Bookworm Transcripts

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So Mike have you been watching the bookworm YouTube channel last week?

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No, I have not I haven't been on YouTube at all in the past week let alone publishing videos or

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Watching videos that I really only create for the bookworm channel. I'm sorry. I don't go back and rewatch either

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I do not go back on rewatch them that is for sure

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But I know that other people would like to

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So I'm bringing it up now because it occurred to me

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I think you and I talked about this two or three weeks ago

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Maybe it was longer than that about how

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We weren't getting the watch time on our videos that we probably should have and I went back and looked and realized

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Oh, it's because they're all unlisted nobody can find them. I would do it. So I

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Went through and I've been scheduling one to come out every day

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so they've been publishing for about a week or so now and

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Like every single day. There's one of the old bookworm episodes. It's now

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Coming up on YouTube. I've been doing some of this on my personal channel, too

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But there's there's a bunch of this that's now going out

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So if you want to ever see us, I know sometimes people pop in in the chance like that is not what I expected you guys to look like

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Like every once while that happens. So hi

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But you can come see us record these we don't ever really do any I don't think we've ever done like screen sharing type

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Stuff here, but if you ever wanted to see us see the episode live you can do that those recordings are there

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It's also a good way if you ever want to listen to it from YouTube you can do that, too

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There's also a special perk of hearing some of our banter before and after a pod. Yes

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Just just saying it's true like finding out what the next next book. I'm going to pick it

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That's true that will not be in the live up the final episode, but for you to watch this recording you would know that answer

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It's true inside baseball. That's what it is

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Super fun that said should we do some follow-up? You have a lot. I have a little

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If we have to I was reading your list earlier before we started recording and I was running through all the notes ahead of time

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It's like holy cow. He's got like some intense stuff here

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Yeah, and to be honest I did not do any of it. Oh

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Yeah, bummer I am ashamed I am ashamed you can leave it on here for next time. I still intend to do all these things

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so I'm gonna add these to the

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List for 155 and I will follow through with these

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I'm assuming people aren't interested in hearing my excuses, so I won't make any care

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I usually give excuses because it makes me feel better, but that's that's me

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It's been a busy couple of weeks for me and

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I barely got this book done

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which was

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Shocking in and of itself because I have been looking forward to reading this one for so long, but

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life happened and

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Between soccer and church and day job. I

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Haven't had a moment to breathe so I did not action on these okay apologies. That's

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Totally valid. Well, I have to

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Should I share the ones I suck that or should I just hide them until next time?

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Let's hide them

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If you don't talk about it, it doesn't exist

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All right, well, I won't make that comment. We'll talk about that later

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so I have to

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One of these was to put together a portable routine

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So basically what are some things that I'm gonna do throughout the day, but it doesn't have to happen at a certain time, okay?

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I did do this and I had limited success with it

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What I found was that there are two or three items on this list

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That I tend to be pretty excited about doing so then I do them pretty quick and I tend to do them

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Earlier on in the morning just because I want to make sure I do those that day

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Which is fine, but then there's three or so of those that are like I should really do this every day

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But I'm not super stoked about doing it

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I know that I would be better off if I were to do it

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But I don't really want to do it and for whatever reason you can probably make some pretty good guesses here

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Those are the ones that get carried over day over day after day and I don't

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accomplish

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I don't really know what to do with that other than maybe do those first, but I don't want to do those first. I want to do the other ones first so

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lame motivation that's what that is

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so limited success on that I

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Haven't really figured out what I'm doing that maybe today's book will help with that a little bit

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But my other action item this one was more

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Fascinating to me than I was expecting

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And it was to do one generous act per day basically

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Choosing to give more in a specific scenario than I normally would have and

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when I made that

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action item my intent was to

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Make that part of my day job like let me take a request that was given to me somebody's got an issue

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With something let me help them out a little more and like offer help in scenarios when I normally wouldn't have

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That was kind of my intention

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With that I can tell you that save I think one day

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I was able to do this every single day since we last

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Recorded

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What what I found was it's very easy to

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Do this?

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the ramifications of doing this are still

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weird to me because

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On one hand it ends up meaning more work

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to me because people then like oh well if I could do that that then they start exploring that thing

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But then they need more help so it ends up leading to more work in

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the long run

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But then at the same time people have a higher view of the work that I'm doing at the same time it seems

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So it's kind of this two pronged thing

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At the same time. I don't have that kind of time

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To do that much support stuff

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And that's fine. It's just a weird thing that I've got to kind of work through at the moment. So

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I'm still doing this and we'll continue to try to do this. I just haven't quite figured out what all the

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trickle-down effects of this one are if I'm honest and look at it holistically these are all positives, but

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I wasn't expecting to need to put

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Even more time into it because of that if that makes sense like that's kind of a weird dynamic that's going on there

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It does

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That is basically how I got in the situation that I am. Oh good job. Good to know

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We were chatting before we hit record that I am taking a an accounting class

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I'm digging into business financials in a way that I never have before

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Because someone's got to do it. So I raise my hand and that means a lot more

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Time and effort to figure things out in addition to all the other stuff I got to do. So

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Here we are awesome have fun with accounting careful, I guess

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Anyway, so don't be too nice. It's kind of an interesting action item results

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I haven't really had one kind of like that that I can recall so I don't know we'll see I'll keep up with it

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So it turns to it turns into

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Sure. All right, that said we should jump into today's book because this is either going to be fairly straightforward

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And we'll get through it or this is going to take a very long time

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It's going to be one of those two it's not really going to be in between and I think we both know that

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Yeah, really fair. Yeah, so today's book is the great mental models. This is volume two

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This is the physics chemistry and biology

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segment of the great mental models and this is by

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Rihanna Rianon

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Bobian

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I'm sure I'm butchering that horribly and Shane Parrish. I know Shane. This is from the Farnham Street team

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But I don't know this name Rianon. It doesn't ring any bells

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I feel like I've not seen that one on any of the Farnham Street stuff. So I'm not sure what the connection is there

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This is the same co-author that was with the right right and I know that but I have not familiar with

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The name of it. Yeah, I know it on the third volume

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That name is connected as well, but Shane is not there's a third author that steps in on the volume three. I

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Don't know the story there at all and there's not a

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like in a lot of these books

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There's like an author's piece like at the back like on a the dust cover and such. There's usually like about the author

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There's not that on this one and I don't I didn't go back and look at volume one. I assume it's not there

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Either so I don't really have any history there could have looked it up, but I don't know yet

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I don't know but if I were to take a stab at the name, I would say Rianon Bowelbin Bowelbin

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Not Bowelbin. There's an eye. I don't know if that's right. I don't know but anyways

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Let's stop butchering his name by the Farnham Street team that that I can pronounce. I can I can run with that

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So this is this is about mental models, right? And this is coming at it from the sciences effectively

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and

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I know that whenever I picked this I had asked you if we should pick it or not because I didn't know how deep into

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Science that were land. This was gonna go

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And I was not so sure we would be able to explain some of this in layman's terms

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So I was asking you about it. You said it would be okay

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So here we are and we get to talk about great mental models once more

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All right, so blame me if it's too sciency for you all pretty much

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And I know that there are many many much chapters here that we're not going to cover

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because this is

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This is one of those books. It's pretty dense. I would say just just from an initial view of this. There's a lot

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In here how many pages is it?

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Do you notice there's no 380 some 380?

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I know that there's no appendix like there's no real

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like usually when we get a book of this size there's like

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Almost a third or at least a quarter of the back of it is all like added extra materials

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That I usually don't go through

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So I kind of assumed that when I picked it up and then I started reading it and was like wait

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What's in the back is doing the whole how to read a book thing?

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It was slipping through the back and it's like wait a second

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the conclusion is on like

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Three pages from the end of the entire book. What?

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Yep, okay. It's true. So very full book

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The three sections are broken out in the physics chemistry and biology in that order

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Uh, so yeah, it's those three sections and I've picked out two or three within each of those

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for us to talk about today

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So unless you want to add something to it, Mike, I'll mention the other ones, but we're going to cover

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Two to three of each of those and there are others. I'll read those off when we get to them

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Anything else before we jump in?

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We'll see. I don't know which of these other ones I would want to

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Bring up maybe a couple where I have action items associated with them

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But I think it kind of depends on how the conversation goes. So we will uh

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Take it as it comes. Yep

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Uh, I want to start this with

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so in

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The actually in the pre-introduction

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Let me get my book open here. There's a section actually before the table of contents

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which is

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Effectively talking about what mental models are from a very high level short condensed summary

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view

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and

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I think that it helps a little bit to read there's there's a little bit of a section here that I want to

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Uh to read you, but I think it'll it'll help set the stage if you're not familiar with the concept of mental models

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Uh, so anyway, this is this is from the Farnham street team

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And they have a statement that they strongly believe that that says the quality of your thinking depends on the models that are in your head

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And then a little bit down below that

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It says when you learn to see the world as it is

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And not as you want it to be

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Everything changes the solution to any problem becomes more apparent when you can view it through more than one lens

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And that's that's effectively what they're getting at is like these models are different ways to view things

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so if you're struggling with

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Understanding something that's going on you can use these different models to

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Basically color the situation that you're looking at to try to give you a different perspective on it

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Is that fair? Yeah, and the first book. Yeah, and the first book they mentioned

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That mental models are the lattice work, which you hang your ideas

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And it's basically the lens at which you look at the world

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So by looking at your situation or your problem through different mental models, you can make sense of it in different ways

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And uh some of the mental models from the first book like aakim's razor for example if you're trying to decide between two different options

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Akim's razor says that the simplest solution is the best solution

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Oh, okay. Well looking through that mental model then this solution is significantly simpler than the other one

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That's the right one right and that doesn't necessarily mean that from every perspective

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That's the right answer or that is 100 correct that that's the right answer. It depends on your bias basically

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so

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That was the idea behind the first mental models and I feel like it is actually more effective in the second one

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Because of the domains that they are taking the ideas from and they're basically making them more generalizable

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So they'll take the ideas from the different categories in this particular book and then they'll use some

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Completely different genre as the basis for this is how you can see that this played out in another realm

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And I feel like in terms of accomplishing the goal of helping people realize how to apply these mental models

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This might be better than the first one. Yeah, I would agree with that which I was not expecting

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At all. I was really expecting it to kind of just build on the previous

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and

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Be a little more explicit about how things could be applied but pulling these sciences in

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And showing how it applies in areas completely outside the realm that you would think

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It should be a covering like thermodynamics. Well, how does that apply?

