up is cool. It is sometimes let's talk about some of these action items

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Did you make better use of your fresh starts? I think so

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maybe I

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Discovered something the last two weeks and that is that if you want to find fresh starts

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You can find them just about everywhere the problem with fresh starts is that you can find them just about everywhere

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That is true

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so

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It's both a positive and a negative to some degree. So I'm learning that I need to just be aware of that and try to

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Adjust my expectations for what comes out of those

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But at the same time trying not to overdo that at the same

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You know in the same interval there because it's easy to try to

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Make use of every single one of them and then the next thing you know

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You're always trying to change something and that's not helpful either

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True your other action item here was to be more intentional with your time-based reminders. How'd you do with that?

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Yeah, I have added a bank of

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time-based reminders and

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Realize that I have probably too many different systems in place for that

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and

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Namely like I've got some that come through Omni focus. I've got some that come through the do app

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Now anymore. I've got a few of them that are coming out of obsidian

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But I'm not a real big fan of the obsidian method with those because they don't seem to actually work at the exact time

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Maybe that's just the way I've got it set up

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I don't know but I've been unable to get them to actually trigger at the time I need them out of obsidian

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So I'm probably abandoning that particular process, but yes

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I gotta figure out what the right mechanism is for those all right, so maybe I

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Might be better with time-based reminders. I've set more of them than I have historically

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Which is I think is a good thing. That's but at the same time like that means that they end up in too many different places

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That's probably a win, but yeah, I don't know. It's uh, I feel that that tension too

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It's really task management that the reminders for me tend to get spread out and

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It's tempting to try to have like one system where you have everything

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But there's definitely limitations with that kind of stuff too

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I'm still experimenting with running everything out of obsidian and I think that's gonna work for me

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But there's advantages to things like do for example where you can have those nagging reminders

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And they just keep showing up until you actually do the thing so I get it

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I've got two action items here for finding more opportunities for fresh starts and creating a mulligan plan and

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the opportunities for fresh starts I did make a list of these and

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They are basically everywhere

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I don't know which of these I intend to really take advantage of

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But just the obvious ones are like start of the year

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I put start of a quarter because I've got the whole personal retreat framework that I follow

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So coming back from that starting a new quarter. That's obviously an opportunity for a fresh start

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But then things like

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anniversaries and birthdays

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After a vacation the start of the school year launching a product even something like Mondays

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I feel our yep

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Opportunity for a fresh start so I started making this list and quickly realized that this is gonna get

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Overwhelming with if I try to do something with all of these

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So I think I'm gonna mark this is done and just walk away from it saying I've made the list and

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Recognize that there are lots of these

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So next time I I'm looking to leverage one just grab the closest one

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Or if there's something that I feel is more

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Significant it's gonna take more effort then maybe I'll do something a little bit bigger

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like a

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Anniversary or a birthday or something like that, but that's done

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And then the creating the mulligan plan I did this as well

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And this was just simply listing out like the number of times per week. I wanted to do certain things and in the previous episode

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I had given some like exercise based ones

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Which I intended to use as like a springboard into thinking about some other areas

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I actually just kept it to that I

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Was thinking about like journaling or mindfulness meditation or stuff like that

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And I just thought like I don't really like the way that the mulligan plan is coming together for that kind of stuff

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So I'm just gonna keep it for the exercise because that's the thing where I've got to make sure I'd I do certain numbers of things

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in a in a given week, so mine is simply

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Exercise three times a week or really lift three times a week run twice a week and bike once a week

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Which is six days a week then and I'm working out

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But the last couple of years I'd actually been working out every single day and it felt great

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So I feel like that's very doable. I've slipped with that in the recent past because

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Broke my hand couldn't lift

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Everything got thrown kind of out of whack trying to get back into the swing of things and establish a normal routine again

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And it's still kind of fuzzy how it's gonna shake out because the lifting routine that I have the gym that is

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Right by our house that we used to go to is under new management, and I don't like it

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It's a very different meat headish crowd

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And it's just not my scene

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Yep

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So I got to find someplace new

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But everywhere that I've looked it's just kind of rubs me the wrong way

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So I don't know where I'm gonna go. I just know that I don't really want to go there

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Toying around we're creating a new routine with stuff at home

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I have some things at home. Thanks Blake for the rowing machine idea, which cost me a bunch of money

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But I've been doing it consistently and it feels great

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I've also got some adjustable dumbbells and a and a bike and stuff like that, so I could do like a simple version of things

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But my routine as it currently constructed requires a little bit more a little bit more in terms of the

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Facilities and stuff, so I got to sort through that I did find a church nearby which has a

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Sports program, so it actually has a like a weight room, but it's not a it's not a great weight room

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They do have a couple of basketball courts and they have like open gym

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Which that has got me thinking about maybe going back and playing basketball once a week

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Because it's been a long time since I actually played like I coached my son's team

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But not played with a bunch of guys in several years, and it's ridiculously cheap

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It's ten dollars for a family for a month. That is cheap. Yeah, so I like everything about that except

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The facilities in the weight room, so still don't know how that's gonna shake out, but I've got the mulligan plan at least

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Just got to hammer out the specifics of the routine yet. Highly recommend the basketball deal

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That's I played basketball with a group of guys every Thursday morning six a.m. Nice and

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I'm the one that makes everybody run more than normal

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Because that was the way my high school team played it was full speed four quarters. You never stop running like that was

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So we did and our goal was to wear everybody out by the fourth quarter and then get all your points in the fourth quarter

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That was how we played

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So I have not broken that old habit apparently

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Yeah, uh, it's funny because the last time I I played with a a group of guys

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I was playing early in the morning. They played at 5 30 at a local high school

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And

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They moved so I stopped going turns out the place that they moved is this church

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That was like oh several years ago

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And they used to play like Tuesdays and thursday mornings. I think I forget the cadence, but now they play every morning

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From five to eight at the church nice

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Five in the mornings will eight every day. That is intense. Wow. I don't think the sense agreement plays

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But it's probably grown a bit and they have people coming and going but yeah, it's on the schedule like five to eight

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Every day. So that's that's pretty cool

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Uh, I will join that at some point, but I also am a little bit hesitant. My finger's still healing. I don't want to

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Do anything stupid?

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Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. We should play basketball sometime. Let's do it

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We have the bookworm basketball club. Oh, dude. I love that idea

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That's a little bit of a commute for you and I to get together to do that though

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That is true. That is true. Well, should we talk about today's book? Yeah, this could be a long window for not careful

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That is a understatement of the year

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So today's book is personal Socrates

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by mark champagne and this is

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hard to describe as a book it's a bunch of

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Profiles, I believe that he calls them of

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Primarily famous people who he's kind of done some

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research and some studies on

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who these people are and what they've accomplished and kind of dissected

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their thought processes and condensed it down into some clarifying questions

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All right, so on the back of this book, which was printed in

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Conjunction with baren fig it says at any point we are one question away from a different life and I

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Love that premise. It reminds me a lot of the concept of

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Thinking time from I think it was the road less stupid

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by Keith Cunningham and

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In that book the big takeaway I remember was that when you learn to ask the right questions then the answers become clear

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so

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Combine that approach of finding the right questions with a book that is literally just a bunch of clarifying questions

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And you've got a recipe for mics kind of book when I first opened this

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I saw the quote that was on the back at any point

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We were one question away from a different life and I immediately thought did he write this for mike

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I'm pretty sure this book is a result of an interview with mike. It has to be

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That's

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That was my initial reaction

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On reading that quote, but before that

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I I have to just point out

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Like we've mentioned this about a handful of books

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Probably over the last maybe six months or so

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How the form factor?

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Starts to play a big role in your experience with the book

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Like they're starting to think about how it feels in your hands and not just

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Print a book and get it out the door and when mike mentioned that this is a in conjunction with baron fig

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Keep in mind that baron fig like one of their claims to fame is high quality notebooks

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Like for writing in them for taking notes and such like that's what they've done in the past

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So for them to take that same style and to put it into a nonfiction book format

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Like there's just so many things they did with this that are

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Fascinating to me like if you've noticed mike like you can open this book to pretty much any page and it will stay there

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Yes, you notice that very

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Esque

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Yeah, it definitely is but there's also some like they've of course got you know

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A couple variations. I think three or four different variations of fonts and colors, but there's one little tiny

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Thing that they did in the bottom right hand corner of the right hand page

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Of every single one of these chapters that when I saw it I thought huh

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Why don't more books do this? This is brilliant

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I love this because I do this all the time but in the bottom

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On the right hand side bottom right or the right hand page

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It will tell you how many pages are left in that chapter so the it's usually four sometimes three pages left in that particular

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Section and you don't have to skip ahead to see how many pages it is before you're done with it

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I feel like this is brilliant because I'm always doing this like I don't want to start the next section

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If I've only got a couple minutes, but if it's going to be two pages, I'll do that

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Or if I've got 15 minutes and I know

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How many like you know what I'm saying like you can look ahead. I do that all the time

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Glance ahead to see how much of a chapter I have left

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But I don't know how to do that with this. I don't know why that little thing like made my day when I figured out what was going on

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It's it's brilliant people should do this more often

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It is uh, I agree that's

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One of those things that just eliminates a little bit of friction when you're reading it because I do the same thing as you

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I'm reading another book right now

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And uh, I do that exact thing where you skip ahead to see how many pages are left in the chapter

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And I didn't even realize how much that annoyed me until I was done with this one

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And then I started doing it again and I had the same recollection like oh

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The personal Socrates book just told me

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Yes, yes, I started in on our next book and I was like, oh

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I have to glance ahead again

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Please bring it back. Please everybody. I don't know whose idea this was a baren fig

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But they need to like tell every publisher everywhere to do this

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Please do this if you're a publisher, please do this

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Yeah, and the paper in the book itself, it feels a little bit weird in my opinion for a book

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It's pretty thin. I mean, it's not

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Low quality but it feels a little bit. I mean the cover doesn't I was banging it on my desk before we started

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You're like are you pounding on your keyboard? No, that's the cover of the book hitting my desk

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Yes, totally sounded like he was hitting the keys on his keyboard

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It totally but the paper feels a little bit flimsy for me, but no big deal

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Yeah, I can't say I noticed that

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I do know like you can tell that they were intentional about how much space they left around the words like sometimes

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When you get a book they always they like to print the page really close to the edge of the words

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That's annoying because then you can't write in it

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This one they specifically left you like three quarters of an inch

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Around the outside so you could write in those margins

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And then they leave you two or three pages four pages in the back for notes as well

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Like this is a company that knows you need to use a book and not just

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You know put it on a shelf and make it look pretty

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So I did not actually write in my book

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Did you I always do yes because I'm an animal like that

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Did you uh write with a fountain pen per chance?

