Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, Zencaster does not like my audio interface.

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It always tries to put me on the system setting

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or the MacBook one, the built-in.

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That might be partly because they recently released,

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like they're at a 1.0 now,

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so we're not playing with their beta anymore.

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'Cause I had to, like, I usually,

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it was typically remembering mine at least,

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and then whenever I came in today to set this up,

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they had announced that, oh, we're open to the public now.

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Like, we're available to sign up

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and you can actually pay them now.

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So it's possible to do that,

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but that also means that all of the settings

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and such needed to be reset.

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'Cause I had some things that,

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we're gonna cause a lot of problems if I didn't tweak them.

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So thankfully I noticed that, I don't know, an hour or so ago,

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so I made those changes then,

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so that way we didn't have 30 minutes

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of trying to figure out how to make it work.

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(laughs)

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- Nice, thanks for doing your homework.

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- Yes, well, I just got lucky, I think.

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That's about all that amounted to.

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(laughs)

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How's Mike?

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- Good, how are you?

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- Doing pretty well.

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You've been, like, traveling all over the place lately.

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- It's true, I was in Austin for the Sean West Conference,

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and then two weeks later I went back to Texas

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to Dallas for the Christian Men's Network Conference.

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So I just got back from that last week.

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And that was a lot of fun.

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It was very inspirational.

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A lot of the people there are literally changing the world.

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So you get around those types of people

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and it helps you get a bigger perspective

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and a bigger vision, so it's always good to go to that.

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But now I am back and I am talking to you

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and we are gonna talk about the brain.

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- Yes, quite extensively it looks like.

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I was looking at our notes.

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It's like, holy cow, we have a lot on this one.

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- Yeah. - Okay.

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- Well, it is 512 pages. - It might be a long one, folks.

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- Yeah, it's true, it's true.

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Before we get there, let's check in on 12-week year stuff.

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How's that going for you?

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- It's going good, I'm still implementing the pieces of it,

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like the buffer blocks and the focus block.

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I forget exactly what I called them,

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but basically there's like the strategic block

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and then there's the relaxation block,

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which I'm using just to disconnect.

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And the strategic one I'm using to think big picture

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about what are the major outcomes

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that I wanna achieve across all the different domains

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or areas of responsibility.

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So I'm making sure that those get on the calendar.

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I'm finding that it's hard to find the time

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to do those sorts of things.

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But when I get them on the calendar,

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then they actually happen.

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So my implementation of the 12-week year,

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well, it's not the complete 12-week year,

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I'm gonna start doing that at the beginning of the new year

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where I have the quarterly goals, I guess,

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and then break that down by weekly objectives.

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The blocks have made it onto my calendar consistently.

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So how about you? - Nice.

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It's going really well.

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So I have, as I mentioned last time,

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I got started on it a little bit early.

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So the nice thing is I've been running with it quite well

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and it's surprising how much time I have wasted

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in the past, Mike.

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It's what I'm learning.

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Holy cow, this is kind of awesome,

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but bad at the same time in that I'm getting a lot more done

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now than I did beforehand,

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but that makes me feel pretty guilty about my,

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we write about productivity, like this is what we do.

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And apparently I was not very productive.

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So that's kind of challenging.

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The nice thing is that I,

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and I've told you about this,

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there was enough flex time.

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Like I, through that process,

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it managed to give me a little bit extra time in my schedule.

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Well, that meant that I was able to take a part-time job

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with our church here in town.

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They've been needing an IT director for quite some time.

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We've just never sat down long enough to define

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what should that role be?

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And can we get somebody in it?

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And the more we did that, I was like,

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"Oh, I'll take that."

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So it's kind of a cool,

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cool little transition there for me,

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but that's something that affects our scheduling

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for when we record and such,

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but outside of that,

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it's kind of an interesting little side thing

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that lets me go work with people day in and day out

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instead of just on my own with a computer screen,

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which I think we'll talk a lot about here in a little bit.

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But the 12-week year has been pretty instrumental

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in making that possible.

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And the nice thing is that the executive password

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or church who I'll be reporting to once I start there,

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I've told him about this process for a 12-week year.

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I don't think he understood it in near the detail

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'cause I didn't take the time to explain a whole lot of it,

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but he's gonna let me use that

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for a lot of my goal setting come the beginning of the year.

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There's some fires that you'd put out between now

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and the end of the year,

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but come January, I get to start in on the 12-week year

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in my part-time job too.

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So it'd be kind of fun.

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- Sweet.

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What about the meditation?

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That was the other thing that you had on there.

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- Oh, you of course had to see that.

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I was honestly thinking,

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I don't know if I wanna bring this up.

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Okay, well, meditation,

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another complete failure for Joe.

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I tried it and tried it and tried it.

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It just doesn't stick for me.

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So what I did was I,

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what I learned in this process of reading brain chains,

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which we'll get to here shortly

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'cause I think we're itching to get into this one,

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with the process of reading that,

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I think something that came out of that for me

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was that the process of reading a book

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kind of acts like meditation for me,

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in that I have to sit down

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and continually bring myself back

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to focusing on the book I'm reading.

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And I hadn't ever noticed myself do that up until this one.

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And I don't know if that's just because the subject of it

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or the length of it or what,

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I don't know why,

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but something about reading a book has that same process

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of noticing that I'm straying in my mind

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and bringing it back, that constant,

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refocusing process, which is the whole point of meditation.

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I think, you know, I'm no pro,

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but that's my interpretation of it.

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So I'm wondering if that reading process is

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taking the place of meditation for me

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and if that's the case, that might be why

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the just sit down and focus and do the meditation

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very intentionally, that might be why I have a struggle with this

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because I'm doing it a lot already.

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I'll give you a half a point for that one.

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It might be a cop out, I don't know.

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(laughing)

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I want it to be something that sticks.

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It just doesn't seem to make sense for me

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and I can't nail down why.

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Sure.

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It's like I keep looking for excuses.

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Well, I actually got to talk to Chris Bailey recently

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who was the author of the last book that we did.

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Yep.

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And we talked about all those different experiments

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that he did and he's obviously a big emphasis on meditation.

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That's something that has really stuck for him.

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But in the interview that I did with him,

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he said that you really have to kind of figure out

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what works for you and people approach productivity

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a lot of times with preconceived notions

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that this is the thing that's going to make

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all the difference for me and they try it

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and it doesn't really work.

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And he was talking about how you need to be willing

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to say, okay, this isn't for me and try something else.

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Like the thing for him was he had always heard

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that the people who get up early are more productive

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and actually in this book,

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Theo has some research that supports that.

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But the conclusion that Chris came to

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is that that's not my biological prime time.

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I really hate doing this.

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It's not working for me and being willing

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to just let that one go and find something else

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that really produces some results.

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Sounds like meditation might be that for you.

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I think so.

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I need to stop trying right now.

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I need to give it a year before I try it again, I think.

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It's just one of those things.

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Everybody talks about it.

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So many people mention it as something that's been

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highly helpful and it's changed the way that they come out life.

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It doesn't work for me, despite my trying.

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Fair enough.

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So you want to tell us a little bit about this book

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we're going to be talking about today?

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Yes.

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So Brain Chains by Theo Comprenol.

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I think that's how you say it.

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This one was heavily recommended by our listeners.

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So thank you to those who recommended this.

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We had five different people recommend it separately.

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I don't think you guys ginged up on us.

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But it was recommended.

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I have an extreme interest in how our brains work.

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So I think there are a few on our list that I'm potentially

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going to be selecting in the future that will dive into

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neuroscience a little more.

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Sorry, I'm like, and sorry listeners.

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This is something I'm interested in.

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So that's just kind of the way it goes.

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I'll get back at you.

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Yeah, I saw some things you wrote down.

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Between the recommendations and my interest in brains.

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And I think this one at one point I heard David Allen mention it

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at one point as well.

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But I've heard it come up a few different places and connect

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all the dots.

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Here we are.

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Yeah, so thank you to everybody who recommended this one.

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And we want more recommendations.

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So we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the

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episode.

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But I really think that's awesome that people are recommending

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these books.

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I probably would not have read this book had it not been

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recommended.

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And I have to say right at the beginning, this is probably

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the best and the worst book I've ever read.

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Yep, exactly.

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Yeah.

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And he kind of preffices it by he starts out with the challenge

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basically or the decision that you have to make on whether you

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really want to read this book or not.

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And at the time I thought that was kind of used for shock value

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maybe, but towards the end of the book I got it.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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I'm glad that I stuck with it.

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There's a ton of really valuable insights that you can get out of

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it.

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But it definitely, 522 pages.

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So it was definitely a longer, longer read.

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Yeah, this is a, this is a long book.

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And this is, this might be why I was talking about the

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meditation thing because you really just had to sit down and

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focus on it.

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So I was reading every day for two weeks on this and it's, I think

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the number was 33 pages a day.

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So despite it being across two weeks instead of, well, it's about

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twice as long as what most books are.

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So you end up reading twice as much per day.

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Anyway, it's a long read as for sure.

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Yeah.

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And it's based off of, I think he said in there there are 600

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different research studies that he went through.

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Yep.

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That's crazy.

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So it's definitely, I mean, he's a very smart guy and he knows what

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he's talking about and everything that he's articulating.

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There's science behind it, which is great.

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I did notice though that he uses the same statistics over and over

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and over again in the different sections of the book that got a

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little repetitive.

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But yeah, definitely a lot of great information in here kind of

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revolving around the idea of ICT.

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He uses that acronym a lot, which means information and

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communication technology.

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So I like that term.

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I like that he's not just saying smartphones, tablets, because who

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knows what that is going to look like in the future.

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But really his whole idea there is that we need to be able to use

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this technology in the correct way.

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Kind of the distinction that he makes, which is something that I've

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been kicking around in my own head for a while, is that there's

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a difference between using this to consume things and that's

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going to be a difference between using it in a productive way to

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actually produce things.

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And most people will default to consuming.

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They'll watch hours and hours of cat videos on YouTube and they

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just get sucked into the hole and they don't think about how they

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could actually be leveraging that technology to contribute value

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rather than just consume things.

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And especially like with the work that I do online and understanding

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a little bit about internet marketing, I totally get how

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marketers are completely taking advantage of our natural, I don't

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want to say desire, but just like we get sucked into this hole

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where we're just looking for the next bit of information.

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We're scrolling through our social media feeds or we're clicking

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on the next video in YouTube and pretty soon hours have gone by.

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And really the whole idea with this book, the big takeaway that I

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got is that we need to change how we relate to the tech information

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and communication technology that is in our lives.

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Because it can take over very quickly.

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Yes.

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The whole premise of the book is how this technology affects our

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brains and how we can interact with it, which I didn't realize

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that whenever I picked it up to be honest.

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I think if I had read the tagline for it, I would have caught

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that, but I didn't notice it.

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So anyway, the tagline of it, "Discover your brain and unleash

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its full potential in a hyper-connected multitasking world."

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And I think if I would have read that ahead of time, I would have

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realized this is about technology and how we interact with it.

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Because I've got another book on our list that will probably hit

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this a little more depth from a philosophical standpoint, not

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necessarily from a scientific standpoint.

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But he goes through so much of what he is labeled as the three

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different brains within our brain.

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So just to kind of explain those, there's the three.

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One is the reflex brain, one is the reflection brain, and one

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is the archive brain.

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And these are three different functions that our mind has.

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And the first of those is the reflex, which is like our

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instinctual.

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This is just a quick response.

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We don't ever have to think about it.

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These are just our habits.

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This is just something that happens automatically for us.

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Then you get into the reflection mind, which is where we have

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to sit and focus.

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That's where we're dedicating our mental ram towards a specific

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task.

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And that's where the deep work stuff comes from.

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Honestly, that's the major player in this book.