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In a lot of ways actually we're not gonna talk about them today, but in a lot of ways

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so

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There there's just a lot of application outside of it

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I just was kind of caught off guard by that. So I was very grateful for it and I think you're absolutely right

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Yeah, and to kind of piggyback on this Martin mentions in the chat that

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This one he enjoyed rereading this one

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Because when they read it the first time they compared it to the first and it's quite different. It is quite different

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I think because the

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Because of the models that they chose to use in the the first one

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There are significantly more models in this one and they are things that you are kind of familiar with already

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It doesn't read like new information

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And that's why I made the comment that I did about this actually being maybe more applicable

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Because to the point that you just mentioned Joe like thermodynamics

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and

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All these types of things you heard about in your elementary school science class and you moved on because you didn't become a scientist

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Right, right and you don't think about the second law of thermodynamics very often

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But actually there are ways that that plays out in other

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uh

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Another domains and so that is I think one of the cool things about this second volume

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It has a lot more

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Surprising application than you thought but almost everyone that I've told about this series

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The first volume they're like, oh, yeah, that's great. They picked that one up

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No problem and then they look at the contents for the second and the third ones

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And they have the exact same reaction. They're like, I don't think this one's for me. Right, right?

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I'm having read it. Yes, it is for you. That's kind of the point if you are if you uh,

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are only looking for

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Scientific information or chemistry information

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Then this book isn't for you

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But if you want to take these ideas that you know just a little bit about maybe because you remember being taught this

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But you've moved on from that because you don't see any sort of application for it

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This is absolutely the book for you

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And and just to kind of cement that idea, okay

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If we jump into the introduction, there's a story in the introduction that I feel like explains this very well

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And that's the story of the frame

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Which is this boat that was built to work with nature instead of against it. I thought this was a fascinating story

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I'm gonna butcher all the names. So I'm not going to tell you all the names, but Norwegian scientist

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This is the was it early 1800s. It was right in front of me. Yeah late 1800s

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They had a lot of curiosity about what's going on at

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The north pole, but every time they tried to send a ship there

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They had this really odd

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Coincidence in that they would try to get somewhere close and then it took so long to get there that the water would freeze

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Crash and smash the boats and they couldn't get anywhere near it, right? So

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This scientist had the idea to develop a ship that worked with this instead of against it

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Obviously, there's major crushing forces when it comes to freezing water

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So that's what would destroy these boats

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Instead of building a typical boat that had your normal keel and had a special shape underneath of it to glide with the water

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He built one that was pretty much spherical

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Didn't really have much for a keel and anything that would reach down into the water to propel it forward could be lifted and removed

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What that meant was whenever it would get to the points where the water was freezing

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It would have that crushing force, but because of the spherical nature of underneath of it

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It would essentially pop the boat up out of the water

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And set it on top of the ice and then it would thaw and it could come back down and then they could keep going

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So it prevented the boat from being crushed. They collected a lot of information

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They never actually got to the north pole it sounded like but they were able to get somewhere close

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All of this was done

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By using the mindset of how do I work with this instead of against it? Like how do I try to force my way through it?

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Let me look at it from a different angle

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And see how I can make this work. That's the concept

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That's basically the process that of mental models that we're talking about like choosing a different lens to look at a problem through

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Yep, that is a brilliant application of the

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Approach for the rest of the book

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You don't really expect that sort of thing in the introduction right but

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That is the exact thing you're going to get for the next

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397 pages. Yes

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Yep, that because this is before you ever get into the book. We haven't even started the book yet. So

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Take that for what it is

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So that said

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uh, the last thing before they get into

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The the meat of the book there's a quote here

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The most important thing to remember is that all of these models are tools

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So there is no like it's typical, right? Like you don't

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Treat everything like a nail to beat it with a hammer

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Because sometimes you don't need that tool you need a different tool

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So not every one of these is going to be applicable to every situation. So you got to pick the right one

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for the time

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And that is the

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dangerous part

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with reading the books that we read I feel

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Because you're referring to that famous saying that when all you have is a hammer. Yep, everything looks like a nail

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and uh

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So you can get a mental model

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You can get an idea or a framework from a single book

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And you can be like this is the tool

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This is the solution and you can just go to town trying to apply it to every area of your life

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And it takes a lot of skill to figure out

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What are the right places to apply and what are the wrong places

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And this is the problem with systems books, especially when taken in isolation. Yep

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Yeah, it is just the term system or that what we refer to as a systems book

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It's basically saying yes, this is your all-in-one

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multi tool your Swiss army knife for productivity

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And to help you get to the next level in your life, but it's never that that simple

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Even that analogy like there there are no multi tools here. There's just the individual tools

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And so you have to learn through trial and error probably

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When to use certain things

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And if I were to summarize like the biggest lesson i've learned through 154 episodes of bookworm

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It is that exact thing that there's going to be something

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In each book that we read that has the potential to benefit my life

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But at no point is there going to be a book that is just like this is everything now just do this

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I guess from our christian standpoint, you could say the bible would be that book

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But even that is like a collection of books and you have to learn the context in order to apply those things

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It's the exact same thing with all of all of these books that we read

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You have to figure out when and where to use this stuff

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So that means that we should all be on the same quest here to collect more mental models

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To collect more dots and and allow us to connect them in new and interesting ways

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And never be satisfied with well i've got a couple of them now so

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Right, right

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Yeah, there's

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Well, let's let's just jump into them because there's there's a lot of different ways you can come at these but the first section here is on physics

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and the very first chapter inside of this is about relativity

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and the

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theory of relativity

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You know, there's a lot of different ways we could maybe discuss that but i'm not gonna

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That's this one thing I don't want to do is spend a lot of time just talking about the science part of this because it can get to be

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A bit much on that, but you can get the kind of gist of it

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Basically things are different depending from the viewpoint that you see them

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And that's one of the main points here is that

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your

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Your perspective informs your experience

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Like that's one of the quotes in the book

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uh a good example of this is one of the initial

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kind of

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science

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Parts i guess is this concept of bob and allis on the train

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with

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Two lightning strikes so bob is outside the train watching the train

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allis is on the train

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And the very front of the train and the very back of the train get hit by a bolt of lightning two different bolts of lightning at the same time

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Okay, bob is watching from the outside. He's talking to allis afterwards

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And says wow wasn't that crazy that the train got hit in two places at the same time

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Allis says what are you talking about the front of the train got hit first and then the back of it got hit

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Well

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Technically who's correct?

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Well depending on which perspective you're coming from they're both correct

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Because bob saw the front and the back hit at the same time

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but because the train is moving and

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the speed of light

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Working the way it does the bolt of lightning it hits at the back has further to travel than the one that hit in the front

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Because she's moving towards the one in the front

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Which means that she sees the one in the front strike first

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And then the one at the back strikes so from her perspective she is correct

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Because scientifically that's what she saw. She's not wrong

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But that's her perspective, right? So you had to be a little careful when you're perceiving things because you don't know what

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Laws of nature or sometimes at play and affecting your viewpoint

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Yeah, so you did a fine job retelling that story, but i'm just as confused

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You tell it it's when I read it in the book really there's there's a the better version of the story from this chapter

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To me the one that made sense to me was that you are traveling on a ship

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Okay, so you are moving in a direction plane car, whatever

00:24:45

You're in a vehicle that is moving and on the vehicle you're holding a ball and you drop the ball and it goes straight down to the floor

00:24:53

So from your perspective the ball falls straight down

00:24:57

But if you were to remove the vehicle that you were traveling in and someone who is removed from the situation

00:25:04

Sees you moving but there's like this transparent barrier now

00:25:08

So that and they see the point at which you drop the ball and then the point it where the ball ends up

00:25:13

It's obvious that the ball is moving forward

00:25:16

As you drop it but because of your perspective you're seeing it drop straight down

00:25:20

And all of that is to say that

00:25:23

everyone bases their

00:25:26

beliefs on their

00:25:28

perspective

00:25:29

And no one understands

00:25:31

100 percent what is going on because you can't see all the different perspectives at the same time, right?

00:25:38

So I don't have an action item from this chapter, but it did challenge me

00:25:42

basically

00:25:44

What you see is never

00:25:46

All there is and the skill to develop here is to get good at perspective taking

00:25:51

Which is the ability to perceive a situation from an alternate point of view. That's something I want to improve

00:25:56

I want to be able to see things from other people's

00:25:59

point of view which step one

00:26:02

Is just

00:26:04

Assuming that people are not lying to you if they tell you something that doesn't make sense

00:26:10

Right and that sounds ridiculous to explain it that way, but I've noticed lately

00:26:15

I've been getting annoyed with people that I see falling into this like well, it's not my experience like I don't care if it's your experience

00:26:23

You might be wrong. Yes

00:26:27

About many things. I am

00:26:30

Can't we just all agree that we don't know everything? I don't know why that's so hard

00:26:34

Well, I was to admit that I'm wrong in that case. I even do this so

00:26:39

Like what you were just saying like taking somebody else's perspective like viewing a situation relative to someone else's perspective

00:26:47

Simple things like I'm impatient when I'm driving like this is no no secret to my family is like if I'm behind somebody and they're moving slow

00:26:55

I'm sometimes physically irritated like it

00:26:58

I'm just it drives me up a wall when speed limits 60

00:27:02

You're doing 55 because I know this road feels like it should be 55

00:27:05

But it's actually 60 which means it's okay to do 67 like that's that's Joe's way of driving

00:27:11

And I will pull up behind somebody

00:27:13

They're going 55 it drives me nuts and I will get upset

00:27:18

But then I've noticed that my kids sometimes like they're going so slow

00:27:22

Okay, take a deep breath

00:27:25

We don't know what's going on in that car

00:27:26

Maybe they have a pot of chili in the back that they're taking to somebody who's sick

00:27:30

And they can't go that fast because they may spill it like you don't know the answers to these things like I'm trying to assume that

00:27:37

Next time I'm behind somebody's slow. They are bringing someone sick a pot of chili

00:27:41

Exactly. That's what it is every time if they're going slow

00:27:44

They have a pot of chili in the back and they can't spill it like that's that's like my go-to response on that one because

00:27:50

I've done that before I've had pot of chili in the back to take it somewhere

00:27:54

And if you take hard corners or you have to react quickly guess what it ends up on the floor

00:27:59

I don't want to do that. Don't spill the chili. Yep

00:28:01

It's or or here so another example I had had

00:28:05

a surgery

00:28:08

And I was told I wasn't allowed to lift more than I want to say it was 10 pounds at the time

00:28:13

for a couple weeks and which was

00:28:16

Not fun. Anyway, we had little little baby kids at the time

00:28:20

which meant that

00:28:22

When we would put kids in and out of the car, I shouldn't be lifting them

00:28:26

But there were a couple times when we would get to the car to do that

00:28:30

I would be pushing the stroller to the car

00:28:32

And then would ask my wife to pick up the kid to put them in the car and I would go around and get in the car and sit

00:28:38

It's like, okay. What kind of dad am I? I'm not even gonna put my kid in the car

00:28:42

That's what it looks like from the outside

00:28:44

Like don't be that guy like don't be the one that makes your wife do all the things like that was the view that it came across

