Bookworm Transcripts

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So I have good news and bad news for you Joe B. Legg. Oh

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fun

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Well the good news is that remember a while back. I mentioned Ali Abdul listed us in his YouTube video

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Yes

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Well, he's got a Twitter thread now and bookworm is number three. So that's the good news

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Number three. So I saw this thread

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What were the other two ahead of it? I don't even have it in front of me because I didn't know you were gonna bring this up

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but

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To me, somebody like Ali Abdul probably has a long list of podcasts that they listen to so

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It's a curiosity to me that it's within the top three

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Yeah, I don't remember what the second one was number one was the Tim Ferriss show. I believe and

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I bring this up because number one. It's cool to see bookworm included in these types of lists, right?

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But that brings us to the bad news

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There's no link no link. Yes, as Scott Deller mentioned to me

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Well deserved you could have linked you though. So this is twice now Ali. I know you listened to the show

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You sent the wrong link via YouTube and you shared it via Twitter and no link

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So I appreciate the fact that you listen and you love the podcast but help us help you

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Throw us a bone next time use a link hilarious. I

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Don't know if I'll ever hear that but

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Doesn't matter. It's so fun

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All right, so that's my intro should we talk about follow-up?

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Yeah, you have like 14,000 on this list. I do have not 14,000, but several yes

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So for context here there were two follow-up items from the last episode

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But I completely botched my follow-up on that episode

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So instead of saying like yeah, well, sorry

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I messed it up. I promised that I would follow through with these for next time. So I did do all of these

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Okay

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I'm not sure how detailed I want to get into the specifics of all these but I'll just share them make a list of things

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that settle me and

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I guess some highlights here

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Going for a run working out reading a book being alone

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Going to Door County my parents have a place in

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Sister Bay and I love going up there because it's really quiet, especially in the winter and so that's kind of like being alone, but

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Yeah, that that is my my happy place

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The next one I had was who do I compare myself to turns out quite a few people and

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It all happens to be around these things that I do

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I guess that might be obvious if you're thinking about who you would compare yourself to but it's other creators

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It's other writers

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It's other people who are

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Athletes or runners so basic version of this is you go to the gym and you're doing the bench press and you see some guys sit down next to you

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And you're I wonder if he can do more or less than me, right?

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That's the immediate comparison, but with runners specifically it always kind of whenever you talk to another runner kind of devolves into like well

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What what's your what's your pace?

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Right, right. I'm not I'm not fast. So this one kills me every time I I talk about it

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So that means Mike when you when you bring that when that comes up like hey, it's

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12 minutes a mile

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For all 24 miles I run every day like you know, you know, I mean I know that's exaggeration

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I'm aware of that but that's my point like the distance can then be the thing that overcomes the other person

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Yes, it can however the people who are really good who you might want to like position yourself and favorably compare yourself to are

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Completely smoking me. Yeah, I remember running a half marathon and seeing my time and I'm like, oh, hey

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I felt like I did pretty good

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Maybe I should look into running a full marathon

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I wonder because I have a sister-in-law who's run the Boston several times like what are the times for the men in my age group to

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Qualify for the Boston Marathon and it was basically running a full marathon in the time that I ran the half

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Like nope not for me

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Guess I'm not that good. Yep

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All right valid point

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Yep

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Other people who podcast other people who make sketch notes

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I mean basically anything that I do there's a comparison to like well

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I wonder what other people are doing in this arena and you can always find somebody like if if you're trying to figure out

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How you rank on something you will always find somebody that you can compare to and

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You can also always find somebody who is better than you?

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So that doesn't mean you should stop

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Doing the thing you're doing but exactly comparison pieces the problem. Yeah, that's the context for all of this is that comparison is bad

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So this isn't something that I should be doing. It's just recognizing that I have this tendency

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Next one was to make a list of good small

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Ordinary things and this one I think is gonna continue

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I think I'm gonna just keep adding to this list as I think of things

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But I've got eight things on this list already. I have a cup of in quotes good coffee

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Yep, because I have discovered recently that what I consider to be good coffee is

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Completely snobbish compared to most other people so I can't just say this good cup of coffee because different definitions of good

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Yep, a long run a good book

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Petting my dog my dog

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I don't think you've met Lucy. She's not met Lucy. No, she's a giant golden doodle like probably close to 70 pounds

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She's supposed to be 45 and she's like a gentle giant. Yeah, she's she's ginormous

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But she never tries to come up on the furniture

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She never like jumps up on anyone

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She does this thing where if I'm sitting in one of those chairs in the corner reading a book

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She'll come and she'll like put her head on on your lap and want you to pet her and then eventually she will just lay

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Underneath your feet

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She just always wants to be by you. So she basically whenever I'm sitting reading a book