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That's where he focuses most of his time, is on that particular

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part of our brain.

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So it's the part that really drives a lot of value in the

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work that we do.

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And then the last brain that he's got there is the archive brain,

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which is the one that takes all the information that we collected

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from our reflex and reflection brain and stores it in long-term

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memory or makes the connections in the creativity world.

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And while we're sleeping, while we're taking breaks, while we're

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taking naps, that's the side of the brain that does all that.

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And the whole book talks about the relationship between those three

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and how we can take advantage of those relationships to get more

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done and increase our intellectual productivity.

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He talks about a lot of that difference.

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He talks a lot about the differences between the three and

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how each one can lead us to doing things that destroy our own

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productivity and election.

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Does that make sense, Mike?

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Yep, absolutely.

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And actually, it was really interesting to go through this

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book because one of my kids' favorite movies is Inside Out.

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And when he was talking about, he had one phrase, "a team of

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millions of librarians."

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That's exactly the picture that I got.

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And I actually am going through an audiobook, Creativity Inc,

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which is kind of the story behind Pixar.

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Yep.

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And I haven't gotten to the part if it's in there about that movie

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specifically, but it talks a lot about their process.

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They do a ton of research to understand the domains that they're

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going to be talking about.

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So when they tell a story, it has to be maybe not canonical.

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This is the science behind the concepts that we're dealing with,

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but it has to make sense.

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And I could totally see the effort that they put into that movie

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after I read through this book.

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And I'm sure they did a lot more than just read this one book.

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They probably combed through all those different 600 different

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studies that Dr. Theo did.

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But it was really interesting.

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And for those of you who have seen the movie, all the stuff that

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kind of happens automatically, like the behind the scene stuff,

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the long-term memory, all the different things that the archiving

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brain is going and putting in this proper place when you're not

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really thinking about it.

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It's kind of astounding to think about that.

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And from a visual perspective with Inside Out, kind of the thing

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that got me was like, during that story, you know that there are

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things happening in the other parts of the brain that are really,

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really important, but you're so focused on the main character in

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that particular case, it's joy.

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And you don't really see all the other things that are happening,

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all the other systems that are in place that like that's just what

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they do.

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And you take them for granted and you never think about them.

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And then it's pretty amazing the complexity of all those things

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that are happening automatically, even while we're sleeping.

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Like that's when the archive brain really kicks in.

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And that gets into, you know, he talks later about why sleep is so

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important.

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But yeah, like even while we're sleeping, when our body shuts down,

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we don't even know what's going on.

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Like our brain is doing some pretty amazing stuff.

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Yeah, I loved that movie because there was so many little things

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that just clicked, especially when you read this, like with the

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archiving thing, whenever the little girl would close her eyes

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and go to sleep at night, the main part of her emotions and such

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would stop what they were doing.

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And then the whole back end librarian side, just everything was

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in overdrive.

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Like everything just went to work at that point.

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It's not that was so cool.

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And whenever you go through this and understand the actual

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science of how that all works, like, oh, yeah, they know exactly

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what they're talking about in that movie.

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I loved it.

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I like that movie a lot.

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Yeah, it's really interesting.

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And when I don't mean to turn this podcast into Inside Out,

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I mean, we're focusing on brain chains.

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But it was really interesting when my wife and I watched it,

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we understood a little bit better, like why our kids did things

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that they did.

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It's like, oh, that's what they're thinking.

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Like that's how their brain is working.

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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But there's so many different little pieces that Theo goes into

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within the book that they, and we have a long list in our

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outline here, Mike.

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I don't know if we're going to get to all of this, but there's a lot

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of little nuggets I think that we pulled out of this, one of

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which was multitasking.

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I think it's pretty well known at this point that multitasking

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is a terrible idea.

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And when I went through and read his whole chapter on

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multitasking, the first of those, he kind of hit me with this

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test that he had spelled out in order to show that multitasking

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is a terrible idea because it takes much longer to switch

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back and forth because we know at this point you just can't do

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two things at one time.

00:19:56

You're not really doing two things at one time because your

00:19:58

brain can't focus on two things at one time.

00:20:01

So you're just constantly switching between them.

00:20:04

And to test this, something he had to do, and I did this because

00:20:09

I was curious, is you set a timer and you have two lines.

00:20:14

On the top line, you write the word multitasking and then

00:20:18

underneath of it, you number each letter.

00:20:21

So one, two, three, four, five, I think it's 12.

00:20:24

So you write multitasking and then underneath of it, write one

00:20:27

through 12 and then you stop the timer.

00:20:29

And whatever that time is, write that down.

00:20:32

You do the same thing, again, on the top line, you're writing

00:20:35

multitasking underneath of it, you're writing one through 12.

00:20:38

But what you're doing is you write the M and then one, U and

00:20:41

then two, L and then three.

00:20:43

And you go all the way down through it and then stop the timer

00:20:47

and then check the difference between the two.

00:20:50

And it amazed me how much longer it takes to do the second

00:20:55

process, the latter of those two.

00:20:57

So what were your times?

00:20:58

Because I did this and I made my wife do it also.

00:21:01

Yeah, so the first one, and I wasn't trying to go crazy fast,

00:21:05

but the first one, let me get my numbers here.

00:21:09

The first one, I think it took me eight seconds.

00:21:14

So it was nine seconds to do the first one.

00:21:17

And then the second one, it took me 17.

00:21:20

Whoa.

00:21:22

That we got a little bit different results, but that was maybe

00:21:28

because I, maybe it was the way I framed it.

00:21:32

Like I kind of probably presented it in a way where it was

00:21:36

transparent as to what specifically the point of the

00:21:40

exercise was.

00:21:41

So I didn't get quite as big a discrepancy.

00:21:44

When I wrote it, it took me 12 seconds to write multitasking.

00:21:47

And that's basically because I was hitting start, writing

00:21:50

multitasking and hitting stop.

00:21:51

So probably a little bit less than that.

00:21:53

And then when I did the letters and numbers jumping back and forth,

00:21:56

it took 16 seconds, so about 33% longer.

00:22:01

And then my wife got the same thing.

00:22:04

It was 15 seconds and then 20 seconds.

00:22:07

But what was astounding to me, especially when watching my

00:22:10

class do it, was how much harder it was to go back and forth.

00:22:14

It wasn't even the time.

00:22:16

It was the fact that this is really hard and all we're doing is

00:22:20

we're writing a word and writing a sequence of numbers.

00:22:23

Like this is very basic stuff.

00:22:25

So if you're going to take this approach when you're dealing with

00:22:28

something really complex, like working on a project that work

00:22:31

and trying to respond to an email at the same time, you're

00:22:34

going to make mistakes.

00:22:36

Oh, yeah.

00:22:37

Those mistakes are going to have negative consequences.

00:22:39

So it really just illustrated to me that this is not something

00:22:44

that you really want to mess with.

00:22:46

Having a visual picture of my wife trying to identify like,

00:22:50

well, what is the next number?

00:22:51

And if you do this exercise, you'll totally get it.

00:22:54

It's way harder than you think it's going to be.

00:22:58

Yeah, exactly.

00:22:59

I had a couple of friends try this just because I was curious

00:23:02

what theirs would be as well.

00:23:04

I don't remember their numbers, but I remember one of them,

00:23:08

the first time through both were fine.

00:23:10

Like it was not a big deal, but the second process where you're

00:23:13

alternating, one of the guys, he misspelled multitasking.

00:23:18

And the other guy, he misnumbered them.

00:23:23

I think he swapped six and seven.

00:23:25

He wrote seven, six.

00:23:27

He's like, now that is interesting that you go through this,

00:23:32

like you know how to write one to 12.

00:23:34

You know how to spell multitasking.

00:23:36

And yet when you try to do them simultaneously,

00:23:39

you screw them up.

00:23:40

And this is very fundamental.

00:23:43

This is not some elaborate project you're working on.

00:23:46

This is just writing a word numbering it.

00:23:48

That's all it is.

00:23:49

And yet there's mistakes in it.

00:23:50

Yep.

00:23:51

That was kind of an alarm for me that even something so small,

00:23:56

so basic can become extremely difficult and cause problems.

00:24:01

It just kind of scared me to think about the number of people

00:24:05

that try to multitask on some major vital projects.

00:24:10

Right.

00:24:11

Like talking on the phone and driving your car at the same time,

00:24:13

which is some nailed that one through your skull in this book.

00:24:17

Yes, yes he did.

00:24:18

He is definitely on the soapbox for that.

00:24:21

He's like encouraging you over and over again to call your

00:24:25

representatives and get them the past laws where you can't use

00:24:29

information communication technology in the car because if

00:24:34

you're on the phone, what was the statistic?

00:24:37

I think it was four times more likely to get in an accident.

00:24:39

And if you're texting, you're 23 times more likely to get in an accident.

00:24:43

But most people think that, "Oh, I'm good enough.

00:24:45

Like I can cover this."

00:24:47

And he shares some of those statistics too where like,

00:24:49

people know like 90% of people say that texting while driving is

00:24:53

extremely dangerous, but 60% of people do it anyways because they

00:24:57

think that they're a good driver.

00:25:00

Right.

00:25:01

And really the reality is we give ourselves more credit than we

00:25:05

deserve.

00:25:06

And we really overestimate our abilities.

00:25:12

And when it comes to operating a vehicle or a piece of heavy

00:25:16

machinery, he talks about that in factories too.

00:25:18

We're like driving forkless and things.

00:25:20

Maybe you're not on the highway and you're not going to take

00:25:23

someone's life necessarily, but you might cause major damage in

00:25:26

the warehouse.

00:25:27

Same concept still applies.

00:25:30

This is a big deal and it's a lot bigger deal than most people

00:25:34

realize.

00:25:35

You kind of have this idea like, "Oh yeah, I know that happens.

00:25:37

I know it's not safe, but it'll never happen to me."

00:25:40

But it does.

00:25:41

And you don't want to get in that situation.

00:25:43

Something I just noticed is neither one of us putting anything

00:25:46

on our outline about driving with a smartphone.

00:25:50

Yeah.

00:25:51

That's because by the end of the book, I was pretty tired of hearing

00:25:55

about it, honestly.

00:25:56

That statistic specifically, like I totally get it.

00:25:59

I understand the importance of it, but I understood the importance

00:26:02

of it by about a page, page 120, I think.

00:26:05

Yep.

00:26:06

And then it got reiterated over and over and over and over again.

00:26:09

Yeah.

00:26:10

I think how did this work?

00:26:12

I...

00:26:13

Because he keeps referencing the chapter on phones and driving

00:26:17

and attention.

00:26:18

Like he references it over and over and over and over again.

00:26:21

And then I finally got to the chapter about it.

00:26:24

And it's like, "Oh, okay.

00:26:27

So now we're going to go through this."

00:26:28

And then I realized I already know all this because he's already

00:26:31

told me everything that he's saying here.

00:26:34

Yeah.

00:26:35

There's a couple different levels of implementation of the brain

00:26:39

gains part of this.

00:26:41

And we'll get to those.

00:26:42

But there's the brain gains at the me level, brain gains at the

00:26:46

we level and brain gains at the they level.

00:26:49

And what I found was he kind of repeated a lot of the same things

00:26:52

over and over and over again.

00:26:54

So at the me level, you personally don't text or call while

00:26:58

you're driving your car.

00:26:59

And then at the we level, tell other people not to text or

00:27:03

drive or text or call when they're driving their car and then at

00:27:06

the they level.

00:27:07

Tell other people, like your sayers, that they need to pass laws

00:27:10

to tell people not to text or drive while the...

00:27:13

Or text or call.

00:27:14

Why can't I say that?

00:27:15

Text or call while they're driving their car.

00:27:18

You know, and it's like, "Okay.

