Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

My son made a Obsidian quick note shortcut, and I have never been more proud.

00:00:07

So he made an Obsidian quick note shortcut.

00:00:12

So can I just conjecture what this thing does?

00:00:15

Sure.

00:00:16

This would be fun.

00:00:18

I'm assuming this means you can put an icon on your home screen that you can tap.

00:00:24

It will pull up a text thingy, you type in text stuffs, and then it will put it into a new note in Obsidian.

00:00:32

So what this does?

00:00:33

Yes.

00:00:34

So it's a shortcut with 10 steps, and it basically asks you the first time you run it for the name of your vault.

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And then when you run it, after you have it set up, you put in the text via text input in the shortcut,

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that has a value, does the same thing for the title, and then automatically creates a new note with the title and the text inside of Obsidian.

00:00:57

It's essentially like a way to capture stuff via shortcut skipping drafts.

00:01:03

So I know you're probably never going to fully utilize this thing.

00:01:07

No.

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But I think it's pretty cool.

00:01:10

That is pretty cool.

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I could see how that's like a super helpful thing for many, many people.

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But I think we talked about this last time.

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I've got this habit of opening drafts before I lock my phone, which means that that extra step of tapping on drafts or tapping on the icon is like it's unnecessary.

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So it just immediately lets me put things in right away, no matter where I'm at.

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So I'll take that.

00:01:35

Yeah.

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And drafts is pretty much muscle memory for me at this point too.

00:01:39

So I don't know how much I would even use this, but I think it's pretty cool.

00:01:44

As a shortcut, it's very similar to the shortcut I had to capture things and format them and drop them into day one back in the day.

00:01:51

And yeah, I wasn't making shortcuts when I was 14.

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So.

00:01:56

Right, exactly.

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So good job.

00:02:00

Wait, Mike's son.

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Good to go, Toby.

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And it's pretty stellar.

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That's, I could see how like if you're, if you're just beginning in the capture process, like that is a pretty select tool.

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Like tool to have like that, that's handy.

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I'm sure it fits his workflow really well.

00:02:18

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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He lives in obsidian.

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It's pretty impressive.

00:02:23

So if you want, here's, there's another thing that you could do with that, Toby.

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You could set that shortcut up such that either you can launch it by itself, like launch it like you have right now.

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Or you can have it accept text as an input.

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And now you could from somewhere, say on a web browser, you could highlight something and then action it off to that short, same shortcut and it would go the same place.

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You can do all of those things.

00:02:57

Nice.

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You just gave him some, some homework.

00:03:00

Some are school.

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Some are shortcut school.

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There you go.

00:03:06

All right.

00:03:08

Super fun.

00:03:09

Good job, sir.

00:03:10

Enough of this, uh, proud parents stuff.

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Let's get into some of these action items, which are all yours, by the way.

00:03:15

Well, thanks.

00:03:16

This, this will be fun.

00:03:17

Super fun.

00:03:18

Yeah.

00:03:19

So for context, the last episode was building a second brain by T.I.

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Go forte.

00:03:26

And we talked in that episode about how I didn't want to apply anything specific from that book and you kind of thought I would do.

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I thought I was crazy for not having any action items because it's chock full of them if you want them.

00:03:40

And I agree with that as we talked through it, recognize that I'm implementing some of the different pieces in different ways.

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But really it was just kind of reference stuff for me.

00:03:49

You, however, jotted down five specific things.

00:03:52

Well, four, I guess, because there's one of these that carried over from the book before.

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Three, two carried over.

00:03:58

Ah, two carried over.

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That's right.

00:04:00

So,

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I cancel one of them.

00:04:02

Oh, okay.

00:04:03

Which one are you going to cancel?

00:04:04

Ah, the daily plan type thingy.

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I wanted that to work so bad.

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And it kind of does.

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Like, what I ended up doing is I made like just a quick punch list of questions that I wanted to ask on a daily basis.

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Printed that off for three or four days to see how it would work before I committed to like doing the whole design part of it.

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Because the design part of it's the fun part that I was like itching to get to.

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But I told myself I'm not going to do that unless this thing works.

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And then I filled it out three days in a row.

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And part of what I was trying to do is like get a, like a top three tasks of the day sort of thing.

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And I realized like this.

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It's another one of those Joe's need for flexibility completely destroys the desire for structure.

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Like it's just one of those scenarios.

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So, fine.

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I give.

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I won't even do this.

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So, that one I got to throw out the window as much as I really wanted to do.

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Like I even the quick title I put on the top of it was even daily plant type thingy.

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Like that was totally going to be the name of it.

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But it is no more.

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Did not last very long.

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That's okay.

00:05:13

What about your eulogy speaking of not lasting.

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Yeah, I actually started writing this.

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It's not done.

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I have like a, I've got a link to it here, but I've got like an outline and then how many points are there.

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So, I have two more points and then I would say it's done.

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So it's not completely done, but it's at least almost there.

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So that's a step forward for Joe.

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Cool.

00:05:37

Which is saying something.

00:05:38

What else is on this list?

00:05:40

Your 12 favorite problems.

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12 favorite problems.

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I don't have 12, but I have 10.

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It's pretty good.

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And then I have like eight.

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Potentials.

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So this, I actually ran into the issue of, I came up with, I think I originally started with close to 30.

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It's like, hey, that would be really cool.

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And then that would be really cool.

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And I've been like trying to whittle it down.

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And I was trying to whittle it down.

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And then I realized, well, no, I should do it the other way around.

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Like which ones are most important.

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And I have moved over some from that original list.

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And I don't have all of them moved over because I just been kind of waiting to see which ones keep coming up in my mind.

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And which ones are more important to me.

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So that's kind of what I've been waiting for as those last few to last two or three to hit the list.

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So almost there.

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Both of those are almost there.

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So yes.

00:06:37

Cool.

00:06:38

Did you implement Para?

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I did.

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Yeah.

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Actually, and it's in tired tea.

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Not quite.

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I didn't do my email.

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That was one that I think he had in there.

00:06:51

So Para, projects, areas, resources, archives.

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I set those folders up in finder directories, folders, whatever you want to call them.

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Also did it in obsidian.

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And actually, I think that was it because those are the only real places that I do things.

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Most of it's through folders obsidian is kind of a conch conjunction with.

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So I did do that.

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And so far that has proven super helpful.

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And I think that has to do with my brain working kind of action based and filtering down from action first.

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That's like the projects then stepping down into areas that just has clicked so well for me.

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So I don't know how that's going to last long term.

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But so far, this has made it easier for me to find things.

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And I've found things and connections that I normally wouldn't have.

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So I will say that that's been a big success.

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I will say there's one addition that I have added to that.

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And that is the concept of an inbox.

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Like why this doesn't exist for him is strange to me.

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So I in my notes system, I have zero dash inbox.

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Like that makes sense to me.

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And I've done the same thing in my folder structure for a very long time.

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New files download into something I've termed not downloads, but inbox.

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And whenever I save things from anywhere, that's where they all default to.

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And then I try to go through those every couple days or so and clear them all out.

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And I have done that for a long time.

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Hazel helps me move things there automatically.

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So all sorts of funness that goes with that.

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So I have been doing that with much success so far.

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Again, the long term is yet to be determined.

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So we're getting there.

00:08:49

Nice.

00:08:50

So having implemented Para, are you surprised that this is working for you?

00:08:58

I guess what I'm after is your feelings currently on the whole concept of building a second brain.

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I saw a tweet earlier.

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Somebody, it was retweeted by Tiago.

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And it said something like being familiar with the cohort and the concept of building a second brain.

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I wanted to hate this book so much, but I loved it.

00:09:25

Yeah.

00:09:26

Is that you?

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Let's see.

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How do I, hmm, I don't know what I've compared it in that way, but I know that having tried

00:09:38

to understand Para in the past from Tiago's blog posts and what he makes available for free.

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Having been through all of that and not getting it.

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I was super timid, I guess, would be the word whenever it came to reading, building a second brain.

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So I don't know that I would say I wanted to hate it, but I expected to be kind of let down, I guess, would be the way to put it.

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But I also know that there's a lot of it that I don't think fully made sense until reading the book.

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So the way that he worded things and his willingness to kind of open the doors more in the book, as opposed to what he did and has done on the blog posts, like that has made it something that's a little more approachable for me.

00:10:33

So I know that in my mind, it means it's easier for me to grasp onto the concepts and I appreciate that.

00:10:40

I'm a fan of the book, but I'm still reserved on the whole building a second brain cohort, especially due to the pricing and stuff.

00:10:50

I don't know. There's so much of that that I'm like, "Ahhh."

00:10:55

Sure.

00:10:56

Hesitating.

00:10:57

That's fair.

00:10:58

I don't know if that's what you were after or not.

00:10:59

Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of trying to gauge your feelings for the whole concept of building a second brain.

00:11:05

I guess I wasn't asking specifically about the cohort, but that makes sense that you specifically, because I know you're like, "The book is fine.

00:11:14

I don't need to buy your thousands of dollars course."

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I do think that is a good approach for certain people and there's probably certain personality types that are like, "I don't want to read the book.

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You just help me set it up."

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And that would be maybe a better solution for that type of person.

00:11:28

Yeah, I think that might be my renegade.

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I'm going to go build this my way, like mentality.

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I don't know that you're the same, maybe you are.

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I don't want to put words in your mouth.

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I get accused of doing that.

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I feel like I have a tendency to want to build things my own way and control it a little bit more and stepping into something where I'm handed the keys to something that's been built and saying, "Here, go do this.

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Just use it."

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I don't do well with that.

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I'm more someone who wants to build my own way of getting there.

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I'll grab some of your concepts, thus PARA, and I've already altered it apparently.

00:12:11

That's kind of the way that I will operate.

00:12:16

Yes.

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I think don't hand me the keys.

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I shouldn't say anybody, but most people that I've seen that are using obsidian fall into that category.

00:12:26

Yeah.

00:12:27

It seems like it.

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I'm going to build my own thing, which I guess I hadn't really planned on promoting this, but since we're talking about this, I have a secret project.

00:12:38

Or we can talk about this.

00:12:41

Sure, we can talk about it.

00:12:43

I have written an email sequence with, as of today, over 50 daily tips, basically.

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You sign up at dailyobsidiantips.com and you get an email every day.

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It's just designed to be a short email.

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I created these animated GIFs so you can kind of see things in action in the email, but it's really just to give you an idea recognizing that you're not going to implement the exact thing that I did.

00:13:09

You're going to take the concept and you're going to play with it and you're going to figure out your own way to make it work for you.