00:28:49

But I wanted to explain to everybody who was watching. No, I just had surgery. I'm not allowed to do that like

00:28:53

But whenever I see other people do things like that

00:28:58

I try to remember those situations because then

00:29:00

I'm less likely to be like don't be like that. Don't be like that person. Well, you don't know the full story

00:29:06

You don't know their perspective

00:29:08

And that's the thing you'll never know the whole story. So that is like a fairly

00:29:13

Inoculous example like they don't know your situation

00:29:17

So you can't do things a certain way because of this thing that is true. You just had surgery

00:29:24

Right, but I think we can explode this to a much higher level

00:29:28

I'm not talking about relativity in terms of relative truth

00:29:32

Just assuming that my perspective is not all that there is to be gained on the topic of what is true

00:29:40

So it's it's not

00:29:43

necessarily

00:29:45

Thinking that you're wrong all the time. Uh, there's that saying strong convictions lightly held like being willing to change your mind as you get

00:29:52

New information, but also not just like rejecting all the information that comes to you because it doesn't fall in line with your

00:30:00

Worldview or your bubble of belief going back to liminal thinking by

00:30:04

Dave grace. Yeah, I love how all this stuff ties together if you were just to read read

00:30:09

Yeah, I mean, I don't forget when we read liminal thinking it might have been after

00:30:15

the first round of the great mental models, but I can totally see it how reading that book influenced my approach to this one

00:30:22

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it is fast. I wish we had ways to do like a

00:30:27

I don't even know how this would happen, but a way to do like a book review that's

00:30:31

topical

00:30:33

And then your sin topical I guess to use the word and then you're reviewing actually like six or seven books at the same time

00:30:39

The problem is trying to nail down which six or seven because it branches out into so many different fingers that you'd have a hard time

00:30:45

Nailing down what those are

00:30:47

Well, if we're gonna embrace a mental model known as the map is not the territory

00:30:51

You could say joe that you could make a map of this

00:30:54

What would you say content?

00:30:57

Interesting interesting terminology. I declined to use said terminology

00:31:04

Okay, okay

00:31:07

All right, so that's that's the relativity piece of physics. There's a couple more here. We're gonna skip

00:31:13

Unless there's something you want to cover in here, Mike, but one is reciprocity

00:31:17

Basically, it's the concept of a scratch your back you scratch mine

00:31:21

that theory of

00:31:24

thinking

00:31:25

The other one is thermo dynamics and they do go through

00:31:28

Three the four laws

00:31:31

I just had a brain for laws for laws. I can I can jump in here real quick with reciprocity

00:31:38

I think the big thing that I got from this section is that we reap benefits when we volunteer so one of the things that

00:31:46

We as a family we have these family core values and one of them is to

00:31:53

To serve others selflessly basically but finding the needed meeting it

00:31:57

and so that kind of was cool to see how like there is actually a

00:32:05

not just religious but psychological

00:32:07

basis for that being true that when you give you get back in a higher level

00:32:16

And then for the laws of thermodynamics, I can run through these quick if you want because they are in my mind node

00:32:22

File here the first law energy can't be created or destroyed

00:32:25

Second law everything always tends towards disorder the third law's temperature approach is absolute zero entropy approaches a constant value

00:32:33

Fourth law of two objects are in equilibrium with the third object then they are in equilibrium

00:32:37

with each other and so all of that is to say

00:32:40

That we are influenced by the people around us regardless of the walls or barriers that we try to put up

00:32:47

Yeah, and in that section there's a piece that talks about literally walls and insulators

00:32:54

because

00:32:55

Information if you think of information trying to come to an equilibrium

00:32:59

And allowing information to cross lines and being easily shared

00:33:03

If it is easily shared you have more common ground you seek an equilibrium with those on the other side if you don't have easily

00:33:09

Shared information you can lead to extremes

00:33:12

of thinking

00:33:15

And one of the examples that's brought up in there is the Berlin wall and sharing

00:33:18

Information or not sharing information on two sides of Germany. So

00:33:24

Super fun stories involved there. We're not going to go into too much further

00:33:30

And then that brings us to the section on inertia, which I do want to spend a little bit of time on

00:33:35

here because they're talking about

00:33:37

how

00:33:40

one of the

00:33:41

equations and such involved here is that basically

00:33:43

if something's in motion

00:33:46

It's easier for it to stay in motion than it is for it to stop and if something is stopped

00:33:50

It's harder for it to get moving than it is to stay stopped

00:33:53

Basically, that's what you're so let's let's just call a spade a spade here

00:33:57

You want to talk about this section because it talks about habits, right?

00:34:00

No, actually we can't we can't resist the habits discussion on this podcast

00:34:04

I wasn't going to go there, but hey, we could do that

00:34:08

But yes, this one, you know, there's a couple of examples that are brought up here

00:34:16

That were fascinating to me one was the use of lead

00:34:20

in

00:34:22

A lot of materials, you know, if you've bought an older house or you've been around DIY stuff at all

00:34:28

You know that lead paint is a thing that's pretty much everywhere from a certain time period

00:34:33

Lead pipes are a thing lead was in many many many many much things

00:34:39

And over time they've been slowly removing that from things despite the fact that going back

00:34:45

long long time ago

00:34:47

We've known that it causes health issues

00:34:49

despite lots and lots of

00:34:52

um

00:34:53

Science and data

00:34:55

They've known that it can cause death and serious side effects

00:34:59

So why is it taking so long to get rid of some things like it was like 50 years it took

00:35:06

to actually get it out of a lot of

00:35:09

systems

00:35:11

Contrast that with absent. I know you saw that one coming

00:35:15

uh, the green alcohol that is

00:35:19

Supposedly claimed to cause hallucinations and such

00:35:21

it was supposed that

00:35:24

absent caused a lot of like a mental

00:35:28

I guess hallucinations and delusions

00:35:32

Uh, but it led to

00:35:34

I guess it was in france. They led it led to the absent murders

00:35:38

It was a guy who killed

00:35:41

Uh his family

00:35:42

And then they ended up banning

00:35:44

Absent and then they were studying it and found out that it doesn't actually cause any of those things. It was all just

00:35:49

false perception

00:35:51

and

00:35:53

It's only recently that they've started to bring it back into certain areas, but uh, it was dropped off very quickly

00:35:59

Instead of taking long long time

00:36:02

But the reason for that is because with lead

00:36:05

It was used in so many different ways and it was beneficial

00:36:10

To like in certain properties it had a lot of things going for it. It was used in a lot of different industries

00:36:15

absence

00:36:17

Would just get you drunk like that's that was all it had going for it

00:36:21

So it was very easy

00:36:23

To drop that because it didn't have the mass, right? Didn't have a lot of

00:36:28

Places that it was being used

00:36:31

Unlike lead so it was a lot harder to get led out of the

00:36:34

Supply chain than it was to get absent out

00:36:37

Hopefully that made sense

00:36:39

It does make sense to me because uh the way that I

00:36:44

Thought about this section

00:36:47

They mentioned that the inertia of belief can make it hard to affect real change in the world

00:36:51

and I immediately thought of

00:36:54

The word hustle because I wrote a book called they'll show hustle before I really understood what Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about

00:37:01

When he started talking about hustle and I don't think they're the same thing at all and uh, I don't think i'm gonna

00:37:09

Be able to change or reclaim that definition

00:37:12

Right, right because there's so much inertia behind it

00:37:16

uh

00:37:18

And so that is what it is, you know, you can

00:37:20

You can either just live with it and say that's not what that means and

00:37:25

Try to convince the the much smaller audience I have and right?

00:37:29

like hey, what you heard before isn't true or uh, just

00:37:33

Go with the flow, you know, that's kind of the

00:37:37

the choice that you you are left with

00:37:39

and I

00:37:42

I don't know. I don't think there's a formulaic right way to uh to do it, but recognizing it is important because

00:37:47

You got to know

00:37:50

What sort of battle you're in for if you're really going to try and change people's minds about things

00:37:55

Uh, and it the nurse is not just a as it pertains to the way people view a topic or think about a certain thing

00:38:03

But that's where my mind went right right? I I mostly was thinking about it in the sense of

00:38:09

Once you have something moving

00:38:13

It's not simple to change course or to get it to stop

00:38:18

The obvious way as you're saying

00:38:21

You mentioned when we first brought this up is habits, right? Like that's an obvious direction. You can take this

00:38:27

But it it does apply in a lot of different areas like if you already have

00:38:33

Uh, the train moving on a content creation

00:38:36

Process if that's already in flow. It's a lot easier to keep it going

00:38:41

If you're trying to get that train moving

00:38:44

It takes a lot of work. We'll actually talk about that one a little bit here in the next section, but

00:38:50

Once it's moving it has a lot of that inertia and it's easy to keep it

00:38:56

on track

00:38:58

uh, so I think about this in terms of

00:39:01

You know a lot of things actually when I have a volunteer schedule and I've got people running for a sunday morning on different tasks

00:39:08

Uh that whole cycle and system is a well-oiled machine at this point

00:39:14

It's very easy to keep that

00:39:16

Moving and when I have to add a person or something slightly changes

00:39:19

You can just slightly course correct and it's not that big a deal

00:39:22

But when i'm trying to implement an entirely new tool or a new scheduling system

00:39:28

Like that takes a lot of work

00:39:31

Because there's not anything already moving

00:39:34

Like I have to get that momentum moving. It doesn't exist

00:39:39

So it does kind of help explain those situations

00:39:42

and the mass of the

00:39:44

Object

00:39:46

Matters too. The bigger it is the harder it is to get it moving or to get it to stop or I would argue to change its direction

00:39:53

I mean this is

00:39:55

a lot of what I am fighting in the day job is

00:39:59

team of

00:40:00

17 people

00:40:02

and

00:40:03

Trying to change the way that we do things is not as simple as like oh well. It's just created a new system

00:40:07

Right, right

00:40:09

Wish it was that easy, right

00:40:11

Yeah, yeah, exactly

00:40:13

It's kind of interesting because going back to the Colby stuff

00:40:16

I am not a high quick start

00:40:18

But I can see like this is the way to improve this process

00:40:22

And I'm not used to being the one who's like hey, let's just go do the thing

00:40:26

Right, right

00:40:29

But that's my role a lot of times

00:40:31

So the next section here is friction and viscosity

00:40:36

I think a lot of people understand what friction is viscosity is like the thickness of a material

00:40:42

So think of molasses versus water

00:40:45

How hard it is for one layer of fluid to slide past another layer. Yes, that is viscosity

00:40:52

Technically good job

00:40:54

I like molasses versus water. It makes sense to me molasses has a higher viscosity than water. That's what i'm

00:41:01

So i'm gonna run with

00:41:03

It's my understanding of it

00:41:05

the the part in here that I think is

00:41:07

super interesting

00:41:09

uh is actually this story about Chernobyl

00:41:11

and how

00:41:14

Lots of stuff happening there, but the part of it that he's so messed up

00:41:19

I know there was so much. I was like really that was a thing come on, but

00:41:24

basically

00:41:26

What what was happening was there was a whole system in place that tried to slow down

00:41:31

and prevent information from being shared

00:41:35

whether that was

00:41:37

How to help the people who were impacted by the incidents at Chernobyl

00:41:41

uh

00:41:43

Or the process that led up to the incidents at Chernobyl

00:41:48

In both scenarios information flow had a lot of friction

00:41:51

They had a lot of pain points

00:41:54

Serious side effects to the people if they were to report on things

00:41:58

namely death

00:42:01

This is the culture that was created

00:42:04

And it meant that the entire situation was significantly worse than it probably should have been

00:42:09

Uh and had

00:42:12

Those checks and balances not been so difficult like if the information flow had not been so difficult

00:42:18

A lot of it probably wouldn't have happened. So

00:42:21

That's purely in the sense of friction for sharing information that that's effectively what they had set up

00:42:28

and

00:42:30

that

00:42:31

To me anyway is a big alarm bell when it comes to like how do I share information with my teammates?