00:27:20

You get it."

00:27:21

Especially after the first time he did a really good job of

00:27:23

articulating all the danger behind it.

00:27:25

He's got a lot of different images and diagrams that show like the

00:27:29

effect where you're not only not seeing things that are actually

00:27:34

there, but also the scope of what you're seeing is diminished.

00:27:37

And so when you combine those together, it makes perfect sense

00:27:39

that yeah, this would compound to four times more accidents while

00:27:43

you're on the phone and 23 times more accidents when you're

00:27:45

texting.

00:27:46

But then hitting it over and over and over again, I don't know,

00:27:51

maybe it's just because I had to get this done by a certain

00:27:53

time.

00:27:54

You know, we're going to get on the mic and we're going to record

00:27:56

this episode.

00:27:57

But I felt like it was really repetitive.

00:28:00

Like, "Okay, I got this already.

00:28:02

We can move on."

00:28:04

Yep.

00:28:05

So.

00:28:06

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts when we get to the author style

00:28:08

part.

00:28:09

He does talk a little bit about different, how do you say this

00:28:14

by a seas biases?

00:28:15

Yep.

00:28:16

I don't know.

00:28:17

I'm going to go with biases, maybe.

00:28:18

I like that way better.

00:28:20

He talks a lot about, I forget how many there are.

00:28:24

There's like 12 of them that he brings up.

00:28:26

And they're just tendencies.

00:28:28

We're intuition to lean ourselves towards a specific way so that

00:28:31

we can make a decision quicker.

00:28:33

That's where our reflex brain comes in because it allows us to

00:28:36

make decisions very quickly.

00:28:38

And in a lot of cases, that's very good.

00:28:41

In a number of cases, that's very bad.

00:28:44

And the primary one that's typically bad is that your

00:28:48

reflex brain has no real sense of ethics and morality, which

00:28:54

means it's your reflection brain that needs to stop and think

00:28:58

things through in order to make those decisions.

00:29:00

And when we work inside of very fast paced scenarios, we tend to

00:29:07

make decisions through our reflex brain using these biases,

00:29:11

biases.

00:29:12

I'm going to screw it up the whole time, Mike.

00:29:15

Without that reflection brain taking account, taking that into

00:29:19

account, it means that we end up leaning ourselves one way or

00:29:22

the other without ever realizing it.

00:29:24

One of these is the anchoring bias that I noticed wrote down.

00:29:29

Did you have a specific direction you wanted to go with that?

00:29:32

I really just wanted to put that on there to talk about this.

00:29:36

I guess from a marketing perspective, because that's where

00:29:41

I noticed this happening a lot, where you'll have a price.

00:29:46

And usually what the salesperson will do is they will give you

00:29:50

the big price first.

00:29:52

Because that way, you're anchored to that big price.

00:29:55

And even if you're not going to take advantage of that offer, if

00:29:57

they move in the right direction, you will probably agree to a

00:30:00

higher price than you would have paid if you had just started at

00:30:04

zero.

00:30:05

And I thought this was really interesting because your brain

00:30:08

basically what it's doing is it's saying, if they started $1000

00:30:12

and we get them down to $900, we think that we're getting a deal.

00:30:15

We feel good about that.

00:30:17

But if you were to approach it the other way, maybe you start at

00:30:20

$500 and then you're never going to end up at $900.

00:30:23

It depends where you start.

00:30:25

And so I think it's really important.

00:30:27

Another book that I read, which isn't on the list, but it's

00:30:31

called Influence, I believe, by Chialdini.

00:30:36

Forget his first name.

00:30:38

It's kind of considered the marketing Bible.

00:30:40

And it talks about how marketers will leverage these techniques

00:30:44

and then also what you can do to combat them.

00:30:46

And he talks about this as well, where you just need to understand

00:30:51

what is going on.

00:30:52

And so that's why I put it on here because that was one of the

00:30:54

biases that he talked about.

00:30:56

And I think it's a really important one.

00:30:58

You have to understand the process.

00:31:00

And when you understand the process and the game that people

00:31:03

are trying to play, then you can more accurately discern whether

00:31:07

it's worth the value that they're asking you to pay.

00:31:12

And I'm not saying that all marketers are liars.

00:31:15

Seth Goden wrote a book I think by that title.

00:31:18

But you have to understand this is the way that the game is played.

00:31:23

And if you understand the rules of engagement, then you can

00:31:27

decide on your own, not be influenced, but you can decide

00:31:31

for your own that yes, this is a quality product.

00:31:34

And I'm willing to pay this amount of money for it, but don't

00:31:38

just let your brain default to, oh, hey, this is less than where

00:31:41

we started.

00:31:42

So yeah, this is a good deal because your brain is brilliant

00:31:45

as it is.

00:31:46

And as many amazing things as it does, there are some things

00:31:49

that is just like, why?

00:31:51

What are you doing?

00:31:52

Like that makes no sense.

00:31:54

The anchoring bias is one of those things, in my opinion, where

00:31:57

it just didn't really click for me.

00:31:59

But I totally see it.

00:32:00

And I just wanted to bring it up so that other people could

00:32:03

kind of be aware of the process.

00:32:05

I'm not going to lie.

00:32:06

I take advantage of this one.

00:32:07

Yeah.

00:32:08

I mean, it's the way the game is played.

00:32:10

Like this is what you do as a marketer, which is fine.

00:32:13

Like you're trying to communicate the value of what you are

00:32:16

selling.

00:32:17

And this is something that I struggle with honestly, because I

00:32:19

have trouble with self promotion.

00:32:20

I need to be better at anchoring bias in the direction of

00:32:23

my stuff is actually valuable.

00:32:25

But you have to understand, like both sides should just, should

00:32:29

just understand the rules that you're playing by.

00:32:31

And then when you can do that, you can arrive at an agreement

00:32:34

that's mutually beneficial.

00:32:36

Right.

00:32:37

I do this with clients who will ask me, can we do an iOS app

00:32:42

and a website?

00:32:44

And if they ask me for both of those, I always want to talk

00:32:48

about the iOS app first.

00:32:50

Because it's usually more expensive, like drastically more

00:32:54

expensive.

00:32:55

And if that's the case, when we get to the website, because most

00:32:59

of the time, you know, nine times out of ten, well, probably

00:33:02

99 times out of 100, they don't want to do the iOS app, just

00:33:05

because it doesn't actually provide anything that they

00:33:08

need.

00:33:09

And it's way more expensive.

00:33:10

Well, because we've been talking about a way more expensive

00:33:14

scenario, when we get to the website, overall, my rates for

00:33:19

building websites are pretty high.

00:33:21

Like typically they're not super cheap.

00:33:23

Like I know what my time there is worth.

00:33:25

And because those rates are high, and because it's typically

00:33:29

lower than building an iOS app, I usually get the sale on the

00:33:33

website because those numbers feel a lot lower by the time we

00:33:37

get to those conversations.

00:33:38

So it's just in how you play that whole meeting game.

00:33:41

Yeah, but in that particular instance, you're not trying to

00:33:44

suck every dollar out of your client that you can.

00:33:47

No.

00:33:48

Especially with web development, like you don't want to burn those

00:33:51

bridges, you want this to be a win-win.

00:33:53

Yeah.

00:33:54

And so in order to arrive at the win-win, you are implementing the

00:33:57

anchoring bias because you have a better understanding of what the

00:34:01

client actually needs than they do in that particular case.

00:34:05

The alternative to this is that, oh, yeah, I can do this for

00:34:09

X amount of dollars.

00:34:10

Okay, great.

00:34:11

What's going to happen as soon as you start that project?

00:34:13

No matter what you said, yeah, I'll do all of this work that you

00:34:16

want me to do at a price that the customer is willing to pay, you

00:34:19

are going to spend two to three times more effort and you're

00:34:23

going to hate that project by the end and your customer is going

00:34:26

to get upset because it's taking longer than you initially

00:34:29

thought.

00:34:30

Like this is the whole waterfall method to project management

00:34:32

that doesn't work.

00:34:33

So the anchoring bias can be used in a positive sense.

00:34:37

It's not always just get the customer to pay more, but understanding

00:34:42

how it works, I think, is important whether you are the

00:34:45

producer or the consumer, I guess, is the best way to put it

00:34:49

because that's the terminology they use in the book.

00:34:51

But whether you're selling the thing or buying the thing, just

00:34:54

understanding the rules of engagement.

00:34:56

Great.

00:34:57

I have all kinds of thoughts on this, but it's going to send us

00:34:59

down at 30 minute, Bunny Trail.

00:35:01

Well, we better move on then so this doesn't take 12 hours to

00:35:05

go through.

00:35:06

I know.

00:35:07

One of the stories that he tells, because so much of this comes

00:35:10

back to working our reflection brain too much, there's a lot of

00:35:14

that with if I'm trying to focus for multiple hours on end,

00:35:18

there's a good chance I'm going to burn out and not be able to

00:35:20

keep going.

00:35:21

So he's pretty heavy on taking breaks, disconnecting from ICT,

00:35:26

information and communication technology.

00:35:28

So our phones, tablets, computers, he's pretty big on taking

00:35:31

breaks from them and doing the whole disconnection process

00:35:34

because that's what allows our brains to get a break and rebuild

00:35:39

and recharge, reenergize the whole willpower and focus ability.

00:35:47

And one of the stories he tells to emphasize this is about

00:35:50

lumberjacks.

00:35:51

There's two lumberjacks, woodsman, who are trying to cut down a

00:35:55

similarly sized tree, one of which starts in chopping right

00:35:59

away and eventually gets to where he's taking a break.

00:36:04

The other spends time sharpening his axe, cuts, then stops and

00:36:08

sharpens his axe, cuts and does the back on forth.

00:36:11

And when they're done and they both take this break at the same

00:36:13

time, the former who just went in cutting and never stopped

00:36:18

realizes that the other guy is drastically further ahead of

00:36:21

him despite the fact that he hasn't been technically working

00:36:24

as long.

00:36:25

And it's a bit of a paradox in your mind that I didn't work as

00:36:30

long, but I got a lot more done and it's because you were

00:36:33

sharpening your tool in that case.

00:36:35

In our case, it would be giving your brain a break, which means

00:36:39

that you're able to focus and have more deep thinking on a

00:36:45

particular topic or a task.

00:36:47

So I just thought the story was interesting because I like wood

00:36:51

working and I like wood and trees.

00:36:53

I like them.

00:36:54

So that story resonated with me and it's one that really kind of

00:36:58

tripped my trigger on, "Huh, I need to take breaks after I go

00:37:03

through a little batch processing and not work myself to death as

00:37:08

much," which I'm very prone to do, Mike.

00:37:11

Yeah, this is completely counterintuitive for me as well,

00:37:16

where even though I understand the concept and I understand that

00:37:21

you need to put yourself in a position to be more productive

00:37:25

and you can be exponentially more productive if you give yourself

00:37:28

the time in the space to actually recharge.

00:37:30

It's hard for me not to just continue to work, even though I

00:37:35

know in my mind I know, my actions don't bear it out a lot of

00:37:40

times, that taking a break is actually the better thing for me.

00:37:43

Stop this project now, go to bed, get a full night's rest and

00:37:47

pick it up in the morning as opposed to keep cranking on it

00:37:50

because I'm not going to finish it anyway.

00:37:52

But that's a tendency that I have as well.

00:37:59

There's a quote that I heard and I think he put it in the book

00:38:02

also about Abraham Lincoln.

00:38:04

It's not specifically the lumberjack story, but it's attributed

00:38:08

to Abraham Lincoln where he says, "If I had six hours to chop down

00:38:11

a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe."

00:38:15

I don't think that ratio is too far off.

00:38:18

Right.