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Uh

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Tonight no, I don't think in this case I did sometimes I do but in this case I don't think that happened

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I don't want to mark up my book

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But I am curious because baren fig paper is like you said

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Usually pretty decent if that means that it would actually work with a fountain pen or not

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We're gonna find out generally you don't want to use a fountain pen when you mark up your books

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It's going to create a mess but right if there's one book where it might work

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This is probably the one I mean it bleeds a hair but not much okay

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Yeah, I would feel comfortable using a fountain pen in this so yeah, I would say so cool

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It also comes in a box and includes a very cool bookmark

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Yep, did you use it or do you use the bookworm bookmark?

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Good question. I'm pretty sure I used the bookworm bookmark

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But I also kept the original one in the book itself

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But I tend to grab the same bookworm bookmark at this point

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And when i'm done with a book bring it with me to my next book

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Pretty sure that's what I did with this one also, but this uh, this bookmark is

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Yeah, it's got like this reflective material on it for like the keyhole design and it's very clever

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It definitely fits with the whole aesthetic. It's like a whole package. It's not just a book

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And uh, it feels really well done. I really like the color scheme. It's like this blue gray black

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sort of a thing

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and every single page has like little hints of color in it

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It's not like color diagrams or anything like that

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but just very much in line with the

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design of the the cover and the the box itself and like I said, I absolutely love this premise for the book

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It's all these different profiles. I don't know how many there are all together. I didn't count them all up

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But they are broken into three different sections

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because

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hashtag productivity book

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Yep

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All great books three books part one is get clear part two is live intentionally

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And part three is expand possibility

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and each of these profiles is

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Probably somewhere between three and eight pages depending on who he's talking about and uh rather than try to go through all of them

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We picked some

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And I added a couple of them for each section

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I got mad at joe before we recorded because I said you didn't add anything

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I told you to put your the ones you wanted to discuss in the outline and we just agreed on the ones we wanted to talk about

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so

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because I think

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I just want to say that like in each of these parts. I was trying to get a quick count

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Because I think there's what is there 1215 in each

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I don't remember with the exact same number. So there's there's somewhere around 12 to 15 per

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Part 10 to 15 somewhere there, but we're gonna go through three

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per part here

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And I just want to point that out because there's so much more than what we're gonna cover today

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At least I think over the plan of what we're gonna cover today. There's a lot more

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We'll see if we cover the whole thing or not. Let's probably not do that

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This will be a four-hour episode if we do that, but there's a lot a lot a lot in here

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Like there's a lot of names in this book

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That are mentioned that we're not even gonna step into like jim's clear is here and we're skipping over him because we've already talked about him

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Right, but we're also skipping over pakaso so that's true. Well, I did give you an opportunity

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You did you did but I think we have the right nine. I think we're good

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and I guess before we get into the individual parts we should mention that

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Mark champagne is a

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Podcaster for a show called behind the human so he's talked to a lot of these people not everybody

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And he also was the person behind the ky o

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Journaling app which I tried to go back and find he tells his story at the beginning

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How it had?

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87 million downloads and he's sitting there ready to delete it from the store because he had

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Asked himself a question which made clear a different life path for him

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And I thought that was a really cool way to

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Introduce the the book. It did not feel like sometimes that kind of stuff is like

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Oh, look at all this stuff that I was able to accomplish and then look at me

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I made the ultimate sacrifice

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Mimi me. I I you know he was just setting up this

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Curiosity theme and I thought he did it really well. Yeah. Yeah, it was one of those

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Scenarios from like wait, you had this nailed you had the product you had it and you deleted it

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Yeah, okay now I have lots of questions. Thankfully you're gonna process a lot of questions here too

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So that that was a great hook to get you going and that was just in the introduction. So yes agreed

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All right, so let's go to

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Part one here, which is get clear and there are

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Lots of different

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Profiles that we could choose from I want to start here with the first one though on calfussman

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and each of these profiles is kind of set up the same way the title of the

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chapter or the profile is

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The question that you can apply yourself from the profiling question. So

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The question for this profile is how can I ask the most powerful questions?

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That is a great one to start with for the way this book is formatted

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and

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Calfussman is according to the bio in the book an iconic journalist author and storyteller

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and then there's a

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Little bullet point list of the things that they've done

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So a long time writer for Esquire magazine. I know you're at times best-selling author

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Interviewed icons like Muhammad Ali Serena Williams Jeff Bezos Robert De Niro

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a host of the big questions podcast

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Had breakfast with Larry king every morning, you know and these bullet points are interesting because some of them are just life accomplishments

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but then some of them are

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Insights into the way that they think like the very next one is philosophy to life

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If you change your questions, you can change your life one of the greatest interviewers and storytellers of all time

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So I really like these little bios and for the most part we're going to skip over these

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But I'd feel like this is a very effective approach rather than trying to tell a story about who the person is

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Having some quick bullet points where you can refresh yourself on their history if you need it before mark gets into

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his

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Profile of the person makes this actually a much shorter book than it could have been

00:25:55

I mean if you don't crank through those bullet points and you're trying to set a stage for

00:25:59

Why this person is important? This could be five times the length. Oh, yeah easily easily

00:26:07

This is this is the point in the book where I realized that mark is asking questions about the book format

00:26:14

As he goes through it like you realize that because what you're what you just said

00:26:20

It would be very easy to make this book twice as long as it is and it's already 250 pages

00:26:24

And going through it. It doesn't feel like that. It feels like it's very short

00:26:28

Even though it is one of the like on the longer side of things like 200 is kind of what I tend to expect out of them

00:26:35

and

00:26:36

This point where he's got these bio points

00:26:38

They even make it in a smaller font make it a slightly lighter color gray like they do all those things

00:26:44

And like I would read these like because there's a lot of names in here. I don't know

00:26:49

And I'm sure that's partly why he's

00:26:51

Doing this because there are obviously going to be some

00:26:54

That you know, but a lot of them you don't and even the ones you know

00:26:59

Like one of them we're gonna cover later. Kobe Bryant like there's some points in that bio

00:27:05

Like I feel like I know Kobe Bryant really well like basketball was my sport we talked about that earlier

00:27:10

but Kobe was of course somebody that every basketball player would look up to

00:27:14

And yet there's some things in that bio. They're like wait. I didn't know that like that

00:27:19

That was completely new to me. So there's a lot of things in these that are super helpful

00:27:23

But you're right it does speed up the process of getting you into the chapter

00:27:27

So what these bios do and by attaching them to a

00:27:31

famous or semi-famous person

00:27:34

Is it wraps the question

00:27:37

in a story

00:27:39

Which makes it more entertaining to read

00:27:42

but also

00:27:44

Ultimately the big takeaway in each one of these is

00:27:48

the question or questions

00:27:50

That you are left with. I mean, I don't even know how many action items I have from this book

00:27:57

Because I'm not going to write them all down for the podcast. There's probably more than 12. It's

00:28:04

Every single section has multiple opportunities for you to brew on these questions and again any one of these can change your life

00:28:12

So

00:28:13

This one at the very beginning

00:28:15

I just like this because how can I ask the most powerful questions? That's really the approach going into this

00:28:20

Whole book this whole project and the the big thing I walk out of this profile thinking about is what are the questions that I'm not

00:28:30

Asking it's great to have a clarifying question those clarifying questions are actually a keep

00:28:36

Piece of the personal retreat stuff that I do. What should I start doing? Stop doing and keep doing

00:28:41

Simple questions, but there's a lot of clarity that comes from those

00:28:44

But I don't pretend that there aren't better questions to be asking especially in specific scenarios

00:28:51

If you're trying to find clarity in a specific area of your life

00:28:53

There are other questions that are probably better openers than those are

00:28:59

And so I leave this first section

00:29:02

Curious as to like what are all the questions that are possible that I haven't even

00:29:09

Considered yet because it kind of ends with this

00:29:12

Statement that you're never going to get an answer to a question that you don't ask

00:29:18

100% true

00:29:21

And then we get blocked from asking great questions

00:29:23

Because we overthink situations and this is the part where mike raises his hand and says guilty because I do this all the time

00:29:31

Trying to learn not to

00:29:34

And I feel like questions are a systems or a process driven

00:29:40

solution

00:29:41

to

00:29:42

Overthinking if you force yourself to just follow the question

00:29:46

then you can

00:29:48

Circumvent a lot of the the overthinking at least that's my personal philosophy with this

00:29:54

Yeah, and just to show the opposite side of the coin you have been

00:29:59

And correct me if I put words in your mouth here, but you have been somebody who has

00:30:04

preached or taught the value of asking yourself good questions for quite some time and have been in the practice of

00:30:12

asking reflective and

00:30:15

challenging questions of yourself for a

00:30:18

Decent period now probably years

00:30:21

Easily at this point is that fair statement? Yep, so

00:30:24

the opposite side of that coin is somebody like me who doesn't do this at all and

00:30:29

I'm not someone who has

00:30:32

a pat set of questions that I go through regularly up until just here recently

00:30:37

Whenever we had a recent book that I'm drawing a blank on where we had three questions that came out of it

00:30:43

And I don't remember what those were, but I know that it's a part of my monthly questioning

00:30:47

Process right now. So like every month I'm answering these questions and

00:30:52

That is something that I find

00:30:55

Super helpful and want to expand on so like you said you could easily have tons of action items that come from this

00:31:01

Book because of the format of the way he lays us out

00:31:04

He gives you a story tells you the background of the person and how they came to that question