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If that does describe you, this email sequence is probably perfect for you.

00:13:20

I intend to keep adding emails to this sequence over time, but I wanted to get to 50.

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50 was the magic number where if I could have this, then I would feel comfortable promoting it.

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It's not going to be a daily email for forever.

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Eventually, you'll get to the end of the sequence and it'll stop.

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It's 50 of them in there.

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I have an outline for 50 more.

00:13:42

Nice.

00:13:44

I got some advice from some of the guys in my mastermind to take the whole thing into, if you want to jump the line, basically, you can do that.

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I made it a course.

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My courses.faithbasebreaktv.com.

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You can buy the course outright for 10 bucks and you get everything all at once.

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It's in teachable.

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It's broken out into the different sections so you can go to the plugins section and implement this piece.

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Then there's a PKM concepts section and core features section and stuff like that.

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I think it's pretty cool.

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I hope other people think too.

00:14:22

I think it's cool too.

00:14:24

You put me on the list and I've been getting these things daily.

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I have to say, there's only been, I think there's one or, well, I think there's been one that I didn't know how to do already.

00:14:39

I think I texted you this.

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There's a lot of this that I already know, but I still look forward to these emails because one, there's always the little video that you've got with them at least.

00:14:53

I think it's most of them.

00:14:54

Is it all of them?

00:14:55

I don't know.

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Wherever it makes sense to communicate the concept I have a video.

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I know there's at least one more that you weren't aware of because we were talking about it prior to recording.

00:15:03

That's the fact that you can have multiple cursors in a city and by holding down the option key.

00:15:09

So that sort of thing I have an animated GIF because that looks really cool when you see it in action as opposed to just describing it.

00:15:16

There's been a lot of these that I've known, but seeing the short video and then your description of what you're doing with it kind of helps you see it in a different light.

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It means that there's a difference context that I can view that feature within.

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Thus, I can kind of see a different way for myself to use that feature.

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So for what it's worth, I think it's pretty cool.

00:15:45

I think you should sign up for this.

00:15:47

Part of me loves that I can't get them all at once because it forces me to process the one.

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But I also know that after about day four or day five of that, there's a lot of people who are like, "Okay, just let me go through the rest of them."

00:16:04

Let me get there.

00:16:06

I'm glad that there's a way to do both.

00:16:08

I think it works well.

00:16:09

Good job.

00:16:10

So if you want to just get them day by day, you can do that for free.

00:16:14

If you want to jump the line, you can do that for 10 bucks is the price that I set it at.

00:16:19

As I build it out, that's probably going to go up.

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I feel like that's pretty low for the stuff that I'm giving away in there, but we'll see.

00:16:29

Maybe no one wants to pay for it at all.

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Because yeah, I don't know.

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But anyways, it's a fun little project that was on vacation last week and I wrote a significant number of them then.

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I'm pretty proud of it.

00:16:41

So, Billie ObsidianTips.com redirects you to the page to sign up for it if you're interested.

00:16:47

Nice work.

00:16:48

Nice work.

00:16:49

Thank you.

00:16:50

All right.

00:16:51

Should we get into today's book?

00:16:53

I think we shall.

00:16:55

All right.

00:16:56

So today's book is "Love and Work" by Marcus Buckingham.

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And this is essentially about doing what you love, but not like you think.

00:17:11

I think it's the best way to describe it.

00:17:15

We've read "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport.

00:17:20

And I feel like it's kind of complimentary to that book.

00:17:25

Although the title kind of makes it seem like, "Oh, just follow your passion, man, and do whatever you enjoy doing."

00:17:31

And I don't think that's a very fair accurate or very accurate representation of the book itself.

00:17:36

I'm kind of curious, though, what your thoughts were as we picked this one up.

00:17:41

Like initial reactions on it?

00:17:43

Yep.

00:17:44

When I told you we're reading "Love and Work," what were you feeling at that point?

00:17:47

And having read it, has that changed at all?

00:17:49

My initial thought was Mike picked a book on how to do what you love.

00:17:57

Why?

00:17:58

Like this.

00:18:00

So backwards.

00:18:01

Why would you do this, Mike?

00:18:03

That's what went through my head.

00:18:05

Now, we've read enough books at this point that I know better than to say that out loud as it comes to me.

00:18:12

But those are almost verbatim, the words that went through my brain when you mentioned this book at the recording.

00:18:20

When I was first aware of this.

00:18:22

Now, that said, when I got the book, actually, when I was going to order it, I don't know, is it "Love and Work"

00:18:29

or does he intended to be "Love + Work"?

00:18:32

Because he uses the plus symbol there.

00:18:34

Yeah, I don't know.

00:18:35

I think when I was searching for it, it showed up as "Love and Work" so I sometimes spelled out with "and" so that's what I'm running with.

00:18:42

Sure.

00:18:43

Got it.

00:18:44

Got it.

00:18:45

I don't know because the more time I've spent processing the content of this book, it makes me wonder if maybe it isn't "Love + Work"

00:18:56

but people don't know how to write that in all the title and subject stuff, so they have an alias of "Love and Work".

00:19:02

I don't know.

00:19:03

Maybe that's not true.

00:19:04

I might be just proposing something that's absurd here, but it seems to me like it would be "Love + Work".

00:19:12

I'm only saying that because of the content here and trying to marry the two, not compare the two.

00:19:20

If that's not trying to rhyme that, but here we are.

00:19:23

Sure.

00:19:24

Anyway, that's just my initial thought.

00:19:26

So yes, my first thought was "Mike's Crazy", which I think is justified given the title and such.

00:19:33

All right.

00:19:35

Well, I picked it sort of because I knew that the title itself would be provocative, let's say.

00:19:43

I don't agree with the concept of just do what you want, follow your passion either.

00:19:49

And having seen Marcus Buckingham speak at the Live to Lead conference, I didn't expect that he would fall firmly into that camp either.

00:20:04

And yeah, we can get into the content here, but the structure of the book, the first chapter is really the first section.

00:20:13

That's introductions.

00:20:14

And then it follows the standard three-part format. So part one is "Signs of Love", part two is the "Seven Devils", and part three is "Make Love and Work Come Alive".

00:20:27

So one of the interesting things about this book, he says it right at the beginning in the introduction, is the first line is exactly the same as the last line.

00:20:38

He says, "If you're like him, you're going to jump straight to the end."

00:20:43

So he did that intentionally.

00:20:45

And it's basically, "Hi, I'm Marcus, and it's good to meet you."

00:20:49

Something like that. I didn't write down the specific words that he used, but that really sets the tone for what is a very personal book.

00:20:58

He shares a lot of stories about his life not in a, "This is what I've done right and look at everything I've accomplished.

00:21:08

I can do the same sort of thing," which is kind of what you expect when you go into a lot of these productivity type books.

00:21:13

But more so almost Donald Miller's self-deprecating, "I've made all these mistakes."

00:21:21

However, I feel like Marcus Buckingham does a better job of talking to the emotions and not trying to make fun of himself sort of a thing.

00:21:31

It's a fairly emotional book about work, which is kind of surprising maybe to some people.

00:21:39

Yeah, I wasn't expecting the term he uses is vulnerability.

00:21:45

Yeah.

00:21:46

He talks about being genuine, authentic, and take a deep breath, vulnerability.

00:21:53

And he does pull back the curtain a lot on his personal life, which in some respects, I felt like he was maybe sharing a bit much at times.

00:22:08

And it almost felt like he was trying to lift himself and his fiance up on a pedestal, but at the same time, I don't know that I would want him to take that away in any capacity because of what it's able to relay and the depth of understanding that it relays.

00:22:31

Yeah. So I think he did well with it. I think you're spot on. I think he nailed the limit on how far to take that and the way of relaying it.

00:22:42

Right.

00:22:43

I guess real briefly in this introductions section, the big idea to call out here is that you are your most important project.

00:22:57

That's one of the big things that I wrote down in this section. And I agree with that completely.

00:23:04

So essentially all the vulnerability that he's talking about, all of the failings that he's sharing, and he describes them this way.

00:23:12

You know, we're not just bashing him because we didn't like the book, although I don't know where you stand on this yet.

00:23:17

So maybe you are. But he just right up front. One of the stories that he shares is that his marriage fell apart because his wife got arrested by the FBI.

00:23:32

He doesn't share her name, even though it's in the national news. It was part of the scandal with the lady from Full House, I think, right?

00:23:43

We're trying to get their kids into these prestigious colleges. So, yeah, I forget the specifics of it.

00:23:50

I never went back and reread the stories when he told me that, but I remembered that. I remembered seeing that in the news.

00:23:57

And so he shares a lot of like what he was going through, what his kids were going through when that was happening.

00:24:03

He does not throw his ex-wife under the bus in my opinion.

00:24:09

He even at one point says the reason that it fell apart ultimately is on me. That is my failing, that my marriage fell apart.

00:24:17

And then he goes on to talk about his fiance that he met at work. Right. Right.

00:24:24

Just to clarify one thing, she was arrested after they divorced. Yes. Yes.

00:24:31

It's two to three years. So, I'm not sure if I misunderstood what you said, but just wanted to make that clear.

00:24:37

No, he didn't divorce her because she got arrested. Right. It was falling apart before that.

00:24:43

And so he kind of, when I read this, I kind of felt like he was harboring some guilt.

00:24:49

Like maybe if he had been able to make the marriage work, she wouldn't have been in that situation.

00:24:53

Like he still kind of felt responsible for that in a way.

00:24:57

All that to say, I mean, you can judge for yourself whether you're going to listen to him.

00:25:03

Most people who write these types of books try to puff themselves up artificially and create this authority.

00:25:12

Like, "Hey, this is why you should listen to me." And so I found this a little bit refreshing just because I don't really care who you are.

00:25:22

I'll judge the ideas for the ideas, but I don't know. I guess in this genre specifically, there are a lot of people who just try to build up an impressive resume and then use that as justification for, "Hey, you should read my thing."

00:25:37

And so this felt very different. He's written a whole bunch of books, by the way. And this is number nine or something like that.

00:25:46

But the first one of his that I have actually read.

00:25:50

I want to say that he's really good at giving you details and facts and authority without telling you why.

00:26:01

Did you catch this? I feel like he did this a lot. He was very good about like, "Here's the thing."

00:26:07

And then he'll explain the thing, but he'll drop a detail there that then provides explanation for it.

00:26:14

And the way that he does this in the very beginning, everybody's heard of Strengthsfinder, right? Like, this is an assessment. Everybody knows about it, right?

