Bookworm Transcripts

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So I saw you had a stream the other day, Joe, about note making and sense making.

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And do your notes make sense?

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The whole world wants to know.

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Um, I don't know.

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It makes sense to me, but I'm the one that made them.

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So there's that.

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I don't know that I got into sense making, though you would probably argue

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they're one and the same.

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Yeah.

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I did not get a chance to attend your, uh, your live stream, but I saw the Twitter

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thread come across as like, help me make sense of all this.

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Yes.

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So I just wonder what the outcome was.

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Yeah.

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It's, uh, it was fun.

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Basically, I guess if you want to plug that I've been.

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Basically going through the process of making notes live on stream.

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Like I know that a lot of people show their note systems and the, the, the

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made notes structures that they come up with after the fact and people love to

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show off their dashboards.

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People love to talk about like how they do, uh, in your case tasks and such in

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things like obsidian and, but I don't really see anybody making those notes live

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and letting the viewership help in the process of making those, which has been

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a fascinating process on my part when we're doing that.

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So anyway, there's that.

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It's been kind of fun.

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Interesting.

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Sounds cool.

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I'll have to try and make the next one.

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I mean, it sounds cool.

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I don't know that it actually works out to be that way, but.

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It's entertaining on my part.

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I will say that.

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Fair enough.

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Well, good job creating consistently.

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Uh, I also have been creating consistently.

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I am on day 27 of ship 30 for 30 as we, uh, record this.

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And that means that I have published, written and published 27 days in a row to

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Twitter and, uh, I feel like I'm starting to be okay at it.

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Like it's starting to make sense in my brain.

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Twitter has always been the kind of thing where I would follow certain people

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and I would read it, but I did not actually create a whole lot on Twitter.

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And this, uh, writing course cohort, whatever has been interesting because

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it hasn't been exactly what I thought it was going to be.

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It's a digital writing course, basically.

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So how to write for the internet.

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I'm learning things like how to get someone who writes a book like the messy

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middle, uh, which we, we covered by Scott Belsky, how to share your takeaways from

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a book like that and get the person, get the person's attention who did it and

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make them want to retweet it.

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And one of my big takeaways was like, you want people to share stuff and you

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want to make stuff that's good enough that they want to be associated with it

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on their timeline, sort of a thing, like they're co-signing it essentially.

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So that was kind of cool.

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Um, I had one thread yesterday, which was by far my most successful one.

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Yeah.

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I, uh, I went from like a couple of hundred views to the first things I was writing

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and maybe a couple of likes, no shares, anything like that to, uh, I shared this

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thread on the ways that I use obsidian and included screenshots to a lot of

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different use cases.

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And that one has blown up Holy cow.

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Uh, it's like a hundred times more than anything that I have ever, 100, 100 times

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more engagement that I've ever gotten in anything I've written online.

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Um, but it also has forced me to kind of crystallize what I want to be known

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for online.

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We're going to get into that a little bit with this book, I think, but like

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part of the ship 30 class was like rewriting your Twitter bio.

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So it used to say I'm a writer, a podcaster, screencaster, whatever, and

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just links to the accounts where I did stuff.

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And I changed that now.

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So it says, I talk about the intersection of faith, productivity and technology.

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Follow me for, you know, intentional technology, personal productivity,

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reluctant creativity was a term I came up with.

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Still like an artist, right?

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I never really felt like I was creative.

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Um, and that, I feel like all this stuff is kind of clicking into place.

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Puzzle pieces are coming together and I'm starting to see kind of how I can, uh,

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add value to the world this way in a very small, small way, because who really

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cares about personal productivity and intentional technology, like, on the big

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scheme of things, maybe that's not so important, but just trying to help where I

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can, like I said, that has ties to today's book.

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But before we get there, we should talk about our follow up.

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So, uh, did you time block for two more weeks?

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I did.

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And

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I still think some people are crazy, but.

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I don't know if I'm supposed to keep doing this at this point, because it's,

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it's, it's maybe we got to have an intervention here at some point from your

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part to mind, but the thing that's still weird to me is like whenever I have

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multiple people that will derail that plan and then the scheme of what I've

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got for the rest of the week now falls out of alignment and I've got a massive.

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I shouldn't say massive.

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I have a cascading effects problem whenever day one or day two of the week

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gets completely thrown off with extra, like external requests that I can't control.

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I don't think I ever would have felt like that had I not time blocked it.

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So I can't quite figure out if that's a me thing or if that's a structure problem.

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So you're saying ignorance was bliss.

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Maybe, maybe, I mean, it's, it's one of these things where like knowing where I

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intend all of the hours in a day to go is fine.

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And when it works, it increases the sense of accomplishment that comes with that

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plan or with what you've achieved for the day.

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But when it's broken and there's nothing you could do about it, I haven't quite

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figured out what to do with those scenarios because it does make things worse

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on my part.

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So I don't want to psycho analyze you live on

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there again.

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I'm super concerned about it.

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Apparently it's why I brought it.

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I do think there's probably some parallels to like one of the things they

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say with like the YNAB budgeting is that by creating a budget, it allows you to

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roll the punches.

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I feel like the same argument could be made for time blocking.

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And it's probably just a single thing that could be overcome that's not

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causing that to, to click for you.

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But I don't know what it is.

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And people are probably sick of us talking about time blocking at this point.

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At the moment, I haven't quite figured out if I want to continue it or not.

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Now that, that said, the other thing here that hasn't been mentioned so far is

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that I have kind of noticed what days of the week are easily derailed and that

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this happens on almost guaranteed.

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So like, for example, I know that time blocking my Tuesdays is worthless,

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absolutely worthless.

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And I say that because that's the day of the week when our staff meeting is and

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it's the day of the week when like the entire church staff is here in the building.

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So the chances of getting questions or pulled aside is like 95%.

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So like, I got pretty much guaranteed time blocking that day is going to break

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and be a problem, like pretty much guaranteed that.

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And oddly enough, like Friday from nine to five on Tuesdays, interruptions.

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Correct.

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Distractions disruptions galore.

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Friday mornings are not far off of that, but that one's completely different.

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It's because there's a couple of folks who are in the office, but tend to wait

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until that moment in time to bring things up for me.

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And I never plan on it because I haven't fully connected that that's what's going

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on. So the benefit and the plus side of you inflicting the pain of time blocking

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on me for now, what, four weeks a month, whatever this has been, I should go look,

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it's been painful.

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But the benefit of it is I don't think I could have connected some of those dots.

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That those particular patterns were happening had I not done that time blocking.

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So on a holistic level, that's been helpful.

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So I think, you know, if I were to continue this, which I kind of want to

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experiment with this, at least for the next week and not time block Tuesday or

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Friday mornings, but try to time block the rest of it and see how that pans out.

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So that's, that's my current working theory.

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Not sure where the flaws are in it.

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I'm sure there are some, but I've not found them quite yet.

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Okay.

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Well, you can do it if you like, I will let you off.

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Look for this one and stop asking you about it though.

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All right.

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That's fair.

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I will ask you about building out a daily creative tracker though.

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Yeah, I put one in obsidian, of course, because, you know, everybody's supposed

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to be on obsidian at this point.

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And as you do, people are the non obsidian people are probably sick and tired.

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Of hearing about obsidian from like 45,000 different podcasts that are in the

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tech space right now.

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So I don't care.

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I'm going to keep talking about it.

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I know.

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But I used to it.

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People are probably going to get sick of this if you're not on that train.

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So my apologies, but here we are.

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Thanks, Blake.

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Every time we say obsidian, Blake puts a bell in the chat.

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So thanks, Blake.

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Yeah, you're supposed to ding the real one.

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It's because it's somewhere and I keep getting to get it out until we're in the

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middle of conversation.

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I'll write a note down so I can grab it.

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There you go.

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All right.

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Note taken.

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So yes, I have a creativity tracker.

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I've been working on it.

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You want to show the details of this or just say that you did it.

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It's rather boring, but basically I've got the daily note thing in the notes system

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that will remain unnamed from here on fourth.

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By myself obsidian and it's just got a just got a tag in there and I just mark true or false.

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That's it.

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OK.

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So once I do that, I can do any and all roll up.

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So I want with data view.

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So makes it super simple.

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So it's literally just a line item on that daily note.

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That's it.

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All right.

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That's why I say boring.

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Good job.

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You crushed your action items.

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I did not feel like I've had enough like bad rounds with action items and just

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saying like, I don't know, I didn't get to it that I felt like I had to like actually get

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this done this time.

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Well, thank you because I kind of failed.

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Hey, which places for once?

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Yeah.

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The one I failed at really was writing a fan letter.

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I did not do this one.

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I mentioned I specifically want to do this to somebody that I don't really know

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and just reach out and say, Hey, your work encourages me.

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And unfortunately, the last couple of weeks have gotten away from me.

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Um, starting a praise file.

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I did do this, although just did this because we started recording.

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Did this this week.

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So yesterday I presented for the linking or thinking conference and I presented

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on city and based personal retreats.

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And I got a whole bunch of really great feedback via Twitter after that

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presentation.

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I don't know if somebody there had like said, Hey, go at Mike and say something

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nice, but that's kind of what it felt like.

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So, uh, with a praise file really, I just want to start collecting those things.

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I guess technically people could delete those tweets if they change their mind

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and then they're gone, but I got the links.

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So that's cool.

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Yeah.

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Cool.

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Well, at least you're moving on that.

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Yeah.

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I think ideally this would include like positive reviews for books or

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courses or things that I have made.

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But, uh, I just wanted to get it, get it rolling.

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So, um, and of course that's all going to be in obsidian thing.

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Of course.

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Of course.

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All right.

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Should we, uh, talk about today's book?

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I think so.

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This could get long, but I feel like we see that every other book.

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Uh, it could get long anytime you and I just start talking about books.

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Yeah.

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Today's book is things that matter by Joshua Becker, the third Joshua Becker book

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that we have covered for bookworm.

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And if this one had come out first might have been the only Joshua Becker book

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that we had covered for bookworm.

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Correct.

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Um, he had also written, help me remember there was the original ones more of less.

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Yes.

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That was the original book on minimalism.

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And then there was a minimalist home, right?

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Yes.

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Okay.

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And that one was basically how to apply minimalism to your living space room by

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room.

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And, uh, I think we both liked the more of less.

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We thought the minimalist home was a bit of a departure and weren't sure if we

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were continuing down that trail with Mr. Becker.

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And then, uh, he comes back and writes this one on mission and purpose and meaning.

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Obviously that's right in my wheelhouse.

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So that's why I picked it.

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It's broken into four parts.