00:31:08

They kind of flush it out with maybe one or two other examples and stories

00:31:12

And then he gives you a section at the end where it's like here's a practical

00:31:17

Task for you to take on and then he has a one-liner at the very end of a final thought

00:31:23

And that last little one page of here's what you need to do with this

00:31:29

Remember what I said there's 10 to 15 of these per part, which means there's I'd have to check somewhere between 30 and 45 of these things

00:31:35

That means you can come out of here with at least 30 to 45

00:31:39

Tasks

00:31:41

Which gets to be intense which is partly why one of mine is to just walk through this thing once more

00:31:46

Just from a high level overview and just figure out which of those are worth doing right now

00:31:51

Because it could get unwieldy very quick

00:31:54

So it's intense. It really is

00:31:58

Yeah, it absolutely can can be the

00:32:00

Episode or the book with the questions by the way, I dug it up while you were talking is 4,000 weeks

00:32:08

There you go. Yeah, episode 135

00:32:11

Blake in the chat said he was reading that right now. It's a good one. Yep. It definitely is

00:32:15

So you have all these questions

00:32:18

From this this book and I don't know what exactly to do with all these

00:32:24

Other than to consider them as we go through it and then like you said probably go back and revisit them at at some point

00:32:31

I'm twying around with the idea of just dumping all of these into a text file and obsidian and creating some sort of like

00:32:40

macro thing and quick ad which just grabs a random question and drops it in whatever note I happen to be in

00:32:48

I don't know

00:32:49

I don't know how effective that would be on the one hand. I feel like maybe that's kind of cool because you never know what you're going to get

00:32:56

And so you might go into it thinking I'm going to apply this lens this mental model

00:33:02

You know, but being forced to answer a different question can kind of

00:33:06

Jar you and give you a different perspective, which maybe would be beneficial, but maybe would just annoy me. I'm not sure yet

00:33:12

So I feel like that would drive me nuts like one of the

00:33:17

one of the methods that I've debated with this is

00:33:20

putting your list together but

00:33:23

Choosing what interval for each question because some of these you could ask yourself every day

00:33:28

And that'd be okay

00:33:30

Some of these I feel like you could only ask yourself about once a year

00:33:33

So like having them randomly show up on a potentially daily

00:33:36

Basis doesn't

00:33:39

Feel like it would be the right route to me. Maybe it would be for you. I don't know

00:33:43

but to me I feel like I need to work through the decisions for how

00:33:48

Frequent should some of these be asked and in my case should some of these be asked because some of these don't

00:33:53

Like I feel like there's a lot of cases where it doesn't apply

00:33:56

Yep, but at the same time those are probably the ones you should ask more often too

00:34:00

I think the big takeaway is just to ask more questions. I think if you do that then this book is a success

00:34:06

But that's the the first one anything else with cal fussman

00:34:11

No, let's keep moving. All right. So the next one that I want to talk about a little bit was robin williams

00:34:17

And the question with this one is what does it mean to be?

00:34:22

unapologetically

00:34:25

me

00:34:26

and

00:34:27

I feel like

00:34:29

That's the kind of question you just hear it and you're like, huh

00:34:32

I don't even really know because I've never really thought about that

00:34:35

and so

00:34:39

I don't know I I have an action item here from this one

00:34:43

To list out what I fear in a single sentence

00:34:46

But I feel like the the profile

00:34:49

Well, it talks about

00:34:51

robin williams and most people are probably familiar with who robin williams is and it talks a little bit about how he was dealing with depression and

00:34:59

committed suicide and

00:35:02

Lost him before his time

00:35:06

So we're kind of robbed of the total influence that he could have had

00:35:09

but he also shares like the kind of person that he was and his approach to to life and

00:35:17

I feel like that

00:35:19

juxtaposition of here's somebody who is really well known for his comedic roles and

00:35:26

the same time he's dealing with

00:35:28

all of these

00:35:30

personal demons

00:35:32

That's an interesting

00:35:34

juxtaposition

00:35:35

I guess if you are on somebody and they're always joking and they're always laughing

00:35:41

You're just like that person their life of the party

00:35:44

They must just be a happy person like this is just who they are but the beneath that

00:35:51

It could be a facade. I'm not saying it was a robin williams, but this is just my thought process going through this is like

00:35:57

Maybe that's a cover for something. Maybe there's some

00:36:01

insecurity beneath the surface and really the

00:36:05

Single word label for that I think is is fear

00:36:08

So maybe it's fear of what other people are going to think

00:36:11

Maybe it's fear of letting somebody that you care a lot about down

00:36:15

But if you don't confront the fear, I feel like that's when it can have the most damage

00:36:21

When you name it, it doesn't seem as scary anymore

00:36:26

It's kind of like the fear setting exercise by tim ferris. It's like well, let's think about the worst case scenario

00:36:31

Oh, that's that's the worst thing that could happen. It's probably not going to be that bad

00:36:35

So what are you afraid of sort of a thing? So

00:36:38

I don't know what does it mean to be unapologetically me?

00:36:41

That's the question that it leads with but it's interesting to me that my action item from that is actually

00:36:47

significantly different

00:36:49

Where it's list out what I'm afraid of

00:36:53

But see that that's exactly where it should go because see here to answer the question

00:36:59

What does it mean to be unapologetically me?

00:37:02

It comes with the predicated question of what does it mean to be me

00:37:07

Because you have to know that first

00:37:09

I think

00:37:11

And in a lot of cases

00:37:13

At least I know in my case like to be completely honest with you when I read that question like wait hold up

00:37:19

um

00:37:21

Not sure. I'm 100 on what it means to be me let alone unapologetically me. Yep

00:37:26

So

00:37:28

What does that even mean and what do I do with that because

00:37:32

I get very conflicted because I'm

00:37:35

You know a farm kid, but I'm in the tech world and I love building things

00:37:39

But I love writing and it like there's so many of these things like okay. Well, what does it mean to be me?

00:37:44

Scattered like

00:37:48

Undecisive like but how do you approach that unapologetically and like you're saying like how do you embrace like the fear

00:37:56

Or let go of the fear that comes with that

00:37:58

But you have to understand all those details and that's not a simple thing to do

00:38:02

But at the same time none of these questions are that simple to answer and yet that's the point right?

00:38:09

That is the point

00:38:10

It's almost doing the book a disservice to cover it the way that we do for bookworm

00:38:15

Because we have to get through it in two weeks

00:38:17

We could literally spend the rest of your life right wrestling with these these questions

00:38:21

And I think that's kind of the intention is maybe you don't do anything with some of these right now

00:38:26

But you do it at some point and you're right like if you think about what does it mean to be me?

00:38:32

You probably think of your mannerisms and the things that you do

00:38:35

but you had to dig deeper and consider the motivations for why you do the things that you do and uh

00:38:42

Maybe there's some insecurity or fear that's holding some of that stuff together which should be

00:38:49

dealt with and is uncomfortable to think about but the question

00:38:53

gives you a vehicle to deal with that stuff if you're just left on your own

00:38:59

Search your your innermost parts your your soul and figure out, you know

00:39:05

Where are the the dark things that need to get get fixed?

00:39:10

That's really intimidating to think about and um

00:39:13

answering a question your mind just kind of goes down that path blindly

00:39:19

It's almost like you're tricked into it and then once you're there

00:39:22

It's like oh, this is uncomfortable

00:39:24

But you do it a handful of times it's like go into the gym and you know that there's going to be good on on the other side of it

00:39:30

So you aren't intimidated by the the discomfort

00:39:34

But it's a lot easier to just

00:39:37

Engage with that stuff. I feel like when you have these these types of questions to help you

00:39:42

Yeah, I just want to point out one thing at the beginning of this book

00:39:45

He makes the recommendation to read one of these profiles a day and

00:39:50

Not go beyond that. So for us to do this in two weeks

00:39:54

Is totally breaking the rule that he recommends

00:39:58

So I think if you were to follow his advice you would probably get even more out of it

00:40:03

But it's bookworm. We have to fly through things, right? Agreed

00:40:07

He mentions a couple times in this book how as part of his routine

00:40:13

He goes through the daily stoic and that would be that would be the closest thing

00:40:18

I could compare this to if we were to try to cover the daily stoic

00:40:21

In a two week period. That's kind of what we're doing with this one

00:40:26

Basically, it doesn't work too well, but here we are and it's fun

00:40:31

Well, I wouldn't say it doesn't work, but it's not the way that they

00:40:36

Intended you to engage with the material

00:40:40

You will get more out of it if you do it at a slower pace for sure

00:40:44

I meant trying to cover the book on bookworm like it just wouldn't work well

00:40:47

Yeah, but yeah, I get what you're saying the third one from this section that I wanted to talk about was chip calmly

00:40:53

And the question here is how can I be the most curious person in the room?

00:41:01

and chip calmly was a

00:41:04

CEO and

00:41:07

consulted with

00:41:09

airbnb and

00:41:11

Basically, he's a is a serial entrepreneur who sold his company jdv

00:41:17

and then wrote five books about psychology and business

00:41:21

But then when he worked with airbnb the really the focus was this hospitality

00:41:26

So how can you make people feel good? Right? And so the approach that he's taken to

00:41:32

a lot of this stuff is just to be curious about

00:41:37

What people think and why things are the way that they are the

00:41:42

What if questions the the why questions?

00:41:46

These are these are the ones he he tends to lean into in fact at the beginning of this section

00:41:52

I like this because the very first part of this this chapter behind the question

00:41:57

I asked chip the same question I asked each guest on the behind the human podcast

00:42:01

Who are you and chip answered? I'm a curious white boy

00:42:04

I immediately knew I was in for a fantastic interview

00:42:08

And uh, I like that because it's not shining a spotlight on his

00:42:14

accomplishments, but really just

00:42:16

Highlights the fact that he wants to be present and figure out

00:42:22

what other people

00:42:24

Are thinking and why things are the way that they are?