00:38:19

I'm trying to find it because I know it's in here, but I think

00:38:24

it's in the same place.

00:38:26

Yeah, page 132.

00:38:29

Man, you said it verbatim.

00:38:31

Well done.

00:38:32

Did I?

00:38:33

Nice.

00:38:34

I've heard different versions of it.

00:38:35

Eight hours, six hours sharpening the axe, whatever.

00:38:37

But principle still applies and I think there's a lot to be said

00:38:41

for the amount of time that you spend prepping.

00:38:44

And that's really what he's illustrating with that lumberjack

00:38:46

story is like it's not even close.

00:38:49

It's kind of the, going back to the productivity project book,

00:38:53

the 20 hour work versus the 90 hour work week and how they were

00:38:56

pretty similar.

00:38:57

They actually are pretty similar.

00:38:59

Like even though it doesn't make sense that you're spending less

00:39:02

than one fourth the amount of time doing the actual work because

00:39:05

you are so much better equipped to do the work, especially brain

00:39:09

work or knowledge work, you can be much more effective.

00:39:12

And I've experienced this myself where I need to write an article

00:39:15

and I can spend hours trying to write this article.

00:39:19

And if I'm not in a mental state to do so, I'm going to write

00:39:22

a few more words.

00:39:23

There'll be other times where everything is clicking and I'll

00:39:26

write a thousand words in 30 to 40 minutes.

00:39:29

And it's kind of, it's kind of amazing that the results can be

00:39:35

that dependent on how sharp the axe is.

00:39:38

Which in this case is your brain.

00:39:40

Yes.

00:39:41

And part of the reason that works is whenever you're taking those

00:39:46

breaks, like you take a nap, you go to bed at night, whatever you're

00:39:49

doing for your break or just stepping away from your work and

00:39:53

going for a walk, going to a whiteboard, just drawing pictures,

00:39:56

whatever that is.

00:39:58

Ultimately what you're doing is you're turning off the

00:40:01

reflex and the reflection brain and freeing up your mental ram for

00:40:05

that archive brain.

00:40:07

Which I see, I love this analogy.

00:40:08

I like having the three different brains because it gives me a way

00:40:10

to talk about this.

00:40:12

But the archiving brain is the one that needs to do the

00:40:16

rejuvenation process and free up your working memory so that you

00:40:21

can go back to working again.

00:40:24

So it's interesting to me if you think about it as if I take a

00:40:27

break.

00:40:28

If I separate from the work that I'm doing right now, it frees my

00:40:33

mind up to come back and do it more later instead of still

00:40:38

trying to retain everything I just finished.

00:40:41

So you end up giving yourself the ability to go back to work

00:40:44

because it's your archiving brain taking things out of that,

00:40:47

your mental working ram and putting it into longer term

00:40:52

storage so that you're not eating up the front side of your

00:40:57

memory.

00:40:58

Yeah, absolutely.

00:41:00

I like it.

00:41:02

I like being able to put words to it.

00:41:05

Finally, we know taking breaks is a good thing.

00:41:08

I don't think anybody would argue with this whenever we say,

00:41:11

"You should take breaks.

00:41:12

Let's get more work done."

00:41:13

I don't think anyone would argue with that.

00:41:15

But this at least gives you the rationale and the reasoning

00:41:18

behind it.

00:41:19

Yep, definitely.

00:41:21

So, I mean, if you were to do the Colby test, which I think

00:41:26

we've mentioned before, and it's something that we've done on

00:41:29

the Asian efficiency team, and then also my wife and I have done

00:41:32

it because it basically illustrates the natural tendencies that

00:41:36

you have towards how you work.

00:41:38

So one of the scales there is a high fact, is a fact-finder scale

00:41:42

and I happen to be a high-fact finder, which means I need to

00:41:45

know all the details before I start something.

00:41:49

And that's where this book is really beneficial because he's

00:41:53

gone through 600 different research studies and he's teased

00:41:58

out the main takeaways.

00:42:00

And those are all based off of research.

00:42:02

They are statistically valid.

00:42:04

And those are facts that I can use to support and reinforce

00:42:08

these behaviors like taking breaks like you were just talking

00:42:10

about.

00:42:11

I know that we're supposed to do this, but I don't really know

00:42:13

why, so I'm not going to do it.

00:42:15

Yeah.

00:42:16

Like, that's where I think that this book can really help.

00:42:19

And did you have anything else you want to talk about the

00:42:22

archiving brain, or should we move on to like the five brain

00:42:25

chains?

00:42:26

Yeah, I think we can move on because there's a lot of the

00:42:29

remainder that clarifies the smartphone stuff I want to talk

00:42:32

about.

00:42:33

Okay, cool.

00:42:34

So, there's five brain chains that he talks about in the book,

00:42:37

and then there are four brain gains or ways to beat those

00:42:41

brain chains.

00:42:42

And I think the important thing here is just to recognize

00:42:45

what these are.

00:42:46

I mean, obviously there's a lot of information behind each of

00:42:50

these.

00:42:51

So, if you want to know all about them, read the book.

00:42:54

But brain chain number one is always being connected.

00:42:59

So, the fact that you always have your smartphone right there,

00:43:04

he talks about the phantom vibrations in your pocket,

00:43:08

you know, stuff like that.

00:43:09

That is always being connected.

00:43:11

And I'll just run through these five and then we can come back

00:43:13

and we can kind of unpack whichever ones you want.

00:43:16

Brain chain number two is multitasking and task switching,

00:43:20

which we kind of talked a little bit about already and how that's

00:43:23

ineffective.

00:43:24

Brain chain number three is a continuous low level of stress

00:43:29

ruining the very best of your reflecting brain.

00:43:31

So, really positive versus negative stress, recognizing that stress

00:43:35

actually can get you to follow through and complete things,

00:43:38

but also not having that constant drip where it's just having a

00:43:43

negative effect on everything that you do.

00:43:45

Brain chain number four is a lack of breaks and sleep.

00:43:51

And this is something that everybody kind of knows that,

00:43:54

"Oh, we need to sleep more.

00:43:55

We need to take more breaks like you were just talking about,

00:43:57

but we don't really do it.

00:43:58

So, I'm hoping that this will actually give me the kick in the pants

00:44:01

I need to actually do that."

00:44:03

And then brain chain number five, he says,

00:44:06

"It's outside your control.

00:44:07

It's brain hostile open offices."

00:44:10

This one was really interesting because there's -- he's right.

00:44:15

Sometimes where you work, you don't get to control that.

00:44:18

But also, I've kind of experienced this not through my place -- not

00:44:24

through the place that I work, but because I work remotely,

00:44:27

I've kind of self-inflicted this on myself to a certain degree.

00:44:31

And also, and also figured out ways to remedy it.

00:44:35

In fact, I had an article that I wrote maybe two weeks ago

00:44:39

for Asian efficiency on how to work effectively from cafes and coffee shops.

00:44:45

And some of the tips and tricks that I've picked up, like, for example,

00:44:48

invest in a really good pair of noise-canceling headphones.

00:44:52

Because when I throw on, I've got Bose QC35s, which were very expensive,

00:44:56

but in my opinion, they were worth every penny.

00:44:59

Not only for the noise-canceling, which I know there's better -- in terms of audio quality,

00:45:03

better headphones, and I'm an audio file.

00:45:05

I've tried a lot of them.

00:45:06

But in terms of noise-canceling, Bose is the best that I've experienced

00:45:10

and for the specific type of work and where I work,

00:45:13

that is the most important feature for me.

00:45:16

So having the noise-canceling ability, and then also their Bluetooth.

00:45:19

So that means I don't have to physically plug in to my laptop when I want to work.

00:45:25

And I like being able to get up and move around and not worry about

00:45:30

pulling the headphones off my head because they're still connected to my laptop

00:45:33

or pulling my laptop off the table.

00:45:36

So little things like that, which can help you overcome your environment.

00:45:41

Really the idea here is that don't play the victim card.

00:45:47

Don't just assume that things are the way that they have to be.

00:45:52

So you recognize that these brain chains are in place, so not just to open

00:45:56

office thing, but all these different areas.

00:45:58

And then do what you can to overcome these because if you just go with the flow,

00:46:03

if you just default to the way that things are right now, then you are not going to

00:46:08

reach your potential in terms of the brain work that you are able to do.

00:46:12

But even if you're able to make a little bit of progress in one of these areas,

00:46:16

it's going to be much better.

00:46:17

So maybe you can't do everything that he implements or he talks about here.

00:46:22

Maybe you can't implement every single thing.

00:46:24

Maybe he talks a lot about email.

00:46:26

Maybe you can't get everyone in your corporate organization to escape that

00:46:33

email culture.

00:46:34

But there are still little things that you can do to reduce the amount of

00:46:37

email that you have to deal with.

00:46:38

Even if it's not get to zero internal email, like we basically have an Asian

00:46:44

agency, which is one of the reasons I love working there.

00:46:47

Does that make sense?

00:46:49

I think so.

00:46:50

There are so many of these, because ultimately what these brain chains are is

00:46:54

they're ruining your intellectual productivity.

00:46:56

That's a term that he uses quite heavily in the book is intellectual productivity.

00:47:00

So you're taking advantage of how your mind works so that you can do the

00:47:05

brain work that we're all trying to do.

00:47:08

We're knowledge work as we've referred to quite a bit in the past.

00:47:11

The one that really stands out to me is they always be connected.

00:47:14

Because the bulk of the book seems to revolve around disconnecting and the

00:47:18

negative effects of having your phone with you all the time.

00:47:21

Even having a smartphone sitting on the table or in the room when you're

00:47:25

having a conversation with someone else can lead to negative consequences.

00:47:29

It degrades the conversation itself.

00:47:32

So there's a lot of little pieces that come with the ICT, the technology that we

00:47:38

have.

00:47:39

There's a lot of how that impacts us on a very small scale.

00:47:44

Each interaction, but on a very big scale as a whole.

00:47:50

If you follow my train of thinking there.

00:47:53

Ultimately what I'm realizing and I've had conversations with a few people about

00:47:58

this since starting to read this and going through it about how the ADHD world

00:48:04

plays into this.

00:48:05

I'm sure you thought I was going to bring this up right away.

00:48:07

But it's fascinating to me how many of these explanations that he gives are

00:48:16

tied to what I now refer to as a race car brain and just being able to bounce

00:48:22

from thing to thing.

00:48:23

Because our phones allow us to do that quite heavily.

00:48:26

And I'm wondering if the constant, you know, the building of that, even when

00:48:31

kids are really little, if we're letting them play with phones and tablets and

00:48:36

play the games and such on it.

00:48:38

I wonder if we're training our kids to be ADD through that.

00:48:41

I have zero science on this.

00:48:43

It's purely firsthand experience.

00:48:45

So I'm sure there are people out there that will catch me on this and say,

00:48:49

"Oh, but that's okay."

00:48:51

To me, it just seems like there's so much of the tech that we love playing with it.

00:48:56

It helps us do an awful lot.

00:48:59

But are we just consuming things in such a way that it's training our brains to

00:49:05

work in a way that's counter what we actually want to do from an intellectual

00:49:10

standpoint?

00:49:11

Yeah, I completely agree.

00:49:13

In fact, you have a point on here.

00:49:15

This is probably where you were going with this.

00:49:17

The rats, the dopamine, and the ICT.

00:49:19

Yes.

00:49:20

Really, what that comes down to is the notifications.

00:49:22

And this is something that I have preached at Asian efficiency.

00:49:25

I actually picked it up from Asian efficiency.

00:49:27

So this is not original.

00:49:29

But this was something that really hit me is the research that has been done that

00:49:34

when you get a notification on your computer, like the ding, when an email comes in,

00:49:41

or the buzz in your pocket when somebody likes your Facebook post, whatever,

00:49:46

what that does, because it is a variable reward, it creates an addiction because

00:49:52

what it does, your brain releases dopamine, which is a pleasure chemical.