00:26:23

You probably don't know the name Marcus Buckingham that is connected to it, right? Like, that's not necessarily a connection that you would make.

00:26:32

But in the introduction, on page two, he's not telling us why you should listen to him, but he's telling you a story about how he was at a speaking event.

00:26:43

And one of the people called out, it's like, "I took your Strengthsfinder test." Like, that's not him saying, "Look at me. I've got all the science and data behind building a Strengthsfinder test."

00:26:55

But he just gave you all of that information without having to explain it. So, like, there's stuff along.

00:27:03

Like, he uses those subtleties quite a bit. And as much as like, you could, like, he's got all the creds, he's got all the stuff he could tell you.

00:27:12

It's like, "This is why you should listen to me because you probably should, honestly." But he doesn't have to say that, but he has ways of relaying that information without being explicit about it.

00:27:22

Yeah, and he gets into the story of how he got connected with the Strengthsfinder company. He's originally from Europe somewhere and moved to Nebraska, so he could be a part of the-

00:27:33

Yeah, move the Lincoln.

00:27:34

Yeah, the Strengthsfinder company, which that in and of itself is a pretty entertaining story. But just, yeah, that's important context because kind of at the beginning here in the introduction section, he's talking about,

00:27:45

he asked the question, "Do you get to play to your strengths every day?" And I think everybody would like to be able to do that. You're not going to be able to do that 100% of the time. He gets into that later on.

00:27:55

But also, he's moved on from that company and he started his own company now, which has its own assessment called the Standout Assessment.

00:28:05

This is my single action item from the book, by the way, is to take this assessment. I'm pretty sure I found it online for free, but I did not have a chance to go through it. I don't know, maybe you have to pay for it.

00:28:18

Okay.

00:28:19

I love this kind of stuff, so I'm definitely going to go through it, especially since he worked on the Strengthsfinder. I rail on assessments, quote-unquote, assessments all the time.

00:28:31

Here's a real one. Somebody who knows what they're doing. So I'll go through this one and see what sort of results I get. In theory, that is true. I have not taken this assessment yet.

00:28:41

Maybe he just had a phenomenal team of researchers who put together the Strengthsfinder and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and learned nothing while he was there. I kind of don't think that's the case, but maybe...

00:28:53

No, I doubt it. It's possible.

00:28:55

It is possible.

00:28:56

Anything else before we get into the meat of this book?

00:29:00

I don't think so. Let's jump in.

00:29:02

All right. So part one is Signs of Love. And there are... Let me count these. Eight chapters, I think, in this section. We're not going to go through each of these chapters, but I do want to list them all out.

00:29:19

Chapter two, the first chapter in this section. Where did the love go? Chapter three, you're weird. Chapter four, Love is Attention. Chapter five, Instinct. Chapter six, Flow.

00:29:32

Chapter seven, it just clicks. And chapter eight, Love lives in the details. And I guess since the introduction is chapter one, there are seven chapters in this section.

00:29:41

Oh, yes. The first thing I wanted to talk about, though, is chapter three with the whole concept of the weird. And it is pronounced weird. I looked it up online. They have the pronunciations of the words, right? So I went in and found the definitions and then looked at the pronunciations, but it's spelled W-Y-R-D.

00:30:06

That makes sense. The chapter is you're weird. But that word, weird, that's an ancient Norse term for the idea that each person is born with a distinct spirit.

00:30:17

He says, "Three things you need to know about your weird. It's so interwoven into your sense of self. It can be tricky to figure out what precisely yours looks like.

00:30:25

It can grow up, but it can't change its shape. And it's your best guide and resource. If there is something about yourself that desperately wants to change.

00:30:33

So essentially, this is the unique thing that makes you you. And he's encouraging us to figure out what ours is. And this makes a ton of sense.

00:30:45

And this is very much in line, I feel, with like, so good they can't ignore you. Because that is becoming so good in developing your skills to the point where whatever market you happen to be in, you're in demand.

00:30:59

Because you are the best at whatever you do. And I do feel that this whole idea of love and work will get into the specifics of how these interplay.

00:31:10

But what he's basically saying in this chapter is that you need to have love in order to do good work. At the end of the chapter, he even says, "The true purpose of work is to help you find what you love. Work is for love.

00:31:23

But also, the true purpose of love is to help you learn where and how you can contribute. Love is for work. So we've got a self perpetuating positive cycle here if what he's telling us at this point is true."

00:31:37

Yeah, I think some of, before we go too far here, the concept of weird is super interesting to me. It's one where, yes, all of us are so unique that there's no way that we're, there's any two people that are the same.

00:31:56

I forget what the number is, but it has to do with trillions of different synapse brain neurons, things going on in your head that there's no way that there's two people with the exact same makeup.

00:32:08

It's like, yes, that's super important. But I think as compared to the concept of love in that first chapter where he's talking about signs of love, this is ultimately where he's kind of somewhat defining what he means by that.

00:32:21

Again, this is his subtlety things, just letting it ooze out without actually spelling it out. But if I can summarize this accurately, I think what he's getting at is by love, quote unquote, he's really talking about how the things that you used to do in the past, the things that you absolutely enjoyed and thoroughly enjoyed,

00:32:42

those were things that you loved, and those were the things that you spend time with and devote time to. So like, it's ultimately the things that you are naturally drawn to, I guess.

00:32:54

But I don't know how far to take it, like with what he's saying, but I think that it is important, like, okay, when he's referring to love, he's talking about things that you love to do, like you enjoy doing and the things that you're drawn to, that you're instinctually drawn to.

00:33:09

We'll talk about the instinct thing later, maybe. But that's, I think that's ultimately what he's getting at.

00:33:16

Sure. On page 47, he kind of summarizes, I think, what you were just saying, in that your life lived fully is the search for the strongest possible connection between what you feel, your loves, and what you give to others, which is your work.

00:33:31

So there you kind of have your definition of those two terms, but he also says that whenever you see someone doing something with excellence, there is love in it.

00:33:42

And I feel like that is an accurate statement. I'm reminded of a quote by, I think it was Mike Rowe said, don't follow your passion, but always bring it with you, the dirty jobs guy.

00:33:57

I mean, basically, yeah, he had a whole TV show around it, but it was always fascinating to me how he's cleaning out septic tanks, or I saw one where he's diving down into the center of this bridge, like, way, way underwater, tiny, tiny spaces so he can paint the bottom of the poles at the bottom of Lake Michigan or something.

00:34:18

Like, there's no way I'm going down in there, but he's just like, yeah, let's do it, right? He's excited about it. And I remember watching that show and be like, how can this guy be excited about all this crazy stuff that he's got to do?

00:34:30

But then also he's the one who taught, he is a big advocate of what's the term? You go to school to learn a trade, sort of a thing.

00:34:39

And basically, you can be a carpenter, you could be a welder, you could be a plumber, and you can absolutely choose to love what you are doing every single day.

00:34:53

Like, it's all in your perspective. And I remember watching that show and being like, if he can do it, why can't I do it? And there's lots of other external factors that go into that, whether you have the choice, whether you have other options, things like that.

00:35:08

But I feel like that's a pretty healthy attitude to take towards your life. So what he's saying at this point, I think, in terms of love, is not, oh, I'd rather be doing something else because that's the thing that's just naturally fun for me, but whatever I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be having a blast doing it, and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability, and I'm going to do it in order to make a difference.

00:35:30

Yes, 100%. Because I think it has to do with, I think what he's getting at here and what Marcus is getting, is finding out what those things are that you can love doing.

00:35:42

That's ultimately what it is, but it doesn't have to be, it can be all in mindset.

00:35:49

Right, so I don't think he would say, you only have to do these things, that's the classical, find the things you love to do and quit everything else. That's kind of the way that people tend to take that, that's not what he's getting at.

00:36:01

Yeah, I feel like he would fight against that. In fact, in chapter six, where he talks about flow, which is kind of the next point I want to talk about the red threads, he says that love matters, but you don't have to love all that you do.

00:36:15

And he has a specific percentage. If you spend 20% of your time doing activities you love at work, you'll be much less likely to burn out. So one fifth of the time, basically, finding these things.

00:36:28

And then the red threads, those are basically clues to find the things that you really love doing. So essentially, some of this advice is best before you would find yourself choosing a career path.

00:36:39

Right, but I also think, don't get stuck in that, you can change your course or your direction or even just find the next step towards moving to that percentage in your current job, even if you absolutely hate everything that you're doing.

00:36:54

You can apply principles of this, but these red threads, these are essentially threads that you instinctively want to pull.

00:37:00

And he's got a whole big list in this questionnaire. This isn't the assessment that I'm talking about the next point in the outline.

00:37:07

But have you lost track of time? When was the last time you instinctively volunteered for something? When was the last time someone had to tear you away from what you were doing?

00:37:16

You felt completely control of what you were doing. You surprised yourself by how well you did. You were the only person to notice something.

00:37:24

You found yourself actively looking forward to work. You came up with new ways to do things. These are great questions.

00:37:31

And it's not designed to be like, "Well, if you answer this, then you move to the next step." And then eventually you land on the thing.

00:37:37

These are just clues that you can use to find this stuff for yourself. The whole chapter starts with a discussion of flow by Mihaly, of course, on page 70.

00:37:47

But he mentions that the whole concept of flow, that's basically you're being asked to do something at the end, edge of your limits, and you lose track of time and you just really are engaged in the work.

00:38:00

That's the sweet spot that productivity enthusiasts try to get to all the time.

00:38:04

Well, I feel like Marcus Buckingham does a great job of defining this before and after without using that chart from that book that we read so long ago.

00:38:15

Before you do something, love feels like it's instinctively wanting to do the thing. And while you're doing something, love feels like time is speeding up.

00:38:24

How did you feel about that? When I read those two statements, I felt like, "Oh, I understand flow better than I ever did before."

00:38:32

Yeah, I know that it definitely clicked, but I know that when I'm one of the times, and this is so strange, one of the times that I absolutely get engrossed in things and I completely lose track of even going to the bathroom and eating, I will completely lose track of all awareness of what's going on, is honestly when I'm doing a code project for myself.

00:39:01

This is why I tend to write scripts and stuff so much because this is something I love to do. And that is 100% flow when I get into that.

00:39:12

And it's something that I know, like I can get into a flow state almost on command when it comes to doing code for myself. The problem is that doesn't pay the bills.

00:39:25

So it's not a thing I can do all the time. But when he explained it this way, then it just totally made sense to me. So it was something like, "Yes, 100%. That's what this is. Totally get it."