00:42:37

like

00:42:39

Is it easy or is it difficult?

00:42:41

Uh, yeah, I actually I have an action in them specifically from that which i've already completed

00:42:47

So whoo

00:42:49

But that was to set up a whiteboard in my office. I don't think you can see it on camera

00:42:53

It's right here. Good not but

00:42:55

The the thing with this is it makes it easy for me and a few of the team members here

00:43:00

To see what big projects are we working on?

00:43:03

They have a place to write any notes

00:43:05

To share with other people in the team

00:43:08

Uh, and then we can also manage like one-off problems like I noticed this had an issue

00:43:14

Yeah, go check the board if it's written on it great

00:43:16

Put your name next to it and add your name to the list of people who want to know when it's fixed

00:43:20

Otherwise write it on the list like that's

00:43:23

A way for anybody to see what it is. We're working on in those situations makes that information flow very easy

00:43:29

Uh, this is like the secondary piece of this chapter which is resistance and making things easier to do

00:43:34

Eliminating friction eliminating resistance kind of all the same thing in that case. So anyway, that's an action. I have set up a whiteboard and start using it

00:43:43

Check got that one done

00:43:45

Nice

00:43:47

Yeah, so you're talking about the information sharing in the Soviet union

00:43:51

And how that system was set up with intentional friction to prevent the communication, right?

00:43:57

The other example they use in this chapter is of toyota creating a smoother environment and empowering workers to engage with their work

00:44:04

Pulling the cord if they see something wrong so that things can be fixed, right?

00:44:08

and uh

00:44:11

I have an action item here from here as well to consider how can we get more lean at work again reducing the friction in terms of communication

00:44:19

So that we can move faster. I mean, that's kind of the big point at the end of this chapter reducing resistance is often easier than using more force

00:44:27

But I have a

00:44:30

Question that pops up just now as we're talking through this. Can you think of a situation

00:44:36

Where more friction would actually be a beneficial thing?

00:44:41

And I don't mean like the Soviets had a specific end in mind

00:44:44

And they wanted to keep people in the dark like I think we can all agree. That's bad

00:44:49

That's generally not a good thing. Yeah, so is there a generally good scenario where friction is

00:44:56

A positive instead of a negative. I think it's it's always going to depend on the perspective, right?

00:45:03

uh, but

00:45:06

Two examples one of which I think martin's already pegged in the chat

00:45:10

but uh

00:45:12

for me personally

00:45:14

I

00:45:15

Want a lot of friction

00:45:17

in place for getting joe's phone number

00:45:20

I make that hard to get a hold of my cell phone number

00:45:24

We have our whole church database system so you can keep track of you know, everybody's contact information

00:45:29

Uh, and I don't even put my phone number in that

00:45:32

Uh because i've had cases where

00:45:35

People go in and find it and they give it out like our staff members go grab that and hand it out to congregation members

00:45:40

So like so I took it out. So if they want to share that number they have to come talk to me first

00:45:44

So it's gotten more difficult

00:45:47

For people in general to get a hold of me

00:45:49

That's partially because i've had so many people's like, can you come fix my printer?

00:45:54

My wi-fi is not working in my house. Why can't I get this to connect to that like

00:45:58

I don't know. I'm not in charge of your house

00:46:01

Like I don't have time to fix all of your houses

00:46:03

Like I would be doing nothing but that for the church if it was that simple

00:46:08

So I want that friction and I get that that's and again. This is why I say it depends on your perspective

00:46:14

I see that as a very good thing

00:46:16

Some people see it as not a good thing

00:46:18

So let me let me reframe this because yeah, I understand like the intentional friction around the personal stuff

00:46:22

And that all depends on your perspective

00:46:24

Right

00:46:24

You want to make it harder for somebody to get your information somebody else on the other hand

00:46:29

wants to make it easier to reach out get their problem solved correct is there anything

00:46:33

At a larger scale that a society as a whole can all agree

00:46:38

This is a positive application of friction that is not just eliminating something bad

00:46:44

I guess that's the obvious

00:46:46

Way that you would apply it and I guess you could apply that for personal or group, but

00:46:50

in terms of

00:46:53

achieving a positive outcome friction is always a bad thing, right? But in terms of preventing a negative outcome

00:46:59

That's when it can be viewed as a good thing. Is there any place that you can think of where those?

00:47:03

Those are crossed. Yeah, the one that immediately comes to my mind is the concept of the tragedy of the commons

00:47:10

familiar with this so

00:47:13

Things like fishing right where it not for checks and balances in limits

00:47:18

and resistance to

00:47:21

being able to fish a certain number

00:47:23

then

00:47:25

Big businesses come in and they will wipe out the entire population

00:47:29

so putting in that resistance and that

00:47:32

requirements

00:47:34

and caps

00:47:36

In this case it would be government regulation to prevent that means that the entirety of that

00:47:40

Species isn't wiped out

00:47:43

Is that fair? Is that kind of what you're thinking of?

00:47:46

Maybe I guess this ties into something that is later on in the third section

00:47:51

where they talk about

00:47:54

democracies

00:47:56

I forget which chapter specifically

00:47:58

That comes from maybe it was incentives

00:48:01

I don't remember

00:48:04

but essentially they say that the problem with democracies is that you have millions of people all acting in their own self-interest

00:48:11

Right, right

00:48:13

So someone is deciding somewhere friction is good or bad. Yes

00:48:17

There's no collective unanimous

00:48:21

Hey friction is a good thing here because right

00:48:24

Yeah, I think even even you know even if I look at

00:48:29

What I just said like the tragedy the commons with fish right

00:48:33

Even that resistance is seen as bad to somebody

00:48:37

Right, I don't know that universally you're gonna find anything that's not considered universally

00:48:44

Positive because there's always a different perspective that looks at it from the other side and says hmm. I don't like that

00:48:50

Yeah, so friction is is positive when you're viewing it through a

00:48:55

A lens of what do I remove?

00:48:59

Right

00:49:01

Yeah, because I know that one of the things that Martin had brought up was like diet and food

00:49:04

What was the I don't know it came up in a few different books

00:49:08

but the concept of making it more difficult for kids at school lunch lines to get

00:49:13

soda and chips like

00:49:16

Putting them not as the first thing in the line and putting them

00:49:19

Kind of off on their own so it's not the easy thing to grab like that's putting friction in place. It's putting resistance in place

00:49:25

Even then the kids would say that's a bad idea

00:49:29

So yeah, I call I call it out just because going all the way back to the beginning of when and how do you use these mental models? Yep

00:49:38

I think

00:49:39

Recognizing do I want to add something or do I want to remove something right? That could be a clue as to what mental model you?

00:49:46

You want to select?

00:49:48

I don't know that you're gonna find a universal on that one

00:49:50

It's it's much too slippery agreed. It's very viscous

00:49:56

Uh, so there's three more sections here. No two more sections before we get into chemistry

00:50:01

one is velocity which

00:50:05

people regularly misunderstand velocity and just assume it's how fast you're going but

00:50:11

having

00:50:13

Well, people don't usually know this but when I was in college I did take a couple of advanced

00:50:18

calculus based physics classes and we would regularly get into debates about different velocity things because

00:50:25

Velocity isn't just speed in a direction. Well, it is speed in a direction. It's not just how fast you're going

00:50:32

so whatever speed you're going it has a calculation of what direction that

00:50:38

Speed is being pointed at

00:50:40

That's velocity

00:50:43

And I loved some of the stories in here around napoleon

00:50:46

So he was talking a lot about napoleon and how he

00:50:49

Conquered a lot of places due to speed, but he always gave his troops a direction

00:50:54

He had velocity and it was all based on it

00:50:57

So anyway that concept can be used in a lot of different ways the other section here is on

00:51:01

Can we talk about velocity and task management for a second?

00:51:04

Sure, why not?

00:51:07

I've got a beef with the way most people use task managers

00:51:10

And that is they put in all the metadata

00:51:13

They get uh, they let the computer be the computer and say based on the context the due date the start date whatever

00:51:22

Here's everything you got to do today

00:51:25

And it's like 25 items long

00:51:27

And the natural approach is okay. This is the stuff I got to get done

00:51:32

I'm going to crank through these things and I think that is an example of speed

00:51:37

Without considering direction or velocity

00:51:40

Absolutely. Yeah, that's actually one of the things I thought about on it is because

00:51:43

It it's easy to say like i'm going to move fast on these things today

00:51:48

but

00:51:50

Unless you're pointing

00:51:52

Those things at the direction you want like what your mission is

00:51:57

What your goal is mike, whatever goals you've set

00:51:59

If you're pointed at those, oh wow it then you're running towards success

00:52:05

But if you're just aimlessly doing a whole bunch of things very quickly

00:52:09

That's a still a failure

00:52:12

So it's velocity not speed. Yes, and then the other thing from here

00:52:17

Uh, sorry, I end up talking about every single one of these chapters, but they talk about how to read direct. Uh, yeah, you did you did

00:52:26

They talked about how it's easier to redirect a canoe than a battleship and with the day job

00:52:30

I mentioned 17 employees that feels like a battleship sometime. Yep

00:52:33

And it occurs to me that the way to

00:52:37

steer that ship more effectively

00:52:41

Is to have

00:52:43

This is going all the way back and I hate to reference this book

00:52:47

before disciplines of execution

00:52:50

And that is way back

00:52:53

And the scoreboard 40x I mean that's that's not the only place they talk about it

00:52:57

But having that scoreboard where everybody can see

00:53:00

This is the result of the velocity not just the speed like people will tend to just do the things

00:53:06

and

00:53:08

Moo try to move fast if they don't have that unifying direction of like this is where we're going to go

00:53:13

And the scoreboard is the thing that gets everybody going in the the same direction

00:53:16

I have been in the day job long enough to realize the effects of not having that and also having that

00:53:22

Yeah

00:53:23

Yes

00:53:24

So the last chapter in this section is leverage

00:53:27

And it's just what it sounds like if you have

00:53:32

Control over something have power in a situation that is something that you can then use

00:53:36

To leverage yourself into a different place think of levers

00:53:40

Sometimes this term leverage gets used

00:53:43

In a lot of different ways and it's not always clear what people mean by it

00:53:47

But if you think about a lever

00:53:49

With a fulcrum like a teeter totter

00:53:51

It gives you a force that you can apply elsewhere

00:53:55

Against something else that's that's the easy way to think about it

00:53:58

Yeah, there are three types here

00:54:01

And basically where the force the fulcrum and the weight it are distributed

00:54:05

That's all in the the mind known file people aren't interested in that

00:54:08

But the thing that I thought was interesting with this is the three questions about leverage

00:54:13

How do I know when I have it where and when should I apply it? And how do I keep it?