00:49:56

And you go and you have to find out what that thing is because you're not sure

00:50:01

it could be something really great or could not be.

00:50:04

And the fact that you don't know what it is makes you want to check it.

00:50:08

And so the notifications, like this is something that this would be a takeaway for

00:50:14

me had I not already trimmed the heck out of my notifications where I basically don't

00:50:19

get anything.

00:50:20

Yeah.

00:50:21

But that's really, really important because it just reinforces the habit that people

00:50:26

have of being interrupted, losing their focus from what they were doing.

00:50:30

And then it takes a long time to get back into the flow and do what you were doing

00:50:34

in the first place.

00:50:35

He talks in here, I think he talks about the first part of this where when you

00:50:39

stop doing something, it takes 15 minutes, I believe, to get back to what you were

00:50:44

doing.

00:50:45

And then if you were in the zone, so to speak, if you're in a state of flow, like my

00:50:49

boy, Mihali, Chik said Mihali would say, then it takes you actually 40 minutes to get

00:50:55

back into what you were doing.

00:50:57

So why would you allow your information communication technology, your ICT, to interrupt you with

00:51:04

this stuff that really isn't contributing any value?

00:51:08

And then bringing this back to what you were talking about with the smartphones and conversations.

00:51:12

I think this is another place where it's really important how you set this stuff up and how

00:51:17

it plays out.

00:51:18

I really have tried to make a concerted effort that when I am meeting somebody for coffee

00:51:23

and getting somebody for lunch, that I am not getting notifications.

00:51:27

They don't know that I'm getting notifications if I am because I don't want them to feel

00:51:32

like, oh, you should probably check that.

00:51:34

And so this is where the Apple Watch comes in for me and I really, really like it.

00:51:39

Now you have to set it up correctly.

00:51:41

You have to really trim the notifications that you get on the Apple Watch.

00:51:44

Otherwise you're constantly looking at your wrist.

00:51:46

It's just as bad as constantly looking at your phone.

00:51:48

But if you have your notifications set up correctly, what you can do is you can get

00:51:52

notifications when you need to get them.

00:51:55

And if I'm meeting with you for breakfast or whatever and I get a notification, I can

00:51:59

feel it on my wrist, but it doesn't interrupt the flow of the conversation that is happening.

00:52:04

It's much less rude in my opinion.

00:52:07

And I really like that.

00:52:09

I really like the fact that I can still have those things on.

00:52:12

I can still get notified of the things that are really important to me.

00:52:15

But if what I'm doing at that particular moment is not as important than it doesn't have to

00:52:22

be a distraction, it doesn't have to interrupt the flow of that conversation and the personal

00:52:28

connection that's happening.

00:52:29

This is why I don't have an Apple Watch.

00:52:32

Because to me, if it's important enough to get a notification, to disrupt whatever it

00:52:41

is I'm working on, I don't care if it's a conversation with somebody else.

00:52:45

Or if I'm writing an article, whatever it is, if it's important enough that I get a notification,

00:52:51

I need to stop everything right now and go pay attention to it.

00:52:56

That's how I come at that.

00:52:58

And if I have something on my wrist that can tap me, even if I'm with someone else, I don't

00:53:05

get how I should have that tap on the wrist, even if I shouldn't, like, if you follow me

00:53:13

here, because I shouldn't get a tap on the wrist unless I need to leave right away.

00:53:19

If I need to get out of there immediately, in which case my phone buzzing or dinging

00:53:23

is okay.

00:53:25

So to me, it's a duplicate system.

00:53:29

It enables potential for more addiction to me.

00:53:33

It does have potential for more addiction, but this is where I would push back.

00:53:37

I agree with that.

00:53:39

If everybody in your life is going to respect whatever boundaries you tell them 100% of

00:53:45

the time, which in my life is not the case ever.

00:53:50

So you could say, "Don't call me unless it's super important."

00:53:53

And then theoretically, when your phone rings, "Oh, this is super important, I have to go."

00:53:58

And then you find out, "Oh, Johnny Pooped on the living room floor.

00:54:03

It's really not that big a deal.

00:54:04

Can't do anything about it right now."

00:54:07

So what are you going to do at this moment?

00:54:10

Was that worth interrupting the conversation that was happening at that particular moment?

00:54:16

When I get a phone call and I have my watch on, my phone isn't ringing.

00:54:20

You don't know that my phone is ringing.

00:54:23

And I have the ability then to discreetly ignore that.

00:54:26

Or if I feel that it really is important, then I can get up and I can deal with that

00:54:30

thing.

00:54:31

But in the moment, I can decide that this conversation that is happening right now, this

00:54:36

is the most important thing.

00:54:38

And because my phone hasn't made any noise, my watch hasn't made any noise, it's just

00:54:42

tap me on the wrist to let me know that I'm getting a call, I can in the moment say,

00:54:47

"This is not as important as what is happening right now."

00:54:50

See, I make that decision before I ever start.

00:54:53

To me, there is no phone call that I need right now because the only time that I need

00:55:00

to be interrupted by a phone call is when I'm allowing myself to be interrupted by a phone

00:55:05

call.

00:55:06

So if I'm going to meet you for breakfast, my phone won't ring, period.

00:55:10

And I won't know if there's a phone call until I'm done.

00:55:13

That's just how I work.

00:55:14

I just don't need to know about it until afterwards.

00:55:19

So I'm not going to make the decision in the conversation.

00:55:22

I'm going to make the decision on whether or not I call them back later.

00:55:25

Ideally, I agree with you again, that's what the whole do not disturb thing is for.

00:55:28

In practice, I don't turn that on.

00:55:31

See, I do all the time.

00:55:34

That's one of the things that actually between airplane mode and do not disturb those two

00:55:37

are on and off on my phone multiple times a day because I just don't.

00:55:44

Like right now, my phone is on do not disturb.

00:55:46

Obviously, we're recording.

00:55:48

It would be on airplane mode if I wasn't sitting here with Alfred remote open using it to bounce

00:55:53

between applications.

00:55:54

So that's just how I'm working right now.

00:55:57

But I don't want it to ever interrupt certain things.

00:56:03

There are times in the day when I'm allowing myself to have someone give me a ring or to

00:56:09

text me.

00:56:10

But for the most part, I dictate when I'm going to respond to those.

00:56:15

Some people don't like that at first, but after I explain it to them, they're usually

00:56:18

perfectly fine with it.

00:56:20

And if they're not perfectly fine with it, they're usually not a client of mine very

00:56:23

long.

00:56:24

Yeah, I think that your approach is accomplishing the same thing and probably is the ideal way

00:56:31

to do it.

00:56:32

But in practice for me, I forget to turn my phone to do not disturb, put it on airplane

00:56:36

mode.

00:56:37

And so I just find that this is a little bit less intrusive.

00:56:44

And really what it comes down to is I want to put those constraints in place so that

00:56:48

I can focus on what Dr. Theo calls right tasking.

00:56:52

Okay, so excuse me while I shift this a little bit.

00:56:56

But this is really at the heart of what we're talking about.

00:56:58

We can go on and on and on about notifications.

00:57:00

Yeah, but ultimately what we're getting at is that you want to be doing the right thing

00:57:05

at the right moment and notifications are usually somebody else telling you that this

00:57:11

is what you should be doing at this particular moment.

00:57:14

And you have to be intentional about deciding that, no, this is the right thing for me at

00:57:19

this particular moment.

00:57:21

And then creating the environment, putting out the constraints in place for that work

00:57:26

to actually happen.

00:57:28

And I think that was actually one of the brain gains.

00:57:32

There were four brain gains that he talks about.

00:57:35

Number one is disconnect.

00:57:36

So these are just basically how you deal with those brain chains and always being connected.

00:57:40

Like the way to do that is to disconnect.

00:57:42

Like you were talking about putting your phone on do not disturb or airplane mode.

00:57:46

Which was fascinating to me that I've been doing some of this without realizing it.

00:57:50

Yeah, I know me too.

00:57:51

I thought that was really interesting that some of this stuff has stuck.

00:57:54

Some of it has not.

00:57:56

And why did the stuff that stick?

00:57:59

Stick?

00:58:00

Why does the stuff that I've been doing?

00:58:01

Why did that stick?

00:58:02

And then the stuff that I haven't been doing?

00:58:03

What's the deal?

00:58:04

Like why haven't I been able to make that work?

00:58:07

And like I said, hopefully the research that he's implemented in here helps some of that

00:58:12

other stuff stick for me.

00:58:14

But yeah, brain chain number one, disconnecting.

00:58:17

You got that one down.

00:58:18

I'm working on that.

00:58:19

Brain chain number two, I'm sorry, chain breaker number two.

00:58:23

Become a right tasker.

00:58:25

This one actually I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on.

00:58:28

I have a pretty good idea of this is the thing that I should be doing at any given moment.

00:58:33

One thing I do need to work on in this particular area is articulating that in a way that doesn't

00:58:38

come across as mean to the other people in my life.

00:58:42

Chain breaker number three, letting your brain idle.

00:58:44

So getting enough sleep and then chain breaker number four is managing your stress well.

00:58:51

But I think if you were to boil this all down to one specific thing, it could probably

00:58:56

be defined as right tasking.

00:58:58

That's interesting.

00:59:00

I thought you were getting ready to say to disconnect.

00:59:01

Well, disconnect.

00:59:03

The way I reconcile this in my brain is that disconnecting is doing the right thing at

00:59:07

the right time.

00:59:09

Disconnect is the process that you would use to do the right thing at the right time.

00:59:12

But ultimately the thing that you are doing, whether it is being distracted because you

00:59:17

are connected or focusing on the thing that you are doing, that's the lower level right

00:59:22

tasking I would argue.

00:59:24

See, that makes sense.

00:59:26

I can go with that.

00:59:28

Now, something I'm going to disagree with you on is you said that I'm pretty good at

00:59:32

disconnecting.

00:59:33

That's not true.

00:59:34

I do the quick check thing a lot.

00:59:38

This is one of the action items I've got a little bit later is knowing what I'm going

00:59:42

to do before I grab my phone because I had this tendency to do this quick check of email.

00:59:51

As much as I talk about batching that, I realized when I went through this that a lot

00:59:55

of times I just glance to make sure I don't have something from a client that's come through.

01:00:00

I don't want them calling me, but I'll check your email.

01:00:02

It's just kind of the way it works.

01:00:06

So I think there's a little bit of a misfire for me and how I have that set up.

01:00:11

So something I set up to try to help me with this.

01:00:16

I've got an article I'm in the process of writing which will come out this Friday.

01:00:20

So it will be out for a little bit before this episode goes live because we're a little

01:00:24

bit ahead in scheduling.

01:00:26

But something I set up, Mike, is so I use Gmail for everything I do with email.

01:00:33

The awesome thing that I like about Google is there's ways to write scripts that run

01:00:38

the background and you can actually do some automatic stuff on your email with those

01:00:43

scripts.

01:00:44

So I wrote one that simply checks my inbox every minute.

01:00:48

And if it finds an unread or if it finds a read message within my inbox, it will automatically

01:00:56

archive it.

01:00:58

And what that effectively does is it means that if I check an email without doing something

01:01:04

about it, it'll disappear out of my inbox automatically.

01:01:08

That could be dangerous.

01:01:10

It's very dangerous.

01:01:12

And I kid you not.

01:01:14

The day I put that in place, I spent the better part of an hour on my phone trying to figure

01:01:19

out how to get around this.

01:01:21

Like, no, I just needed, like I sat there and I looked at it.

01:01:26

There was one particular email.

01:01:27

I just wanted to check.