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And I think what we'll do for the outline and the chapters here is tackle the four

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parts, so there's only 11 chapters.

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So we could go chapter by chapter if we want to, but they kind of, they kind of

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fall neatly into these different categories.

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So part one is the objective and the obstacles.

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Part two is distractions of a paralyzed will.

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Part three is distractions of the lesser goods.

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So those are the two different categories of distractions that he's dealing with

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here.

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And then part four, which is almost an afterward ending of the book, beginning

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of a more meaningful life.

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So let's start here with part one, which is the objective and the obstacles.

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And in here, there are a couple of chapters, chapter one, a life with no regrets,

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chapter two, distracted from meaning.

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Uh, this is kind of where he starts talking about the importance of focusing

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on the things that matter.

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I like this, uh, approach perspective, whatever, right at the beginning of this

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reminded me a lot of a gap book that I had read, which was 30 lessons for living.

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Um, that one would be fun to cover on bookworm two, but the basic idea of that

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book was, uh, he had talked to that author, had talked to a bunch of people

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in nursing homes who were just living their best life.

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What contributed to you living, you have no regrets, basically.

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How, how did your life end up being successful?

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What, what were the secrets?

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Right?

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And so he condensed that down into after interviewing tens of thousands of people.

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30 different lessons for living, but really the, the inspiration behind that book

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is really what Joshua Becker is getting at here at the beginning of this one is

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that you don't want to get to the end of your life and wish that you had done

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things differently.

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Yeah, this is, this is like the setup for the rest of it, but basically, I think

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what he's like, the foundation I feel like he's laying here is that there has

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to be a bigger thing than just yourself that you're working towards.

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I'm extrapolating here, but you have to have like this purpose and vision, I guess,

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to use some of those terms, like we were talking about earlier before the other

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two parts and then I guess the fourth part before you can start to understand

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those distractions and what takes you away from that.

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Basically, you have to know what you're being pulled away from before you can

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talk about those pieces and it makes perfect sense to, to set it up that way.

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But like the two of them, a life with no regrets, like asking folks nearing the

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end of life, you know, what do you regret most?

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And trying to understand like, okay, well, what was it?

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Well, I didn't do that artwork or I didn't write that book that I wanted to

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write or I didn't resolve this relationship issue.

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Whenever you have things like that, well, then the, the obvious next question is,

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well, if that's, you know, if you were to die today, what would be the thing that

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you would wish you had done, like what would you regret not having done?

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Well, that's the thing that you need to be working on.

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Like you need to make sure that that's incorporated in your life somehow, which

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that question is how we got this book, by the way, because this, that was the

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answer to Joshua's.

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That was his response to that question is, you know, what's the one project you

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wish you would have done had you, like, if you were to die today?

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And it was this book.

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And I am kind of glad he got asked that question because this is, there's a lot

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going on here, but yeah, this is where he sets that up is the, the very beginning

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is like, what is the goal you're shooting for?

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Yeah, I had written down that question as a talking point.

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It was originally asked by Charlie Gilky.

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And he said, if you were to die today, what one project would you be most

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disappointed if you weren't able to complete it?

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And I'm curious, Joe, what is your answer to that question?

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I actually don't know.

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And I've thought about it quite a bit, which is kind of strange because usually

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with a question like that, like it's instant.

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Like I know the answer to that immediately.

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This one's kind of strange because I feel like the, the thing that at least my wife

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and I have been working towards is setting ourselves up such that we could have a

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place in a home where we could invite other people over and teach and guide

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and disciple and such, but we've been doing that.

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Like that's, that's where we're sitting right now.

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That's been our kind of our family mission here lately.

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And that's been going really well.

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So we're kind of sitting in the middle of that project right now.

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And obviously that one's never done.

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Like there is no completion point to that.

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So to have the question of, you know, what is the thing that you, like, what is the

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project that you would wish you had been working on?

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I'm not sure what that answer is.

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I mean, obviously I think there's, there's probably something, but I haven't figured

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out what the answer to that should be.

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Um, you know, the, the closest I think I've come is probably something to do with my

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kids and engaging them and empowering them in some form, but I feel like we do a lot

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of that as well.

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So I'm not sure.

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I don't know the answer to this.

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Do you have a clean answer to this?

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I do.

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Uh, I'm questioning it now because you brought up the kids thing and that's a project

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that never really ends, but I know it's similar, right?

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It's just a perpetual thing.

00:19:48

Yeah.

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But the, uh, the thing I thought of right away was updating my book because I, I wrote

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that book when I had no idea what I was doing.

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And since then learned a lot about writing and what a good book looks like and feel

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like I could write a much better book now.

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And, uh, I don't ever really want to go back and touch it because it's one of those

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things that that was the best I could do at that moment in time.

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And I'm sort of ashamed of it when I look at it.

00:20:17

Sure.

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But I don't want to just chuck it and start over either.

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So it's kind of like, well, what do I do with this thing?

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I, I don't know, but that's, that's the thing.

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Like if it were to be over as soon as we are done recording, that would be the thing

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that I would have regretted as not updating that because I feel like that theme is

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something that I've developed and I've changed my thinking or grown my thinking, maybe,

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on that topic of faith based productivity so much since then that there is definitely

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another, another book to be written there.

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So that's my, my answer.

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But the larger point here, which you were kind of getting to was like, when you, everyone

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wants to live a life well lived, right?

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They want to make the most of all the time they've got to work with.

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And he talks about how minimalism is actually a support to that because it's the

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intentional promotion of the things that we value most by removing the things that

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distract us from them.

00:21:20

I love that definition.

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I like the fact that I stumbled upon that after he asked that question about what's

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the thing that you really want to complete because I feel like once I had that in my

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mind of that book needs to be updated, then it was easy for me to think about all the

00:21:38

things that don't line up with that.

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And oh, minimalism is just removing those things that don't really add any value.

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Uh, there's a phrase in here.

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I jotted down how to get to the end of life with minimal regrets, choose well,

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set aside lesser pursuits, seek meaning and do it every day.

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How did you feel about that, that little checklist right there?

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Is that something that inspires you or are you like, well, duh, but that's really

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vague.

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And I don't know what to do with that.

00:22:05

Um, I'm usually pretty good with some vagueness around that.

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Um, it was kind of motivating.

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It made me like, I feel like I should do this.

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Uh, I feel like there's, there's a lot of things that I could get from this, but at

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the same time, like, okay, checklists.

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I can do it, but there's a lot that, there's a lot that comes with it.

00:22:28

Like there's a lot of second order and third order baggage that's going to come

00:22:33

along for the ride.

00:22:33

That's fair.

00:22:36

I think maybe, uh, this is one of those things that we tend to make more

00:22:41

complicated than it needs to be.

00:22:44

Yeah.

00:22:44

Maybe it's the fact that it's a minimalist who is speaking this to me, but I hear

00:22:53

that and I'm like, yeah, I think it really is that simple.

00:22:56

We just make it harder.

00:22:58

Um, and the second chapter really is all about distraction.

00:23:03

He ends the first chapter by talking about how the enemy is distraction.

00:23:07

And then in chapter two, there's like eight common distractions and those are

00:23:11

the foundation for the next two parts in the book.

00:23:13

But on page 22 in chapter two, he said that when distraction becomes a lifestyle,

00:23:18

we lose control over the life we're living, but distractions don't start our lifestyle.

00:23:22

So they don't have to take control of your life.

00:23:26

And, uh, I feel like there's a lot of truth.

00:23:30

If we're willing to look at our situations, honestly, in those couple of statements,

00:23:36

yeah, we, it makes us uncomfortable, maybe to think about all the distractions that

00:23:43

we have allowed to take root in our lives, but it's also empowering to believe that

00:23:49

we have the potential to take them back.

00:23:53

And I like how he encourages us that, you know, distractions are part of the deal.

00:24:00

They've always been there.

00:24:01

They're never going to disappear.

00:24:03

So you just kind of got to make the jump while you still can that phrase in particular

00:24:08

with that story he mentioned at the end of chapter two, that kind of stuck with me,

00:24:12

make the jump while you still can.

00:24:14

Uh, I don't think that pertains for me to, uh, minimalism, but I feel that that phrase is

00:24:22

going to pop up again and again in other scenarios.

00:24:24

I think there's, uh, there's some profound insight to be gained from that.

00:24:29

You have the ability.

00:24:30

You won't always have the ability.

00:24:32

So you may as well do something with it while you can.

00:24:35

Yeah, just to, to, you know, put some more bones on that story there, uh, to flush it out.

00:24:42

There's a trip that he went on.

00:24:44

Was it just his wife or with all those kids, both of their kids?

00:24:47

Uh, they were on a catamaran, uh, which is massive boat, two little pontoons looking

00:24:54

sort of things.

00:24:54

Anyway, they can get quite big.

00:24:56

And at one point, the captain of the ship invited people to jump off of the depth,

00:25:01

like the upper deck, which is up like the mast of that.

00:25:03

Uh, it's about 25 feet into the water from that point.

00:25:07

And he was inviting people to jump off of it.

00:25:10

So of course all the young kids and the, the young men who were trying to show off to

00:25:14

all the ladies do this right away.

00:25:16

And, uh, Josh Joshua was noticing there were a lot of gray hairs on the boat with them

00:25:23

who had no intention of doing this whatsoever, uh, nor should they.

00:25:28

And his wife while he was acknowledging this in his brain, uh, asked, are you going?

00:25:34

Are you going to jump?

00:25:35

And that's where the jump while you can.

00:25:38

Cause he said, yes, like I still can.

00:25:40

I'm in my mid 40s.

00:25:41

I can still do this.

00:25:42

He climbed up and jumped.

00:25:44

So that's, that's where that comes from.

00:25:46

It's like while you're still able to take advantage of it and, and, and make that move.

00:25:50

Like that's exactly what we're.

00:25:52

Well, what he's getting at here is like, well, you can't, you know, make that jump

00:25:56

when it's too late in life, but you can now.

00:26:00

So don't wait, like don't sit around and wait until it's too late.

00:26:04

I was surprised how much that story resonated with me because I kind of knew

00:26:11

where he was going with that from the beginning of that story.

00:26:15

And I immediately started to disconnect because I don't do well with heights.

00:26:21

So there is absolutely no way that if I'm in that exact scenario, I can make the jump.

00:26:26

And I expected that my brain would be so attached to the literal story that he was

00:26:33

telling me about jumping from a tall height that I would immediately discount the,

00:26:39

cause he's trying to using it as a metaphor, basically.

00:26:43

For the point he's trying to make regarding stopping, living a life of distraction

00:26:49

or defaults and live a life of intention instead.