00:42:27

I'm not doing a very good job of describing this, but I think there's a very

00:42:29

Important distinction here between like engaging with a question with a spotlight on yourself

00:42:37

Versus engaging with a question and looking outward or at the people and the things and the systems and whatever around you

00:42:46

You won't notice a lot of things if you're just looking

00:42:52

In but you might notice some really cool stuff if you can flip that around and instead look out

00:42:59

Does that make sense?

00:43:01

Yeah, so let me let me try to pull some of this together because I think I understand what you're trying to piece together here, Mike

00:43:07

But so the question how can I be the most curious person in the room?

00:43:11

So process that for a second in order to be

00:43:14

The most curious person in the room

00:43:18

You have to have a handful of things you have to

00:43:21

Have an awareness of who's in the room that you're talking to

00:43:25

Which means that you need to be paying attention to their feelings and their thoughts and their processes of

00:43:31

The processes of thinking mental models, I guess if you can put those pieces together

00:43:36

You have to be aware of those things

00:43:39

You have to pay attention to every word that they're saying and how they're saying it

00:43:44

And you also have to have an awareness of how your stance your words and your

00:43:49

physical appearance impacts what they're saying basically

00:43:55

You have to be hyper aware of what's going on in that interchange

00:44:00

The reason for that is because in order to be the most curious you have to notice

00:44:04

A lot of little details and you have to then be

00:44:08

in a spot where you wonder

00:44:12

Why they're doing those things like if mike mentions something about obsidian

00:44:16

He generally gets excited like you can tell that it's it's pretty obvious

00:44:20

So obsidian is a big deal to mike

00:44:22

Obviously if you're new to the show mike has an obsession right mike you'll admit this right?

00:44:27

I do surely you will

00:44:29

so

00:44:30

mike gets excited when obsidian comes up on the other hand if you mention roam research

00:44:35

Which mike used to be?

00:44:38

Super excited about things are a little different anymore

00:44:41

It doesn't have that same air that obsidian does

00:44:44

Now those are all things that you can pick up on if you have a conversation with mike about note making

00:44:50

and and trying to

00:44:53

See if I can use some of your terms like sense making note making

00:44:56

Map of content like I start throwing these terms out and you can just tell mike is itching to start a conversation

00:45:02

Like I can tell this by looking at him. So it's true

00:45:05

If you notice those things

00:45:07

You can then find you're jumping off points for questions to like okay. Well, why is that?

00:45:12

You know

00:45:13

Based on what I just said if you ever run into mike you can ask him about

00:45:16

Why obsidian over room research and you're in for a treat for a conversation like you can start the conversation that way, right?

00:45:23

That's what it means like so in order to be the most curious person in the room

00:45:27

You also have to be the most aware person in the room and the most present in the room

00:45:33

So it's not just as simple as asking good questions. It's being

00:45:38

In that moment with that other person at that time

00:45:42

Yeah, that's a good way to put it and that was something that I had missed in my

00:45:47

My description was that the the person who is the most curious

00:45:51

Is also the most present if you were to summarize it in a single phrase. That's a

00:45:58

a great way to describe it. Yeah, and so the

00:46:03

the action item I have from this particular section, which I am going to add to my

00:46:10

Journaling template is how was I curious today? And I feel like that is

00:46:18

reinforcing a bunch of different

00:46:22

Positive behaviors in a very simple

00:46:25

By simply using the word curious because if you're going to be curious

00:46:31

you're not going to try to

00:46:34

explain

00:46:36

in a way that this is the way things are or

00:46:39

Like convince somebody of the way that they should think you're going to try to understand why they think the way that they do

00:46:45

it's a very different approach

00:46:48

and uh, I feel like there's a tendency for myself to

00:46:54

Take the other approach where well, I get maybe this goes along with the systems thinking stuff is like

00:47:00

Well, let's figure out why the this is the way it is, but then once I get to that point, it's like, okay

00:47:06

Well, here's the solution

00:47:08

Let's just do this and then we'll get this and then we'll move on and solve the next

00:47:14

systems problem

00:47:16

and uh, I

00:47:18

Don't think it's that simple

00:47:20

uh, I want to do a

00:47:23

Better job of accepting things for the way that they are

00:47:27

Content not complacent, you know, I'm not just there's nothing I can do about this

00:47:31

And so this is my lot in life. I do think there's a fine line here with self-determination and personal responsibility

00:47:38

Which is important taking control and ownership of of your life in your future

00:47:43

But then also not like resenting the fact that you're in this

00:47:48

Situation maybe there are some situations where you really just don't want to be there

00:47:52

And I'm not saying like don't fight to make things different but for me personally like

00:47:57

Don't engage with things through a negative mindset and being bitter because you got to do this this thing just

00:48:04

Go into it being present and you'll enjoy it a whole lot more

00:48:08

Yeah, I think that's that's a good way to put the whole thing together because if you are being curious on a daily basis

00:48:14

And coming out of the way that we're explaining like it has so many ramifications behind it that are

00:48:22

Tertiary or secondary to the original intent. So go for it. Be curious. Right. All right part two is live intentionally

00:48:30

And the first profile here that I wanted to discuss is Kobe Bryant

00:48:36

I didn't even make the connection that I like basketball you like basketball. So this was an obvious one to talk about

00:48:42

Yep, right, but the question associated with this one is how do I get to the rim and uh,

00:48:49

That has a very specific sports context

00:48:53

if you don't play basketball then maybe the

00:48:57

The value of that specific question

00:48:59

Gets lost a little bit, but there's lots of other questions that go along with this inside the profile that help you kind of comprehend this

00:49:06

So for example, the big thing from this profile is the thing about

00:49:12

Kobe's mamba mentality, which is a constant quest to be better today

00:49:19

Than you were yesterday. So there's lots of questions that can go along with that like what is your motivator?

00:49:24

What is my self-talk sound like?

00:49:27

Who do I need to study?

00:49:29

How can I outwork myself

00:49:31

in terms of becoming the best that that you can be and so my action item from this specific one

00:49:37

Is to make a list of people who inspire me and start asking questions about why they inspire me

00:49:46

And I feel like i've kind of done this for talking about internet heroes before like i've always kind of known

00:49:51

These are the people that I look up to but i've never been specific about what can I learn?

00:49:57

From them and what I like about this profile is that it doesn't require you to engage in dialogue with them

00:50:05

You can study somebody's life without having a personal relationship with them

00:50:11

and I think that's pretty cool and uh,

00:50:15

I think that by being intentional about that you can

00:50:19

probably grow

00:50:21

Quite a bit from people who are doing something that you want to do or doing something that you currently do

00:50:28

But do it better than you. Uh, I want to always be trying to get better. I want to get better as a

00:50:35

Husband. I want to get better as a father. I want to get better as a creator. I want to get better as a podcaster

00:50:43

I don't want to be complacent be like well, that's good enough and just I show up and do my thing

00:50:48

I want to always be looking for those things that I can do better

00:50:54

Which is why like I always listen back to every episode that i've ever published and

00:51:00

I hate hearing my own voice, but I

00:51:03

And I don't want to say I enjoy but I get value out of recognizing the mistakes that i've made

00:51:10

It helps me not make them again. Uh, one of the big things for me with podcasting

00:51:15

Toastmasters kind of reinforced this

00:51:18

Was the use of filler words as soon as I started listening back to all the umbs and the likes

00:51:23

It pretty much disappeared and that sounds ridiculous, but it really did like overnight

00:51:28

I stopped the majority of I still do it every once in a while

00:51:33

But it's 1/100th of what it was that first podcast episode that I recorded then I had to go back and edit it back

00:51:40

Afterwards, I'm like man. This has got to get better because this is brutal. Yep

00:51:44

Please help

00:51:47

Yes, that's the thing about podcasting like I this is actually something I wrote down as a an action item

00:51:52

That I want to do is start listening back to bookworm because I don't

00:51:55

Right now and mike knows this because it's frustrating. I'm sure for you mike, but I

00:52:01

I don't do that

00:52:03

But at the same time i'm aware that that can be extremely helpful like if you come back to kobe brian

00:52:08

in 2008 the Lakers

00:52:11

Made it to the championship and lost

00:52:15

And kobe then went through a whole process after that like where did we go wrong?

00:52:20

Why do we lose how am I gonna lead this team differently like he started asking himself these questions

00:52:25

And then they won the championship the next two years in a row

00:52:27

So he totally changed things around

00:52:30

But one of the ways that he did this

00:52:33

was studying michael jordan and

00:52:38

Just paying attention to the fundamentals like what is his footwork like how does he handle the ball?

00:52:42

What is it that he does different?

00:52:44

that makes him so

00:52:47

Exceptional but one thing that

00:52:49

They don't point out here that that mark didn't mention in this because

00:52:54

I've had my obsession with kobe before and

00:52:58

I know that he used to watch him his own tape back and he would critique every little move that he made wrong

00:53:05

by watching himself in that process so he not only studied the people who

00:53:11

He considered mentors

00:53:14

Even though they wouldn't actually mentor him since you know competitors

00:53:19

So like stuff like that wouldn't happen, but he would study himself as well

00:53:23

to compare himself to

00:53:26

The ideal that he has in his mind that he's working towards and I think that's something like I know I need to do

00:53:32

So I need to be if I'm gonna, you know continue this thing called podcasting

00:53:36

It's something I should you know work on because I know that I do some of the filler words occasionally. I have my phrases

00:53:42

I do try to watch and make sure I'm not

00:53:44

Repeating the same type of word

00:53:47

Many times like I always try to make sure I use synonyms instead of repeating it

00:53:51

And making it easier to understand that way or more interesting

00:53:55

So like those are things I know I do but there are a lot of things I know I do that I should not do

00:54:01

So thus paying attention to that would be helpful

00:54:04

Don't worry. Toby makes you sound good

00:54:07

Thanks, Toby

00:54:09

You're the best me too

00:54:10

And that's something that is when you first start paying attention to stuff

00:54:14

There's a bunch of low hanging fruit

00:54:15

But my takeaway from this is I don't ever want to lose that I want to constantly ask that question