00:39:42

Yeah, and there's a whole 'nother discussion, whole 'nother angle we could take with that I've shared before, the Derek Sivers article that was kind of revolutionary for me about get a job that pays the bills and then you're free to do what you want.

00:39:58

And I think that's something that you can do your art for love, essentially. I think that would be one approach to this. But that doesn't mean it's the only approach and there are other ways that you could find enjoyment and flow like you were talking about in your other, throughout your day-to-day.

00:40:16

And I personally believe that there's no distinction between work and life. There's just your life and you got to figure out how to manage it all. And so when I'm looking at that 20%, yeah, if you got to find it in your side projects, that's fine. Go ahead and do it.

00:40:33

And really, you could make a full-time salary doing the thing that you love, right? But if you can't do that, that doesn't mean that you can't experience this or find the enjoyment or have love at work like he's talking about, I feel.

00:40:50

So don't pigeonhole it, I guess, just because you see somebody else doing something and you wish that you could do it that way. Find your own combination of the ingredients for your own success soup.

00:41:02

Right. You going to take this questioner?

00:41:05

The red thread questioner? Yeah.

00:41:09

I haven't gone through it yet. I don't think I'm going to formally. I like these things, these questions. But I kind of also know what are the things that really get me going and I've spent the last year thinking about the appropriate mix of this in my life.

00:41:31

Sure. Yeah. I could see, if I had read this book in July of last year, maybe this would be something that I was like, "You know, I need to go through and take stock of my life and ask myself these questions. Maybe I'll build them into my personal retreat process." I don't know.

00:41:48

There you go. There you go. I think I might. I don't know that it'll, like you're saying, I don't know that it'll be formal, but it's something I need to process a little bit. I say that knowing that I tend to get a lot of enjoyment out of helping other people solve problems.

00:42:08

But the problem with that is that it means that I will regularly do things for other people and I rarely do things for me at all.

00:42:20

So sometimes that line between, "What am I doing because I know my wife is really excited about this? She doesn't know I'm going to be doing these things, but I'm going to do it for her."

00:42:30

Stuff like that I sometimes forget, like, "Okay, where is the line between something she wants done and what I want done?"

00:42:37

Right? So sometimes I struggle with that and can get a little bit fuzzy on, "What does Joe actually like to do in his free time?"

00:42:45

I don't know. We'll see. So I feel like running through this quasi-formally might be helpful, but at least keeping things in the back of my mind would be a good thing to do for a while.

00:42:57

Sure. Makes sense.

00:42:59

All right. The last point that I had in this first section was from Chapter 7. It just clicks because he talks about the process for building the Strengths Finder.

00:43:10

And obviously I love this.

00:43:15

I just shouted on a few things in my node file, but the story that's associated with this is really cool. Essentially, when he joined the Strengths Finder company, he saw Don Clifton in the room late at night pouring over the research trying to dial in the right questions, and he's like, "I'm going to get into that room someday."

00:43:41

And this chapter, he kind of talks about how they landed on the questions that they ask.

00:43:50

And I want to cover this just so I have a public record of why I rail on any future assessment.

00:44:00

Yes. All right. So they've got a whole team of researchers, but they have these questions and then answers that go with them. All right. So the question answer combos, even if they measure the skill, they have to be thrown out if they don't predict the desired skill.

00:44:25

Okay. So you could have a good question. You could have a good answer, but if they don't directly link together, they got to be thrown out. You cannot tell me that any of the other quizzes that we have taken, the majority of the books that we have read.

00:44:43

I'm trying to think, even the Todd Henry one, I think, would not match up to this level of scrutiny. But for sure, like the Gretchen Rubin one and things like that, like those are, it's fine to call those quizzes. Those are interesting exercises, but they are in no way an assessment or...

00:45:06

And just I guess the big thing is, because they are not an assessment, the results that they give you have to be held lightly. Don't build your life on the results of any one of those. And I'm not saying that people have done that for any of those specific things.

00:45:23

We're comparing apples and oranges at this point, because the trick isn't just to find the right answers. The trick is to find the right wording of a question. They call that the stem.

00:45:34

To generate an answer that only people with that strength would come up with. And I hope that I have done a decent job of explaining this process because in my mind, obviously, this is way more work and way harder and completely missing from almost everyone else.

00:45:52

Almost every one of those assessments that we have taken. And I have not had a way to verbalize why those things felt invalid to me until I read this. And he kind of shows this is everything that goes into the creation of these questions for this assessment.

00:46:11

And if you have this great question that you really, really like, but it doesn't provoke the right type of answer from the right type of person, doesn't matter, you got to throw it out.

00:46:22

And I feel like anybody who just creates an assessment and tax it on to a message that they want to tell, that's not an assessment. Because really what you're looking for is a tool to validate in the reader's mind, the message that you're about to tell.

00:46:40

As opposed to coming into it with, I am genuinely curious as to what direction I should go with my life based on the results of this. And most of the ones that we've gone through, it's been very clear.

00:46:55

Like, I'm going to sell you something in the next step. It's going to look a little bit different based on your answers. So this is a totally different league, I feel.

00:47:06

Yeah, I think this is probably a lot to do with verifying that the test proves what you want it to prove. Is that ultimately what you're getting at here?

00:47:16

Well, it's not only verifying what you want it to prove. It's verifying that it's a, that it's predictive of the skill or the scale that you're trying to measure.

00:47:27

But then even what those skills or scales mean and how many there are, like you can't just grab whatever feels right or take a shot in the dark. Well, we surveyed 100 people and this is what they told us.

00:47:42

Like, that's fine for family feud. It's not good enough for a formal assessment.

00:47:47

I will say this is the one chapter in this first part that I wrote absolutely no notes down for.

00:47:55

Talking about that whole, everybody's different in their own way and things strike some people really interesting and others, not at all.

00:48:03

Yeah, this one was in my mind, like the least interesting in this whole part. Sure.

00:48:09

Well, the other thing, but knowing that when I read this, I knew this was something that you were going to grab onto. Like, yes, this is, this is, I knew this was something you were going to jump on. So I knew that, but it's just not for me.

00:48:22

Well, let me just add one more thing here. Okay, since I have already mentioned like the four tendencies, right?

00:48:32

Or the five love languages is another popular one. He actually says in this chapter, there are as many love languages as there are people in the world, which is why another way of saying like a lot of the types of books that we read will tend to have these sorts of quizzes slash assessments as part of it.

00:48:51

Because they're trying to classify you as one of these different categories. And he basically is railing on the school system throughout this entire book and the workplace in general about you shouldn't try to classify people into these these convenient buckets.

00:49:05

You shouldn't try to be like everybody else. The job shouldn't be something that anybody can do. You should find the thing that you can do really well and do that.

00:49:13

And it's going to be fun and it's going to bring meaning and that's, that sounds like a pretty awesome formula to be honest. And so I guess when I was reading this section, I was recognizing that if you try to simplify it too much, you really are contributing to the problem of just like the general classifications of these buckets and everything is way more complex in that.

00:49:32

And if you go into it thinking, this is a really complex topic and I want to understand the infinitely complex project that is me going back to the introduction, you're never going to be able to figure it out completely, but you're going to be able to get a lot further than you would by taking these these sorts of things that really belong on on Facebook.

00:49:52

Right, right.

00:49:54

Anything else from this first section?

00:49:57

I don't think so.

00:49:59

No.

00:50:00

All right, let's move on to the next section then, which is the seven devils.

00:50:07

And there are a bunch of chapters here.

00:50:10

I'll read through these again just so we have the record.

00:50:15

Chapter nine is group think, chapter 10, the excellence curse.

00:50:20

Chapter 11, mis-instinct, chapter 12, feedbacking, chapter 13, fear fighting, chapter 14, rate me, rank me.

00:50:28

And then chapter 15, I don't think I have any notes.

00:50:32

Chapter 16 is suck it up unless I messed up that number.

00:50:36

Yep, I did.

00:50:37

That's actually chapter 15 is suck it up.

00:50:39

Okay.

00:50:40

Yep.

00:50:41

So it's nine through 15.

00:50:42

Gotcha.

00:50:43

Right.

00:50:44

And the question I want to ask at the beginning of this section is what is strength?

00:50:51

We talked about the strengths finder in the last section.

00:50:54

How would you define it, Joe?

00:50:57

The easy answer is something you're good at that you would consider one of your core talents, I guess.

00:51:08

Something you're probably, probably an easy way to say it is like it's something you're better at than most other people.

00:51:14

Do you feel that that is still, is that still your definition after reading chapter 10, the excellence curse?

00:51:22

I don't know that I would continue to have that.

00:51:26

Viewpoint, I think one of the ways that I tend to think of a strength is something that I know that I am better at to me than other things that I do.

00:51:39

Like, I know that one of my strengths is doing tech support.

00:51:44

Because for me, I'm better at that than preaching from a pulpit.

00:51:49

Not a thing I want to do.

00:51:51

That would be my strength in that sense. But it gets messy when you start trying to nail down what qualifies as being good at it.

00:52:01

Like, that's where the messy part comes in, which I think is what he's getting at in chapter 10 with the excellence curse.

00:52:07

So, I don't know that I have a clean answer on that of how to define it. Do you have a quick one-liner?

00:52:13

Well, I've got his one-liner, but I'm not sure I 100% agree with this. He mentions on page 116 that where there is no love, the activity is a weakness, even if you excel at it.

00:52:26

So, if you are good at something and you don't like it, kind of what we've been told is that whatever we're good at, that is a strength.

00:52:34

And he says that that is a lie.

00:52:36

If it weakens you because you don't like doing it, then that is not a strength.

00:52:41

Strengths are things that strengthen you, and this is where he ties it to red threads, going back to the first part.

00:52:50

Others can judge your performance, but only you can judge your loves.

00:52:55

And when it comes to your loves, you are the only genius there is.

00:52:59

So, people can tell you, "Hey, you're good at this thing, but they can't tell you, "Oh, you love this thing."

00:53:05

And I feel in this chapter, there are some things that I've been good at that I've received that praise from people like, "Oh, that was amazing. You're really, really good at this thing."

00:53:19

And it feels like when they say that, it's almost disappointing. It kind of hurts.

00:53:24

It's like, "Yeah, but I don't like it. I don't want to do that again."

00:53:28

So, I definitely can picture myself in this position that he's kind of describing here, but I'm not to the point where I'm going to say that I think it's somewhere in the middle.

00:53:42

I think that if you just did what you're good at, that is not the right approach.