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She's within arms reach nice nice. So one of my favorite things is reading a book and petting my dog

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Pedding the dog. I've also gotten the habit of taking naps on Sundays, which is amazing. That is amazing that that is actually

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It's how the girls refer to it. It's daddy's sleep time

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I think is what they refer to it out because I have done this for it's probably approaching a year now where

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Sunday afternoon

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Naps have become a thing on my part and I had a friend we're talking about

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You know taking a Shabbat Sabbath dinner that sort of thing and they said something about a Shabbat sleuth

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Like that is a technical term. I guess in some circles. Oh, I could do that Shabbat sleuth. That's that's my that's my thing now

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I will I will take that one on full steam ahead

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Interesting

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Yeah, so I've I've fallen in love with the Sabbath nap as I call it

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Yep, and other things I like home-cooked meal playing board games with my kids

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But I know that there's lots of little things are basically if I express gratitude for something in my daily questions journal

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Essentially that is the type of thing I want to add to this list and have this list that I can just go look at anytime

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I need to pick me up

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Find a way to do some unprompted kind thing every day

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I've been doing this but not every day. So I

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Guess quasi failed at this again. I don't know. I feel like the

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The spirit of the action item is to get me thinking this way and I would like to improve my

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success rate on this but I

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Feel like this is a win already just starting to think this way sending the encouraging text message stuff like that

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And then the two which were from the last episode

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How can we get more lean at work? These are just thinking time questions and how often do I look for opportunities to cooperate or collaborate?

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I guess would be another another way to say that

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These have sparked a whole bunch of insights for me in the last couple weeks

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Nothing specifically that I want to share here, but these have been really successful

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Again proving that the best action items for me are the ambiguous ones that I just think about

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Yeah, it's kind of how it goes anymore, right?

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And I feel like that's actually this is a diversion that it might actually be a progression of bookworm

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I've kind of wondered about that. So yeah, when we first started they were very there were a lot of tactical

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Action items like I am going to put this timer on my desk and use it all day long like that type of task

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anymore, we've got these kind of

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higher level action items and I wonder if it's purely like a

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progression of what what we consider is something to work on like it's more mindset stuff than it is

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physical stuff very true I

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Say that and yet the two action items I have are very tactical from this

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Last round one of which I've already completed had already completed when we were recorded

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And that is I don't think you can't see it on stream, but there's a whiteboard here right behind me. That's right there

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I know you can't see it

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but that has proven to be invaluable for

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My little worker bees and myself

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So that has been something is just kind of gold. I just regularly come up

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Hey, Joe just real quick like nope go right on the board like unless it's mission critical right now

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go right on the board and I will see it tomorrow morning and that has in itself saved me many many many times in

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Running off to solve some problem. I don't need to solve right away

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So love the whiteboard the other one was to work on my environment and I wasn't sure what that meant

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when I detailed it and

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I have started to figure out what that means

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because the the goal is to set up the environment to allow me to maybe be a little more creative and and

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have more focus on the work that I'm doing and

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Some of that is as simple as the door to this room

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Regularly just without me thinking about it. It's always wide open

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It's a little weird to have it shut

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all the time

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Because then people don't know if I'm here or not unless they see the currently recording sign on the door handle

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So that feels a little weird

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But I did learn that if I close it like 75% to where it's like mostly shut, but it's still open

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It's open enough that if somebody really needs something they will open knock and then come in

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But they're more prone to letting me be at that point

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So then that that one small thing has actually proven to be very helpful

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At the same time we've started like

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Moving a lot of gear in this room to kind of get it out of this space where my desk sits

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Which frees me up to stand a lot more because sometimes I don't stand at this desk

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Just because I've got a pile of speaker monitors behind me

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So I can't roll the chair back because it'll slam into speakers

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so just simple stuff like that seems to make a big difference and

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I'm continuing to just kind of see like okay. What what happens when I make these small changes and

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It's amazing to me how much of that little subtlety can make such a big difference just mentally so

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so far

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Limited success, I would say maybe not limited but continuing to work on it that might be an ongoing thing here for a while nice

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Super fun. You ready to talk about where ideas come from? Yes, I am

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All right

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well today's book is where good ideas come from by Stephen Johnson and

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this was a book that I picked and I had heard from several people

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about Stephen Johnson in this book in particular

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so kept coming onto my radar and

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With the whole topic of PKM fascinating me. I figured this would have some overlap with that

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I did not expect it to speak directly to software spoiler alert. He does a little bit even in this older book, which is

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surprising and his choice of software is

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Fitting for the time frame - yes, yes, exactly

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So stay tuned for that

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But essentially it's really about how do good ideas come about which I think is a fascinating

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concept

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The book itself is not like your traditional book. There's an introduction

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There's a conclusion and then there are seven chapters in between there are not multiple parts

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They're not even labeled chapters. It's just the number and then the thing

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so

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A little bit different a little bit refreshing approach. I would say to this

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Before we get into the the specifics though, what were your first impressions of this book?