00:54:20

Because if you're Kobe Bryant, you make it to the NBA finals

00:54:24

It's easy to just dismiss it as like well it didn't work out for us this time

00:54:27

But no, he's so obsessed. He wants to figure out how can I get even better

00:54:31

And that's the approach that I want to take to the stuff that I do

00:54:35

Next one that I wanted to talk about I mean, there's a bunch of them we could talk about in this section James clear is in this section

00:54:41

Uh, Ryan holiday is in this section

00:54:44

But the one that I and we're skipping them. We are. Yep. Let's talk about Florence Nightingale

00:54:50

Yep, go Florence. Yeah, so Florence Nightingale

00:54:56

Was if I remember right

00:54:58

Uh, the person who kind of started the the red cross correct. Oh, I don't know that I could confirm that

00:55:05

Basically, correct, but I can't place it. She was uh in the 1800s. I believe

00:55:12

Uh pressured to get married and have children

00:55:16

And uh, she didn't want to do that and she wanted to help people and uh, I remember reading her story recently in a different book

00:55:26

I forget which book it was

00:55:28

and basically volunteering in one of the wars to

00:55:32

Assist injured soldiers because they were just laying there dying

00:55:36

And so nobody stopped her and then from there she just continued to

00:55:41

Raise the bar like all these people were dying and it was because of unsanitary conditions and she was the one

00:55:48

Saying basically this isn't good enough and uh, she's got her own

00:55:54

Story that mark kind of talks about in this book here

00:55:57

But the question with Florence is how can I raise the standard and because she was a woman living in the time in the society that she was in

00:56:07

She was basically encountering roadblocks to whatever she really wanted to do at every single turn

00:56:14

And so the the big takeaway from this for me is kind of a combination of what I had understood of Florence Nightingale

00:56:22

Prior to reading this and then applying these questions on top of that of how can I raise the standard?

00:56:29

What makes me unique and how do I navigate the roadblocks that are in my way?

00:56:35

I feel like

00:56:37

There are a lot of people and myself included in the past who

00:56:41

Encounter some resistance and it's easy to be like oh well ryan holiday says the obstacle is the way

00:56:47

So just figure it out right but it's very discouraging when you run into that stuff and

00:56:54

There's a temptation to think that well, this isn't the right path and um, yeah, I think it was courage is calling

00:57:03

Thanks Blake in the the chat for pointing that out. So I want to

00:57:07

Spend some time thinking through these things

00:57:11

And I feel like I've kind of already sort of done this

00:57:15

I've got the whole concept of a life theme that I talk about my faith-based productivity course

00:57:19

But this is a little bit different way of applying that same

00:57:24

Concept and I feel like the questions that come out of this coupled with her story

00:57:29

It's it gives people hope to think that like well, this is the thing that I really am passionate about that

00:57:37

I'm really excited about the thing that gives me life

00:57:41

So what are the ways that I can raise the standard in this particular area?

00:57:45

And then if you continue to raise the standard and you continue to get more excellent

00:57:49

That's when the attention comes and like we're talking about the the beginning with the the podcast

00:57:56

Like I was talking to somebody this morning and I said, you know

00:57:59

Because they were interested in starting a podcast. I said if you're gonna start a podcast make sure it's something that you're really excited about

00:58:06

You're gonna talk about anyways

00:58:08

You might do a hundred episodes and you might not get

00:58:10

Very many downloads and if you're doing it for numbers or you want to make some money or whatever

00:58:16

It's not going to happen

00:58:18

You have to have a motivation that goes beyond that and you just have to continue to try to be more excellent with it

00:58:23

If you do that long enough

00:58:25

Then people will start to take notice

00:58:27

And at that point you can have like the wide influence

00:58:32

but until that point just

00:58:35

Use whatever audience you have whatever platform you have and go deep

00:58:39

So

00:58:40

The people who have you know millions of people who follow them they can throw out a tweet and it can reach a whole bunch of people

00:58:46

But it's not going to have like a profound impact

00:58:49

And you can have you it's kind of a unique opportunity where as long as you have a smaller audience

00:58:54

You can go deeper and you can have a greater impact in somebody's life and you don't really know who you're impacting

00:58:59

Just that that one person

00:59:02

They have the potential to reach a whole bunch of other people to reach a whole bunch of other people

00:59:06

And I guess that kind of comes back to being present and making the greatest impact that you can

00:59:11

I mean, that's kind of my takeaway from this Florence Nightingale story

00:59:15

Is like I don't think she did it because she had this big dream that she was going to completely revolutionize health care

00:59:22

She just saw like these people are dying they need some help and this person in front of me who

00:59:26

Is getting these infections like this isn't right

00:59:30

We should do something to change this and as long as you have that that mindset you can do a lot of good

00:59:35

So Florence Nightingale did not start the Red Cross

00:59:38

Sorry, but it was founded by Henry

00:59:41

D'Nant I think is the way he say it

00:59:44

And he was

00:59:47

greatly inspired by her work

00:59:49

So he credits her for the development of it of the international Red Cross society

00:59:55

Gotcha

00:59:55

And according to this article that I'm looking at until 1934 they celebrated world cross day on her birthday

01:00:01

There you go. That's the connection. So there you go

01:00:04

So coming back to

01:00:07

The question here, how can I raise the standard? You know, you're talking about a whole bunch of stuff

01:00:10

I feel like I could jump off of

01:00:12

Mike, but this is one of those questions that

01:00:15

You know, I was talking earlier about some of these have different intervals that you could ask these

01:00:19

This is one that you could ask

01:00:21

At least weekly if not daily like how do I raise the standard

01:00:25

for myself?

01:00:26

Specifically you can be looking at that from a different level like as far as organizations that you're a part of

01:00:33

climate change like so many things you can think about and and endeavor to

01:00:38

tackle

01:00:40

But if you apply it personally like it's something you can ask very regularly

01:00:45

and

01:00:46

There's a lot here

01:00:48

that you can

01:00:50

That you can jump into like like you're saying with the podcasting piece like if you're going to do something make sure it's something that you love

01:00:56

To do but then how do you raise the standard with that? You know, whenever you're starting out with something brand new

01:01:02

It's usually a bit haphazard. It's not super clean

01:01:06

Like if you think of podcasting like it's easy for the first ones that we record to be terrible. We don't like them

01:01:10

I hate listening to myself back at episode one of bookworm, but whenever

01:01:16

You start you're always going to have it

01:01:20

Like that

01:01:22

But that just gives you a platform to start

01:01:24

Building on and you can always start to get a little bit better, but at the same time when you first start

01:01:29

You can be extremely niche in a very small sector like what you're talking about

01:01:34

You don't really branch out and go wide

01:01:36

Until after you've got that initial build and I would say like in the case of bookworm

01:01:41

I feel like we've just never

01:01:43

We've never really started branching beyond

01:01:46

our initial stance

01:01:48

But I also feel like it's only

01:01:51

In recent months that we would even get to the point where we could even consider that

01:01:54

So anyway, that's a side point all this to say like how can you raise the standard?

01:02:00

That's a question that can seem easy on the surface

01:02:04

Again

01:02:06

And you could easily answer this very quickly like up my audio value or audio production

01:02:12

Ability like get a better microphone like sure you can raise the standard in that way

01:02:16

But it's more of an impactful question if you ask it from the stance of like, okay

01:02:21

Well, how do I become a better speaker?

01:02:23

And how do I ask better questions? How do I have more?

01:02:26

Insight in less time like those are all questions that you can ask about

01:02:31

Podcasting in particular, but that's a whole different realm than just buy stuff because buy stuff is easy

01:02:38

Be better is not

01:02:40

Yeah, and even I think for me raising the standard doesn't mean

01:02:45

becoming more

01:02:47

Excellent necessarily in my craft or what I do

01:02:51

But in terms of the impact that I have in the life of people around me

01:02:59

so

01:03:00

Yeah, if you're gonna

01:03:02

Want to the the context with the conversation that I was having this morning was I want to get this message out there

01:03:08

Okay, well, that's fine

01:03:10

But you're not going to get it out to

01:03:13

Gazillion people at the beginning what you got to do is you got to just really own this message

01:03:19

with whoever is currently

01:03:21

in your sphere of influence and just help them as much as you possibly can and

01:03:28

If you do that to the best of your ability and you're constantly asking how can I do that better

01:03:33

Then there will be opportunities for you to do that at a larger scale

01:03:37

But if you're looking at it in terms of the numbers

01:03:40

Of these are the number of people that I want to reach or impact

01:03:44

You're not going to get there

01:03:46

Right, right

01:03:48

Numbers can get in the way of a lot of good things

01:03:50

Yes

01:03:51

Exactly

01:03:52

Uh, next one is chris chembra

01:03:54

We can cover this one pretty quickly. I just like this one because it's kind of focused on

01:04:00

Gratitude and the question associated with this one is whom haven't I thanked lately

01:04:05

Uh, if you dig into this a little bit more

01:04:08

The underlying question is basically what relationships do I value the most in my life

01:04:12

And there's a encouragement in this section to not forget the people who helped you to get the things

01:04:17

That you have

01:04:20

And I don't want to say that I have neglected that but it can slip my mind from time to time

01:04:28

I do have a gratitude practice as part of my journaling routine my wife and I have a gratitude practice as part of our date night

01:04:36

I have incorporated this into like even though my work meetings and things like gratitude is important and I recognize that

01:04:44

But I also think that I also I tend to be more

01:04:49

What is it? Recency bias

01:04:52

You can focus on what has happened lately instead of looking more long-term and this is where I was five 10

01:04:59

20 years ago

01:05:01

And I can see how this thing led to that thing led to that thing

01:05:04

But that thing way back there that was really the start of this

01:05:07

So I don't want to go back and send text messages to people that you know influenced me 20 years ago

01:05:13

But my big action item from this section is just to notice those things

01:05:17

More frequently and the action item specifically is send encouraging text messages more often

01:05:24

I should probably make this a little bit more specific, but I'm not going to

01:05:27

Because I don't want to have a number associated with it

01:05:31

I feel like if I did that come on no because I feel if I did that then I would just grab something for the sake of grabbing something

01:05:39

So kind of my approach to this is I want to zoom out a little bit more and recognize

01:05:45

All of the things that have clicked into place

01:05:48

And be thankful and express gratitude for those things more consistently

01:05:53

But I feel like the actual application of this action item is most valuable when it is an organic

01:06:01

Response to that revelation

01:06:03

And if I try to put a number on it

01:06:05

I feel like I've confined it now to a task that needs to be done and it loses some of the authenticity that goes along with it

01:06:13

Does that make sense?