00:53:49

I'm not sure if I go as far as to say that that is a lie.

00:53:52

And instead, you should do the things that strengthen you because that feels a little bit too much towards the "just do what you love, do what you like."

00:54:02

Maybe, I don't know, because we kind of redefined love.

00:54:05

I feel the truth is somewhere more in the middle, "Allah, Cal Newport" in "So Good That They Can't Ignore You."

00:54:12

I agree with everything he's saying about how you have to infuse that love and that meaning into the things that you do in order to become excellent at them.

00:54:19

However, I'm not going to just say, "Well, whatever you're good at, if you don't like doing it, don't do it."

00:54:29

Yeah, I think that's, to me, that's kind of the danger in this because he talks a lot about the things you love, finding the things you love and then focusing on those and trying to bring more of that into your life.

00:54:41

I can't say that's a bad thing. I struggle with this whole, even if you're something, like even if you can excel at it by all worldly standards, it's not something you should be doing.

00:54:56

I struggle with that one because there is no perfect job, there is no perfect work, there is no perfect everything for your day-to-day life.

00:55:07

There's always going to be something you don't want to do. Taxes, you'll have to pay.

00:55:13

You will have to, at some point, pay bills, you will have to do the dishes.

00:55:18

In each of those scenarios, there are people who love to do those things, but being someone who loves doing all of those things, I think would be rare if it exists.

00:55:30

I only named a handful of small tasks.

00:55:34

At some point, you have to do something that's not in the category of, "I love to do this."

00:55:42

Where is that line? I'm pretty good at doing IT support and yet working with folks who struggle with technology or don't understand what social media is, like that drives me up a wall.

00:56:03

Yet I get the honors of doing that occasionally. I'm told I'm good at it, but it's not something I love to do.

00:56:13

It's a part of the holistic picture of what I do. It is still a thing that I have to keep in my day-to-day just because it's a part of the job.

00:56:25

If I want to do the things that I love to do where I'm at right now, which involve all the fun audio, sound, tech stuff, despite my camera shutting off right now because I don't have a fan on it because it keeps overheating.

00:56:36

This is all stuff that I love to do, and yet there are other aspects of the job that come along for the ride that I don't like doing.

00:56:45

What are the paths forward from there? I'm not sure how that he would say that that's a bad thing, but I got the impression that you should be hunting for the things that you don't love and extracting them from your life.

00:57:02

That was the perception I got from it.

00:57:05

Yeah, I think that that vibe is definitely here, and that's the thing I don't like about it. I do think the advice that he shares is not something that you shouldn't consider.

00:57:17

It just shouldn't be the only thing you consider.

00:57:20

I think you would agree with that based on where this lands in this section.

00:57:27

For example, the next chapter is on mis-instinct, and this is where he says to pay attention to what you're going to be doing more than why.

00:57:36

The big point here is that we misclassify these things.

00:57:39

He mentions that if you ask most salespeople what they love best about selling, they'll naturally attach to the why.

00:57:50

I like helping people solve their problems. No, that's not really it. But the best salespeople love about selling is the actual process of the clothes.

00:58:00

That is thrilling to them. They're not always closing. You have to have conversations.

00:58:07

There's a whole process that happens before the clothes.

00:58:10

I think you don't have to do it all the time. You just have to get closer to that 20%.

00:58:15

If you never get a chance to close, then you're not going to enjoy being a salesperson.

00:58:22

There's lots of different things that you have to consider here when you're figuring out what is the right mix for yourself.

00:58:28

Another detail here in chapter 11 is that it is really a clue as to what to do with the things that you love, but you aren't any good at.

00:58:36

It says, "A hobby is something you love, but you're not very good at it."

00:58:41

Just because you love something and you're not good at it, that doesn't mean that you should just go and try to do that for a living anyways because you should love what you do.

00:58:51

Just figure out a way to be able to do that in your life without having to have the pressure of that thing being excellent in order to pay the bills.

00:59:00

The real trick with that gets to be when the hobby is something that you are good at.

00:59:08

You have something else you do that you're even better at or that pays better and you love that too.

00:59:15

That's to me where it starts to get dicey because you could turn that second thing into something that you could make money off of and make it a full-time thing, but it's not as good as the other thing that you love doing.

00:59:32

Now you're stuck in this spot with two loves that you have to choose between. That to me is the harder path there.

00:59:40

That is the harder path. I feel like I've walked that path.

00:59:45

Good job, sir.

00:59:47

Essentially, my previous position with the Blanc Media team, you could argue that's the dream job, right? I get full-time salary to play with stuff and create things.

01:00:00

That was one thing that I loved, but when that was the main thing, it just never clicked.

01:00:13

I still get to do some of that stuff. I still get to do the writing. I still get to create, but having something else that is my main thing and scratching an itch in a totally different arena, I guess time will tell whether that actually sticks for me or not.

01:00:30

It feels to me like it's a more natural mix at the moment. I'm sure that the right mix changes over time.

01:00:45

Just because it was right five years ago, 10 years ago, doesn't mean it's the right mix now.

01:00:49

I think you should constantly be thinking about these things.

01:00:53

I think with the culture that we live in right now, especially if you're a bookworm listener, you probably have an interest in personal growth and self-development and developing your skills.

01:01:06

Figure out what the right mix is for you and don't just conform to the cookie cutter. This is what everybody else does.

01:01:16

When I took the day job that I have, I was very upfront about, "Hey, I've recorded these podcasts on these days and I want to continue to do that."

01:01:27

It's during the day. We're recording this during the day on a Thursday. I'm still putting in the work.

01:01:32

I'm still putting in the effort to get the results that they're paying me for.

01:01:36

But by saying, "I have this other thing I'm interested in and I want to continue to do this on the side," instead of being like, "Oh, well, no, we work from nine to five Monday through Friday."

01:01:44

I'm like, "Yeah, that's cool."

01:01:47

And I feel like no one's going to give you permission to ask for that. You just kind of have to do it.

01:01:53

Yeah, you kind of have to take it by the reins at some point. You're in control of that.

01:01:59

That's the thing that drives me nuts is when people throw a fit because something's not going the way they want, but they're not willing to put in the work to do anything about it.

01:02:07

Get off your butt, quit watching TV at night, go do the work.

01:02:12

That's definitely part of it. You have to move if you want to get somewhere. You can't just sit still.

01:02:18

You have to move and you have to follow your own plan, which is getting back to the whole importance of the assessment thing, I think, because those assessments, those can be clues into figuring out what is the plan for you.

01:02:29

No one else can tell you that. That's kind of the next point here is the reactions versus the feedback. I love this concept.

01:02:35

This really comes from chapter 12 on feedbacking. He says, "The road to hell is paved with other people's advice.

01:02:43

People will give you well-intentioned advice and you should ignore it." He says, "The only time feedback is helpful is when it corrects a fact.

01:02:52

Feedback is saying, you'd do better if you did it like I do." And essentially, the whole case he's made in this book up until this point in chapter 12 is, you can't follow somebody else's path.

01:03:04

That's what the education system and the workplace will try to do is to make you just like somebody else, but you're really going to find the most fulfillment if you spend some time figuring this out for yourself.

01:03:18

And I feel like this is absolutely true. So what are you supposed to do if you don't listen to feedback? You get reactions from people.

01:03:25

You share something and you're, "Hey, what do you think about this? Don't tell me what I should change about it, but tell me what you think."

01:03:34

And I think that this is a really great concept. You could use this about personal decisions that you're trying to make. You could use this about content that you're trying to create.

01:03:43

I mean, the whole idea of reactions versus feedback, I want to spend some time thinking about all the different places that maybe I've been defaulting towards the feedback. And I want to respond or want to change that a little bit so I focus more on the reactions.

01:03:57

Yeah, the way I've heard it is don't let criticism go to your heart and don't let compliments go to your head.

01:04:04

Here we go.

01:04:05

It's kind of that concept because the feedback piece, like we've heard this online for a long time. You got to get feedback from your users and customers so that you know where to move forward.

01:04:18

The problem with that is they're going to tell you that you need to be going somewhere that you may not have on the road path, but that's where I really, really like the whole reaction thing.

01:04:31

Some of the more progressive folks who are trying to get information in order to change their businesses or to change their direction.

01:04:41

I don't know that they could explain it the way that you and I are talking about it, but they've kind of gone more towards like the open ended questionnaires.

01:04:50

Like it's not a pick from these five options questionnaires. They're an empty box for you to fill in your thoughts.

01:04:58

So it ends up being a scenario where you can instead of just choosing from the cookie cutters that they've given you, you kind of get a blank slate to fill in your thoughts on something.

01:05:10

That direct, I can definitely resonate with to use the term that you're infatuated with here lately. I love that one.

01:05:18

But the thing that it does is it lets people maybe take you somewhere with your thoughts about something that you hadn't considered going into so they can go completely different directions as opposed to just following what you've given them as options.

01:05:35

So I get it. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Now, the real question there is how do you go about seeking that and in what way do you seek these reactions?

01:05:43

Like what are you trying to improve or change or alter by seeking for that? So I think you got to have some, a little bit of a precursor to that yourself before you can start figuring out what to ask questions about.

01:06:00

You know, I think personally, I've got some thoughts around like, okay, here are some things I'm doing in my day job on a weekly basis.

01:06:09

And here are some things we're talking about doing big picture like, okay, don't tell me how it went or what you think should be done.

01:06:16

Talk to me about how that event made you feel. We did our big worship in the park thing. How did it feel?

01:06:22

Like, don't tell me what you think should change. Like, I know the camera things. I know the live stream things. Like, I know some of the technical details, but how did it feel? Like, talk to me about that.

01:06:32

So I feel like that's a good, a good lesson to learn and when I could definitely use more often.

01:06:38

Yeah. Last thing in this section for me is just real briefly, chapter 15, suck it up.

01:06:45

That virtually any job is awful and soul destroying if it's being done by a person who doesn't find love in it.

01:06:51

I think I agree with this statement and really everything that he's talking about in this chapter about how sustained excellence without love is impossible.

01:07:00

You can be good at something for a little while, but you're not going to continue to be awesome at it unless you put in the effort and you're not going to put in the effort if it's something that you don't like doing.

01:07:13

So really what he's saying here is that love isn't just a feeling. It's not what you think about the things that you are doing.

01:07:20

It is really a source of energy.

01:07:24

And I think most of the bottleneck in terms of what people are able to do is not a lack of time.

01:07:35

It is a lack of energy, maybe attention to you, you get distracted or whatever, but if you really are motivated to do something, you will find a way to do it.