00:54:18

I feel like those are great just like thinking time questions. There's no simple answer to those

00:54:22

But also this is the thing that you should be seeking to get and leverage itself is not a bad thing

00:54:27

They make the point that leverage is a moral

00:54:30

So most people I think if they don't have leverage they don't have that influence

00:54:34

They are resent the fact sometimes that it's been used against them

00:54:38

When they're not in alignment with the outcome that people are trying to drive

00:54:41

And so they kind of push back on that. Oh, that's a bad thing

00:54:45

I don't want to manipulate people you don't have to

00:54:48

Manipulate people you don't have to use it in a bad way, but you should

00:54:54

Look you should be considering when you have leverage and you should be considering how to use it

00:54:59

Uh, and then also recognizing that you don't always have to use it

00:55:02

Just because you have leverage doesn't mean that you should use it

00:55:04

You have to take a new account. It's impact on the people that are around you as well

00:55:08

I think silent in the chat has a great

00:55:12

Have example for this because best example of leverage have ever heard their comment here

00:55:17

I leverage Mike and jose time reading to find out if I will read a book or not

00:55:21

That that's exactly what we're talking about using something to help you make a decision or something

00:55:27

You're gonna do right. So and we know this a lot of people use bookworm

00:55:31

As a pre-filter for books that they're going to read

00:55:35

Like it's kind of a precursor to choosing a book to read

00:55:39

Absolutely like that's leveraging the podcast to save yourself time in choosing books, right? So

00:55:45

Absolutely do that. Good job. Well done silent

00:55:49

1000 points

00:55:53

That brings us to what the next section am I there? Yes chemistry

00:55:58

Oh chemistry chemistry was one of my least favorite classes. Did you have to take chemistry in college?

00:56:05

Ah

00:56:07

Yes, I did because I was a biology major for my first year got it

00:56:12

Got it. So

00:56:14

I took lots of biology and lots of chemistry got it but only for a year

00:56:20

Had a lot more on the math side. So the physics side was the part I was deep into I did a fair amount of biology stuff because the agricultural side of

00:56:28

I might agree, but

00:56:30

The chemistry piece was not really there. I was not chemistry. Anyway, all that to say

00:56:35

The first chapter here is on activation energy

00:56:37

This is the one that I was kind of alluding to earlier when we were talking about inertia in that

00:56:42

Activation energy is the amount of energy it takes to get something moving forward like that's that's what gets us

00:56:48

Get something started and

00:56:51

It's not what continuous not what is used to keep it going. It's what it takes to get it moving, right?

00:56:58

um

00:56:59

I don't really have any of the specific examples here that I

00:57:02

For care to reiterate, but the part about it that I thought was interesting is that

00:57:05

If you have activation energy you have to have enough of it

00:57:11

To get the ball rolling so much so that it will continue rolling once that activation energy is depleted

00:57:18

Yep, think about that for a second

00:57:21

And then think about some of the things we've talked about already. So take take uh, which one let's take task management because that's fun to talk about

00:57:30

If you're setting up a new task management system

00:57:32

And you're working through the process of how is that going to be used in a lot of different scenarios

00:57:40

You have to have a lot of energy up front

00:57:43

to not only set it up

00:57:46

But also keep it moving once you've got it

00:57:49

started long enough that it becomes

00:57:52

Perpetuating right that it becomes something that can keep itself

00:57:55

going

00:57:58

Because otherwise it drops off it fails. It's boring. It's not working. I'm going to quit

00:58:03

Like this this is a lot of like the dieting and exercising that happens after new years

00:58:08

Yes, people have a like a little bit of activation energy because it's new years

00:58:12

But they don't have enough to get it into the territory of becoming a change

00:58:19

holistically

00:58:21

Yep, so that was the example that I was thinking of in terms of activation energy and habits

00:58:26

specifically around diet and exercise

00:58:28

because

00:58:31

I

00:58:32

Have been working out long enough that I have seen it every single year

00:58:38

That right after new years there are about

00:58:42

three times the number of people in the gym

00:58:46

Because they have made a quick decision and they have not thought through

00:58:51

How much effort this is actually going to take to do this

00:58:55

Multiple times a week for the rest of your life. Yep

00:58:58

And build out the system in order to have protect the time and space to do that

00:59:03

And so they burn out right and that is the

00:59:07

Obvious example that I think a lot of people can relate to either because they see it or they fall and pray to it themselves

00:59:14

And I've I've been on both ends of that by the way

00:59:16

But the point is that change that doesn't last is easy

00:59:21

and so

00:59:23

This mental model really should be applied anytime you're thinking about

00:59:29

Any sort of behavioral change

00:59:31

I am forced to ask myself

00:59:35

All of the action items that I failed on at the beginning of this episode. Yep

00:59:39

Why didn't I follow through with those things and if I am going to follow through with those things

00:59:44

I also have to ask the question. Is this something that I want to continue to do?

00:59:49

If it's something that I want to continue to do if it's going to become a habit, I need to automatically assume, okay

00:59:55

It just it just increased from here to here like it's exponentially more work in order to get this done

01:00:01

And just recognizing that I feel would provide a ton of value because

01:00:07

Now if you're viewing this thing as this giant change you're trying to affect

01:00:13

You're forced to consider well if I'm going to make this big change in my life

01:00:18

What are the things that I'm not going to do in order to make this happen?

01:00:22

And just thinking about things that way like I don't have a number in mind

01:00:26

What do you think the the impact that that has on your potential success rate?

01:00:31

I mean, it's got to go from like

01:00:34

the 10 percent for the people who just say they're going to start doing something

01:00:39

right up to

01:00:41

75 80 because

01:00:43

You're taking it seriously and I say taking it seriously just in terms of you're giving it the amount of weight that it should actually have

01:00:51

And that's a really cool application of a mental model

01:00:55

I just wanted to call it out because I think that's why this stuff is so so great

01:00:58

Because you don't even really you can't really predict

01:01:01

The ways that this stuff is going to benefit you until you start like trying these on for size and then oh

01:01:07

That's why it didn't work last right right and like you're saying

01:01:13

the more time you spend planning

01:01:15

You're you're effectively building up a store of activation energy

01:01:19

So so if I'm planning and putting it together

01:01:22

Like before it actually has launched like we're building up all of that

01:01:28

And then when you get to the starting day

01:01:31

You have all of that built up and you can take off like whenever I do these outdoor events

01:01:36

We've spent probably three weeks a month month and a half

01:01:42

Planning and building and collecting and deciding and architecting and drawing out plans of all sorts of stuff

01:01:48

That's all like building up that activation energy and then it all gets launched all on that day

01:01:55

And usually about noon we're done and ready to go crash because we've just spent the entire day

01:02:01

Exploding with that energy to get it all to happen very quickly. So it's it's kind of that concept, right?

01:02:09

um one of the things that like one of the stories in here at least

01:02:12

On a high level i'm not going to tell the specific story

01:02:15

But whenever you heck hear about coups and overthrowing governments and such and trying to break down existing

01:02:21

constructs

01:02:24

The part that is oftentimes forgotten is the amount of energy and and time and effort it takes to build up a new structure to replace

01:02:32

The one that you just destroyed

01:02:35

Whenever you're breaking something down and you want to

01:02:39

Like get past that negative thing that you're seeing as

01:02:42

detrimental

01:02:45

You got to have enough energy to not only destroy that problem

01:02:48

But build up whatever it is. It's going to replace it

01:02:51

You don't get to just break down all the stuff you don't like and then everything's hunky dory and fine after that no

01:02:57

You have to put something

01:02:59

Back in place of it, especially if it's like a government overthrow

01:03:03

Like you're not going to just tear it down and everybody's going to be okay. Like you've just removed all

01:03:08

All hierarchy so

01:03:12

Every man for himself like that's not gonna go well. Welcome to the wild west that didn't turn out great did it?

01:03:17

So let's not do that

01:03:20

Yep. Yep. And then the other thing here is uh

01:03:23

That the reactions are not always quick

01:03:27

Um, so what you're talking about don't underestimate the effort

01:03:31

uh, they have a different way of explaining this in the

01:03:35

In the book they talk about the bonds that have to be broken and then you also have to create new ones

01:03:43

Uh to replace that

01:03:45

That just sounds like a lot of work. Yes

01:03:48

So yeah recognize that it's a lot of work recognize that it's not going to necessarily change

01:03:52

overnight and then

01:03:54

Are you willing to put in that amount of effort for a sustained period of time in order to

01:03:59

Achieve that outcome that you want. So the next section here is about catalysts

01:04:04

I like this one. This one's kind of fun

01:04:07

catalysts accelerate change

01:04:10

So if the change is currently in action a catalyst takes that change and makes it happen faster

01:04:19

But is not consumed by the reaction correct

01:04:23

It's not consumed by the reaction

01:04:26

So this is not pouring gasoline on the fire and it's also not

01:04:30

What starts the change either?

01:04:33

So the change is started by an external force

01:04:37

This is why this comes after activation energy you get your activation energy

01:04:41

It gets something started and then you can have a catalyst come in and accelerate that change

01:04:46

and

01:04:47

That there's a whole bunch of examples here the easiest one for us to probably understand

01:04:51

our instagram or social media influencers

01:04:55

This this is the easy one. Let's say that mics already excited

01:04:59

Let's say that there's a product or an idea

01:05:02

that has been started

01:05:05

and one of these influencers or

01:05:07

social media stars if you will

01:05:10

Takes it and talks about it

01:05:12

What happens?