00:26:53

And instead by the time I got done with that story, I was like, yeah, let's do this.

00:26:57

I've been asking myself why I flipped that switch so fast.

00:27:06

I don't know other than I don't know what to attribute it to other than he's a good writer.

00:27:11

Yeah, because this, this story, I don't know.

00:27:16

There's something about this.

00:27:17

Either the way he told it, it's only, it's about a page long.

00:27:22

That's it.

00:27:23

Like this is a real quick, not a long drawn out thing.

00:27:26

But that particular story is one that I found myself rethinking throughout the rest of the book.

00:27:33

For some reason, like this one came up a lot and it's the one that's kind of struck me the most

00:27:39

throughout my reflection time on this book, which usually, like a lot of times when we have

00:27:45

books and they tell tons of stories, like Joshua does here, when there's a lot of stories,

00:27:51

like it seems to be fairly rare that one specific story over, I don't want to say overshadows,

00:27:57

but it kind of hovers over top of the rest of them and continues to come up even after

00:28:03

you're finished with the book.

00:28:05

But this one definitely did, at least for me, again, I don't know if that's just

00:28:09

something to do with approaching midlife crisis territory or if that's, you know,

00:28:15

something else going on that I'm not acknowledging and it's subconscious.

00:28:18

I don't know what that is.

00:28:19

I need to lay on a bed and somebody asks me, you know, how I'm feeling.

00:28:22

Like there's, there's something going on there, but this one, this one definitely resonated with me.

00:28:28

And I continue to rethink it for sure.

00:28:30

All right.

00:28:31

We're glad it wasn't just me.

00:28:33

No, there was something about it.

00:28:35

I don't know what it was.

00:28:36

All right.

00:28:37

Well, let's move on to part two, which is distractions of a paralyzed will.

00:28:43

And two chapters here, chapter three, dreams over shadowed and chapter four, which is wounded.

00:28:48

The majority of the book comes in part three.

00:28:53

So we don't need to spend a ton of time here, but there are some fascinating insights

00:28:59

from these chapters.

00:29:00

One of the things I jotted down from chapter three is the observation that many

00:29:04

people would rather be miserable than uncomfortable, which when you hear that phrase,

00:29:11

it kind of doesn't make sense.

00:29:13

Like, aren't you uncomfortable when you're miserable?

00:29:16

But the point being that we would kind of default to what we know, even if that is

00:29:27

making us overwhelmed and anxious and stressed out by having to maintain all of

00:29:33

this stuff and all these obligations rather than focusing on the thing that is

00:29:39

really important, because if we focus on the thing that is really important, then

00:29:44

there's no excuses.

00:29:47

There's no ability to tell ourselves a different story.

00:29:51

We just got to wrestle with the results.

00:29:53

So there's another thing he says here.

00:29:55

Like when you do something and it fails, you can no longer hold the belief that I

00:30:00

have the potential to do this thing.

00:30:01

I have thought about that a lot, not just in this particular book, but I've

00:30:07

noticed this in some people because some people I'll talk to in real life and they

00:30:14

just, they kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

00:30:17

And I always ask myself, like, why is that?

00:30:19

Why am I getting annoyed when I'm talking to this person?

00:30:22

And it's because I have zero tolerance for people who just want to talk about stuff.

00:30:27

It's like, okay, yeah, sure, that sounds like a good idea.

00:30:32

Come back and tell me about it when you've actually done something to move in

00:30:37

that direction until then, like, talk to the hand.

00:30:40

Because a lot of people, and I've fallen into this myself, I was thinking back today,

00:30:48

even about some of the projects that I've taken on over the years and lots of talking,

00:30:55

very little action associated with them.

00:30:59

So I'm not trying to project, like, I don't struggle with this as well.

00:31:02

This is the natural human tendency, I think, especially if you're scared of putting

00:31:06

yourself out there, if you don't have the confidence that you are able to do this thing

00:31:11

by talking about it to other people, basically what you're able to do is get a little dopamine

00:31:16

shot in the arm when someone says, hey, yeah, that's a great idea.

00:31:18

Or I believe in you, you can totally do that.

00:31:20

However, most of the time, that doesn't translate into the action because all they're

00:31:28

looking for is the emotional jolt.

00:31:32

You really have to believe that this is part of who you are and why you're here.

00:31:37

And it has to be, you got to be driven by this mission or this purpose to make this

00:31:43

thing happen before you put yourself out there and risk something.

00:31:47

And that is a theme throughout this whole book.

00:31:50

And I really enjoy it.

00:31:52

By the way, there's a bonus section at the end about finding your purpose.

00:31:54

I did not put that on the outline because I don't really like the exercise, to be honest.

00:31:59

I was going to ask your opinion on it at some point.

00:32:02

So yeah, but it's a great idea.

00:32:04

I mean, I don't know where I would start with that.

00:32:07

I just looked at his approach and it didn't.

00:32:08

I use the word resonate a lot lately because I've kind of gotten a different

00:32:13

revelation of that word.

00:32:14

So I'll try not to overuse it, but that's the best one I come up with is like.

00:32:19

This thing reverberates in my soul.

00:32:22

And I'm like, aha, there is something here.

00:32:25

That's what I mean when I say resonate.

00:32:26

It's not that I have all the facts.

00:32:28

And yes, this makes logical sense.

00:32:30

It's just this feels right to me.

00:32:33

And there's a lot of things that you can actually judge more accurately by how they

00:32:38

feel than if you were to try to collect all the data.

00:32:40

So I really like this, this whole beginning part here, like, don't just talk about it.

00:32:47

You got to actually do it.

00:32:48

And the identifying the things that will cause most people not to take that first step.

00:32:55

And then what I hope to do about that is actually do the things.

00:33:01

Yeah, and the bulk of the things, quote unquote, that keep us from, you know,

00:33:08

acting are all based around distractions and fear.

00:33:11

In this particular case, fear being the distraction or the thing that keeps us from

00:33:15

doing it.

00:33:16

And I'm very uncomfortable with this particular chapter, which is well done by

00:33:25

Mr. Becker, I would say, because this is this is the territory where we start getting

00:33:29

into why are you not?

00:33:31

Like jump while you can.

00:33:33

But why aren't you?

00:33:35

Why are you not moving forward?

00:33:37

Why are you not actually, you know, taking that step?

00:33:41

And there's there's an awful lot of it that comes down to the fear component and

00:33:49

acknowledging what it is that you're afraid of, you know, there's a whole bunch of

00:33:54

stuff like you can be afraid of the success that comes with it or afraid of being good at

00:33:59

something, which is just so backwards in my mind.

00:34:01

But that happens and people do it a lot.

00:34:04

And when you start trying to break down those fears like that, that gets uncomfortable

00:34:09

real quick, like real quick.

00:34:12

And I'm not, I'm not thrilled with Mr.

00:34:15

Becker's prodding into territory.

00:34:17

I don't want to go into.

00:34:18

So he forces you to deal with being uncomfortable back to that first point.

00:34:26

Many people rather be miserable and uncomfortable.

00:34:27

And so I could see this being the point where a lot of people just put this book down and

00:34:31

they don't want to deal with it.

00:34:32

But I actually think this is the exact right approach to take up this.

00:34:36

The layout of this book is spot on talking about how what you really want is to live

00:34:43

a life of meaning.

00:34:44

The reason we don't live a life of meaning is that we get distracted.

00:34:47

We need to make the jump all weekend.

00:34:50

Like you said, there's two reasons why you don't.

00:34:52

And fear is the one talked about in in chapter three here, but then chapter four talks

00:34:57

about being wounded.

00:34:58

So something happened in the past.

00:35:01

This is sort of related.

00:35:02

You know, you're afraid that you're going to get hurt again.

00:35:05

But again, there's some really powerful insights here.

00:35:08

Like all of us are influenced in some way by troubles in our past.

00:35:14

And he does a great job of articulating that not all of these hurts and traumas are equal.

00:35:18

And I really will get into this more in style and reading, but I feel like it has a

00:35:23

really effective job of of saying, like, this is.

00:35:27

My small trauma and it's not false humility, but it's also like very effective and communicating.

00:35:33

I know people have had way worse experiences, but this is the one I know.

00:35:38

And this is what it did.

00:35:40

And then you can totally apply that to your your own situation very easily.

00:35:44

It's very generalizable.

00:35:45

But in chapter four, he talks about how regardless of the size of the trauma, what a lot of us will

00:35:52

tend to do is wait for things to be perfect, wait for everything to line up.

00:35:58

And he says, if we wait to be healthy, perfect and prepared, we will never accomplish anything.

00:36:03

So essentially you need to do something before you think you are ready.

00:36:10

And I endorse that belief.

00:36:16

Yeah.

00:36:19

The whole wait until it's perfect before you act thing, that's me to a tee.

00:36:23

Like that's absolutely where I get hamstrung because I don't want to

00:36:31

build the garden fence until the soil is just right.

00:36:36

Well, if I do that and I wait, well, that means the window that I have to actually get the job done

00:36:44

is now like two days, two or three days.

00:36:48

But it's like four or five days worth of work.

00:36:50

But that's the cognitive dissonance that comes in that scenario.

00:36:56

Like that specific one, like that happens a lot where I think I'm going to wait until a certain

00:37:01

thing is ready.

00:37:02

But the conditions under which I'm going to wait for actually don't add up, but you don't always

00:37:07

connect those dots unless you're able to take a step back and start to process it.

00:37:11

That's what he's encouraging you to do is kind of take the step back and work through it.

00:37:15

But I always want to wait until it's just right because there could be a better way to do it.

00:37:21

And if I just do it now, it's going to be harder than what it has to be.

00:37:24

And I don't want to deal with it being more difficult than I need to deal with.

00:37:27

Like that's the difficult thing that comes with that.

00:37:30

I think I think of so many things that kind of makes my brain hurt the things that put off

00:37:36

because of this sort of thing.

00:37:38

I should have read this one a long time ago, apparently.

00:37:40

Well, I tend to struggle with that as well.

00:37:44

And it's kind of embarrassing to think about because like the ship 3430 stuff has gotten me back

00:37:52

into a consistent writing habit again.

00:37:54

But I had created a consistent writing habit when I self published my book in the first place.

00:38:01

And that's the thing that kick started all of the stuff that I do online.

00:38:05

So there's obviously a lot of great fruit that has come from that decision in that habit.

00:38:13

But still, if you were to have asked me a couple of months ago, hey, should you be writing every day?

00:38:18

I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I should.

00:38:19

But I'd always have an excuse for not doing it.

00:38:23

Right.

00:38:24

Putting money on the line by signing up for this course and committing myself to do it,

00:38:29

the forcing function, that was the thing that got it going again.