01:07:51

Just my personal ethic, there's a whole bunch of family things that we've made habits.

01:07:59

The man-school stuff that we do have a men's curriculum that me and my boys go through every Wednesday before we go to church.

01:08:06

The one on ones that we do before going to work on Thursday mornings.

01:08:12

These are all things that did not fit in the schedule.

01:08:19

We're going to do this anyways. We're going to make it work.

01:08:23

We crowbarred it in there, and now we do it and everything else falls in around it.

01:08:28

It reminds me of the statement from The One Thing, I think, by Jay Popison and I'm blanking on the other person's name.

01:08:40

I don't remember.

01:08:42

But there was a statement in there about juggling all these balls.

01:08:47

You've got family, you've got your health, all these different areas of your life you're trying to make work.

01:08:57

They're all made of glass, so you don't want to let them hit the ground.

01:09:01

Accept the work one. That one's rubber, and you should feel free to chuck that one at any time.

01:09:06

I remember reading that and sharing my revelation with that with people and they're like, "What?"

01:09:11

You have to show up at work. You can't just say, "I'm not going to show up at work."

01:09:15

This is not really saying, "I'm not going to show up at work."

01:09:18

That's the thing. It was shocking to me when I would share this with people.

01:09:23

They're like, "Well, I don't understand how in the world you can do that."

01:09:25

I'm like, "I don't understand how you don't understand."

01:09:28

You just put this in first, and then everything else just works.

01:09:34

You have to do it, though.

01:09:36

It's almost like a step of faith.

01:09:38

You've got to just say, "Well, I'm going to go do this thing first in the morning,

01:09:41

and I'm going to trust that I'm still going to be able to get the things done during the day,

01:09:44

and no one's going to care."

01:09:45

They don't. In fact, I've told many of my previous bosses about this thing,

01:09:51

and they're like, "Oh, that's awesome. I'm going to do the same thing. Thanks for inspiring me."

01:09:55

It's the kind of thing where you feel you can't share it, or you can't even ask for it,

01:10:02

and when you finally do, at least in my experience, all the apprehension about,

01:10:07

"Oh, people are going to think I'm robbing from the company because I'm doing this thing."

01:10:10

That's not it at all.

01:10:12

Maybe there are situations where that is the case, but I have not encountered that.

01:10:16

You build up this narrative in your mind about all the reasons why you can't do this thing.

01:10:21

Just do it.

01:10:24

Just put yourself out there and see if things don't click into place in a way that is much

01:10:31

more positive than the story that you're telling yourself in your head.

01:10:35

I think it's too easy for people to latch on to things.

01:10:43

In this case, it's easy to latch on to the concept of, "I'm going to find the things I love,

01:10:49

and I'm only going to go that direction."

01:10:53

Sometimes you have to deal with...

01:10:58

We were talking about this a little bit ago.

01:11:00

Sometimes you have to deal with the bad stuff, the unfun stuff, to get to the fun stuff,

01:11:04

to the things you love.

01:11:06

I think that's really what he's getting at here.

01:11:08

It's not something to set aside permanently, but at the same time dealing with bad things

01:11:16

or unfun stuff is okay.

01:11:20

But you have to keep in mind as well, like what you were saying, like when you set time aside

01:11:25

to do these things, the things you enjoy, that's okay.

01:11:31

Giving yourself that space to do that is not taking away from other things.

01:11:37

It's building into yourself.

01:11:39

I take time every morning to read and write a little bit of code for myself.

01:11:44

I do that every morning.

01:11:46

It's kind of my jumpstart the day time, and it's what I love to do.

01:11:52

I feel that that's something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of, and will continue to do,

01:11:57

because it sets me up for a good day when I do that.

01:12:02

I know that it's important for me to build into myself that way.

01:12:07

You start combining all those thoughts together.

01:12:10

I think that's what he's getting at.

01:12:11

I think you spot on.

01:12:13

Agreed.

01:12:15

Should we go into the next section?

01:12:18

Sure.

01:12:19

Part three.

01:12:20

Let's do it.

01:12:21

Part three is making love and work come alive.

01:12:29

There are a bunch more chapters here.

01:12:33

There are a lot of chapters in this book.

01:12:35

I just realized.

01:12:37

Part of that is because in Part two, he's got seven chapters there, and they're all two

01:12:46

to three pages long.

01:12:47

They're not very long at that point.

01:12:49

It kind of ups the chapter number pretty quick.

01:12:52

Yeah, it is a standard length book, but lots of chapters.

01:12:56

Chapter 16 is, "I love you.

01:12:59

Chapter 17 is a scavenger hunt for love.

01:13:02

Chapter 18 is love at work.

01:13:06

Chapter 19 is love in learning.

01:13:09

In Chapter 20, your children are not your own."

01:13:13

A lot of ground covered here in this last section.

01:13:16

This feels like the catch-all for everything else that he wanted to talk about.

01:13:21

There are a couple things specifically that I thought were interesting in this section,

01:13:24

though.

01:13:25

In Chapter 16, he shares about immediate rejection syndrome, which is saying no to new things

01:13:30

while still wrestling with an idea.

01:13:33

I do this all the time.

01:13:35

Yeah.

01:13:36

It gets me in trouble sometimes because people can't understand why I'm like, "Ah, no, no,

01:13:42

no."

01:13:43

I recognize after he read this that it's simply because I'm still thinking about something

01:13:47

else.

01:13:48

Until I get clarity on that thing, I want nothing else to do with anything new that

01:13:53

comes my way.

01:13:55

Do you deal with this?

01:13:56

I'm the opposite.

01:13:57

I want to say yes to everything right away.

01:14:00

Then I'll regret it later.

01:14:03

I've had to learn to not do that.

01:14:07

I'm a little envious of your gut reaction.

01:14:10

Well, like I said, it gets me in trouble sometimes, so I don't know that you should be in me

01:14:14

as to that gut reaction.

01:14:15

I would guess that yours gets you in trouble less often than mine does.

01:14:20

I don't know because the way this manifest is people will ask me to do something and

01:14:25

I just feel this intense emotion, this big wall being built up in my mind, I cannot.

01:14:35

Under any circumstances, say yes to this thing.

01:14:38

Then if I say no and people want to know why, I can't articulate it.

01:14:43

They think I'm just being a jerk.

01:14:47

It's just because I don't have clarity on this thing yet.

01:14:51

I'm so scared of over-committing to things and not being able to follow through on things

01:14:59

that my default just is no.

01:15:01

Every time I get asked, I feel like I know what the right answer is, but I can't explain

01:15:05

why.

01:15:06

Every time I try to do it, I end up getting emotional and it comes across real, short,

01:15:14

and aggressive and it never ends well.

01:15:19

Yeah, I wanted to just mention that because I totally see myself in that.

01:15:26

The next thing that I wanted to talk about in the outline is the concept of un-goals,

01:15:33

which are goals that are set for you by somebody else.

01:15:39

I feel like that is probably most goals, to be honest.

01:15:46

He mentions that goals don't have to be smart.

01:15:48

They just need to start from within you.

01:15:52

I agree with that.

01:15:57

If everybody had that interpretation of goals, then I would be much more on board with that

01:16:04

term.

01:16:05

I think we discussed this couple episodes ago, though, that most people when they think

01:16:10

of goals, is it specific?

01:16:12

Is it measurable?

01:16:14

Right.

01:16:15

Is it time-specific?

01:16:16

All that kind of stuff.

01:16:18

That just drives me nuts.

01:16:20

Yeah.

01:16:21

I like his term here un-goals.

01:16:24

It's like the anti-goal almost.

01:16:25

It's not an anti-goal because it's not taking you against the thing you're working on.

01:16:33

I like it un-goal, but the question is, how many un-goals are you getting?

01:16:40

I know I get a lot, but that's actually part of my job.

01:16:43

I kind of like that to some degree, but at the same time, those aren't the long-term

01:16:49

things I'm working towards either.

01:16:51

They're generally a short-term deal.

01:16:55

I don't know.

01:16:56

I like the term at least.

01:16:58

I do too.

01:17:00

I wonder if the whole concept of the un-goals and then also the immediate rejection syndrome,

01:17:09

if that is tied to something like the Colby scores.

01:17:14

I am guessing that you are a pretty high quick start based on what you just told me, and

01:17:21

I definitely not.

01:17:23

There are times when, if it's something that doesn't take very long, like a couple hours

01:17:33

to do something, there's a lot of times when I will have it started and done before somebody

01:17:41

else has processed whether or not they should do it.

01:17:46

That's the way I tend to operate.

01:17:48

I tend to summarize very quickly, like I generally deduce the things that are best in a category

01:17:54

of things to buy.

01:17:56

What's the perfect chainsaw for my particular property?

01:17:59

I can usually deduce the answer to that question in 15 or 20 minutes, whereas some people will

01:18:05

spend multiple weeks and hours processing what that answer is.

01:18:10

Nope, I do it really, really, really fast.

01:18:14

That's what I do.

01:18:15

The last thing I wanted to just touch on here, we could have a whole big discussion about

01:18:21

this, but I think we have in previous episodes.

01:18:24

He touches on what is school for though, and that's in chapter 19, love and learning.

01:18:32

I think his description of this is pretty great.

01:18:39

He mentions that our kids are more resilient than we think they are.

01:18:42

He talked about how the whole purpose of school was originally so that adults could go to

01:18:47

work.

01:18:48

It was secondarily for teaching needed skills.

01:18:52

He summarizes this by saying that to the world, school is for sorting.

01:18:57

The result of that sorting happens in choosing a college and a career.

01:19:04

He's got some not real nice things to say about the US News and World Report list of

01:19:10

the top colleges.

01:19:12

Yeah, he's kind of harsh.

01:19:15

Yeah, well, again, recognize that his ex-wife went to jail for this, so it hits close to

01:19:22

home for him, but he's also very articulate in explaining why this is garbage.

01:19:28

I tend to agree with him even before we read this book, to be honest, but he basically is

01:19:34

talking about how many college boards connect the bonus levels of the presidents and administrators

01:19:40

with their ranking on these US News and World Report lists.

01:19:45

They have marketing, which generates more applications, which allows them to be more

01:19:49

selective, which is what allows their ranks to rise.

01:19:54

This is a machine that's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hopefully

01:19:58

you can crawl out from under it if you're going to a real prestigious university.

01:20:03

And ultimately, the skills that you would get there, I would argue, are less and less

01:20:09

important because it's really about what you are able to learn, not about where you are

01:20:13

able to learn it.