01:05:14

It perpetuates and becomes more and more popular

01:05:17

That's

01:05:19

That's a very easy way to think about a catalyst. That's what a catalyst is

01:05:22

It's a social media influencer

01:05:25

[laughs]

01:05:27

The chemists are upset right now

01:05:29

Trying to think of a positive application of that and I can't

01:05:32

so uh

01:05:34

Yeah

01:05:35

I don't know

01:05:36

I would like bookworm to be a catalyst for people buying more physical books

01:05:40

Does that work? I don't know, but I don't know if that's actually happening

01:05:44

I don't know

01:05:46

So uh, maybe I should just step on the soapbox here for a moment

01:05:48

You know the fact that you have read a uh, an outline

01:05:52

Does not mean that you have read the book the fact that you have listened to

01:05:55

An audible version does not mean you have read the book

01:05:58

Just like you listen to this podcast. You don't engage with it

01:06:01

The audio just keeps moving whether you're paying attention or not

01:06:03

so

01:06:05

That's not the

01:06:07

The hard work the hard work is when you have to force your eyeballs to move across the page and

01:06:10

Answer the question. What did I just read?

01:06:13

Yes

01:06:14

Yep

01:06:15

And uh, it doesn't automatically advance when you stop paying attention

01:06:19

um, so

01:06:22

Yeah, I am a firm believer that uh, physical books are the way to go

01:06:26

Kindle books, I will concede the point to martin

01:06:30

Kindle books are

01:06:33

Acceptable

01:06:34

Uh, I do think for me personally physical books are

01:06:38

Are better

01:06:39

Yeah, I read more when I because I started buying physical books 100

01:06:42

Um, if you read more because you started buying Kindle books more power to you

01:06:48

I would love to see the data to support that though

01:06:51

I

01:06:53

Don't know if bookworm is a catalyst or

01:06:56

Maybe it's hmm. I don't know if it would classify

01:07:01

You get what I'm I'm saying though because the the intended change is we want people to buy physical books. Yep, right

01:07:07

Not just listen to to audio

01:07:09

So if a certain number of people the trend is that people are buying ebooks and they're specifically just listening to audio books

01:07:19

We can say well you shouldn't do that you should buy physical books

01:07:22

And then if there's a bump in the the data people buying physical books that would be technically

01:07:26

Catalyst like that's kind of what I'm trying to spin your social media influencer thing in a positive way and I I'm failing it

01:07:34

I I just don't know that bookworm is the right example there

01:07:38

because I I I

01:07:41

I struggled to know if bookworm would be the catalyst or

01:07:45

An additional activation energy to get somebody to start it would depend on the person and where they're at and the journey

01:07:51

Because for some people we would be the like starting point like

01:07:56

You don't read at all. Well, listen to bookworm

01:08:00

Learn about these books and maybe it'll spark that energy to get you to start like that could be a person

01:08:06

I'm just going to lean into this now bookworm is a catalyst because catalyst decreased the amount of energy required to cause change

01:08:13

So if we're trying to get people to read more books, we've already had multiple people in the chat today

01:08:17

Say that they use this as a screener then they decide okay

01:08:22

I'm going to read that one and there are a couple people who have said I can't wait for my

01:08:26

Volume two of great mental models to arrive so I can read this so we are absolutely a catalyst

01:08:32

Okay, so we're a social media influencer since we push things on no no don't go there

01:08:37

[Laughter]

01:08:39

Uh, we won't talk about how so much of our marketing is done on social media. Okay social media

01:08:49

Since you're talking as soon as you continue to talk about this let's talk about the other example

01:08:54

They use in this section the black death was a catalyst for societal change Instagram is the black way more fun

01:09:03

It's true. You are absolutely correct black death was as weird as that is to say a great catalyst for change in a lot of positive ways

01:09:10

Yep

01:09:11

But we don't want to talk about that because it's just icky to talk about how something that killed so many people

01:09:18

Was a positive it's just it feels very wrong, but okay. Well, let's let's uh

01:09:24

Just as controversial

01:09:27

Oh good. Oh good. I'll say I'll say covid was a catalyst

01:09:30

because it changed the way that we

01:09:33

Do a lot of different things the way we work specifically has changed forever

01:09:38

There is no way you're going to get people to go 100% back little pockets maybe individual small companies

01:09:45

Yes, but at as a society

01:09:47

It is now acceptable to work from home and there is nothing business owners can do about it

01:09:52

Right is what employees expect because it has been proven that it works

01:09:56

Right, so that's an example of a change that was brought on by the by a catalyst sure

01:10:02

Okay, hey, whatever you need to do like this. This this is totally fine

01:10:10

All right, the last section in chemistry, I'm not going to spend much time on it unless Mike decides to bring it up even more but alloying

01:10:19

Halloween

01:10:22

Like an alloy think of two metals together

01:10:25

Like it's just a weird word to say alloying

01:10:27

How do I in none see that one? Anyway, when you put two things together, they both become better

01:10:33

at the other end right so

01:10:36

Think of like peace treaties

01:10:38

Both parties end up better when they work together

01:10:41

Maybe not necessarily treaties, but peace treaties, but treaties in general

01:10:45

um

01:10:47

Anytime you have two things that are working together towards a common goal

01:10:50

And they become better together than a part

01:10:54

Right, so it's not one plus one equals two

01:10:56

It's one plus one equals four that concept right?

01:10:59

That math doesn't work

01:11:02

This is why we read books

01:11:04

I mean the the best example here at the end they talk about how knowledge is the ultimate alloy and they talk about Leonardo da Vinci

01:11:10

Uh, he was a genius because he could combine knowledge from different disciplines

01:11:14

That's if I were to summarize my goal from reading all these books. That's what I want to be able to do

01:11:20

I want to be able to take these ideas and mash them up with those other ideas and get something totally new in the process

01:11:25

And oh, hey, that's the thing that really changed my life. Right?

01:11:27

Yeah, it is fascinating. You know, we've we've continued to talk about this syntopical piece

01:11:33

Here it is amazing how much

01:11:36

the connections between books and seeing a holistic view across them

01:11:42

is more revelatory than reading one of them and

01:11:48

Five years ago. I don't think I could have told you that that was a thing that even existed

01:11:53

But now I'll tell you you should read a lot and read widely because

01:11:58

You get to see a much broader picture and you can have a much better view of the world if you do that

01:12:04

obligatory mention of the how to read a book episode

01:12:08

Yeah, link in the show notes by the way, it cracks me up every time we talk about that

01:12:13

Because that is episode 42. I believe

01:12:18

And 42 hitchhikers guide to galaxy is the answer to life the universe and everything

01:12:23

So obviously the answer to life the universe and everything is read more books

01:12:28

I did not connect all those dots, but that is that is amazing

01:12:34

So there you go. The answer to life is how to read a book

01:12:37

Great fun

01:12:41

Uh, let's go on to the last section here, which is the biggest actually

01:12:46

biology, okay

01:12:48

And we started off with

01:12:50

two parts on evolution

01:12:53

Which I thought was interesting that they broke it down into essentially four pieces across two parts the first part being natural selection and

01:13:02

Extinction and they they specifically call out that it's a little bit

01:13:07

Odd to do that knowing that natural selection can lead to extinction

01:13:12

But they call it out because natural selection can work within

01:13:16

Uh a given species

01:13:18

Not necessarily wiping it all out, right? So there's that

01:13:22

Uh, I didn't really want to spend a whole lot of time on evolution because

01:13:25

It's evolution and I feel like even scientists have been telling me that it's not necessarily true

01:13:31

So it's a bit weird to think of it and talk about it because even I've got scientists telling me that this isn't a thing so

01:13:37

Whatever, okay. There's that well, I I'll summarize these two chapters

01:13:43

And I think the application of this is disconnected from

01:13:48

What you're talking about? Sure

01:13:51

So the first part natural selection extinction natural selection is non-random elimination

01:13:57

Which I think that definition when I read that I was like, oh

01:14:02

This can apply

01:14:05

anywhere. Yeah

01:14:07

So it's just the reduction of options

01:14:09

based on

01:14:11

Certain characteristics and that's the the goal here with the mental models, right?

01:14:16

Is how do we see this stuff at play in other domains?

01:14:18

And then at extinction extinction doesn't occur in

01:14:22

Isolation

01:14:24

It's not just this thing

01:14:26

ceases to exist

01:14:28

Because this thing ceases to exist there are outside factors that

01:14:31

contribute to that

01:14:33

and then part two

01:14:36

is

01:14:37

Where they talk about the adaptation rate and then they call it the the red queen effect

01:14:42

So adaptation is both a noun and a verb

01:14:46

Which I think is interesting

01:14:48

adaptation requires leaving or being forced from your comfort zone when you observe and experience new threats

01:14:53

Well, every time you read a book and you encounter a contrary idea that is potentially a new threat

01:14:59

And you have a choice whether you are going to adapt or you are going to barrier

01:15:04

head in the sand and pretend that that thing is not there

01:15:07

whatever so

01:15:09

I

01:15:11

Like this a lot

01:15:13

Okay

01:15:15

I feel this is a good

01:15:18

Summarization of the growth mindset

01:15:22

Um, you have ideas you have beliefs

01:15:26

You continue to look for new information

01:15:29

You be willing to admit when you are wrong you be willing to change your beliefs

01:15:36

That is adaptation that is the thing that

01:15:40

fights against extinction

01:15:43

Um, in fact, the the thing that's kind of interesting about this is like just pretending that the threat isn't there

01:15:50

Uh that complacency

01:15:54

That can be the thing that ends up killing you that can be the thing that brings about the extinction

01:15:59

And uh, yeah, I don't want to get into a debate about the

01:16:04

The science part of this. Yes, but as I consider how this

01:16:08

applies to a personal development journey. I I think this is this is pretty cool. Yeah, that that I could get on board with yes

01:16:17

But the broader

01:16:20

Yes

01:16:21

Sure percent

01:16:23

So after the evolution piece, there's this supporting idea of competition

01:16:28

Basically survival of the fittest I guess is that concept

01:16:31

Not quite that extreme, but that that concept

01:16:34

Uh, then they get into

01:16:37

A section called ecosystem

01:16:39

I do want to spend a little bit of time here because this one is where you start talking about things like culture

01:16:43

and the broader

01:16:46

interconnected

01:16:48

pieces of

01:16:50

animals people in connection to each other

01:16:53

In relationship to each other

01:16:56

And how those impact one another and they they give the example of

01:17:01

Was it sea otters and sea urchins and kelp and how if you remove the sea otters from the mix

01:17:08

They're not eating the sea urchins which in turn eat the kelp which in turn lead to a healthier environment for all sorts of things

01:17:14

And so you got to have sea otters like they're uh, a keystone species as they called it

01:17:20

So you got to have those

01:17:22

but

01:17:23

there's also

01:17:25

situations where

01:17:27

If you change the ecosystem you change the environment that

01:17:30

An animal or a situation is operating within

01:17:33

It can have wildly different effects

01:17:36

One of these stories was about breeding elephants. I forget the sub-sea sub

01:17:40

type of elephant that they were talking about but

01:17:45

it's on the verge of extinction and instead of like

01:17:49

sectioning off an area where the wild ones can be

01:17:54

You know kept close to each other so that they don't become extinct

01:17:57

Instead they've been doing artificial insemination and trying to help them breed

01:18:01

Ah, yes the intervention bias. Yes. So they they stepped in

01:18:06

And it's led to all sorts of problems

01:18:09

They shouldn't have stepped in they should have just stopped being jerks

01:18:12

Pretty much. Yeah, because it's now led to

01:18:15

infant mortality rates increasing and

01:18:20

Just a lot of problems. That's the that's the intervention bias in a nutshell is the desire to always do something instead of leaving things alone

01:18:27

So recognizing that you're impacting this ecosystem and it's having negative effects

01:18:31

rather than stop affecting the ecosystem the

01:18:35

The response is well, let's just take all these elephants captive and we'll try to breed them in captivity

01:18:41

But now we have a bunch of depressed elephants

01:18:43

Yep

01:18:44

We're having health problems because we kept them in captivity and they're not okay with that

01:18:49

Okay, yeah, I think this is interesting and it forces me to consider

01:18:52

Where is my intervention bias?