01:06:14

I get what you're saying. I'm not sure it makes sense. Okay

01:06:18

That's fine because

01:06:20

I think you can argue it both ways. Yep. So I don't think you're necessarily wrong

01:06:25

I think this is one of those cases where

01:06:28

Because I'm a bit conflicted on what to do it with this one from an action item

01:06:32

This is partly why I have an action item to go through this whole thing again because

01:06:37

with this one it's one where

01:06:40

I can choose to be intentional with it and I can wait until that intention comes and then act on it

01:06:46

Which I feel like is what you're saying you're

01:06:49

planning to do or

01:06:52

I can force myself

01:06:54

to

01:06:55

Have the action and therefore drive the heart and tension

01:06:58

Sure, you get what I'm saying?

01:07:00

So it has to do with like the motivation before the action or the action that then encourages the motivation

01:07:06

This is why I say I don't think you're wrong. I just think that there's the possibility that sometimes

01:07:12

For some people because you're I feel like you're significantly better at gratitude

01:07:16

than many people I know you're way better at it than I am and

01:07:20

It's something that I would need

01:07:23

to just say

01:07:25

I'm going to show gratitude to someone today no idea who that is

01:07:29

But I am going to make it

01:07:32

My task today to make sure that that happens like that's what I would have to do

01:07:35

Because I'm not good at it. I'm terrible at it actually so like that's that's where my heart would need to be

01:07:42

So again, I don't think you're necessarily wrong in your scenario Mike, but I think in mine it would be completely different

01:07:48

Sure

01:07:49

I can see that I think it is a chicken and egg scenario and I think for me specifically

01:07:55

I don't want to focus on the task itself. I feel like the real value of this comes if it's

01:08:01

rooted in

01:08:03

Inspiration from reflection, which is the big thing for me. Yeah. All right. Part three is expand possibility

01:08:12

And actually the first profile here Maya Angelou this

01:08:16

Compliments that whole idea we were just talking about

01:08:20

Well for me with the action item now

01:08:23

I was not I knew who this was but I didn't really know that the story and I should say the question in this section is how do I rise up?

01:08:30

Now the story here

01:08:32

And I'm sharing this from the the book. I'm not really paraphrasing this so she was

01:08:39

Raped when she was eight years old

01:08:42

She told her family about it and then the day the man was released from prison. They found

01:08:48

him killed and she thought that her words

01:08:53

Confessing that to her family are what actually killed that man. So she

01:08:57

felt very

01:09:00

She felt guilty about that and she stopped speaking altogether for five years

01:09:05

Which is a pretty

01:09:09

Serious reaction to that and you hear that story and

01:09:15

You're a monster if it doesn't do something inside of you

01:09:17

Like how do you not have empathy and feel bad for her in in that situation? So right?

01:09:24

Obviously though she was able to work through that and part of the things she credits for that is reading a ton

01:09:33

So one of my bullets is read non-stop

01:09:36

The action item associated with this though

01:09:39

for me is to

01:09:42

List the people in my life who have been kind or inspirational because her story is like she had somebody

01:09:48

Who forced her to take a step out there and that was kind of the thing that helped heal her

01:09:54

And she shares that story or mark shares that story in this profile

01:10:01

So

01:10:03

It's a good inspiration. It shows me that

01:10:07

One person can really have a domino effect in terms of the impact because you don't know who you're influencing

01:10:14

Maybe it's the next Maya Angelou or maybe it's the next Ryan holiday or the next James clear

01:10:19

Whatever like the person that you have the opportunity to encourage

01:10:23

And help that person

01:10:26

Rise up that is

01:10:29

Very exciting to me the the type of impact that you can have

01:10:34

When you go beyond the individual

01:10:38

That is standing in in front of you. So I want to make a list of the people in my life who have been kind or inspirational to me

01:10:46

I've already been thinking about this and I've got several people

01:10:50

Top of mind, but I want to make it make it formalized

01:10:55

And then I want to pay it forward. I want to consider other people and how I can help them rise up

01:11:02

Again, just recognizing that you can't take the person or the people in your life at face value

01:11:10

You don't understand the real potential that they have and

01:11:14

You got to assume that

01:11:17

There's something bigger there to be unearthed and when you combine it with like all the stuff that we've talked about the curiosity and trying to figure out

01:11:24

What's really there? I mean, it's kind of natural that you would be

01:11:28

more self sacrificial

01:11:32

I guess is the best way to describe it

01:11:34

like

01:11:35

my time is

01:11:37

precious

01:11:38

sure

01:11:39

I time-block my day because I want to make the the best use of the time that I have but

01:11:44

People are the reason for productivity and if you go into it like someone needs something from you

01:11:50

And you go into it with a curious

01:11:53

mindset and you're trying to be present I feel like that's

01:11:56

kind of a

01:11:58

Perfect conditions for some really cool stuff to happen and I feel like I've kind of seen this happen recently

01:12:05

For me and I want to continue to go in this direction, but

01:12:11

Just constantly looking for those people who you can help pull up

01:12:15

I mean I had a conversation with somebody this morning

01:12:18

I mentioned about the podcast stuff

01:12:20

Somebody that I went to high school with that I ran into randomly at a coffee shop the other day

01:12:25

And I was on my way out to a meeting and I was like, hey, we should get together and catch up

01:12:30

You know, so we did that today and it was

01:12:32

Really really cool. Did I have time to do it today? Probably not, but I did it anyway

01:12:37

And it was extremely nice life giving and you know what all the other work stuff. That's all going to work out

01:12:43

It's all going to be fine and that one

01:12:46

Experience that I had today like that brings motivation to everything else that

01:12:50

I've got to do today and that's the kind of thing I'm recognizing

01:12:54

Translates into action and energy even further down down the road. It's not just for today

01:13:00

It's it's going to I'm going to have feel the residue of that for several days

01:13:06

And so I'm kind of thinking to myself. How do I like consistently do this and really it's not a system

01:13:12

It's not task oriented. It's just being more aware

01:13:16

And taking advantage of the opportunities that are already there for me

01:13:19

So the main question of this section, how do I rise up?

01:13:22

I cannot help but hear this song rise up from Hamilton rise up. I can't help

01:13:29

It's just over and over my head. Have you seen this Hamilton? Yep, you uh,

01:13:33

I can't get it out of my head. So I see it every time. I don't think that's bad

01:13:37

This is one of those cases where sometimes when you have a connection outside of the book

01:13:41

It helps you remind like reminds you of the book whenever you hear that song or something triggers that later

01:13:47

Which is I think is really good because like in this case

01:13:50

There's a couple of like sub questions underneath of this that we've kind of talked about

01:13:54

Where do I find the courage to rise up? How do I help others rise up? And I think the latter of those two

01:13:59

is where a lot of

01:14:02

genuine growth can come from

01:14:04

Because if I'm focusing on helping other people

01:14:07

Achieve what they are after

01:14:10

It forces me to go towards what I'm after as well. So it's kind of a double-edged scenario

01:14:17

So I'm I'm a fan. I mean, this is a good question to ask and you can take it again

01:14:21

You can take it on a lot of different levels. How do I help people rise up from an activist stance?

01:14:26

How do I help people?

01:14:27

Get to the point where they know what it is they want to do

01:14:30

Day-to-day throughout their life at least set a mission

01:14:33

You know build a team out of their family like there's so many different

01:14:37

Scenarios that you could take this so it's it's a solid question. I'm a fan

01:14:42

Yeah, and I'm recognizing looking at this outline now that this section in particular the expand possibility

01:14:49

This is really abundance mindset driven if you have a scarcity mindset none of this stuff makes any sense

01:14:56

But when you recognize that there's no scarcity

01:15:00

and

01:15:02

Just because I happen to be successful doesn't mean you can't be successful and let's just

01:15:06

All be decent humans to each other. That's really the the only way to do it

01:15:13

Right, right

01:15:15

next profile is navine jane and the question from this one is what if it were possible and

01:15:21

I'm trying to condense this because we're running long, but I I go through this profile

01:15:28

and I am encouraged to

01:15:31

think bigger society trains us to recognize limits and this profile

01:15:39

Kind of is like take the lid off

01:15:42

Imagine if there was no no limits. What would you do if you were wildly successful?

01:15:49

That's not the question that's being asked here, but that's kind of the the direction

01:15:54

really the

01:15:56

Thing that's being asked in this profile is actually more practical

01:15:59

It's getting you to take the first step in that direction without feeling like this is absolutely ridiculous

01:16:05

And there's no way I'll ever achieve this. So why am I even doing this?

01:16:08

But recognizing that every problem is solvable

01:16:10

Recognizing that you're creating a lot of your own

01:16:14

limits and so

01:16:17

Those limits will hold you back from making that decision to take action

01:16:23

So let's imagine for a moment that

01:16:26

You've gone through and you've made this decision you've taken that action

01:16:31

How do you feel after this decision has been made?

01:16:36

And recognizing that our own imagination and our own definition of what's possible and what isn't

01:16:42

Is what drives us it encourages me to think again think bigger, you know

01:16:49

What what would it look like if?