00:38:33

So if you if you are looking for those excuses, I think you will always be able to find them

00:38:41

because nothing is ever going to be perfect.

00:38:43

And I have definitely succumbed to that myself.

00:38:45

Another thing he says in this chapter four, which I really liked is great leaders run towards problems.

00:38:53

I don't like dealing with problems on one hand, but on the other hand, I like solving problems.

00:39:02

But you can't solve the problems unless you deal with the problems.

00:39:06

Correct.

00:39:08

So I definitely want to be a better leader.

00:39:11

I want to be a better father.

00:39:14

I want to lead the people and the teams and the organizations and the companies that I'm involved with.

00:39:21

I want to do right by them and help them do more and be more.

00:39:26

So I have that as like the the overarching theme is leadership is important to me.

00:39:33

I want to be a better leader.

00:39:34

OK, well, it's a better leader.

00:39:35

Do he slaps me in the face with this?

00:39:38

He says, they run towards the problems.

00:39:39

OK, I guess you're right.

00:39:42

I got to run towards the problems that.

00:39:44

Yes, but I don't want to.

00:39:47

But that's the thing, like whenever I've worked under really good leaders or really good bosses in the past,

00:39:53

like that's it's always been the thing that they do, like they hunt for the issues, like the biggest issues.

00:40:02

And it I say that knowing that the the specific situations that they would take off and and attack and go towards were actually like systemic issues that I didn't even realize were a thing.

00:40:19

Like it was just more of a I'm doing my day to day.

00:40:23

I'm doing all of the work I'm being asked to do.

00:40:25

But the the way that it's communicated had nothing to do with what they were after they were actually after,

00:40:32

you know, systemic issues like why are the sales, why are the sales reps even needing to ask for this data?

00:40:37

They're not even he wasn't worried about, you know, how to get the data to them in the right format.

00:40:42

He's like, why do you need this at all?

00:40:44

Like he was asking much better questions and then going after that problem instead of just getting the team to solve the problem on the behalf of the sales reps.

00:40:54

That's a whole story in itself that I'm not telling.

00:40:56

But but that's that's the the hard part with it.

00:40:59

You know, whenever I think about the teams that I lead.

00:41:02

Am I going after the systemic problems that they face?

00:41:07

In most cases, I would probably say no.

00:41:08

So I'm not leading them very well if you want to apply it in that sense.

00:41:12

But I don't know there's there's always something more, but it's easy to be afraid of running towards problems.

00:41:18

I don't want to do it.

00:41:19

Well, yeah, I don't want to do it either.

00:41:23

And I've been thinking about this and brewing on this with the challenge to this is what leaders do, right?

00:41:29

And I think if you were to talk to me individually, so take leading people out of the equation,

00:41:37

I would 100% say that who you are becoming is more important than what you are doing.

00:41:45

Or basically don't focus on the output.

00:41:49

Had an interesting conversation the other day about the productivity space and the anti productivity movement.

00:41:58

For lack of a better term, the people who are pushing back against the just do more and crank and make like, again,

00:42:10

focusing on the output, I'm able to do all of these things.

00:42:14

Well, why do you want to do all those things in the first place?

00:42:16

Right.

00:42:17

So that's at the very heart of this whole book, Things That Matter.

00:42:20

But that phrase like who you are becoming is more important than what you are doing.

00:42:25

That has been sticking out to me.

00:42:28

And if that's true of an individual, then it's also true that a leader would assume that responsibility for the people that they are leading.

00:42:38

And it's not just about getting the job done or completing the project or the task.

00:42:44

It's about how you do it.

00:42:46

And it's about the character that's developed in the process.

00:42:50

And that's kind of messing me up.

00:42:53

Because everybody tends to focus on like, just get the thing done.

00:42:58

Right.

00:42:58

I tend to be the person that people call on when they just need something done.

00:43:03

And they know that I have the ability to just get it done.

00:43:08

But I'm recognizing more and more that just getting it done oftentimes causes a lot of a lot more harm than good.

00:43:17

And so I've been wrestling through that.

00:43:20

How do you still make things happen with a team or an organization without crushing people, basically?

00:43:29

In a way that they are pulled towards this picture that you're selling.

00:43:41

Because I really believe like sales orientation or sales ability, that is part of leadership.

00:43:46

No one's going to follow a leader unless they convince the people that are following them that they can help them get where they want to go.

00:43:53

So how do I pull people in a way that they are motivated as opposed to trying to push them from behind?

00:44:01

And the metaphor I have in my head of this is like a piece of string or a piece of rope.

00:44:09

You can pull a rope in a direction, but you really can't push it.

00:44:14

It's not going anywhere if you're trying to push it.

00:44:16

And I think that people are like that too sometimes.

00:44:22

Yeah, I was pulling a coax cable three hours ago before we recorded here.

00:44:30

And Joel, my assistant was helping me with that.

00:44:35

And at one point he was like trying to push the cable down into the pipe that we were trying to pull it through.

00:44:40

And there's a reason that people talk about pulling cable.

00:44:43

You don't push cable into the ceilings.

00:44:45

You don't push cable through all the pipes and stuff.

00:44:48

It's definitely pull it through, which is why we have pull strings.

00:44:52

That's why we have everything is referred to as pulling.

00:44:55

You cannot push it.

00:44:56

Not really related, but fun.

00:45:02

But that needs to apply to yourself before you can apply it to other people, which is really the whole idea of this book.

00:45:09

So it's a little bit of a tangent, but this is where my brain one is.

00:45:12

I was thinking about this.

00:45:13

Shall we move on to part three?

00:45:16

This is where there's a lot of fun stuff that I don't want to talk about.

00:45:20

Yeah, so part two is basically the internal stuff and part three is, I guess it's not really external stuff,

00:45:31

but it's definitely a shift from maybe past to present.

00:45:37

There's several chapters here.

00:45:39

Chapter five is the Me Monster.

00:45:41

Chapter six, enough is enough.

00:45:42

Chapter seven litter on the road to purpose.

00:45:45

Chapter eight trending.

00:45:46

Chapter nine beaches get boring.

00:45:49

Chapter 10 blinking lights.

00:45:51

We could probably do an entire podcast episode just on that last chapter, but we'll get to that maybe in a little bit.

00:46:01

I feel like we've done podcast episodes on that chapter.

00:46:04

Yeah, well, digital minimalism for sure.

00:46:08

I mean, he'd mentioned Scall Newport, but let's talk about the me.

00:46:13

The skipping.

00:46:14

Yeah.

00:46:16

Let's talk about the Me Monster, though.

00:46:19

This is the one that I grab my only action item from the entire book in.

00:46:25

OK.

00:46:28

The to sum up this chapter is basically we don't need help being selfish.

00:46:34

However, the most direct path to happiness involves looking at the interests and needs of others.

00:46:42

So really effective reframing of this, I think, because if you're to ask people, you want to be happy, they'd say, yeah.

00:46:49

Joshua Becker says pursue purpose, not happiness.

00:46:54

When you pursue purpose, then the happiness kind of comes along for the ride.

00:46:59

Some great statistics in here and quote some research studies.

00:47:02

There was one from the science of generosity by Summer Allen from UC Berkeley,

00:47:08

which showed that wealth tends to make people less generous and more isolated.

00:47:13

And essentially, we should serve somebody.

00:47:17

And the action item that's associated with this for me is towards the end.

00:47:25

He asked this question in one of the stories that he was telling.

00:47:30

How does this action benefit someone else?

00:47:33

And it was a minor point.

00:47:36

It wasn't a big like, hey, you should do this.

00:47:38

Like he flat out says about 100 times you should do digital detox.

00:47:41

So he's not like trying to drive this point home.

00:47:44

But this just jumped off the page at me.

00:47:47

The things that I do and specifically the things that I create, because I'm trying to

00:47:53

establish new creative rhythms with the newsletter, the YouTube channel, all that stuff, these

00:47:59

these things that I believe are going to align, but I don't really know yet.

00:48:03

It's trying to get some movement with them, right?

00:48:04

So I don't want to just do this to do this.

00:48:08

And I don't want to do YouTube because I feel like everyone needs a YouTube channel

00:48:14

who's trying to do it, but I'm trying to do, right?

00:48:16

I want to do it in a way where I'm actually helping people in some small

00:48:21

white, like I said earlier, I kind of wrestle with that because like intentional technology

00:48:25

use on some scales, you could look at that and be like, well, how is that really making the

00:48:29

world a better place?

00:48:29

But for some people, it could totally change the world.

00:48:32

It's kind of the whole idea behind this book.

00:48:33

Like it's fits the right thing at the right time.

00:48:35

It can absolutely change somebody's life.

00:48:38

So how do I create content then in all of these different forms, whether they be podcasts,

00:48:47

videos, articles, newsletters, that has the potential to benefit someone else,

00:48:54

not just something that I feel like writing or I feel like making.

00:48:59

And obviously there's got to be a Venn diagram where those things overlap, right?

00:49:06

Because if you don't enjoy the thing that you're making, you're not going to keep making it.

00:49:10

You have to be motivated to do that.

00:49:12

But just that simple question, I want to start asking myself that about the stuff that

00:49:17

I'm publishing.

00:49:18

I don't want to just create stuff to create stuff and add more noise to the universe.

00:49:22

I want to try to help specific people and kind of niching down and figuring out like,

00:49:29

what do I want to be known for has helped with that.

00:49:33

I still got some work to do there.

00:49:37

But I feel like this is one of the things that I can use to kind of measure if I'm on the right track.

00:49:44

Yeah, this is something that I know.

00:49:45

Well, I was kind of talking about this earlier.

00:49:48

So when my wife and I bought our current house and the five acres that come with it,

00:49:53

one of the core purposes we had for the purchase of this property, which to get that done was one

00:50:04

of the biggest undertakings I think I've had in my life to get that actually accomplished.

00:50:10

The main goal was to set up a place that could be a retreat for other people

00:50:15

and to help teach people a variety of things.

00:50:21

Some of those are day-to-day skills.

00:50:24

Some of them are mental skills, but also to be like a respite place for folks.

00:50:30

So that's ultimately what we're doing, but it's fascinating how the things that we do day-to-day.

00:50:40

Look identical to folks who buy properties like ours for their own use that don't apply to other people.

00:50:49

But when it's all said and done, I know that some people, and he talks about materialism and stuff in here too.

00:50:57

I think maybe we'll get there, but I know that there are a lot of folks who do that sort of thing.

00:51:02

And it's almost like a show-off scenario where it's like, "Look what I have," or "Look at the things I do."

00:51:09

And yes, they may love doing those, but there's always an ulterior motive.