01:18:54

Where are the things that I try to fix when really they'd be fixed if I would just stop meddling with them? Yes

01:18:59

Yes

01:19:01

Honestly, this is gonna sound weird. We we struggle with this a little bit at

01:19:05

at our house with our homestead because

01:19:09

We have animals on that farm

01:19:12

On I hesitate to call the farm, but there's chickens cats like

01:19:18

these are animals that we're taking care of they're all outdoor and

01:19:21

When do you intervene in certain situations and when do you let nature take its course?

01:19:27

Right, so that it's a tough one and when you have kids trying to help you make decisions. It gets messier yet. So

01:19:34

Yes, that one's that one's a bit of a challenge. Anyway ecosystems

01:19:39

I specifically wanted to bring it up because if you translate that to

01:19:45

productivity habits making changes

01:19:49

This is a big deal because changing the system the ecosystem that you're operating within

01:19:55

Can oftentimes help you make those changes much easier

01:20:00

And it would then change the amount of you know if you use some of these other models

01:20:04

It would change the amount of activation energy you need to make those changes

01:20:08

And would make you less dependent on a catalyst to make long-term

01:20:14

effects permanent

01:20:16

So one the example here is bill to bill wallish. Does that sound right? Yes, I still love this

01:20:22

And wrote down this quote too. Yeah. Yeah, so he he

01:20:26

Was winning the super bowl NFL. I don't remember the teams. Do you have the teams written down, but yeah, I'm a football fan

01:20:34

So he he he took over the the 49ers and they were terrible

01:20:38

And then he just started working on the culture and getting everybody to believe in the team put the team first

01:20:44

Do the right things the right way and he wrote a book called the score will take care of itself

01:20:48

But the quote here is that the critical factor whenever people work together is that they expect something of each other

01:20:54

And I loved this because as I mentioned a couple times already

01:20:58

Big challenges I'm facing right now have to do the day job and

01:21:01

Shifting expectations with a large number of people who have done things a certain way for a very long time

01:21:07

Right, so you can't just be like, hey, we're gonna go this way now

01:21:13

Right, right

01:21:14

You have to when you're creating a a culture like this

01:21:18

There has to be

01:21:20

This mutual dependency on each other you have to trust each other you have to rely on each other and this is why something like

01:21:27

The five dysfunctions of a team is so fascinating to me because if that trust isn't there if people don't expect something of each other

01:21:35

that mutual

01:21:38

Mutual alignment is broken and then everything just stops working. You don't see it right away in a business

01:21:44

You can continue to sell the products and the systems continue to work

01:21:47

And it kind of slowly over time the revenue goes down and the other numbers go down and the bad numbers go up

01:21:54

And you look back a year later and you're like, how did we get here?

01:21:57

But it happens so slowly that you don't even realize it a lot of times

01:22:01

Yes, so my my point and what I was

01:22:05

Getting at is like bill Walsh made this big change like culturally

01:22:08

He changed the entire environment that the team was operating within

01:22:12

And that led to massive change what was it three years and they won the super bowl after he joined and like that's that's what we're talking about so

01:22:21

Altering situation

01:22:25

It's a big deal. That's that's my point

01:22:28

Cool by the way on the topic of the five dysfunctions of a team. I have a new favorite patrick one seony book

01:22:35

and

01:22:36

death by meeting

01:22:38

So the title is kind of clickbaity

01:22:42

It's not actually about how meetings are bad the big takeaway from the book actually is that meetings don't have to suck

01:22:49

and

01:22:52

The question that they ask at the big in the middle of the fable

01:22:56

It's like well, why do people like going to movies but don't like going to meetings?

01:22:58

Right. I don't want to turn this into a discussion about that book. I'll just leave it there, but it actually is is really good

01:23:04

Interesting read it recently and it's it's awesome

01:23:06

I listened to it recently, but I have also read it recently. I have two physical copies

01:23:11

That I have read before I work listened to it

01:23:14

Read each one like I read that book and then I read that one

01:23:19

Yeah, typically what I will do if I have both of those

01:23:23

I will read it first and then I will listen to it again to just see what kind of pops out to me

01:23:28

Um, never the other way around by the way

01:23:33

All right, good to know

01:23:35

All right, the other sections here

01:23:37

I'm going to kind of run through these

01:23:40

Fairly quick stop me if you want me if you want to talk about one more mic because the one I want to spend more time on is the actually the last one

01:23:46

So the one after ecosystem is

01:23:50

Nietzsche's basically finding your spot inside that broader ecosystem where you are the uh a key component to that

01:23:59

ecosystem so that would be finding your niche you hear that phrase quite a bit

01:24:03

Self-preservation so one after that

01:24:06

Pretty much what you would expect. I'm gonna look after myself and make sure I'm not the one that gets killed here like that's

01:24:12

What we're talking about whether you're in a discussion about

01:24:15

Mm-hmm. What a discussion of fight versus flight in that. Yes section. Yep. That's kind of interesting. Yep. When do you

01:24:21

Go to battle when do you say? Nope? I'm done. I think that's that's what we're talking about

01:24:28

uh replication when something's working and going well

01:24:31

repeat it

01:24:34

if I do have something about this one because uh the thing in here that I liked was commander's intent

01:24:40

And uh, I don't even remember the exact

01:24:44

story that this came from I think it was the German army

01:24:49

and

01:24:51

The commander's intent is the sweet spot between execution of strategy and the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions

01:24:57

There's four elements to commander's intent formulate communicate interpret and implement

01:25:01

and basically

01:25:04

From a business perspective what I thought of this is that uh

01:25:08

you

01:25:09

Want to

01:25:11

When you're communicating up and down the chain of command

01:25:13

You want to give people the information that they need to make the right decisions

01:25:17

You don't want to try to over process things

01:25:19

That's kind of what i'm dealing with is like so rigid these these processes and then like people follow the process and they don't stop to think like

01:25:27

Why are we doing this in the first place and to me?

01:25:29

It's like pretty obvious. This is not the right thing to do in this situation

01:25:32

So why didn't you stop and consider that like because i'm following the process. Yep, right?

01:25:36

so

01:25:37

uh, this has got me thinking about all of the sop process because uh

01:25:42

Work the system stuff like that that we've read, you know, it's like document every single process

01:25:46

And this I think is a little bit different

01:25:49

I want to document every single process, but I want to document it in a way that it communicates

01:25:54

Commanders intent as they talk about it here. Here's the information you need now you go and do what you think is right

01:26:00

Okay, there you go do that good job mike

01:26:04

Rince and repeat right so

01:26:07

After replication we have cooperation

01:26:09

So cooperating with other people working with other people to get things done

01:26:14

It's probably the very high level view of that uh that comes with the supporting idea of done bars number

01:26:20

Did you read this part in detail?

01:26:24

I did uh, don't have a whole lot written down from that

01:26:28

Uh, i'm familiar with dumb bars number and I did not write down everything

01:26:33

Right that they talked about in this book because it is

01:26:36

Generalmous. It would be twice as big as the mind map I created which broke mind node by the way for principles

01:26:42

If I would have tried to do that

01:26:44

I basically took the approach that I tell everybody else to take when they are creating their own book notes

01:26:50

Jot down the things that are

01:26:52

A relevant to you the things that you want to noodle on

01:26:54

And so I don't have anything in my mind map from

01:26:57

Dumb bars number. However, I will say that cooperation and trust is something I have been thinking about a lot lately

01:27:05

And I do have an action item from this section on how often do I look for opportunities to cooperate

01:27:12

So the the done bars number piece the reason I brought it up is like this was something that was fascinating to me

01:27:19

A while back, but anyway, the the number is 150 is the main number that we're talking about here

01:27:26

uh, basically it's

01:27:29

Friendships relationships that you can maintain

01:27:31

You can maintain a an inner core of closeness of friendships of five people

01:27:36

You have a close friend group of about 15

01:27:39

50 like basic friends and acquaintances and then 150 is like the size of a community that you feel like you know

01:27:47

Names and faces and pretty much know those people

01:27:50

Um, the 500 people here is a category that's like friends of friends

01:27:55

It's like you maybe met him once but you're not going to have any form of contact with him and then 1500 people is like the upper limit of

01:28:03

Anyone that you could potentially put a name or face to

01:28:07

That's the upper limit and I know some people that that number is probably way lower than that

01:28:11

Just saying like you are terrible with names and faces. I'm actually pretty good with that

01:28:16

but

01:28:17

I'm not so I might be lower

01:28:19

And I think maybe that's the thing I've always

01:28:22

Not really liked about thumbars number like it's a good starting point

01:28:26

Right and I can see how those numbers can be relevant

01:28:29

You can't be everybody's close friend. You got to pick and choose your your close friends for example

01:28:33

But after that like what do you really do with that? Correct. Okay. That's fun fun number

01:28:38

Uh, the next section is hierarchical

01:28:42

Hierarchical hierarchical

01:28:45

I can't get that word out organization hierarchical organization

01:28:48

uh, basically where do you fit in the hierarchy of

01:28:52

Whatever group you're talking about and understanding how that applies to

01:28:57

Your role in that organization. That's probably the easy way to understand it

01:29:02

Uh incentives you kind of eluded to this one

01:29:06

Earlier

01:29:08

Setting up incentives that help drive the actions and behaviors that you're after

01:29:13

Right all sorts of examples in there as well

01:29:15

And then the last one that I want to spend a little bit of time on here is tendency to minimize energy output

01:29:21

Basically, I'm lazy and I don't want to do anything and I would like for things to happen without me having to do a whole lot

01:29:27

Yeah, uh, are you familiar with veggie tails? Oh, yes. Yes. All right. I think it's the pirates who don't do anything