01:16:52

Everything that I did I had you know the golden touch

01:16:56

And everything that I did was was going to to succeed

01:16:59

Where would I take action that I am not currently just because I feel like well

01:17:05

I can't do that super well. So I'm just not even going to try

01:17:07

The big takeaway for me for this whole section is just try it anyways

01:17:12

The result almost doesn't matter

01:17:14

The belief in yourself is the thing that does

01:17:17

and just throw it out there and don't judge it by the

01:17:22

the result but give yourself the

01:17:25

Affirmation that you're the type of person who just takes action on these things

01:17:30

And I feel like if you do that consistently

01:17:35

You'll surprise yourself

01:17:37

I'm kind of learning that myself like there's some things that I'm doing currently that I didn't think I could do

01:17:42

But I'm learning that I can because I put myself in the position to try

01:17:48

And I had to overcome some limiting beliefs just to put myself out there took somebody

01:17:54

Somebody close to me saying you got to quit talking the way that you're talking because you can do this that

01:18:02

I was like the first time I believed in myself enough to actually put myself out there and try it

01:18:06

And I'm learning that yeah, I have the ability to do it. I just never even saw it before

01:18:11

Right

01:18:12

This one

01:18:13

I feel like this particular chapter is one that probably has impacted me the most

01:18:18

Out of all of them, which is saying something

01:18:20

because what if it were possible and

01:18:24

My brain jumps to a whole bunch of different places and

01:18:27

Some of these what if it were possible

01:18:31

Like it doesn't have to be

01:18:33

I don't think based on current, you know cultural scientific societal standards

01:18:40

It doesn't have to fit within those and it doesn't have to make logical sense

01:18:43

What you're asking because that's the point so

01:18:47

Some of what or when I read this chapter one of the things that jumped in my mind was what if it were possible to cure adhd

01:18:55

Like I don't know that that's actually

01:18:58

Intifically feasible because I don't know enough about it to be able to say yay or nay on that

01:19:03

But the question there is well, okay. Well, what if it was or

01:19:08

Even if you're not curing it. What if there was a way

01:19:12

to solve your specific symptoms

01:19:15

With something I don't even know what that is like what would it be like or

01:19:20

If you had it under control, how would you act and then you get what I'm

01:19:26

getting out here like if you start to ask those questions and

01:19:29

Even though you don't really think it might actually be possible. What if it was?

01:19:35

And then what actions would you take if it was that that can change a lot of things very quickly and it can get you to really process

01:19:45

Some of these other components here like the other two questions are in this chapter. What limits am I setting?

01:19:53

Okay for those of you who are in the add world, I find I set a lot of limits on myself unknowingly

01:19:58

But the question is what are those and how do I turn those loose? Like how do I break those chains?

01:20:05

What do you do with that? You know, what if these limits could be let go?

01:20:09

And the other one here, how do I know if this is the right decision?

01:20:12

That's another great question

01:20:15

So, you know, if you go at what I'm saying like if you start trying to bump up against all these things like you can have a lot

01:20:21

A lot of good things come from them because I feel like a lot of us tend to

01:20:25

Put these glass ceilings on ourselves

01:20:28

And we lower them and then we want to know why we can't achieve what we want to achieve. So

01:20:34

I really really really really like this one

01:20:37

Yeah

01:20:40

There's so many other ones that I want to talk about but

01:20:43

For the sake of time, we'll pick one more

01:20:46

and that is Steve Jobs and

01:20:50

I almost said we should not talk about this one because we've talked about Steve Jobs a lot

01:20:54

But the thing I want to talk about from this is very different than what I thought it was going to be

01:20:58

When I went into this profile

01:21:01

So

01:21:02

The question that goes along with this one is how can I think different

01:21:06

and in

01:21:08

1997 there was that ad which

01:21:11

Uh, here's to the crazy ones. I actually have that framed

01:21:15

I really like that that poem

01:21:19

But the thing that stands out to me from this is what Mark calls the pause

01:21:24

I don't know if he stole this from somebody else or not, but

01:21:28

This was the thing when Steve was driving people crazy with his perfectionism

01:21:35

This is the thing that would cause

01:21:38

Him and his teams to go back to the drawing board because something wasn't good enough

01:21:44

And there's a question in here that he I guess asked if it could save someone's life

01:21:49

Could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?

01:21:52

That sounds a little extreme, but you can see how he kind of drove that idea forward

01:21:58

But that premise of the pause

01:22:01

This is something that doesn't just apply to product development

01:22:07

This is something that I feel can be value in anybody's day to day

01:22:14

Where in your life could you slow down to think?

01:22:16

All right, so maybe you know where this is going now

01:22:19

Uh, they also in this chapter or profile mark talks about the whole idea of mindfulness meditation and the value of that

01:22:28

mentions all the usual suspects

01:22:31

Calm headspace all that kind of stuff, but the way that it's framed here with the pause

01:22:36

and not

01:22:38

being guided this is very much in line with something that

01:22:42

Uh, david sparks and some other people have been talking to me about in terms of mindfulness meditation is like the real

01:22:47

Pro move with this is not having an app that you follow

01:22:53

But just thinking and just focusing on the breath just slowing down

01:22:58

So the action item here is to find a meditation routine that actually works for me

01:23:02

And uh, i've been doing this a little bit actually already

01:23:05

but not having to have a process that I follow and

01:23:12

just

01:23:13

slowing down for a couple of minutes and focusing on the breath

01:23:17

this

01:23:18

for whatever reason feels a lot more approachable to me than

01:23:23

The whole idea of mindfulness meditation because i've tried all those apps the 10 percent happier stuff like that

01:23:30

We've talked about this over and over and over again on this podcast

01:23:33

Do you still stick with a mindfulness meditation routine?

01:23:38

Uh, I do been in a weird sort of way so I don't use any apps for it

01:23:42

But i've started incorporating that into like my morning and evening walks outside

01:23:48

So I do kind of like a walking meditation of sorts. So that's what i've morphed into

01:23:53

Okay, yeah, and that's kind of the thing

01:23:56

As i'm thinking about this is like, I just got to find my own version of this. I got to not feel bad that

01:24:02

somebody else's

01:24:05

Meditation practice hasn't clicked for me

01:24:08

Yeah, and uh, I want to get a little bit more definition of what that looks like. I I feel like i'm

01:24:15

80 of the way there because I think part of this

01:24:19

is my

01:24:21

daily

01:24:22

prayer routine

01:24:23

Which for whatever reason i've hesitated to like lump that in with the term

01:24:29

meditation

01:24:30

but it kind of is

01:24:32

And then combining that with moments in my day-to-day routine

01:24:36

Where you know what things are moving a little too quick right now. I just need to hit pause

01:24:41

And I need to take a step back and just a minute or two

01:24:45

quick

01:24:47

recenter

01:24:49

Get some space and then i'll reengage

01:24:51

Because I feel like i've got opportunities to do that and that would provide a lot of benefit

01:24:56

but I kind of just

01:24:58

get caught up in the flow and the momentum

01:25:01

And don't take advantage of those

01:25:03

Yeah, I think having that space between

01:25:06

Between things when it does get crazy is super helpful, but I think being willing to rebrand certain activities as meditation

01:25:15

Is perfectly fine like a prayer practice

01:25:19

Absolutely is that think about what meditation is sitting and focusing on the thing in front of you?

01:25:24

Well during a prayer practice, that's exactly what you're doing

01:25:28

or

01:25:30

You know a bible study if you want to go that route too like that can be the exact same thing. Exactly. Yeah, it's okay

01:25:37

To do this is like this is partly why i've done the whole walking thing because I realized that

01:25:42

I was doing my best on those walks to pay attention to

01:25:46

My surroundings and trying not to let my mental, you know racecar take off and keep me focused on

01:25:54

Other things, but I want to focus on the nature that i'm in right now

01:25:59

So i'm doing that same thing. It's just in a different form

01:26:02

But because of such the like all the mainstream pieces and even what they explain here with steve jobs

01:26:08

His practice was more of the sit and meditate like comes some of the cliche views of that

01:26:15

But that's one small piece and one small form of that

01:26:20

So kudos to you you can find a different way to do this. You don't have to use headspace

01:26:24

It's okay

01:26:26

All right

01:26:28

the book ends with a profile on

01:26:32

mark himself

01:26:34

And this is just sharing kind of his journey

01:26:39

There's some specifics here about like a

01:26:42

theme for the year and kind of how he arrived at the

01:26:47

Place where he wrote this book because the his word for the year was thriving

01:26:53

he talks about

01:26:54

scans and prompts and

01:26:56

Things like that, which I I don't know

01:26:58

I feel like there's a cool way to end it and I feel like there's some really cool stuff in here

01:27:04

But I also think that it's uh a lot of stuff that we've kind of covered before and so since we're

01:27:09

Long on time we can probably skip this one. Yep. Basically. It's a summarization of here's what i've learned from all this stuff

01:27:16

Yep. Yep

01:27:18

He does give some practical tips on how to uh apply this yourself

01:27:23

some structure there, but I think it's something that you kind of have to discover for yourself and it's a mashup of a lot of the

01:27:30

The types of books that bookworm listeners have already read

01:27:34

Yep, so I guess that takes us to action items

01:27:37

And i've got a bunch

01:27:40

It's gonna say which of the 40 do you want to talk about so I have jotted down

01:27:47

five of them from our discussion here. This is not everything from

01:27:52

My outline, but I think this is what I am going to

01:27:56

land on here for formal action items

01:28:01

I want to

01:28:03

list out what I fear in a single sentence

01:28:05

And this is not so I can continue to allow this to hold me back

01:28:10

But just naming it and the attempts of of overcoming it and and I know it's easy to be like, well, I don't have any fear or

01:28:17

I think if you dig deep enough, you'll find something. So that's what i'm going to do is dig deep enough

01:28:20

See if I can find something add the how was I curious today to my

01:28:25

Journaling template and uh like my other journaling template

01:28:29

Sections, I don't

01:28:31

intend to force myself to answer this every day, but i'm going to create the opportunity in the prompt

01:28:35

So I have an opportunity to put something there if if uh, something stands out to me and then

01:28:40

It's part of my personal retreat process. I review all those journal entries

01:28:43

So I feel like a couple months from now when I do my next personal retreat that's going to provide value for me

01:28:49

I'm going to make a list of people who inspire me and start asking questions about why

01:28:54

I'm going to share encouraging test messages

01:28:57

More frequently and i'm going to find a meditation practice that works for me

01:29:02

Now you've mentioned a couple of them, but the one that you keep coming back to so the only one that I have written down at the moment

01:29:09

Is to go through this all again

01:29:11

Yes, I have three okay, so I have two of these are

01:29:16

That well one of them is kind of a summarization the other one is derived from a chapter we didn't cover but

01:29:22

um one of these is to visualize my day ahead of time as

01:29:27

Someone who can easily get distracted. I feel like it's

01:29:30

It's extremely helpful for me and i've done this in the past so I know it works

01:29:35

But it's super helpful for me to take five minutes and I actually have to set a timer for this because i'll shortcut it

01:29:42

Five minutes timer in the morning and then walk the entire day

01:29:45

Mentally like what is it that I go?