00:51:14

I'm not saying that everybody, I'm just saying that that's kind of the cliche, I guess.

00:51:17

I think it's a lot more people than you realize.

00:51:20

There's a saying, most people buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.

00:51:26

Correct. Yes, absolutely.

00:51:29

And I know that that's common, but it is so much more fulfilling what we've been doing.

00:51:38

I get really excited when I know there's a bunch of people coming over, which as an introvert is the worst thing ever,

00:51:44

to have a whole bunch of people come over and then stay there for five hours.

00:51:49

It's like, "Deep breath, we'll be okay. It'll be all right. I'll be able to sit and read a book tomorrow morning. It'll be okay."

00:51:57

You can go hang outside with the bats.

00:52:00

Yes, hang out with the bats outside, go pet some kittens and walk the trails in the woods later.

00:52:04

Like, "We'll do this and it'll be okay." That's what the introvert in me wants to scream.

00:52:09

I'm saying this knowingly. Here, chapter five, the me monster. This is the antithesis to that.

00:52:16

If you're going to focus on yourself and what makes you happy and focus on being happy,

00:52:24

you get the opposite, not happy.

00:52:26

By trying to turn it to focus on other people, that's the key.

00:52:32

I feel like that's a point that he makes here that I wish was bigger, but at the same time,

00:52:38

he made the point and he has a lot of ground to cover. He can't sit there and camp out. There's

00:52:44

entire books around that. That said, I really enjoyed this part, that particular chapter especially.

00:52:52

You probably enjoyed the next chapter too, which is enough is enough because it talks about

00:52:59

how, well, at the end of the chapter anyways, he talks about generosity, which that part really

00:53:05

stood out to me. I guess most of this next chapter is talking about how you can't out

00:53:11

earn a desire for money. Money is a moral stuff like that, but the thing that impacted me is that

00:53:19

the people we admire the most are generous. I think I shared not too long ago. I had heard that

00:53:25

just recently and put that to the test in my mental checklist of the people that I looked up to and

00:53:33

that I considered to be successful. I was like, that can't be right because the other version

00:53:39

I'd heard was like, everybody who is successful in life is generous. I'm like, there's got to be some

00:53:43

jerk outlier there. There probably is. I don't know them though. As I went through,

00:53:51

all of the people that I could identify who fit that criteria for me that I actually knew,

00:53:57

like, yeah, these are generous people and they're not concerned about hoarding and they're not

00:54:07

concerned about themselves. I guess you can look at it a couple different ways. You could say,

00:54:15

well, they have the ability to do that because they've achieved this certain level, but everybody

00:54:21

that I've talked to this way, they strike me as this is who they are and it feels authentic. It

00:54:33

doesn't feel like this was something that changed once they got to a certain point. Some of them I

00:54:38

know the whole story and I know that this is who they were before they became quote unquote,

00:54:45

successful. I think there is maybe not 100% success rate with this. You could argue that, but

00:54:55

absolutely this is the general principle that the world of the generous gets larger and larger,

00:55:03

but the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. Think bigger, live bigger, give bigger,

00:55:10

not looking to make yourself comfortable because again, the biggest thing that's going to move

00:55:16

the needle in terms of your happiness is serving somebody else.

00:55:20

The focus of this particular chapter is on money, but keep in mind that the amount of money you need

00:55:31

to achieve happiness, lack of quotes if you want to go off of what we were just talking about.

00:55:41

But if you look at the amount of money it actually takes to do that, it's actually quite small

00:55:45

for what you would think. He had a whole survey and study that he did as part of this book

00:55:53

and there were questions around that he asked people in this survey. He was asking them how

00:56:01

much, how likely would you be to be happier if you had just a little more money and people were

00:56:07

all over the place on that. They were all over it. They said, if I had just a little bit more money,

00:56:12

I'd be happier. It reminded me of Rockefeller's attributed quote. I don't know how true it is,

00:56:19

but he was theoretically asked how much money would be enough money for you and he said a dollar

00:56:28

more. Sure, there's always more to be achieved. I don't know if that actually happened or not.

00:56:35

I've never been able to fully confirm if that happened, but that's the story and how it goes.

00:56:39

Enough is never enough if you're always looking at those numbers as the thing that

00:56:46

tells you when you're done. I don't know. People do it a lot, but you shouldn't. Don't do that.

00:56:52

Don't do that. Let's see, chapter seven litter on the road to purpose.

00:57:00

This stuff I like from all these chapters, but one of the things I did want to talk to you about

00:57:05

and bring up is that everyone is minimizing something. I never thought of it that way. I had

00:57:12

phrased it previously. Everyone is optimizing for something. Optimizing is basically what do you

00:57:20

want to maximize in your life, but minimizing would be focusing on what things do you want to

00:57:27

eliminate from your life. I don't think that one of those directions is necessarily

00:57:33

better than the other, but I think this is a pretty profound truth if you've never thought

00:57:38

about this before is you do get to optimize your life for whatever sort of situation you want to

00:57:48

create. We do this without thinking about it. I'll just use optimizing as an example because

00:57:54

going back to that quote that many people would rather be miserable than uncomfortable.

00:57:59

What they're doing is they are optimizing for safety, maybe, or optimizing for comfort.

00:58:04

That could be said of the whole section on money. If you're trying to get a whole bunch of money,

00:58:12

you're optimizing for comfort or optimizing for leaving a bunch of big inheritance to your kids.

00:58:21

You can define for yourself what is important, and then your choices either move you closer to

00:58:26

that or further away from that. The point being whether you view it through the minimizing or

00:58:33

optimizing lens is that you should consider the choices that you are making and the life that you

00:58:39

are creating because they have ramifications across the board. He mentions that if you're not

00:58:47

minimizing your possessions, what you are minimizing is your money, time, and potential. I 100%

00:58:54

agree with that statement. Everything that you own requires maintenance, requires attention,

00:59:00

and that's less that you have for other things. There is a zero-sum game when it comes to your

00:59:12

resources, whether that be your money or your time or your attention. This, I feel, is moving

00:59:21

from chapter six is about money, but this is about time and attention. They both are currencies

00:59:29

that you use in your life. If you think about it, really, money represents the portion of your

00:59:35

life that you gave to get it. Essentially, money represents time and attention. You go to a job,

00:59:41

you get a paycheck for the hours that you put in. You're trading that portion of your life for the

00:59:48

paycheck so you can pay your bills and feed your family and all that kind of stuff. We tend not

00:59:54

to think of it that way. When you think about possessions, go back to the previous chapter,

01:00:01

I really want this thing. It seems like a good deal. Are you willing to trade a portion of your

01:00:05

life in order to acquire that thing? Then this chapter is more focusing on the perspective

01:00:14

stuff. It's not the individual things. Don't waste it, but really just, "Okay, let's get everything

01:00:20

moving towards the things that really matter here." Yeah, I guess this one, chapter seven,

01:00:27

I found it to be more on the materialism train, buying things. I feel like he needs a chapter

01:00:36

like that in here. This is what his whole online presence has been. I know that he absolutely

01:00:46

needs this chapter in here, but it's what you would expect, I guess, in that sense. He's referring

01:00:52

to how if you have a lot of time that you've put into earning money that then goes into buying

01:00:59

things that take up your time, this is a perpetual circle that you're creating that you may not even

01:01:06

realize that you're creating. It's not from this chapter, but there's a section where he talks about

01:01:14

the cost of a free puppy. A free puppy isn't free. It doesn't work that way. Becky and I talk about

01:01:25

this sort of thing fairly often when we give gifts, especially around Christmas time, of course,

01:01:31

but being very careful with giving gifts that don't then require later purchases or create the

01:01:39

need for someone to maintain in some form. It surprises me how often, like, how difficult that is

01:01:47

sometimes. If you think through, if I give someone something simple like a gardening trowel,

01:01:55

like, that seems pretty minor, but the assumption is that you're going to spend time using that

01:02:02

in a garden, right? If this is a person who gardens all of the time, it's a great gift.

01:02:09

You could easily be somebody's favorite if you give that gift to a gardener. But give it to somebody

01:02:14

who isn't gardening at all, but has talked about it, and now you're encouraging that habit,

01:02:22

which maybe that's what you want to do, but you're encouraging them to spend time and potentially

01:02:28

more money on building out said garden, which again, maybe that's what you want them to do or

01:02:33

you think that they should do. That's a very simple one, but you can easily start picking out

01:02:38

things that lead to issues and costs that you don't necessarily want to put on

01:02:43

someone else. From a gift giver stance, you have to think about that, but you also have to think

01:02:48

about it when you're buying things for yourselves. What are the extras that are going to come with

01:02:54

this that I'm not planning on? Because it can get big real fast, so you've got to watch it.

01:03:02

Yeah, and driving that whole thing is the desire for more. He talks about the

01:03:10

health benefits of contentment in this chapter. It reduces stress, improves your outlook,

01:03:15

relaxes your body, makes life more enjoyable. I like this question again at the end. I didn't

01:03:22

write an action item for this one, probably because I have pondered this for quite a while

01:03:27

with my whole concept of a life theme, but does this promote purpose? The life theme is something

01:03:32

I came up with in the faith-based productivity course that I put together. Really, it is just

01:03:39

finding your purpose and condensing it down to a single statement, starting with your core values,

01:03:43

figuring out what's important to you. That's probably why I didn't like his approaches. I

01:03:48

tried it myself and figured out what worked for me. But just the TLDR version here,

01:03:55

my life theme is to help people answer the question, "Why am I here by inspiring and

01:04:00

encouraging and teaching them to connect to their calling, discover their destiny, live a life

01:04:03

they were created for?" And everything that I do has to align with that. If it doesn't align with

01:04:10

that, I'm not motivated to do it. So I might do it for a very short period of time, but most likely

01:04:16

I'm going to not do that very long because I feel like that is a waste of my time. It is not an

01:04:21

alignment with my life theme. It's not an alignment with my purpose. When you can align your work with

01:04:28

your purpose, though, then it's exciting and it pulls. It doesn't push. I don't know. There's a

01:04:38

whole big rabbit trail there, but I really do like the way that he frames this and gets you

01:04:46

thinking about why am I doing the things that I'm doing. Are they really in alignment with the

01:04:54

greater good that I'm trying to accomplish here? The next chapter is trending. This one,

01:05:03

this one I wrestled with a little bit because this is kind of about social media.