01:29:39

Immediately. Yeah, there's a there's a gourd in that one who is

01:29:44

Lazy and he has all these contraptions that he builds and he calls them labor-saving devices

01:29:51

That's immediately what I thought of

01:29:53

The the general premise here is like we'll take the path of least resistance

01:29:59

And we'll easily hunt or we will spend a decent amount of time trying to save ourselves time

01:30:06

Which doesn't make sense

01:30:09

And yet it's a thing that we will continue to to do

01:30:13

uh at the same time

01:30:15

Because we don't want to spend a lot of time making certain decisions or acting on things. We have a tendency to

01:30:22

generalize

01:30:25

and use previous experience to

01:30:28

Make a snap decision or make a quicker decision

01:30:32

Which oftentimes is positive

01:30:35

It helps us build experience and we can

01:30:39

You know have more accurate

01:30:41

Information at our fingertips because we've had so much experience with it. So you're better at making those assumptions

01:30:46

Uh, it can have a negative to it. Sometimes people get really been out of shape over like stereotypes

01:30:52

Like you shouldn't stereotype me like well

01:30:54

Exists for a reason

01:30:57

People stereotype me all the time

01:30:59

That's fairly common. I'm the tech guy. So people immediately assume

01:31:03

All sorts of things the problem is I came from a farm

01:31:06

It's a shortcut that fires the shortcut fires in your brain. You really can't do anything about it initially anyways. It's going to be there

01:31:13

Yeah, so it's it's fascinating to me the number of folks that assume things like

01:31:18

You're gonna cut your leg off if you run that chainsaw. I'm like, do you know how many trees? I've cut down with chainsaws over the years like

01:31:23

Just because I'm the tech guy does not mean

01:31:26

I'm completely

01:31:29

incapable of running a chainsaw like

01:31:31

Simple things like that can can permeate without we without us even realizing it. So

01:31:37

Because we have a tendency to want to minimize the amount of energy it takes to make decisions. We'll oftentimes use those snap reactions

01:31:45

Yeah, one of the ways that we tend to minimize energy output is through the practice of satisficing

01:31:52

I like this word. Yep. I like this concept

01:31:55

Uh, if for nothing else to recognize when you're doing this so you can push back against it

01:32:01

Satisficing is when you find the first thing in your brain that satisfies your minimum acceptable conditions

01:32:08

So as it pertains to

01:32:11

evaluating options and figuring out what's the right

01:32:15

path to take

01:32:17

You know your brain is going to latch on to something initially and and if you want to really spend some time and make the right decision

01:32:23

then you have to recognize that and

01:32:25

Consider other options

01:32:28

However, there are times when it does make sense to just go with your gut

01:32:32

The first one I tend to be on the other end of this

01:32:35

I think where I overthink things and I over research things and I would probably be better off if I went with the first thing that my brain found

01:32:43

With satisfies the minimum acceptable conditions

01:32:45

But when it comes to big important decisions, this is uh, something I feel like you can maybe

01:32:53

fall into

01:32:55

especially

01:32:57

quick starts, uh

01:32:59

You want to take action quickly

01:33:01

because you value

01:33:03

the uh, the action itself

01:33:05

And you you know, you can't steer a park car

01:33:09

So

01:33:11

It's easy to attach to something and then just resolve in your mind. This is the right way to go and then you you basically

01:33:17

Block off all the other inputs. That's the the dangerous part of this. I think the shadow side if you will

01:33:24

That and if you're not

01:33:26

Aware of the side effects of what's what you're doing too like they this they talked about

01:33:34

Open formats offices

01:33:37

Open layout offices cubicles and how

01:33:41

It's a lot

01:33:44

less

01:33:45

money and a lot less work to build an open layout office plan like

01:33:52

From a resources stance. It's cheaper to build. It's cheaper to maintain. It's cheaper to heat and cool. It's

01:33:59

All the things right. So why wouldn't we want to do this? This is a better thing because it also

01:34:06

Makes it easier

01:34:08

For people to have those one-off interactions to have the creative

01:34:12

Aha moments because they're talking with people in finance when they're in animation like these things can happen, right?

01:34:20

I'm not saying that those things don't happen

01:34:22

But the flip side of that is they know very well now that this is a bad idea because when are you supposed to sit down and focus and do your work?

01:34:30

When are you supposed to make those one-on-one phone calls that? Yeah, rely on trust

01:34:36

And being open with somebody when you have

01:34:41

40 other people somewhere close to you that can hear your entire conversation

01:34:46

Like that's not possible. So it doesn't happen. So then those relationships don't

01:34:50

Are not built. So then you end up not having those relationships at all. So

01:34:56

Although this concept of like energy conservation can oftentimes be

01:35:01

Desirable it can have some pretty bad

01:35:05

Detriments. Yep. Don't do an open office plan. Please don't

01:35:09

Agree that day

01:35:13

that

01:35:14

brings us to the very last of the book

01:35:16

Which is just putting it all together, which I appreciate that they did this

01:35:21

It kind of needs a conclusion

01:35:24

But basically they're saying use these as tools and use them as models

01:35:27

You don't need to force it

01:35:30

Use them where they make sense. That's kind of what they're saying at the very end, but it's literally a page and a half

01:35:35

They don't need to do some big long thing and then you're at the back of the book

01:35:40

And there's picture credits and that is it. It is two pages of picture credits and no appendix. No extra information. That's the book

01:35:48

Super interesting. I'm okay with that. I am okay with that. Yeah

01:35:54

So unless there's something else Mike that brings us to action items

01:35:58

Let's do it

01:36:00

So I had the two I have two

01:36:02

One I talked about which was putting up a whiteboard

01:36:05

What I already have that done. So probably doesn't count they were talking about that in the chat

01:36:09

Does it even count if you already did it? Probably not. So

01:36:12

Put it on the list, but check it off. I don't know. Don't even put it on the list

01:36:16

Anyway, that has been helpful. Uh, the other one that I need to work on

01:36:20

uh, this goes back to the ecosystem

01:36:23

chapter and

01:36:26

I need to do a little work on my environment. I think

01:36:29

I feel like they're a handful of things

01:36:32

I'm not gonna discuss them here, but they're a handful of things I've been trying to change in my like day-to-day

01:36:39

work

01:36:41

Structure

01:36:42

It's probably the cleanest way to say that

01:36:44

That just aren't working well

01:36:46

And I think it's environment related

01:36:49

But I don't think I connected that until we read this book

01:36:52

Sure, so I need to do some work on that

01:36:55

And I I don't know what's gonna come of it, but I at least need to explore it

01:37:00

So that's what I got. That's my one kind of bigger one

01:37:05

Here, uh, you would kind of expect to have a lot more here

01:37:08

But so much of this is just how you think

01:37:11

At least that's my perspective. You probably have 12 of these, right?

01:37:14

I do not I have the two that I've shared here, although the environment I do remember that coming up

01:37:22

Actually, it was in in my notes. It was the chapter on replication

01:37:27

Because once you get a feel for the environment you can adapt it to better suit your needs

01:37:31

That was the point that they were making and that

01:37:33

Rem that got me thinking about the environment that I do my work in as well

01:37:37

And uh, we did read a book about that

01:37:41

Which was a great book the extended mind by any Murphy Paul

01:37:45

So if you want to dive deeper into that topic, that's when I'd recommend

01:37:49

and uh

01:37:51

I don't know it kind of interesting to to hear what sort of action items you come up with that

01:37:57

Framed through the previous experience of of that book, right?

01:38:02

That's where I'll be thinking when you uh share what you're going to change in your environment

01:38:06

All right fair enough

01:38:09

But my action items I've got two just like thinking time questions

01:38:13

Uh in addition to the four I failed with at the beginning

01:38:16

How the one of the questions I want to ask is how can we get more lean at work?

01:38:22

Uh, just when I say more lean

01:38:25

I've kind of talked about a lot of different things in this episode, but basically

01:38:30

Allowing people to make the decisions that they think are best and do the work without

01:38:36

Extra process that slows everything down

01:38:40

And then the other question I want to consider is how often do I look for opportunities to cooperate?

01:38:45

And uh, this one is a little bit more broad because I think there are other

01:38:52

Other domains where I want to consider this not just work of the work is the one that comes to mind also

01:38:59

um for me in in terms of

01:39:01

There are opportunities here to take action on this

01:39:04

So those are mine. I captured both of yours. You have a check mark next to your whiteboard already. Yes

01:39:10

So good job. I'm batting

01:39:14

50 percent right now. Good job

01:39:16

I like that. All right style and rating

01:39:19

this book is

01:39:21

a challenge

01:39:22

not in the sense that it's hard to read

01:39:24

but I

01:39:27

I also am not sure

01:39:29

I'm a good person to tell you whether or not this will be easy for you to understand with the science explanations

01:39:36

because I think

01:39:39

There were no i'm kind of glancing at the list. I don't think there were any

01:39:44

of these laws or theories

01:39:48

that are the basis of

01:39:51

These topics that I haven't studied in

01:39:56

Formal schooling in some way shape or form

01:39:59

So because of that it's hard for me to know

01:40:01

That when we're talking about friction viscosity thermodynamics

01:40:06

I've studied those things before so I don't

01:40:10

I don't know how much of that if you haven't studied it at all

01:40:14

If that would be easy to understand in this book. I'm I'm a bad read for that one

01:40:18

For you

01:40:20

If you have any form of background on it. I will say that just from my stance

01:40:26

Having been away from that formal study for quite some time. This was very easy for me to understand

01:40:31

As far as the sciency side of it, but that's not a big part of the book either like it's not

01:40:37

I wouldn't even say it's a quarter of the book

01:40:42

It's kind of these short explanations at the beginning to help you understand what those laws or theories are

01:40:47

Like what the concept is but we're only talking about maybe a page

01:40:50

page and a half on that per

01:40:53

Chapter out of what do we decide?

01:40:55

397 pages

01:40:58

Our only chapters this is it's not even 20. So it's not much. That's that's covering that

01:41:03

So that said I I feel like this is one that is approachable to many people. I think that's

01:41:11

I'm going to preface it with that

01:41:13

That said a lot of the stories in this

01:41:15

I think they were only a handful that I feel like I've heard before

01:41:19

This is one of those where they've done their homework for sure

01:41:23

And helped us branch out into areas we haven't normally gone

01:41:27

I don't know of another book that I've ever encountered that takes

01:41:32

These types of scientific concepts and explains the general world and culture around us using those theories and concepts

01:41:40

I don't know that I've ever encountered that

01:41:43

Uh, so I absolutely love that that process

01:41:47

um

01:41:48

on a weird note

01:41:50

But there was some like editing things that were wrong here like some sentences that just had bad

01:41:55

Like the the editor didn't catch it and I noticed at least a handful of those which was a bit strange

01:42:02

I suppose we didn't talk about this. This was published by automatic

01:42:05