01:01:28

I was like, okay, what's this process?

01:01:30

And like, okay, if I tap that, I have to mark it as unread and then move it back to

01:01:35

my inbox.

01:01:36

That's not simple to do.

01:01:38

So I ended up spending this time trying to, is probably not an hour, but I'm exaggerating

01:01:42

there.

01:01:43

But it was a decent amount of time.

01:01:45

How do I get around this thing I put in place?

01:01:48

So it's very helpful in forcing me to not use my phone to check email, enforcing me to

01:01:53

batch it through my computer, which is way more efficient and way better anyway.

01:01:58

Definitely.

01:01:59

I inflicted some pain on myself.

01:02:01

And it's been very helpful to keep me from not checking my phone.

01:02:04

Yeah, email on the phone is not a great idea.

01:02:10

I actually just did a, you know, we worked on an email course for Asian efficiency.

01:02:15

And it's actually called Escape Your Email.

01:02:17

And there's a whole big section on there on the right way to use email on your phone,

01:02:20

which is triage because the swipe gestures allow you to real quickly take actions on

01:02:25

specific emails, put them in your task manager, send it to a reference file, whatever.

01:02:29

But even that I am leaning towards taking email completely off my phone.

01:02:38

For sure, it's disappearing from my home screen and I'm burying it in a folder somewhere.

01:02:43

But I am 95% convinced that removing it from my phone completely would be a good idea for

01:02:52

me.

01:02:53

I don't really ever want to reply to emails on my phone.

01:02:59

And this is what Dr. Theo talks a lot about is you have a small keyboard, a small screen.

01:03:04

You can't see very much.

01:03:05

You're going to make typos, etc.

01:03:08

And that makes a lot of sense.

01:03:10

But I just think that there would be a lot of benefit from completely eliminating that

01:03:18

source, that potential source of distraction on my mobile device.

01:03:23

It would force me to constrain email to the specific times that have set aside for it

01:03:29

on my calendar going back to the 12 week year with the buffer periods.

01:03:34

And I'm actually really nervous about this.

01:03:38

But I'm putting it out there right now.

01:03:41

I am going to do this.

01:03:42

So this is something that you can hold me accountable to.

01:03:45

All right.

01:03:46

I'll let you know if it has caused a crisis or not, I guess, when we hear you go right

01:03:51

next.

01:03:52

All right.

01:03:53

We'll see how it goes.

01:03:56

I'm trying to get out of some of my email too.

01:04:00

Yeah.

01:04:01

And when you think about the whole idea here between how we use our technology as a consumer

01:04:06

or a producer, I'm never going to use email on my phone to produce things.

01:04:14

And I know that you could technically classify some of the emails maybe that you reply to

01:04:21

as moving projects forward and producing things.

01:04:24

But the majority of it, if you're honest with yourself and actually, if you're honest with

01:04:29

yourself, self, I would say all of it really isn't accomplishing that goal.

01:04:34

So if I'm asking myself, why is this device in my life?

01:04:38

Is it to be a potential distraction?

01:04:41

Well, then I should leave email on there.

01:04:43

But if it's any other reason, what in the world would I leave that there for?

01:04:49

It's only going to cause problems.

01:04:52

That's kind of how I'm learning to deal with it.

01:04:55

Yep.

01:04:56

Oh, email.

01:04:57

Can we talk about daylight savings?

01:04:59

Because we just went through daylight savings and I hate daylight savings.

01:05:03

Yeah, actually, that was something that I put on the outline.

01:05:06

The daylight savings is done.

01:05:08

I hate the savings.

01:05:09

Yeah.

01:05:10

He talks about how daylight savings really messes with your internal clock.

01:05:16

And there's really no good reason for it.

01:05:20

And I completely agree.

01:05:21

And yeah, you're right.

01:05:22

The wound is fresh.

01:05:23

So I figured I'd throw it on there.

01:05:26

But really the--

01:05:27

And we have kids.

01:05:28

So it continues.

01:05:29

Like, the scab continues to be pulled off every day with kids.

01:05:33

Right.

01:05:34

If you want to know why daylight savings is a dumb idea, like, have kids because they

01:05:38

don't recognize that it's an hour later.

01:05:41

You don't get an extra hour of sleep.

01:05:42

They're up at the same time.

01:05:44

But really, like, that just illustrates Dr. Theo's point is that this is not something

01:05:50

that is natural for your body.

01:05:52

Why are we implementing this man-made construct?

01:05:55

And I'm sure that somebody out there somewhere is able to articulate actually a decent reason

01:06:00

for daylight savings.

01:06:02

But from--

01:06:03

No, they can't.

01:06:04

[LAUGHS]

01:06:05

Well, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

01:06:07

I'm not.

01:06:08

But yeah, what I would argue is based off of especially the content of this book, like

01:06:12

how your brain actually works, why would you do this to yourself?

01:06:16

Because sleep equals good.

01:06:17

And if you mess with my sleep, I have a problem.

01:06:20

Right, right.

01:06:21

There's another thing I put on there.

01:06:24

Sleep equals good.

01:06:25

Well, they're connected because so much of daylight savings, it takes place at 2 AM.

01:06:33

And that means that it's going to affect the way that you sleep, no matter how you

01:06:39

come about it.

01:06:40

If you sleep longer or sleep shorter, it's going to affect it in some way.

01:06:44

So he talks an awful lot about how we are sleep deprived as a nation, as a world mostly.

01:06:52

And because we are sleep deprived, there are so many attention dragging--

01:06:58

what do I want to say-- negative outcomes that derive from a lack of sleep.

01:07:05

And most people need more sleep than what they're saying.

01:07:07

And those of us who think that we fall into the category of not needing that much sleep

01:07:11

because we're OK, the number of us that do that greatly outweighs the number of people

01:07:16

who actually can live with that little sleep.

01:07:19

It's a word and not real good shape.

01:07:23

What I figured out with this mic is that-- and the part that really stood out to me is the

01:07:27

whole blue screen thing because we know that watching and looking at blue screens before

01:07:31

bedtime is a terrible idea.

01:07:32

I never fully understood why until he explained how there are receptors in your eye that correspond

01:07:40

to the production of melatonin, which is the hormone that helps you fall asleep.

01:07:46

And the frequencies of blue light going into your eye inhibits that production of melatonin.

01:07:54

And that particular process is identical to being outside and looking at the sun at noon.

01:08:01

It's equivalent to that level.

01:08:03

So it just inhibits that production of melatonin, which means it's harder to fall asleep.

01:08:08

And it messes with your whole night as well.

01:08:10

Yeah, there's probably most people who listen to this show are aware of this tool, but I'll

01:08:16

throw it out there because this really had an impact for me.

01:08:19

If you have to use your computer specifically past the time when the sun goes down, definitely

01:08:25

get flux, which I believe the website is justgetflux.com.

01:08:29

We can put the link in the show notes.

01:08:30

But what it does is it changes the tint of your screen so it's more orangish.

01:08:36

And then the later it gets the more orange it becomes because that warmer orange, it

01:08:41

kind of simulates like a candle light as opposed to a bright blue sunlight.

01:08:46

Yeah, so it doesn't stop your body from producing the melatonin that will actually help you

01:08:54

get a good night's sleep, which is what using your devices at night actually does.

01:08:58

And ideally, obviously you can disconnect completely, but there have been times where

01:09:02

I've had to work late and that has been a huge lifesaver.

01:09:05

I could definitely notice a difference once I started using that tool as compared to before

01:09:12

I started using that tool, the quality of my sleep got a lot better.

01:09:16

And the thing that I really got out of this sleep section is that sleep allows your archiving

01:09:21

brain to connect the dots effectively.

01:09:23

This was really interesting to me because one of the big revelations that I got about

01:09:27

creativity was from reading a book by Austin Cleon titled, "Steal Like An Artist."

01:09:33

And in the book, he talks about how when you create something new, all you're doing is

01:09:38

you're connecting dots in a ways that nobody has before, but ultimately you are reusing

01:09:43

and repurposing things that already exist, which I struggled with for a long time.

01:09:49

A lot of this stuff, like I'm a musician, I play guitar and I sing on the worship team

01:09:52

in our church.

01:09:53

I'd be writing a song and then I'd be happy with the song and then I would hear this

01:09:58

chord progression from a different song and I'm like, "Oh, that must be where I got that.

01:10:02

Darn it, I can't come up with anything new."

01:10:05

And so reading that book kind of freed me from the stress of thinking that I wasn't able

01:10:12

to produce anything new because that's just the result of the process.

01:10:15

What you put in is what comes out.

01:10:17

It's going to be a little bit different.

01:10:18

You're going to put your own spin on it.

01:10:19

That's okay.

01:10:20

And that really was very freeing.

01:10:23

But in this particular section as it regards to sleep, getting enough sleep allows your

01:10:29

brain to connect those dots.

01:10:31

So if you're not getting enough sleep, you cannot be as creative because your brain doesn't

01:10:36

have the ability to connect those dots effectively while you're sleeping or even if you just

01:10:41

look at the quantity of your sleep and take quality out of the equation, which you can't

01:10:45

do obviously.

01:10:46

But even if you just limited the amount of time that those dots can be connected, you're

01:10:50

still handicapping yourself when you don't get enough sleep.

01:10:55

And for anybody who is creative, they have probably experienced the phenomenon where

01:11:01

you're thinking about a problem and you're like, "I just forget it.

01:11:03

I'm going to go to bed."

01:11:05

And then you wake up and you're like, "Oh, there's the solution.

01:11:09

This is why.

01:11:10

This is what's happening while you're asleep."

01:11:12

So that was really a light bulb moment for me.

01:11:15

I love how if I'm struggling with how to do something in code and I don't have the solution.

01:11:23

I don't know how to solve that problem.

01:11:26

And then I go mow the lawn.

01:11:29

Usually I come out of mowing the lawn with the answer.

01:11:32

Just the idea of stepping away from the problem, we talk about this all the time.

01:11:37

Like, "Well, you can't come up with a solution to it.

01:11:38

Well, step away.

01:11:39

Go do something else."

01:11:40

And you'll figure it out.

01:11:41

Like, that's so true.

01:11:43

Absolutely so true.

01:11:44

And this is where the archiving brain comes in.

01:11:46

And this is why I love it because now I have words on how to explain it.

01:11:50

Right.

01:11:51

Yeah, definitely.

01:11:54

I think we could probably, for the sake of time, skip the other email related stuff

01:11:59

because we've talked about that enough.

01:12:02

But I do want to hit on the thing that you put in here about the Eisenhower matrix.

01:12:07

Yes.

01:12:08

So, and this kind of comes back to what you were talking about where you're going to go

01:12:14

mow the lawn and the solution comes.

01:12:16

It's because you're allowing your brain to engage and disengage and activate those different

01:12:21

parts of your brain in an effective way, which you could boil down again to right-tasking.

01:12:27

Right-tasking is really at the heart of this Eisenhower matrix.

01:12:32

For people who aren't familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, it basically splits things up into

01:12:37

four different quadrants.

01:12:40

There's the things that are important and urgent.

01:12:42

There's the things you've got to do.

01:12:44

And then there are things that are important but not urgent.

01:12:46

These are the things that typically get pushed to the wayside.

01:12:49

Things like going to the gym or getting up early to write, spending quality time with

01:12:53

your family, the things that you know you want to do.

01:12:56

Everybody would say they want to do, but they don't make the time for them.

01:12:58

And the reason they don't make the time for them is that the third quadrant is things

01:13:02

that are not important but are urgent.

01:13:04

This is where email comes in.

01:13:06

I've heard somebody say that email is a to-do list that other people can write on.

01:13:10

And if you think about how you reply to email typically, you say yes to stuff.