01:05:14

And there's a lot of negative things that you can say about social media. I'm also in the middle

01:05:22

of a course, which is requiring me to write daily on social media. So this is the right thing, right

01:05:27

time for me. And there was one specific section about two questions to ask about your social media

01:05:35

use. And that is, why am I attracting followers and how am I attracting followers? That I spent

01:05:43

some time thinking about that. I read that part kind of the same time I was wrestling through

01:05:49

in the ship 30 course talking about redoing your Twitter bio. And like, what is the person who is

01:05:57

considering following you? What are they going to get from you? Because it's not about you. Most

01:06:02

people, myself included list, well, I do this and I do this and I do that. No, who cares?

01:06:07

Right. If I'm going to engage with you, what am I going to get in return? And I feel that this

01:06:18

chapter kind of helped me get to the point where I am motivated to create the things that I am

01:06:26

creating in service of helping other people. And it doesn't have to be something that I have

01:06:33

earned a credential for. That's another thing they talk about in ship 30 and a big roadblock for a

01:06:39

lot of people is like, well, who am I to talk about X? Well, if you've learned anything, then you

01:06:45

have something that you can teach, convert, get talks about, teach everything that you know.

01:06:49

Right. Because there's always going to be somebody who's not as far along on their journey as you are.

01:06:54

And I feel like this chapter kind of fit together nicely with all that other stuff that I was

01:07:04

thinking about in terms of like ship 30 is talking about how do you get this attention.

01:07:08

And by asking those two simple questions, as I'm going through this, it's it helped me solidify

01:07:14

why I would want to do that in the first place. Those two things combined have created an insane

01:07:21

amount of motivation for me. I am working more hours, which this is kind of getting into the next

01:07:30

chapter beaches get boring, but I am putting in more effort, but it is more exciting. And I feel

01:07:40

that pole instead of the push when it comes to this stuff. And that is exactly what he's trying

01:07:46

to infuse in people is not where you dread engaging with this and you just try to make it through

01:07:52

and you hope that you have enough. It's that when you connect to that purpose and you have that

01:07:58

mission driving you and the things that you do, that that brings the motivation because you know

01:08:03

that this is what I'm here for. There's a quote at the beginning of this chapter, this

01:08:08

overcoming the distraction of applause trending in chapter eight. It's by Jim Carrey. And I think

01:08:15

this is this is interesting because I feel like I've seen seen people shoot for this many, many

01:08:20

times, but this is a quote. I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they

01:08:24

ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer. Yeah. It's like, huh, interesting. Talk to

01:08:33

any like middle schooler, maybe even high schooler, maybe not high school, middle schooler for sure.

01:08:39

And if you ask them, you know, what would you love to be when you grow up? I won't be a YouTube

01:08:45

star. Like that's almost universal, it seems like, like, I want to be a big, I want to be a big

01:08:51

creator online influencer. Like, these are the things that people absolutely want to be and aspire to.

01:09:00

And I think it's something to do with this, like wanting to be that person that people look up to

01:09:06

and that people go to. But the trouble with it is that there's a lot, a lot, a lot that comes with

01:09:14

that. You may not even realize, you know, sure, it'd be great to be rich and famous, right? But

01:09:20

there's privacy stuff you've got to now worry about. What do you share online? What do you not

01:09:26

share online? People are going to hunt you down your address and be able to send you things with

01:09:30

whether you want to or not or show up at your front door, whether you want them or not. Like,

01:09:33

this stuff happens. Are you sure you want that? And there's a lot of extras that that are going

01:09:41

to come along for the ride. Are you sure? Because once you're there, guess what? There's no going

01:09:47

back. Like you can't go backwards on that. So be sure if that's that's the route you want to go,

01:09:53

no guarantees you'll get there. But if that's what you're shooting for, just be aware that there's,

01:09:57

there is a negative side that can come with that. Now he's not focusing on that particular

01:10:01

part here at all. But he does have a quote here. What page is this? 133. You don't need praise

01:10:10

or attention to have value. That one struck me because it's very easy. You were talking earlier

01:10:18

about the stats on your Twitter thread. Like, I feel like as creators, like it's easy to gravitate

01:10:23

towards those numbers. And you feel like you're getting somewhere whenever you see those metrics

01:10:30

go up. But it's it can have the opposite side as well. Like when they don't go up, like when you're

01:10:37

get used to them going up and then they don't or they go backwards, you start to question what

01:10:43

you're doing. And am I doing the right thing? Did I not say that the right way? Maybe that

01:10:47

wasn't clickbaity enough. Like all of these things start to to come into your mind. So you get,

01:10:53

you really got to be careful with it, I find. So just being aware that like the praise and

01:10:58

attention doesn't necessarily mean that you're not valuable. It's just different, I guess. So

01:11:06

don't make that your focal point. That's my that's my focus for you.

01:11:09

Yeah, that's the the shadow side. And definitely those are purely vanity metrics that people can

01:11:16

just look at in order to make themselves feel good. But it really comes down to the motivation.

01:11:22

And I feel like in this book specifically, Joshua does a great job of making sure that this is

01:11:30

grounded in how do I serve somebody else? And you don't need to have 10,000 followers

01:11:37

in order to make an impact. That's kind of the thing here is regardless of how viral something

01:11:45

goes or doesn't. What is the thing that you can do, which is going to make the most impact?

01:11:52

You do not need to be an influencer to have influence. You can influence somebody. There is

01:11:59

somebody who looks up to you and you can help them, whether that happens to be online or not.

01:12:05

I guess for me, because I do a lot of stuff online, what I am recognizing is I have this

01:12:16

platform. It's not as big as a lot of people and it doesn't matter. I will grow it if I can. I'm

01:12:22

not going to be upset if I don't. But I am going to make things that I want to make that are going

01:12:29

to help people. I think maybe I mentioned it here. Maybe it was a different podcast, I forget. But

01:12:36

there was an essay by Derek Sivers that kind of rocked my world when I came across it about

01:12:45

balance. And I will put a link in the show notes here when I get a chance to grab it. But

01:12:51

Derek Sivers ends up a lot of his books mentioning contrary advice even just like,

01:12:58

here's an essay on this. Here's an essay on that. If it resonates with you, use it if it doesn't

01:13:02

move on to the next one sort of a thing. But this one really impacted me about how

01:13:07

you should have a job that takes care of your bills and then you should have your art and you

01:13:13

should not have the pressure for your art to be the thing that pays the bills for you.

01:13:18

And when you decouple those, what happens is you are free now to make whatever it is that you want

01:13:24

to make. What I've recognized is that people who make things for a living, that your income is tied

01:13:33

to the algorithms and it's tied to the SEO. And so you have to stack the keywords and you have to

01:13:40

do all the things. Yep, that's the one. So I guess what I'm saying is I enjoy not having that be the

01:13:53

driver. And I feel what that allows me to do is focus on the impact that something can have,

01:14:02

not to my bank account, but to the people that I would be creating this for in the first place.

01:14:10

Because like I said, I want to not just add to the noise. I want to create not consume, but not

01:14:16

just so that I have an output. Really, I'm inspired by this book to leave the world a better place.

01:14:23

Especially online, there's so much emphasis on the negative and the jerk set are out there.

01:14:30

I'll shine the light wherever I can. I'll be a good guy.

01:14:36

Yeah, that's the hard part with this is like, okay, if you want to build a following online,

01:14:41

you know, why? And you know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I've been

01:14:48

building some systems behind the scenes to make this easier for myself. And by that, I mean like

01:14:56

not just sticking with like one platform, but how do I post once and let it go a whole bunch of

01:15:02

places so that that reach can grow in many, many ways. That's that's ultimately what I've been

01:15:08

working on. And I'm really, really close on that one. Anyway, side note, but I find that trying to

01:15:16

determine like, okay, well, what is it that I'm wanting to share? Like, I know that from a

01:15:23

day-to-day stance, but holistically, what is the answer to that question? And I think that's what

01:15:28

you're talking about. It's really easy to come up with like, hey, look how I'm using Obsidian today.

01:15:33

Like these are things that are easy to come up with, but why? Right? And I think that's what

01:15:40

you're getting at because I know like you just did a threat on Obsidian and such, which was great.

01:15:44

And I think it does help people in a lot of different ways. But if that fits into the overarching,

01:15:53

and I say this knowing that it does fit for you, so this isn't a dig on you, but I know that people

01:15:58

are sharing things like what you did, not because it fits with the overarching what they want to do

01:16:04

and what they want to share and learn about online, but because anything that involves Obsidian

01:16:11

gets clicks right now. Like that's why some people are sharing that. Now, I know that that's not

01:16:17

your reason, but that's what a lot of people are doing right now. And that part frustrates me.

01:16:23

When people just jump on the bandwagon for the sake of the clicks, like that's that's the hard part.

01:16:27

I understand that. I guess it comes down to what do you want to be known for? And if you don't know

01:16:38

what you want to be known for, then you end up chasing whatever happens to be popular.

01:16:46

But when you figure out what you want to be known for, it becomes immediately obvious whether

01:16:53

something is on-brand or off. So like I said, I'm still kind of just going through this.

01:16:58

In Ship30, they use the example of somebody that I've talked to for the Focus podcast,

01:17:04

Jesse Anderson, who is the ADHD productivity guy. And they used him as a case study because I guess

01:17:15

he went through that and he was sharing that, well, this is what I'm thinking about, but this is to

01:17:22

niche and they're like, no, that is perfect. And you can see how he's totally leaned into that.

01:17:30

Everything that he shares is about ADHD and productivity. And again, this is based on their

01:17:36

presentation. Maybe Jesse would say this is a wrong characterization, but sounds like he wasn't

01:17:41

sure that that was going to be the thing. That was just one thing when he was going through the

01:17:45

reps and writing. And then from that point, he kind of clicked. For me, it's the intersection of

01:17:53

faith, productivity, and technology. So when we talk about Obsidian, my inspiration for sharing

01:17:59

that is not, well, Obsidian is how to better get something out there. It's, I see people who

01:18:05

are slaves to their devices, which will maybe get to it in chapter 10 here. And they just consume

01:18:12

things and they never think about the relationship they have with these things. And there's so many

01:18:16

positive things that the technology can enable, but it doesn't happen by default. You have to

01:18:21

control the interaction. You have to have a purpose when you go into it. So I'm just going to share

01:18:26

a bunch of positive purposes. And maybe people will like this and holy cow, people liked it.

01:18:32

Yes. But that's, I think that's the right way to do it. And I think that's probably the better

01:18:37

way to do it for sure. I'm just saying like, people can, people can jump on the trains and they do it

01:18:44

for honestly the money and the traction, which some people want to be known for that, I guess.

01:18:51

I guess. Can we talk about leisure? Do we have to? I'm never retiring. That's what I know.