01:20:15

If you're going to be a doctor, if you're going to be a lawyer, yeah, you need the degree,

01:20:18

go ahead and do it.

01:20:19

But if you're just trying to learn business, for example, I have a business degree.

01:20:22

I learned more going through the $100 MBA than I did in my entire four years at a very

01:20:27

good business school.

01:20:28

Yeah, I have worked with enough junior developers and such online to know that what they learned

01:20:42

coming out of school seems to be way behind, especially in the tech world.

01:20:50

Now I know that there are places that have gotten better about this, but it bugs me how

01:20:54

far behind people are when they just come out of school for programming.

01:20:58

It's like, I never went to school for programming and I know way more than you.

01:21:03

Well, that's kind of the point behind the $100 MBA.

01:21:05

I don't know if you know that whole story, but Omar Zenholm was a business professor,

01:21:09

I think at Stanford or something.

01:21:12

And he recognized that the business curriculum he was teaching was teaching his students

01:21:16

how to manage factories.

01:21:18

He's like, this is online e-commerce.

01:21:21

They don't need these skills.

01:21:22

They need something totally different.

01:21:23

So he proposed a bunch of changes to the curriculum and they're like, well, it's got to go through

01:21:27

this two year cycle and then maybe we can add it.

01:21:30

You know, he's like, two years, it's all going to be different again.

01:21:33

Yes.

01:21:34

So he's like, start all over.

01:21:35

He's like, forget this.

01:21:36

I'm just going to record some videos and sell it online.

01:21:40

And made way more doing math than, yeah.

01:21:42

And ultimately it's more helpful because it's more current information to your point.

01:21:46

Like, if you're going to learn coding at any sort of institution where it's got to go

01:21:49

through that formalized process to get approved, it is by definition out of date.

01:21:55

Yeah, especially if they use textbooks for it because less, I don't know if this has

01:21:59

changed, but though last I heard it was eight years from start to finish before a textbook

01:22:03

can be used in school.

01:22:04

Yeah.

01:22:05

Well, eight years ago, I don't even know what languages, code languages were popular at

01:22:13

that point.

01:22:14

I could probably figure it out, but there's so far in the past now, it just moves way too

01:22:19

quick.

01:22:20

So you can't do that.

01:22:23

So not a huge fan of traditional school systems and you and I are probably the wrong people

01:22:30

to, or maybe we're the right people to talk to about this, considering we both homeschool.

01:22:36

And I know that for us, we are able to tailor schools specifically to our girls and help

01:22:44

them with a lot of the soft skills at the same time.

01:22:48

Like, yeah, your sister hums while she does her math.

01:22:52

Yeah, she does.

01:22:54

Like that's what helps her focus.

01:22:57

If you want to get around that, you can either learn to tune it out, go somewhere else, put

01:23:04

something on and headphones like, this is something you need to do.

01:23:08

It's not something you need to force her to change.

01:23:10

You need to change how you react to it.

01:23:12

Right.

01:23:13

Yeah.

01:23:14

Like that's the, and that's just one real small thing that has happened.

01:23:17

So teaching them in ways that help them to pick up those things are super helpful.

01:23:26

But at the same time, like he's got a real strong disagreement with the entire structure

01:23:32

of school, not just the day to day.

01:23:35

Like he's talking about the concept of choosing a school and what do you do when you come

01:23:41

out of that school and how do we teach people who have just come out of school and he's

01:23:47

got all sorts of qualms with the whole structure.

01:23:52

Yep.

01:23:53

I don't know that I've processed it on that level.

01:23:57

He's obviously spent some time with this concept.

01:24:02

I can't say that I have.

01:24:04

So I don't know, I don't have any reason to disagree with him, but I also don't know

01:24:09

that I could speak intelligently about what to do about it either.

01:24:13

Yeah, that's fair.

01:24:16

At this point in the book, chapters 19 and 20, envision that for some people you can probably

01:24:24

stop reading at that point.

01:24:27

But I do think there's some good stuff in here.

01:24:30

Like he's got a whole manifesto in chapter 19 about all the different points and making

01:24:38

college free, getting rid of grade point averages.

01:24:41

But there's some important stuff in here too, I feel like is more general inverting the

01:24:44

classroom, reading the research, all those kinds of things.

01:24:49

I think there is benefit to understanding how all of this ties together with the world

01:24:58

of work also.

01:25:01

So you know what you're fighting against if you're going to really try to, according

01:25:06

to his definition, do what you love.

01:25:09

Right.

01:25:10

So I think by this point, hopefully we've established that that's not just find something fun

01:25:14

and figure out a way to do it for a living.

01:25:18

But if you're going to find something that you're excellent at and you're going to try

01:25:20

to incorporate that into your work in whatever way, shape, or form, that's generally applicable

01:25:26

to just about anybody.

01:25:28

But it is kind of packaged in this section as a parent who is pointing out all of the

01:25:37

ways that the system has wronged their kids.

01:25:40

Yes.

01:25:41

I'm not one that likes the system.

01:25:44

Obviously we opt out of a majority of it.

01:25:48

Right.

01:25:50

Anything else before action items?

01:25:53

Just one.

01:25:54

This kind of goes back earlier in the book into chapter eight.

01:25:59

Love lives in the details.

01:26:02

And he's got a list of five questions there that I thought were kind of interesting because

01:26:08

he calls out that the details around the things you love are important because sometimes

01:26:16

you love doing something, but the surroundings of it change whether or not you love it or

01:26:23

not.

01:26:24

Sure.

01:26:25

And so these five questions, five questions, does it matter who you're doing it with?

01:26:30

Does it matter when you do this?

01:26:33

Does it matter why you're doing this?

01:26:34

Does it matter what the focus or the subject is?

01:26:37

Does it matter how you're doing it?

01:26:39

And just as an example of this, I mentioned earlier, it's like coding projects.

01:26:43

And if you notice how I clarify that, coding projects for myself, like those I get lost

01:26:49

in, coding projects for someone else, like I can do them well, but I'm always watching

01:26:56

the clock seeing if I'm done yet.

01:26:59

So it can be the exact same code, exact same thing in the exact same way, but who it's

01:27:09

for drastically dictates my interest level in it.

01:27:15

And that's ultimately what led to my development.

01:27:18

Well, I shouldn't say ultimately.

01:27:20

That was one piece of why the development company I was running was that I chose to

01:27:25

shut it down and it's also why I continue to code for myself, but don't regularly take

01:27:32

projects for other people.

01:27:34

So I've become aware of that.

01:27:36

So anyway, I just want to point that out that the details around these things do matter.

01:27:40

So clarifying the quote unquote love to use his word here, I think is important and does

01:27:48

does matter.

01:27:50

Absolutely.

01:27:52

That's an interesting observation.

01:27:55

I didn't have any deep revelation from that like you did for myself personally, but I

01:28:00

did really enjoy those questions.

01:28:02

All right, action items.

01:28:04

Let's do it.

01:28:06

All right.

01:28:07

So I have a single action item that I mentioned already, which is to take the stand out assessment.

01:28:16

And again, I mentioned in the episode that I've essentially been thinking about this topic

01:28:21

for about the last year.

01:28:23

And what's the right mix for me?

01:28:27

And so I got additional information, additional context from reading this, but there wasn't

01:28:34

anything specific in here that was like, Oh, I need to take that action now or move in

01:28:39

this direction.

01:28:41

There's a whole bunch of reference stuff in here that I'll hang on to like the red thread

01:28:44

questionnaire and the does it matter questions that you mentioned.

01:28:49

But the next thing for me is simply to take that assessment because I have all those assessments,

01:28:54

the strengths finder, the Colby, all that kind of stuff stored inside of obsidian.

01:29:00

And in fact, the next book that I'm going to pick, which you have not seen yet, maybe

01:29:06

will be added to that file.

01:29:09

So how about you?

01:29:12

Why am I cringing?

01:29:13

I don't know.

01:29:15

Okay.

01:29:16

There's no reason to cringe show.

01:29:19

It's all good.

01:29:20

Okay.

01:29:21

We're just going to talk about our feelings tomorrow.

01:29:24

You got nothing to be scared of.

01:29:25

I don't trust you.

01:29:30

I have, are you done with action items?

01:29:33

Yeah.

01:29:34

That's what you got.

01:29:35

Yep.

01:29:36

Okay.

01:29:37

I have two.

01:29:38

One is I need to order a small spot fan for my camera.

01:29:43

So that one I need to get done because then it would be quiet enough that I must turn the

01:29:47

big one on and cause the background noise for Mike to deal with later.

01:29:50

So I'll fix that.

01:29:54

The other, the actual action item is I do want to, I think I am going to formally run

01:30:00

through these red thread questions.

01:30:02

I think I just need to write them down and run through them top to bottom.

01:30:07

I think it would be good to do that.

01:30:10

And if it doesn't give me anything new, I think it would be helpful just to verbalize or I

01:30:18

guess externalize those answers, having come off of building a second brain and starting

01:30:24

to gravitate towards that concept.

01:30:26

I could see how this could be a good, maybe jumping off point of trying to build kind

01:30:30

of a collection of here's what makes Joe tick.

01:30:39

And here's what gets Joe excited.

01:30:42

I feel like it would be good to start to do some of that and give me a jumping off point

01:30:48

to write about to some degree.

01:30:52

Because it's one of those things like once you start writing about some of these things

01:30:56

and starting to think about it intentionally, you can start to make those other connections.

01:31:04

I think that's ultimately what I'm trying to do, but doing the work on me and not necessarily

01:31:09

a thing to be shared.

01:31:11

So I don't know if this is something I would share, but I think it would be a good jumping

01:31:15

off point for some of my own thinking processes.

01:31:20

So that's what I got.

01:31:22

Cool.

01:31:23

So if you're going to figure out what makes Joe tick, you have nothing to worry about

01:31:27

with my next book.

01:31:29

I'll just just drop that.

01:31:31

Okay.

01:31:36

Alright.

01:31:37

Style and rating?

01:31:38

Sure.

01:31:39

Alright.

01:31:40

So the style of the book, I feel is very approachable.

01:31:45

I feel that Marcus Buckingham is an excellent communicator.

01:31:50

I feel like that comes through in the way that he writes.

01:31:56

You mentioned that he adds a bunch of details without making it sound like he's puffing

01:32:02

himself up.

01:32:03

And I attribute that to just excellence in communication and having seen him speak at

01:32:09

a conference, I feel that is another gauge of like, yeah, he's really good at this.