01:13:14

You don't even consider whether you should be doing those things, especially if it's

01:13:18

coming from a co-worker or a boss.

01:13:20

You just figure out a way to get that thing done, but that means you sacrifice something

01:13:24

else.

01:13:25

And then there are the things that are not urgent or not important.

01:13:28

These are the time wasters.

01:13:30

And these are the things that we should kind of get rid of.

01:13:34

What was interesting to me about this particular section was the percentages.

01:13:39

So he actually assigned percentages to the things that kind of, I think this is the ideal

01:13:44

way that you would divvy up your tasks where you spend 20% of your time on things that are

01:13:50

important and urgent, 70% on things that are important but are not urgent, 10% on things

01:13:56

that are not important but are urgent, and then you eliminate altogether the things that

01:14:00

are not important and not urgent.

01:14:01

And the reason I say that's ideal is that I don't think that accurately reflects how

01:14:05

most people spend their time.

01:14:07

It's true.

01:14:08

It's true.

01:14:09

I only wrote down Eisenhower Matrix because I know you love it.

01:14:12

It's true.

01:14:13

I do love it.

01:14:14

It's been very, I don't want to say inspirational because there has been action associated with

01:14:20

this, but it really just articulated to me in a way that I completely understood, yeah,

01:14:25

the things that are important, they're not going to happen unless I make them happen.

01:14:29

And if I just go through my day because I'm naturally a people pleaser and I'll have

01:14:34

a tendency to say yes to everything, it's been hard for me to learn the ability to say

01:14:37

no, that I will get stuck living my life out of the urgent column.

01:14:43

And that means that you don't have time for the things that are important.

01:14:47

And one of the things that he said to do, which I thought was really interesting, this

01:14:51

is an exercise that actually I implemented in the escape your email course as well, but

01:14:55

he says to score each task on your to-do list, basically put it in one of those quadrants.

01:15:01

And so the way I did it when the escape your email course is that we had people put the

01:15:06

emails that they received in those different quadrants just so they could see, is this

01:15:10

email actually important and urgent or is it urgent, but not important?

01:15:14

Just so they could see that most of the email that you get actually falls into that quadrant.

01:15:18

But this is really interesting in that like if you score each of these tasks on your list,

01:15:22

you can identify, yeah, these are all things I need to do.

01:15:25

But then if you score them and you know that this task is important and urgent, this task

01:15:31

is important, but not urgent, then you can use those ratios to build out your to-do list

01:15:37

for the day.

01:15:38

I thought that was a really cool approach.

01:15:39

I think it makes a lot of sense.

01:15:42

And that's something I'm trying to figure out with this new role I'm taking at our church.

01:15:46

The primary of that is doing support for the group of people who work on our staff.

01:15:51

Okay, everything is going to be urgent and important according to them.

01:15:58

Right.

01:15:59

I know how this works, but just because someone else thinks that it's highly important that

01:16:06

it happens right now, and I've had this conversation with a few of the staff members already,

01:16:11

it's like the chances of something going down and being catastrophic is actually quite slim.

01:16:20

And in most cases, the issues that we run across really don't need solved right now.

01:16:27

Like yes, they're urgent, but they're not truly like it's not like someone's going to

01:16:31

die because the projector doesn't work.

01:16:33

Like it just doesn't hit that level.

01:16:35

Like everybody's still going to be living.

01:16:37

It's okay.

01:16:38

You may not be able to use your PowerPoint, but that's okay.

01:16:41

It's not the end of the world.

01:16:42

You'll be all right.

01:16:43

So I'm just trying to help people understand that.

01:16:45

So there's going to be a lot of coaching going on in that, I'm sure.

01:16:48

Yeah, definitely.

01:16:50

And I think that's an important point to make is that you're probably in an organization

01:16:55

or maybe even a job where you can't define your entire day.

01:17:00

You will have to do some of this where you're responding to things that other people are

01:17:03

declaring as urgent, but you don't have to sign for the package 100% of the time.

01:17:09

You can make small steps in the right direction and create the space to take action on the

01:17:15

things that are really important.

01:17:16

That's where the last point there that I put, the Pareto squared comes in.

01:17:20

The Pareto principle is the 80/20 rule.

01:17:23

So the idea is that 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results.

01:17:29

So Pareto squared, that's like the 80/20 of the 80/20.

01:17:32

And he extrapolates this out.

01:17:34

He has the numbers to support it.

01:17:36

But if you apply the 80/20 rule to the 80/20 percentage, what that means is that I think

01:17:42

it's 4% of what you do produces 64% of your results.

01:17:49

And so really what this articulated to me was really dig down and identify what are the

01:17:54

things that move the chains, what are the things that really make an impact, what are

01:17:59

the things that really move you towards your goal?

01:18:01

Because you can make time for those things.

01:18:05

4% of your actions, of your tasks, creating 64% of your results.

01:18:12

And the way that that happens is through the habits or the rituals that you establish.

01:18:15

Your morning routine, your evening routine.

01:18:18

For me, it was getting up early.

01:18:20

We talked about this a couple episodes ago to write.

01:18:24

And that produced the book, which led to my position with Asian efficiency.

01:18:29

But it was not a whole lot of time.

01:18:31

It was an hour a day.

01:18:33

But just taking small, consistent steps in the right direction, implementing the right

01:18:38

4% can significantly move the ball.

01:18:44

Every time I read one of these books, I try to come up with some way to summarize the

01:18:50

whole of the book.

01:18:53

And in this particular case, I think there's a quote that comes that he wrote in the book

01:18:58

that applies quite well.

01:19:01

And since we're Apple nerds and we're in technology, and this was all about technology,

01:19:05

I thought that's made a lot of sense.

01:19:06

So anyway, the quote is, "If Steve Jobs had been glued to his iPhone, he never would have

01:19:11

invented the iPhone."

01:19:13

Exactly.

01:19:14

Okay, that sums up a lot here.

01:19:18

Because so much of our technology, because we become addicted to it and because we can't

01:19:23

disconnect from it, it prevents our ability to think clearly and to reflect on a higher

01:19:29

level and more critical thinking tasks.

01:19:34

It prevents us from being able to do that.

01:19:36

Which is very, it's required heavily if you're going to do something like invent an entire

01:19:43

new world of devices like Steve Jobs did with the iPhone.

01:19:48

So I think that quote makes an awful lot of sense with how this book is laid out and what

01:19:54

the intent of the book is.

01:19:56

Is that fair, Mike?

01:19:57

Yeah, in fact, I wrote down in my notes the book in a nutshell, "Control your ICT enough

01:20:03

the other way around."

01:20:05

Which is really summed up in the quote that you shared about Steve Jobs because if he hadn't

01:20:09

been able to control his ICT, he would be a consumer and not a producer.

01:20:15

So action items.

01:20:16

I talked about one for myself of knowing what I'm going to do with my phone before I pick

01:20:22

it up.

01:20:24

So that's a tough habit to break because so many times I think a lot of us just like,

01:20:29

"Oh, I got a few seconds here.

01:20:31

Just grab my phone.

01:20:32

I open it before I even really know what I'm going to do with it."

01:20:34

So I have that habit.

01:20:36

So I need to try to break that and just know what I'm going to do with my phone before

01:20:39

I pick it up.

01:20:40

I have a habit of checking my phone first thing when I get up in the morning.

01:20:43

He talks about the negative of this quite a bit.

01:20:45

I also have the opposite of doing it before bed, which I've actually been able to kick

01:20:49

since reading this because I realized how bad that was.

01:20:52

Which honestly I can say helps my sleep.

01:20:54

I like sleep.

01:20:55

Sleep equals good.

01:20:56

So that's a good thing.

01:20:58

So I'm trying to figure out how to avoid my phone in the early morning because I have

01:21:01

this tendency to want to know, "Did anything come crashing down last night because I have

01:21:05

so many websites that I maintain?"

01:21:08

I just have a tendency to want to keep an eye on things.

01:21:11

It's not always good.

01:21:13

Something I picked up and he doesn't really spell this out in the book in much detail,

01:21:19

but talking to my kids before I pick up a device.

01:21:24

Part of the reason I wanted to do this, and I was talking to my wife about it because

01:21:28

so many times we'll grab our phones and we'll check something quick like, "What's the weather?"

01:21:32

But we just pull it out and check it without ever saying what we're going to do.

01:21:37

The problem that I have with that is that I think, and this is Joe's summary here, I

01:21:44

think that might be teaching my kids that those phones and those devices are more important

01:21:49

than them, which is kind of a scary thought to have.

01:21:54

I don't want them to think that if I don't like what's going on right now or I can't

01:21:59

do something like, "This is my pacifier."

01:22:02

I don't want them to think that.

01:22:05

Something I started trying to do, and our oldest picked it up pretty quick, is just

01:22:08

saying, "I need to check the weather for this afternoon on my phone.

01:22:13

I'm going to do that quick and then I'm going to be done."

01:22:15

It's funny how they've just did a lot of accountability in that as well because I have

01:22:18

to, one, know what I'm going to do before I pick it up, and two, stop immediately, otherwise

01:22:23

I'm a heretic.

01:22:25

I don't want to be lying to my kids, so it forces my hand in a couple of scenarios.

01:22:33

What I'm trying to do is talk to my kids about what I'm doing on a device before I pick it

01:22:37

up.

01:22:38

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

01:22:42

That's scary though.

01:22:43

It is.

01:22:44

Because what are you going to say?

01:22:45

I'm picking up my phone because I am bored and I'm going to waste the next 20 minutes

01:22:50

on Twitter.

01:22:51

Yeah, I want to know what's going on in Twitter.

01:22:53

I want to see more of Marco's dog pictures.

01:22:57

Like, "No, it's not important."

01:23:00

Right.

01:23:02

My action items, along the same lines but not the same implementation, I want to teach

01:23:10

my kids the right way to use technology.

01:23:12

That was one of the big takeaways I got, is use technology to be a producer, not a consumer,

01:23:17

which I feel like I've already taken some significant steps in that direction.

01:23:21

I do not have a Facebook account, but I almost never check it.

01:23:27

And it's just kind of interesting to me.

01:23:30

People will say, "Well, I sent you a message on Facebook and I'm like, 'Up, I don't check

01:23:33

Facebook and it feels good when I can say that.'"

01:23:36

Right.

01:23:37

So, I want to teach my kids the right way to use the technology.

01:23:40

My wife actually had a little bit of a conversation about this recently where we were talking about

01:23:45

the negative effects of technology and how addicted people can get.

01:23:49

She mentioned that, "Well, I don't think they should have a cell phone until whatever.

01:23:54

I forget what age she said."

01:23:57

And I push back a little bit initially.

01:23:58

I'm like, "Well, I don't think that we should necessarily put a rule in where we don't want

01:24:01

them to have it because if we just take it away completely, all that's going to do is

01:24:06

increase the desire and the want for it.

01:24:07

And then once they actually get access to it, once they get their kids phones or their friends'

01:24:11

phones, for example, they're not going to know how to use it correctly.

01:24:15

So I want to show them the right way to use it.

01:24:19

Another action item is to implement the out-of-office replies that he talks about.

01:24:23

So he mentions in the very long email section about how he uses an out-of-office to curb

01:24:31

people's expectations.

01:24:33

And actually, Chris Bailey does the same thing.

01:24:35

It's awesome.

01:24:36

He has an auto-responder that gets back and says, "Hey, I only checked my email at 3pm.

01:24:41

Once a day at 3pm, so if you need an immediate response, I'm sorry, but you're not going

01:24:45

to get it basically."

01:24:47

And I don't think I could do this with all my email accounts, but definitely some of

01:24:51

them, that makes a lot of sense.

01:24:53

And I think they could go a long way, just in curbing people's expectations as to when

01:24:58

I actually get back to them via email because ultimately I want to be in control of my

01:25:02

own email experience.