01:19:00

That's what Joshua Becker advocates for. And if you just take that snippet, you probably think this

01:19:05

guy is crazy, but this chapter nine is really great. He talks about how modern society is infatuated

01:19:11

with leisure, but leisure doesn't provide meaning. It can provide renewal, but the goal is not to

01:19:17

avoid work. He's kind of saying work because you want to, the goal of work isn't more rest. The goal

01:19:24

of rest is better work is what he says on page 151. And so this has been challenging to me because

01:19:31

the most meaningful and fulfilled life you can live is going to include hard work. Anything that

01:19:38

is worth doing is going to be difficult. Right? If you want to live a fulfilled life based on

01:19:47

things that matter, I would say it is safe to say you cannot optimize for comfort. So what do you

01:19:55

optimize for then? And what does your work relationship look like? Because a lot of people view work as

01:20:00

a necessary evil. They go punch the clock nine to five and they live for the weekends. Joshua does

01:20:07

a great job of kind of saying it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, I know that I come from a farm

01:20:16

and if you have farm blood in you at all, the concept of retirement is nonsense. Like, oh,

01:20:23

wait, does that? I know of exactly zero farmers that I've met even in my agricultural career,

01:20:29

which was hundreds, if not thousands. None of them ever had a retirement plan. Like, it was just

01:20:36

work till I die. Let the kids do it again. Like, that's the plan. Why is it? So I have that blood

01:20:44

and I know that. So the concept of retiring is non-existent. Now I may just change paths at some time,

01:20:52

but retiring won't be a thing. As far as like leisure goes, like I tend to be at the mindset that

01:21:01

if I want to sit around, let's play into Joe's world right now. If I want to sit around a campfire

01:21:10

and drink a glass of wine or have whiskey with guys or something like that, if I want to do that,

01:21:16

I'm not going to do that all day long. Like, that's going to drive me nuts. But if I do it after a day

01:21:22

of cutting wood or building gardens or planting gardens, like after a full day of, you know, maybe

01:21:30

I'm at church doing work, like after a full day of that, that one or two hours of leisure at the

01:21:36

end of the day is significantly more fulfilling and more restful than if I'd been doing it all day

01:21:41

long for weeks on end. Like, it's way better. So it cannot be the in-game, I don't think, because

01:21:49

it's just not, I don't know, it's not truly fulfilling. I think it's depressing, honestly,

01:21:55

when I think about it. So I'm not doing that. That's, yeah, we'll do that.

01:22:00

I guess what I've been, been toying with and bouncing around in my brain is just our relationship

01:22:07

and how we view our work. Because your work doesn't have to burn you out. And I don't know,

01:22:19

I guess I'm kind of torn as to what is the ideal number of hours for somebody to work.

01:22:30

I think there's a lot of evidence that says after 40 hours, you get diminishing returns.

01:22:35

But I also think that especially now there's a lot of people who are doing a lot of different

01:22:42

things. And so maybe you don't have a single 40 hour a week job. Maybe you have a bunch of

01:22:48

different things that all contribute. And what's the division of labor look like for that kind of

01:22:55

stuff? I'm in a kind of weird position because I took a different job in January. I'm no longer

01:23:03

full time with the Blunk Media team. And creating was my job for a long time. That is what I got

01:23:09

paid for. The minute that I didn't have to do it for money, it completely changed the relationship

01:23:14

with the process. You could argue that I was viewed my work wrong and it didn't have to be that way.

01:23:18

And I don't think it was ever like a sludge. It was always something that I really enjoyed doing

01:23:23

it. And I really enjoyed the people that I got to do it with. But it's different. It is absolutely

01:23:30

different now. And I think we're in a spot where the messy middle would call it free radicals.

01:23:39

People don't have or they at least have the ability to not work according to the traditional rules.

01:23:49

You can define your own mix of things that are going to be considered your work. And I have found

01:23:59

since I took this other position that I put in more hours. But the creative work is actually

01:24:08

restorative. So like the podcast and things that I do on the side, like I'm still putting in the

01:24:15

hours at the quote unquote day job in addition to this. And maybe that's a bad example because

01:24:21

I was doing this in addition to stuff I was doing at block media too. But it's a very different type

01:24:27

of work. I get to go manage people and systems over here. And then I get to go make stuff over here.

01:24:36

That mode switch is energizing. So I've been thinking about like, well, what is sustainable

01:24:46

for me with all of the things that are on my plate plus all the responsibilities at

01:24:52

church ministries we're involved with. I have all these things that we do as a family, the

01:24:57

weekly one on ones, stuff like that. What is the right mix? And I find that anytime I find a

01:25:05

every time I look at a formula that somebody else uses, I'm like you.

01:25:10

Yes. It doesn't feel right. You have to figure and so I'm having to figure this out for myself.

01:25:18

And I think it's kind of cool that we have the opportunities now by working remote and

01:25:25

using the technology strategically to kind of piece together what our work life looks like. I

01:25:31

think you probably done this in some way, should perform too with the stuff that you do at your

01:25:35

church. Like there was no blueprint for this. You just kind of figured it out and you're like,

01:25:40

yeah, this is the thing. And everyone needs to find that for themselves. But this whole

01:25:45

chapter about beaches get boring. Like the big takeaway from this is don't work so that you

01:25:53

don't have to someday enjoy the process. Don't chase the goal of eventually I'm going to retire.

01:26:00

Just learn to love what you do. And if you don't love what you do, figure out what you can do to

01:26:05

improve your own situation or find a better situation. Because if you develop a growth mindset,

01:26:11

you continue to work on yourself harder than you work on your job, as Jim Rohn would say,

01:26:15

you will have the ability to say this is how I want to work.

01:26:23

Yeah, for sure. I just know that I can't sit prepared long. Even when I'm on vacation,

01:26:30

it's like I want to climb a mountain. Like I can't just sit still. So I will always be that way. I'm sure.

01:26:35

Sure. All right, we can, I think skip chapter 10, the blinking lights.

01:26:42

The short version of this is do a digital detox. We spend a lot of time consuming. The average

01:26:49

adult spends 12 hours, 21 minutes per day, according to Nielsen total audience report 2020.

01:26:54

That's kind of crazy. So just think about your relationship with your technology. I would also

01:27:01

add go watch the social dilemma. It's a great documentary. It'll scare you out of social media.

01:27:09

It will. We've watched it with our two oldest who are 14 and 12. And they want nothing to do with

01:27:19

social media. I've had to kind of come back the other way and be like, well, you know, it's not

01:27:23

all bad. You can like use it strategically. I use it every day. Yes. But I'm doing it this way.

01:27:31

Yeah. Definitely stay away from Facebook or meta or whatever it's called this week.

01:27:39

Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is exact. I mean, when you have a book that talks about overcoming

01:27:47

distraction, like the tagline on this overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life,

01:27:52

like the very first thing that jumps into your head, I'm betting involves technology. Like that's

01:27:57

when people say distraction, technology is usually right there very quickly behind it.

01:28:03

And he covers it in this chapter. It's a long chapter, you know, compared to a lot of the others.

01:28:09

So there is that. But it's we've talked about this before. Like the stuff can get in the way.

01:28:15

Don't let it get in the way. Try to keep it under control. When you realize it's gotten out of

01:28:21

control, do a detox again. Yep. And keep moving forward. Like that's that's really the moral of

01:28:27

the story, I think. Agreed. All right. So the last part here is part four, ending of the book,

01:28:35

beginning of a more meaningful life. Yes, that is the name of the section. Yes, that is a terrible

01:28:40

name for a section. Yes. So Joshua Becker, have your people call my people. What this should have

01:28:48

been called was the next chapter. Essentially, where do we go from here? Right. But that title is just

01:28:57

long and clumsy. And I don't like it. I like the idea of what he's saying here. There's one chapter

01:29:02

in this section. Live the story you want told. That's a great title. And it kind of ends with

01:29:08

it's more about the journey than it is the destination. And I absolutely love that phrase.

01:29:17

It's more about who you're becoming than it is about achieving a specific goal habits over goals.

01:29:22

Goals are dumb. No, all that kind of stuff. And that I think is like a great way to end it.

01:29:30

It's framing it as like, just do the next thing that's going to help you live a more

01:29:34

intentional, meaningful life. Don't try to just blow up everything and

01:29:39

get rid of your phone and leave social media and move to a farm with the bats like the Bulegs.

01:29:49

Like just figure out the next step in terms of optimizing for the type of life that you want.

01:29:54

I think this goes all the way back to one of the early chapters where we were talking about

01:30:01

people just don't move. Like they don't act. They don't take the next step. This is coming full

01:30:08

circle and saying, hey, do that. Like that first step, that thing that we were talking about early

01:30:13

on. Now you know all the things that are keeping you from taking it. Now you should take it.

01:30:18

That's really what this is. And I love that he wrapped it, put a bow on it and said,

01:30:22

here you go. He did a really good job with it. So yes, there's not much more to say on it,

01:30:27

I don't think. But yeah, I like that he came full circle on it.

01:30:30

Yeah, there's some other cool stuff in here that I'm going to chew on for a little bit. Like

01:30:35

there's a story that he shares and somebody uses this phrase, leave every room a little bit better

01:30:41

than you found it. I really like that. I want people to be sad that I'm leaving.

01:30:46

Yeah. Yeah. And he says that some people may not like your originality, but others will admire it.

01:30:52

So again, like be brave, do your thing. Don't base your value or your worth on other people's

01:30:59

opinions. Very important for anybody who does anything online.

01:31:02

So yeah, it's a great summary to this very good book. Anything else you want to say about this?

01:31:13

No, I think I'm good. All right. Well, let's go into action items then. I have a single action item,

01:31:22

which is to ask how does this action benefit somebody else? Kind of already talked about this.

01:31:28

I just want to shine the spotlight on why I'm doing the things that I'm doing and not have it be

01:31:34

about me. Again, you know, the world of a generous gets larger and larger. I want a default to

01:31:40

generosity to borrow another convert kit core value. They really crushed it with those core

01:31:45

values, by the way. They did. What about you? All right, two. So both from early chapters, one,

01:31:54

we talked about it slightly, but the concept of today, I commit myself to. I want to try this

01:32:02

for a while. Like I've got these morning questions that I do. I want to slip that in as kind of a

01:32:07

core component of that and maybe drop a few of the others that I'm in the middle of. So I want to

01:32:13

apply that one. Also, he kind of said this in passing. I'm kind of surprised I didn't come up

01:32:19

so far on that you didn't write it down because this is something you should have written down,

01:32:23

Mike. He mentions reading books from previous centuries. You remember this?