01:29:48

Where is it that I go sit and do x and then I move to go where to do y

01:29:53

Like I have to walk through that visually in my brain and then i'm much more likely to follow through on it

01:30:00

Otherwise, I'll get distracted and not do the things that I actually intended to do so it's kind of a

01:30:06

Different form of time blocking, but it's all mental so that works well for me. I need to do that

01:30:13

So that's one two

01:30:15

Again, this is kind of a summarization of a bunch of these but journaling morning and night because again

01:30:19

I don't have this practice of asking questions at all right now

01:30:23

So I'm going to start with this real quick morning and evening thing. It doesn't have to be anything big and elaborate

01:30:28

I'm just trying to make it a habit of

01:30:31

Basically a morning and evening check-in. I don't know what those questions are yet

01:30:36

because

01:30:37

Task number three is to I'm not going to reread the book

01:30:41

But basically skim my way through it having been through it and I know

01:30:45

All of the stories and such at this point

01:30:48

And we've talked about it and I've processed it to some degree

01:30:51

I want to kind of skim my way back through it

01:30:53

And collect these questions and figure out what those intervals are going to be

01:30:57

Now some of that's going to be in those journaling prompts

01:31:00

But I don't know that for certain as far as like which ones are daily and which ones aren't

01:31:05

I don't know the answer to that but that's I feel like a good

01:31:08

starting point for it at this

01:31:11

Juncture in the road. So that's where I'm gonna jump off

01:31:14

on this journey

01:31:17

All right

01:31:18

Style and rating my book. So I go first

01:31:21

This should be no surprise that I absolutely love this book

01:31:25

Yep

01:31:27

I do agree

01:31:29

That the majority of the value to be had from this is not in a single

01:31:34

Crank through this reading

01:31:36

I feel like the questions that are presented here

01:31:40

have

01:31:42

phenomenal value

01:31:44

And

01:31:45

I get the approach that's taken in terms of writing it

01:31:48

It's almost kind of a shame that it has to be packaged this way

01:31:52

Like people probably wouldn't pay $24 for a list of questions

01:31:56

But that's really the valuable thing that you're getting out of this

01:31:59

It is really well done. It's

01:32:03

I feel like the book itself is is high quality

01:32:06

I really like

01:32:07

The the book it feels different than most other books that you would get off of Amazon the corners are around it

01:32:13

It's really really nice a standard bear and fig stuff

01:32:16

I think mark did a great job with the profiles

01:32:19

I kind of talked a little bit about it at the beginning

01:32:21

The bullet list of the bio gives enough context without having to waste

01:32:25

Words in telling more stories to get people

01:32:29

Familiar with the person that he's talking about and what that does is it makes it very condensed

01:32:36

I know you mentioned it's 240 pages, but it's actually probably not

01:32:40

It's probably not long in terms of the number of words

01:32:44

Because remember each one of these chapters is a couple pages long

01:32:48

And then it'll end like at the top of the page and the rest of the page will be blank

01:32:52

And then sometimes there's even another blank page after that so that it can start on the left hand page in the next

01:32:58

The the next profile

01:33:00

So I've I don't know it's an easy read

01:33:03

It's easy to just crank through this

01:33:05

If you're looking to extract maximum value from this

01:33:08

Probably don't do that probably take your time and

01:33:11

Really think about some of these questions that are being asked there

01:33:15

But I also think having gone through this that I've collected a bunch of these questions

01:33:19

And these are going to go in a bank for me somewhere and I'm going to

01:33:22

Go back to the well

01:33:25

at different points in my life and this is going to continue to

01:33:28

To give me value. It's not just

01:33:30

This group of questions at this point in my life the question itself

01:33:35

It could be great, but it maybe doesn't land for you in a specific

01:33:41

Context a specific season, but later on it could be the exact right thing for you

01:33:46

So what mark has done is he's given you a whole bunch of questions

01:33:50

Which they're not all going to be

01:33:53

Awesome home run this question right now changed my life

01:33:56

Some of them will change your life further down if you go back and you revisit them

01:33:59

But the the value of what you get

01:34:01

If you as long as you recognize the value of the questions here is absolutely phenomenal in in my opinion

01:34:07

I feel like everybody should read this

01:34:09

In fact, I've gifted like 12 copies of this

01:34:13

I think since I originally got this one

01:34:17

And almost everybody that I have given it to is like man that book is so good

01:34:21

Thanks for for giving that to me

01:34:22

So I wholeheartedly would recommend this to the the book remodiness

01:34:25

This is one that should be in your library

01:34:28

And I'm going to give this five stars

01:34:30

I don't know how you could rate it

01:34:31

Less than that other than if you wanted something that you didn't really have to think about if you didn't want to have to

01:34:37

Engage with and ask the tough questions if that makes you uncomfortable then yeah, you're not going to like this one

01:34:43

But if you're curious at all

01:34:46

And you don't mind looking at things and maybe dealing with some uncomfortable things with the intention of becoming better and

01:34:54

Growing yourself as a person

01:34:56

Then there is so much gold to be mined here and it's not in the information that's provided

01:35:01

It's not in the system that's being sold to you

01:35:04

It's simply in the questions and the prompts and letting your brain unravel this stuff for itself

01:35:09

If you have a fixed mindset and you have a victim mindset and you don't want to let either one of those go

01:35:16

Don't read this book. Everybody else you should read this

01:35:19

Yep, that's pretty much what you need to know because this is going to force you to grow

01:35:24

I don't think it's going to be possible to ask these questions

01:35:27

Or even like you don't even have to ask the questions of yourself

01:35:32

I'll even go that far having read this

01:35:35

There's a lot of this and the stories and the questions that are being asked that

01:35:40

I didn't actually formally ask myself that question

01:35:43

and yet

01:35:44

I'm processing the potential answers for it

01:35:47

and realizing I've got a lot of work to do and

01:35:52

Thankfully, I have a date with my wife tonight. So there's a lot of questions

01:35:56

I want to ask her and hopefully she can answer. She's probably not going to appreciate me springing these on her, but she'll be okay

01:36:04

and

01:36:06

Yet as I went through this there's a lot of points at which I was getting a little emotional with it again

01:36:12

Like I don't know what this you and these books

01:36:14

You've done that to me lately. So

01:36:17

It's something you should read. I absolutely wholeheartedly think everybody should read this

01:36:23

It's an easy 5.0

01:36:25

I don't know how

01:36:26

else to rate it than that because it just has a huge impact

01:36:30

and I think that some of the value of it is

01:36:34

being willing to

01:36:37

set up some process or system at which point you're able to

01:36:42

Ask these questions regularly at some point and not just read them once answer them once and be done

01:36:47

I think being willing to tackle these

01:36:50

more than once

01:36:52

as seasons change as life events happen

01:36:55

I think that's where the value can truly come from this long term

01:36:59

So please pick this up and read it if you haven't already

01:37:02

All right

01:37:03

So let's put personal Socrates on the shelf. What's next Joe?

01:37:09

The next one up is unwinding anxiety by juts and brewer

01:37:13

Which i'm a little

01:37:16

hesitant about at this point when I first picked it as like, okay

01:37:18

This would be really good. I deal with a decent amount of anxiety and now that i've gone through personal Socrates and assolese questions

01:37:24

I'm like, hmm. Maybe I do have the answers to that right now, but

01:37:28

Reading a book on it probably wouldn't hurt yet at this point. So we'll we'll cover that one next time

01:37:34

And then what are you picking?

01:37:36

What's after that? Please don't tell me it's this gap book that you've got up here. No, it's not

01:37:41

So

01:37:43

One of the profiles which we didn't even talk about was chase Jarvis

01:37:47

Who is the CEO of creative live? He has a book

01:37:52

Called creative calling which looks amazing. So we're gonna do that one

01:37:57

Nice. Nice. I was on the edge

01:38:00

Of choosing to order that one just for my own

01:38:04

sake so one of the video reviews for the book on

01:38:07

Amazon says only read if you want life to become more interesting

01:38:12

Okay, that's fair enough

01:38:17

Sounds good any gap books mic. I know you've got one dude. I'm not reading this one. That's okay

01:38:22

so mindfulness meditation yada yada yada

01:38:26

there is a

01:38:28

Book, I don't remember if it was mentioned in this one or not

01:38:33

but dan heres the 10 happier guy

01:38:35

also

01:38:37

wrote another book

01:38:39

Called meditation for fidgety skeptics

01:38:42

And I feel I believe that is the one that's more

01:38:46

the approach to mindfulness meditation

01:38:49

As opposed to his own personal story

01:38:52

I picked this one up at a half price books the other day

01:38:55

So

01:38:57

I am going to start this one actually today. I've got my other gap book that I am finishing

01:39:03

And then i'm going to read this one because it's pretty short before jumping into unwinding anxiety

01:39:08

Sure, well if I have a gap book this time, I might actually like i'm going to be going through this one again personal Socrates somewhat

01:39:16

But I also did just reread

01:39:18

Take back your family with my wife. I feel like that one mic you should pick up and go through for

01:39:24

Uh the podcast you do with rachel. Yeah, I feel like that would be a solid because it's all about

01:39:31

Building a team with your family and being on a mission together collectively like that is the core of that book

01:39:37

I feel like it would fit you pretty well. All right. Well, we actually have that one. Uh, haven't read it yet. Oh, there you go

01:39:43

We'll uh, take a look

01:39:46

It's a solid that it is

01:39:49

All right

01:39:50

So thank you to everybody for listening

01:39:54

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01:40:00

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01:41:10

You need to pick up the book unwinding anxiety by jetson brewer and we'll cover it together in a couple of weeks