01:25:03

I don't want to feel like I'm stuck.

01:25:05

Another one I talked about was no email on my phone.

01:25:07

I'm going to do that even though it scares me to death.

01:25:12

And then the last one, we talked a little bit about sleep, but I have had actually, in my

01:25:16

possession, the sleep revolution for a long time, but never read it.

01:25:20

I actually bought it with you when we were at the max.conference at that bookshop.

01:25:24

Oh, that's right.

01:25:25

I remember this now.

01:25:26

I was like, "Why do I know the name of this book?

01:25:28

Like this sounds familiar, but I remember that now."

01:25:31

Yeah, because you were with me when I bought it.

01:25:33

But yeah, I want to go through that one and just understand more concretely everything

01:25:38

that goes on in terms of sleep.

01:25:41

And also I think that there is a lot of little things.

01:25:43

We talked about the blue screen stuff and there's some takeaways here, but my anticipation

01:25:48

is that with the sleep revolution, there's going to be a lot more practical tips on how

01:25:51

to get a better night's sleep, which I am excited to dive into.

01:25:56

And the sleep revolution is a pretty approachable from what I've heard way to do this.

01:26:02

I actually saw the other day, there is a course on how to sleep better.

01:26:08

That is $500.

01:26:11

And I cannot fathom somebody taking an online course on how to sleep better, but they have

01:26:19

like the price anchoring.

01:26:21

It's really interesting.

01:26:22

They have the graphic that says, "You could either spend $5,400 on a graduate level course

01:26:27

on how to sleep better or buy this course for $500."

01:26:32

Interesting.

01:26:33

But anyways, sleep revolution seems like a better option to make.

01:26:37

Makes sense.

01:26:38

It's a little cheaper.

01:26:39

Yeah, definitely.

01:26:42

So author style, I alluded to this earlier.

01:26:46

I don't know how many times I should have been keeping track, Mike.

01:26:51

I don't know how many times I got caught trying to read a sentence and noticing typos,

01:26:59

sentences that didn't make sense.

01:27:03

And I'm not a grammar Nazi.

01:27:04

I'm not one that usually calls this stuff out.

01:27:08

There were a lot of places where I just had a hard time reading it, not because the content

01:27:12

was difficult, but simply the writing style.

01:27:15

And frankly, the lack of editing was quite painful in some places.

01:27:21

Did you have that experience?

01:27:23

Yeah.

01:27:24

I mean, really the version of this book is a Kindle version.

01:27:29

I believe that the paperback version is a Create Space, which is Amazon's self-publishing

01:27:34

platform.

01:27:35

And it was like $30.

01:27:37

So I went with the Kindle book.

01:27:39

And in the Kindle book, they have links to things, but almost every time the link was

01:27:44

highlighting the wrong text.

01:27:45

Yeah.

01:27:46

You know, like he's got an email address and it's grabbing the email address, but also

01:27:50

like the three words before the email address and underlining it all is a link.

01:27:54

So that was really distracting.

01:27:55

And there was also some definite grammar issues.

01:27:59

It just seemed like he didn't work with an editor with the, which if he self published

01:28:03

it, you know, maybe that's the case.

01:28:04

And I'm sure if you went through my book, you'd see the same thing because that's a

01:28:07

process that I took.

01:28:09

But from a reader's perspective, it definitely was distracting.

01:28:13

I also mentioned that like he repeated a bunch of statistics a bunch of times.

01:28:18

This book has a ton of great information.

01:28:20

He's distilling 600 research papers into this book.

01:28:24

So I don't want to be too harsh on this, but it definitely could have been a lot shorter.

01:28:29

Like I mentioned, there's the different levels of the brain gains that he mentions.

01:28:36

And I felt like a lot of that was just saying the same things.

01:28:40

Not even different ways a lot of times, but restating the same statistics.

01:28:45

And it kind of felt to me like maybe he's got a blog where all of this stuff originated.

01:28:50

And then he combined it all into a book and didn't after he did that read it from beginning

01:28:56

to end to make sure that it flowed well.

01:28:58

Again, very minor, like it's not as big a deal as I'm probably making it out to be.

01:29:03

But that's kind of the approach that I got.

01:29:04

And then by the end, you know, it's 522 pages long.

01:29:07

It's a really long book.

01:29:09

But by the end, it makes you want to just finish the thing as opposed to like that's

01:29:13

when it should be climaxing.

01:29:15

That is when like he's good.

01:29:16

He should be in my opinion as a writer, making his strongest points.

01:29:19

Like you want to leave that positive note, that positive taste in the reader's mouth.

01:29:25

That's not what I got.

01:29:26

I got to the end.

01:29:27

I got to the page where it says, "You've reached the end.

01:29:29

You want to write this book."

01:29:30

And I was like, "Oh, yes."

01:29:33

So I said at the beginning, "This is the best and the worst book I've ever read."

01:29:37

That's why.

01:29:38

Tons of great information, tons of great takeaways.

01:29:40

But the author's style definitely, I don't know, it kind of graded on me towards...

01:29:49

Again, I don't want to sound mean.

01:29:51

I don't want to sound negative.

01:29:53

But it's a very factual based book.

01:29:57

So if you're looking for a lot of stylistic writing, that's not really here.

01:30:01

And then by the end, it's like, "Okay, I've heard this already."

01:30:05

So...

01:30:06

Yeah.

01:30:07

I got curious because I noticed enough just pure spelling mistakes that I was like, "Who

01:30:12

published this?"

01:30:14

This should not get through an editor.

01:30:16

He did have an editor, but it just felt like I was reading a second draft or something

01:30:20

like that.

01:30:21

It just didn't have the cleanliness of it.

01:30:24

But he did self-publish it.

01:30:25

I looked it up because there's no one claimed it on the external of the book.

01:30:31

Because I got the print.

01:30:32

Like I've got the physical book for it because that's how I read things.

01:30:36

But there was so many cases where, for example, the third section, he's got it all broken out

01:30:42

into three sections.

01:30:43

The third section was designed to help you figure out what do you do about all of the

01:30:49

chains that we put on ourselves and how we interact with all these issues.

01:30:54

I was super excited to get to that point because that's what we do is what do you do

01:30:58

with all this stuff?

01:31:01

I got to that point and then I realized, "Oh, he's just going to reiterate most of what

01:31:06

he said already and put words to the conclusions that the reader can grab automatically as

01:31:12

you go through the first part of it."

01:31:14

I literally think this book could be about a third as long as it really is.

01:31:19

There's so much of this that's just copy-paste almost and reiterate the same thing and say

01:31:25

things that don't need to be said.

01:31:28

There's a lot of it.

01:31:29

I was rather upset about the way that this was put together.

01:31:34

I think there's a ton of great information here.

01:31:36

I think you're right.

01:31:37

This has got a lot of value.

01:31:39

I'm glad to have read it.

01:31:41

The reading process was rather painful though.

01:31:43

Yeah, don't ever want to read it again.

01:31:45

Yeah, I don't know either.

01:31:47

Here to read it?

01:31:49

Yeah, I struggled with this because like I said, there's a lot of great information

01:31:52

in here and I got some very actionable takeaways which I think are going to be really good.

01:32:02

That being said, I invested a lot of time.

01:32:06

I read 522 pages which is a big ask and I don't know when I got done.

01:32:13

Like I said, I felt glad to have been done as opposed to glad to have read the book.

01:32:21

Great.

01:32:23

I would recommend it to people especially if they are interested in understanding the

01:32:28

science behind how the brain works.

01:32:31

But I don't know, I think I'm going to have to write it 3.5 which feels kind of negative

01:32:36

to me because we read a lot of great books and I usually write things 4 or 5 stars.

01:32:40

But yeah, it's a good book.

01:32:44

It's just a little bit hard to read and pretty repetitive.

01:32:47

So in my opinion, that's worth a 1.5 star docking I guess.

01:32:54

All right.

01:32:55

No, I'm going to put it in a 3.

01:32:58

So I'll make you look a little better.

01:32:59

How about that?

01:33:00

Yeah.

01:33:01

Part of my rationale is again, a lot of great information.

01:33:04

I think there are better books that could cover a lot of the similar information.

01:33:09

I think I've got at least one maybe two on our list for the future that might cover some

01:33:13

of the similar information.

01:33:16

But I think it might come at it in a better way.

01:33:18

Just my skimming of one in particular that I already have in my possession.

01:33:22

So I think there are other books out there that could maybe cover a lot of this just

01:33:27

in a better way.

01:33:30

So I don't think this is one I'm going to recommend to most folks.

01:33:33

I love having read it again.

01:33:35

I just am not sure that I don't think I could with a good conscience say, "This is a great

01:33:41

book.

01:33:42

I think you should pick it up."

01:33:43

I really don't think I can say that.

01:33:44

Yeah, I agree.

01:33:45

If someone comes to me and says, "Hey, you got a book on brain science that can really

01:33:50

help me understand the reasons why I am or am not productive, I'm probably not reaching

01:33:58

for this one to give it to them."

01:34:00

Yeah, I'm sure there are some others and I'm hoping to read them soon.

01:34:06

So the next book on the list is one that I picked out.

01:34:09

It is the Checklist Manifesto by a tool Goon Day.

01:34:14

I'm not sure if that's how you say it.

01:34:17

But I actually just started this one last night.

01:34:20

I read the introduction.

01:34:21

I think this one's going to be really interesting.

01:34:23

Nice.

01:34:24

I'm looking forward to this one having taken this part-time job because I'm guessing I'm

01:34:29

going to put a lot of checklists in place.

01:34:31

Nice.

01:34:33

The one after that is, "CUBE Q," the question behind the question.

01:34:41

There's a series of about four or five books that I'm probably going to sprinkle in here.

01:34:46

If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey, this is one of the books that he requires his new

01:34:52

hires to read before they start.

01:34:54

He has a series of books that he makes new people read before they join the organization.

01:35:01

This is one of them.

01:35:02

I've wanted to read those books for quite some time.

01:35:05

I figured I'd make you read them with me.

01:35:06

If you're going to make me read the sleep revolution, I'll make you read Dave Ramsey's

01:35:09

books.

01:35:10

That's cool.

01:35:11

That's cool.

01:35:13

If you have any books that you'd like to make us read, you can recommend them on the

01:35:17

website.

01:35:18

Just go to bookworm.fm and there will be a button on the sidebar on the right to recommend

01:35:23

a book.

01:35:25

We've got a whole bunch of them that people have recommended and we're starting to get

01:35:29

to some of them.

01:35:30

Brainchains, what we did today, was actually a recommendation.

01:35:33

If you have a book that you think we should read, go there and recommend it for us.

01:35:38

There's also a list of books that we've read and are upcoming.

01:35:42

If you go to bookworm.fm/list, you can see all of the books that we've read so far, the

01:35:47

ones that are planned and then also some of the ones that are recommended by listeners

01:35:51

just like you.

01:35:52

Sometimes, I think it's interesting to see what people think about a certain book.

01:35:59

We don't really have a good self-hosted mechanism for folks to...

01:36:05

This is what I thought about your episode.

01:36:07

We don't have a self-hosted place to do that.

01:36:10

We've been using instead as just the iTunes review process.

01:36:13

There are a number of folks who have posted out there to let us know what they thought

01:36:16

of either a specific episode or the podcast itself.

01:36:20

If you have some feedback on what we've been talking about here, you don't like our recommendations

01:36:25

or you think we were too harsh on brainchains, go over there and let us know.

01:36:29

That's a good place to share that information because we do keep up with those reviews on

01:36:32

iTunes.

01:36:33

Thanks, everyone, for joining us.

01:36:36

If you read the book, thanks for joining in our podcast Book Club.

01:36:40

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

01:36:42

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