01:32:29

I did see that. Yep. Yeah, I don't know how I would apply this, but I think it's a really

01:32:37

smart move. So I don't know that this is something I'm going to do near term, but I want to just

01:32:44

kind of keep that in the back of my mind whenever I'm selecting books for either of myself, maybe

01:32:49

not necessarily for a bookworm. But I think there's a lot of wisdom in that concept. So it's one that

01:32:56

I want to try to apply here and there. So yeah, I've got those two. Nice. All right. Style and rating.

01:33:05

I really enjoyed this book. I knew that I would based on the subject matter. And just from the

01:33:11

very beginning, starting with that question by Charlie Gilkey, knowing that this was exactly what

01:33:17

I thought it was Joshua Becker's life work. This did not disappoint. I feel like it's really well

01:33:26

written. It's really well organized. We kind of talked about the structure, the objectives and

01:33:31

the obstacles he's talking about. Everyone wants to live a life with no regrets. Why don't we do

01:33:35

that because we're distracted? What are we distracted by breaks it into a couple different categories?

01:33:40

Those are the two part two and part three ends it with a great call to action, a poorly titled

01:33:46

call to action in part four, but we're on the same page though, Joshua, you know, live a life

01:33:53

on purpose, be intentional with how you're going to spend the rest of your precious moments here on

01:34:00

this earth. And I don't know. I can't say enough good things about it. I think everyone should read

01:34:11

this. You may have hesitation because Joshua Becker used to be a pastor and there is some

01:34:16

religious language, I guess, but I don't think he I don't think it's it's part of his story, but he's

01:34:24

not using it like he's explaining how he uses it to form his own values and inform his own

01:34:31

decisions, but it's not like this is what you should do. It's like if you are a person of faith,

01:34:36

this is something you should consider. It's very aspirational actually for me and how I want to

01:34:43

live my faith online because that's one of the things that's kept me I think from leaning into

01:34:46

the whole idea of faith based productivity is I want to be authentic. I don't want to come across

01:34:52

as telling people this is what you need to do. That being said, like if you share your story,

01:34:58

people can't argue with it. So I feel he did that very, very well here. Even if you

01:35:07

don't have a religious background, which again, like, applying that to me, it's inspiring to me

01:35:14

because that's the spiritual why behind all the productivity things. A lot of the productivity

01:35:17

books we talk about, we read talk about finding your why. Well, if you've got a spiritual why,

01:35:26

that's like the strongest why you can have in my opinion. He doesn't get, he didn't lean into that

01:35:31

a whole lot with this. It's just more so like you really should find out what it is that is

01:35:37

important to you and you should eliminate the things that aren't in alignment with that. So I feel

01:35:43

it's very generalizable. It is very easy to read. There's a lot of great stories. We didn't talk

01:35:53

about many of them after that first one. The only chapter in this entire thing which

01:35:59

felt kind out of place was only because we had a red digital minimalism by Cal Newport,

01:36:03

the blinking lights, that is, you know, one chapter summary of digital minimalism and

01:36:08

he didn't do as good a job as Cal there, but that's to be expected. It's one small piece of his

01:36:13

his message instead of the whole thing. So I'm going to rate it at 4.5. I would absolutely

01:36:20

recommend this to just about everybody. And I feel that the topic that the book addresses

01:36:30

is something that we need more noise around. I use noise just not like signal versus noise.

01:36:40

We need more people talking about this sort of thing in the age that we live in with the default

01:36:47

to distraction, with the goals of the companies that are controlling the technologies that we use

01:36:56

every single day, not being in alignment with our own. We have to recognize that and we have to fight

01:37:02

to take it back. And just shining a light on what is it that's important to you is a big first step

01:37:10

in that. There's obviously more you can do. But I feel like this is written in a way that it's

01:37:21

very approachable for just about anybody and whether you've been thinking about this for a

01:37:27

long time, like I have, or you are considering this for the very first time, there is a lot to

01:37:35

be gleaned from this book. So those are my thoughts. 4.5 stars.

01:37:43

I know that when I first picked this up, I kind of thought based on the cover, the tagline on

01:37:52

overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life. Like whenever I started putting all these

01:37:55

pieces together, it didn't really add up to me that Joshua Becker was taking on the topic of

01:38:00

technology, because that was where I thought I was going with this. And I would suspect that a lot

01:38:06

of people assume that as well. I will tell you it's an unfounded expectation whenever you

01:38:13

pick this up in a very good way. And that if you go through these chapters that we've covered,

01:38:19

the parts that we've discussed, you'll know that there's one small piece of this whole book that

01:38:25

goes into that. He does reference it from other places, but it's definitely not the purpose behind

01:38:31

the entirety. And I have to say that this was kind of a breath of fresh air to me, because

01:38:39

when we think about distraction, my tendency is I think of my focus and what I'm looking at at

01:38:45

any given time. And that's what he's referring to. But the attention can easily be swayed

01:38:52

slightly off course by more than just technology. And he focuses on a lot of things that can do that.

01:39:02

And that was something that I feel like more people need to discuss. I think we don't need to increase

01:39:10

the noise around this type of thing, Mike, but we need to turn up the volume maybe on what is there.

01:39:15

A better way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think if we crank it up a bit on this topic, I think we're

01:39:23

in much better shape. Joshua Becker obviously has been writing for quite a while. He has a

01:39:30

great style. There's so many stories here. The catamaran jumping thing is definitely going to

01:39:35

stick with me for quite some time, especially now that I've talked about it here on the show like I

01:39:40

have. But I find that this particular book, I'm fairly certain is going to come back many, many,

01:39:48

many times. And it's going to resonate for quite a while to use your word. But I know that this is

01:39:55

something that a lot of people could benefit from. I absolutely love this book. I think it's a 5.0.

01:40:02

I really do. I think it's something that I may actually reread here in the near future, which I

01:40:09

can't say I've taken on very often. You know, whenever I've got a book that I really like and I

01:40:17

don't generally reread them very soon after. But I may do that with this one because I feel like

01:40:22

there's some stuff that I've I need to work through because there's some difficult topics here that

01:40:28

covering it in a week to two weeks, it just doesn't give you the time to sit with it.

01:40:35

And and glossing over it is in moving on to the next one, which this is one of the downsides of

01:40:42

the way that we do bookworm whenever you have a book like this and you feel like you want to

01:40:45

spend some time with it. You really don't because you're moving on to the next one so fast because

01:40:51

of the schedule that we keep. So if you have one that you're like, whoa, I need to stop and think

01:40:55

through that and that could make big changes like, no, it's easy for me to just slip past it, not make,

01:41:01

you know, not process it and just move on to the next one because I got to keep moving like that.

01:41:06

That's kind of the potential downside of what we're doing. But that doesn't happen too often.

01:41:12

So that's why I say I may bring this one out again here in the near future. But anyway, all that to

01:41:18

say, absolutely recommend it. I feel like you should pick it up. I'm going to put it at five.

01:41:21

Oh, I do think it's something that you should read for sure. Okay, there you go. I'm done.

01:41:25

All right. So let's put things that matter on the shelf. What's next, Joe?

01:41:33

bittersweet by Susan Kane. We're going to talk about hard stuff, Mike.

01:41:39

Difficult life scenarios that could also be good. Thus the term bittersweet. Susan Kane is the

01:41:47

author behind Quiet, which we covered a long time ago now. And that was all about introverts

01:41:53

and how we need more of their voice. And yet she has this book bittersweet. So I don't know,

01:42:01

I think it'll be good. It'd be a challenge, I think. We'll see if there's, you know,

01:42:05

flesh wounds that get opened up in this process. It'll be good.

01:42:10

I have to admit, I really enjoyed Quiet. I'm not looking forward to this one.

01:42:15

All right. All right. Well, I had one queued up, but I'm going to change it based on what you

01:42:26

just told me about you wanting to brew on this topic some more. So we're going to brew this topic

01:42:31

some more. Thanks, Mike. What are we doing? We are going to read Hero on a Mission by Donald

01:42:39

Miller. Are you familiar with this book? Yep. So Donald Miller is an interesting guy.

01:42:49

It's a polarizing guy. Yeah, I guess he started off his first book was Blue Lake Jazz, which was a

01:42:58

religious book. And then he went into marketing with the story brand. And I actually think he did

01:43:06

a great job with the story brand framework. And he's got like marketing made simple,

01:43:11

business made simple. I'm familiar with all that stuff I've gone through, the video courses and

01:43:15

things like he's done a really good job with it. So here on a mission is basically taking the

01:43:20

hero's journey and applying it to your own individual purpose. I feel like this could be great. It

01:43:26

could be awful. Either way, it's going to be a really fun conversation. All right. All right.

01:43:32

I'm game game. Yeah. So since we're not going to do Joshua's exercise at the end of this this book,

01:43:38

we will go through Donald, Donald Miller's. All right. That's fair. That's fair.

01:43:43

Got any get books? I've been kind of taking my time with this one. I actually, you know,

01:43:52

took a little longer than I intended on it just because I feel like it was such a good one. So I

01:43:58

didn't get to one this past time around, but I'm about to pick between two or three

01:44:05

for this upcoming week. So I know I'll have one next time around. So no, I don't you.

01:44:09

I do not. It has been a challenge to write every day for the last 27 days, but I only got three

01:44:16

more days to go. Yeah. It takes a lot of time to do that. It does. And it's been great,

01:44:23

but I am kind of figuring out what sort of cadence I want to do regularly going forward. It's definitely

01:44:29

not going to be publishing every single day. So I will have a little bit more time, I believe,

01:44:36

in the near future did not have time to complete a gap book here for this episode though.

01:44:41

All right. So thank you to everybody who supports the show. Thank you specifically to the Bookworm

01:44:50

Club Premium members who are willing to pay to support our work. We don't have ads. That's

01:45:00

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01:45:05

willing to pay five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year, you can go to bookworm.fm/membership

01:45:10

to sign up. And if you do sign up in addition to our undying gratitude, you get some mind maps

01:45:18

for the books that I've read. Another Twitter thread I did recently is how I take notes on books

01:45:25

that I read. But I create these mind map files and mind note, and then I upload the mind note files

01:45:30

and the PDF files to the Bookworm Club. So you can have them for reference, or you can download the

01:45:36

mind note files themselves and edit them if you want. There's also a Bookworm 4K wallpaper that I

01:45:43

created and some gapbook episodes that Jill recorded. But the big reason to do it is that you want to

01:45:50

help us support our work, pay for the servers, help us buy some of the books. So we really appreciate

01:45:56

people who are willing to put their money there and support us financially. I love you guys.

01:46:02

That said, if you are one of the amazing people who reads along with us, I know that's a challenge

01:46:09

to do sometimes. Pick up Bittersweet by Susan Kane, and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.