01:32:15

Because I remember walking away from that, just being drawn to him and his personality

01:32:19

and I'd never heard of him before that conference.

01:32:22

It's not like John Maxwell or one of these like super big names.

01:32:26

It's just like, I really like this guy.

01:32:30

So I feel he, the book itself and the way that he writes is very engaging.

01:32:38

And even if you don't like worries coming from, even if you completely disagree with

01:32:43

all of like the college and education system stuff that he talks about in the last two

01:32:49

chapters.

01:32:50

You still feel by that point you're willing to write it off as like one of those crazy

01:32:54

friends that you have that you enjoy spending time together still, even though they have

01:32:58

these crazy beliefs and you're not going to ever see eye to eye on that sort of thing.

01:33:03

But you're able to look past it, right?

01:33:04

Just because you have history together and they're a nice person.

01:33:08

I feel like Marcus Buckingham is a nice person and willing to give him the benefit of the

01:33:13

doubt.

01:33:15

So that being said, style wise, this is a great book.

01:33:19

And it's not wise.

01:33:20

I felt like it was okay.

01:33:23

There's some really good stuff in here and I really enjoyed the conversation that we had

01:33:26

from it.

01:33:27

It kind of was what I had anticipated.

01:33:30

I feel like in part two it gets a little bit fuzzy and it's not real clear.

01:33:35

But I feel like he's got enough unique ideas here where these are additional dots that

01:33:41

you could collect to help you build out a better picture of what the right path forward

01:33:47

for you is.

01:33:48

I don't think you're going to read this single book and be like, oh, I get it now.

01:33:52

I never thought about it this way.

01:33:55

I don't know.

01:33:56

Maybe if I could put myself back that far and I'm never engaged with anything in this

01:34:02

genre before and I counter the concept of the weird and the concept of the red threads.

01:34:10

I have trouble picturing coming to those and having those be just these revolutionary

01:34:18

ideas.

01:34:20

They feel like complementary ideas.

01:34:23

I feel like I'm glad that I have read this.

01:34:25

This is a good additional reference work to how to read a book, Mortimer Adler's style.

01:34:31

In topical reading, I can compare things against it.

01:34:34

But this isn't one of those stakes in the ground.

01:34:37

This is a tipping point for my thinking in any way, shape or form.

01:34:42

That being said, it's a good book.

01:34:45

I feel like it's entertaining and engaging read and there's something here for everybody,

01:34:49

but it's not going to knock your socks off.

01:34:52

I'm going to rate it at 4.0.

01:34:55

I would still recommend it to people.

01:34:57

I think just about anybody could get something out of it.

01:35:00

I'm curious if there are any of the other books that he has written that are really just

01:35:07

like stronger message.

01:35:10

This is who Marcus is.

01:35:11

We talked about Donna Miller last episode or not last episode, two episodes ago.

01:35:17

Hero on a mission.

01:35:18

You could really tell that was an authentic message.

01:35:20

There have been different books at different points where Joshua Becker is the other one

01:35:24

that comes to mind with things that matter.

01:35:26

It's like, this is the message that Joshua Becker has.

01:35:31

This one doesn't land that way.

01:35:33

That doesn't mean it's bad, but I'm curious if that has been discovered yet for Marcus

01:35:38

Buckingham or not.

01:35:40

I would be curious about that as well.

01:35:42

I know that with this one, he does call this out in the introduction that he's written.

01:35:49

I don't remember if it was nine or 10 other books, but he said this one is drastically

01:35:53

different than those because the others are just bathed in science and data.

01:35:59

This one is less so.

01:36:02

He can't help himself and he does bring it out once in a while, but he doesn't live

01:36:08

there in this book because there's a ton of story here that he uses to make his point.

01:36:13

I think that's well done.

01:36:15

He is obviously really good at communication piece.

01:36:22

Like I said early on, he's really good about relaying some subtle details without having

01:36:26

to tell you explicitly what's happening.

01:36:29

That's always appreciated.

01:36:31

That's a good sign of a solid writer.

01:36:35

I can always appreciate that.

01:36:38

The whole concept of finding what you love and focusing on that just feels a bit wishy

01:36:46

washy to me.

01:36:49

I don't fault him for helping you find the things that you enjoy doing.

01:36:55

I don't fault that at all, but it definitely has this strong, I felt it was strong, a strong

01:37:02

desire to help you find those things so that you can stop doing the ones you don't.

01:37:10

I think that's okay to a point, but there's always going to be a point at which you got

01:37:17

to stop and be okay with something that's unfun as I've been saying.

01:37:24

I think he has that in there and it's just too much for me.

01:37:29

I don't think that's helpful.

01:37:32

I think the concept of what he's trying to get across is good.

01:37:37

I think it is, like you're saying, it's kind of an entertaining read the way he's put it

01:37:41

together.

01:37:42

It's not fiction, but it kind of has some of the story elements of that here.

01:37:50

I don't know how else to put it other than just that it doesn't feel like it's a solid

01:37:58

concept to me that the entire book is based on.

01:38:04

Because of that, I just struggle with what do I do with this?

01:38:08

There's definitely a lot of, "Oh, that's a cool way to think about that," or the concept

01:38:14

of flow and understanding it in the realm of love for the thing that you are doing.

01:38:20

That's kind of a, it's not completely revolutionary, but it's revelatory in the sense of it.

01:38:27

It's helped us understand a concept a little bit more.

01:38:32

It does do that, but I struggled with his core point of finding things that you enjoy

01:38:41

and focusing on that.

01:38:43

I don't think it's bad, but I definitely think that if you're going to talk about that, you

01:38:48

have to have it tempered with a caveat of sometimes you got to do hard things.

01:38:54

Yeah, that's true.

01:38:56

I think he attempted it with a chapter title in "Suck It Up," but I don't think he really

01:39:03

delivered much there.

01:39:06

I think he went the other way of not doing the things you have to do to do the thing

01:39:13

you love.

01:39:14

That was kind of the perception that came with that.

01:39:17

It's like, "You had it in the chapter title.

01:39:19

You had an opportunity, but then you went the other direction."

01:39:23

All that to say, I'm going to put it at 3.5.

01:39:26

Again, I think there's some solid points here, but there's a lot that needs filled in for

01:39:37

me.

01:39:38

Sure.

01:39:39

That is exactly what I thought you were going to rate it, to be honest.

01:39:45

That's content-wise.

01:39:46

It's probably what it deserves, but style-wise.

01:39:49

I rounded up because I think he's one of the best communicators we've ever read.

01:39:56

Yeah, that's fair.

01:39:58

All right, let's put that one on the shelf.

01:40:02

What's next, Joe?

01:40:03

We're going to do some hard stuff.

01:40:05

Let's do it.

01:40:06

It's a good counter to what we just went through.

01:40:09

Do the hard things first by Scott Allen.

01:40:14

That's pretty much what we're going to talk about.

01:40:16

Instead of finding the things you love and trying to focus on that, we're going to talk

01:40:19

about doing the hard things, the stuff you don't want to do.

01:40:23

Do that first.

01:40:25

That'll be a fun comparison there.

01:40:29

Yes, it will.

01:40:31

Now I'm super nervous.

01:40:32

You got to tell me what we're doing after that.

01:40:34

Yeah, after that, we're going to figure out what makes Joe tick.

01:40:38

Oh, fun.

01:40:39

We're going to go through the story of you in anyogram journey to becoming your true

01:40:43

self by Ian Morgan-Cron.

01:40:46

Okay.

01:40:48

The story of you.

01:40:49

Are you familiar with the anyogram assessment?

01:40:51

Yes.

01:40:52

Yeah, I don't know that much about it.

01:40:54

I know some people absolutely swear by it.

01:40:58

We're going to figure out what all the fuss is about.

01:41:01

Okay.

01:41:02

I've read through some of the results for it.

01:41:05

I don't remember what it was.

01:41:07

They said I was, but somebody told me, "Here's what you are," and they sent me a link to

01:41:12

it.

01:41:13

I looked it up and I was like, "Yeah, it sounds exactly like me."

01:41:15

Yeah, I know people who are so in love with this thing that they'll like in their Instagram

01:41:20

stories.

01:41:21

They're like, "Yep, I'm an eight.

01:41:23

This is what I do."

01:41:24

Yeah.

01:41:25

I have no idea what that means, so we're going to figure it out.

01:41:27

Yeah.

01:41:28

I know that my wife is the same.

01:41:31

She is, I don't remember the number, but she's like reading through it.

01:41:36

It's like, "Oh, I think that way."

01:41:39

People perceive me like this.

01:41:40

Oh, yeah.

01:41:41

Definitely.

01:41:42

She's like, "I didn't know that."

01:41:44

Sorry to burst a bubble, but it is correct.

01:41:50

I can see how people fall in love with it.

01:41:53

It's a little bit eerie how accurate it is, but me having read and done enough of these

01:41:59

assessments, I can see how they could maybe put something together for it.

01:42:02

I'd be very interested to know your perception on how well the survey works.

01:42:06

Yep.

01:42:07

I know that's your territory, right?

01:42:08

I know that's your territory.

01:42:09

That's going to be a big part of our discussion.

01:42:11

Yeah.

01:42:12

Super fun.

01:42:13

Because this is based on an ancient personality type, I don't know how to describe it, typing

01:42:21

system I guess is the phrase that they use.

01:42:24

Yep.

01:42:25

Good chance I'll have issues with it, but we'll see.

01:42:29

You got any gap books?

01:42:32

I don't.

01:42:33

I don't know why.

01:42:35

I've had time.

01:42:37

Not sure why I haven't done that.

01:42:38

Maybe I should do that.

01:42:40

Seems strange that I didn't.

01:42:42

I got one.

01:42:43

It's several short sentences about writing by Verlin Klinkenborg.

01:42:48

Verlin Klinkenborg.

01:42:50

I like the name.

01:42:51

Yeah, I know.

01:42:53

There's no chapters to this book.

01:42:54

It's just like these short little paragraphs.

01:42:57

I'm trying to think of another style like this because it's not even like a page at

01:43:03

a time.

01:43:04

It's just several short sentences about writing and it's pretty good.

01:43:10

All right.

01:43:12

Sounds interesting.

01:43:13

Yep.

01:43:14

Cool, cool.

01:43:15

All right.

01:43:16

So that'll do it for this episode.

01:43:17

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01:43:22

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01:43:23

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01:43:30

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01:43:34

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01:43:38

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01:43:48

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01:43:54

And if you're one of these amazing people who reads along with us, do the hard work and

01:43:58

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