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All sorts of things so

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I wasn't real sure what I was getting into when I read the title where good ideas come from

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And my mind it was potentially

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Going to go down the route of a systems book like here's a process you can go through to come up with good ideas

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Like I had that as a potential

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in the back of my mind

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But then if you read the subtitle on this the natural history of innovation

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It kind of lends itself to saying that probably that's not going to be

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What you're going to get out of this

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If you read the whole paragraph and and bio of sorts on the the back of it

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It would tell you that you're probably not going to get a system out of this and yet somehow I thought that was maybe going to happen

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But if you continued the whole how to read a book concept and wrote through

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the table of contents like what you were saying

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It's it definitely could have been put together in a three-part book

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It definitely could have been a whole bunch of things, but I feel like they did really well and just saying no

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It's not a three-part book. It's

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seven segments

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Intro conclusion with an actual real

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conclusion for once I feel like that's maybe a breath of fresh air will get there

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And then there's this massive amount of like acknowledgement and

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appendix and stuff on the back

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But something that's in the back that I I kind of wish more books did

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Uh, but there is like a further reading

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section in the back

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That I tend to appreciate now

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That said a lot of these are his own books

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Or are they all his own books? Anyway, I think it's it is helpful to just kind of see like here's some other stuff that you can read

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That's similar to

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This topic and that's that's something that I wish more books would do. I know that a lot of books will reference

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Uh other books within it and that's that's a lot of times how I come up with ideas for

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The next books that we're going to read so

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overall I liked it, but

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Uh, the layout of it and the structure of it. It was definitely a breath of fresh air just based on what we normally see

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Agreed

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Uh, it is definitely a different type of book. Um, let's actually

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go into the uh, the introduction here because

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This really sets up the framework that he uses throughout the rest of the book

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This appendix by the way, I think it was the last book

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You are the great mental models volume two. You were surprised at how small the appendix was

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Didn't exist this book made up for it. Yeah, it absolutely did

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I'm just looking at it. It's like how long is this thing?

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Because it's

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That's the bibliography

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Yeah, it's long 40 pages

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There's the book feels bigger than it than it is because it's

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247 pages I think and then there's a whole bunch after that

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Feels like you're only about two thirds of the way through the book when you're physically holding it right which is all

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All uh appendix and references and things like that which he addresses

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How and why he used the format that he did later on in the book, but

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In the introduction he really pieces together three different

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Metaphors, I guess for idea generation

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one of them

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is

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the coral reefs and Darwin and how he recognized that this is a very small percentage of the

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earth's landmass, but

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it houses an insane number of the

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The majority of the species, but it's a disproportionately high percentage

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and then he talks about cities

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and then the third metaphor that he uses is the internet or the world wide web

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so a lot of the arguments that he makes in all the other chapters following this

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are all

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filtered through these

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Metaphors, which I'm curious if you thought that was

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Successful or not, how did you feel about this approach setting up the rest of the book?

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At the very beginning like when I read those particular pieces

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It was one that I felt like this could either go one of two ways

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Like he's setting me up with these three different stories

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And it seems to work pretty well at least in the intro

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But you know at that point I wasn't so sure that it was going to continue throughout the rest of the book

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You could kind of like that happens pretty commonly like the

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Whatever is pitched in the introduction

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Seems like it carries on throughout the rest of the book like that's the the recurring theme you're about to get

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That seems to be a common thing

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Which is partly why I tell people be sure you read the introduction because a lot of people I've learned skip it which seems weird to me

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but

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given that he takes these three different concepts with Darwin and

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you know inner city life and

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You know the worldwide web taking those three

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Stories and carrying them throughout the rest of the book. It seems to work pretty well

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Knowing

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Quite a bit about each of those three

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There's a bunch of like places that you could say are loopholes and potential foundational problems

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With that particular approach like what the the details that he's going to talk about throughout the rest of the book

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So I'm not sure how well it played out

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Time it was done

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but

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It's it's kind of a cool way to do it. I think having these three different ones that you're going to carry through the whole

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Book that part was fascinating to me versus the standard

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Let me pitch this one idea that we're going to talk about throughout the entire book

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No, we're going to come at this from three completely different angles

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And i'm going to give you examples and stories about each of them through the entirety of this text

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That I greatly appreciated like that that really puts some

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Teeth to the content here. So very grateful for that part

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Yeah, and actually let's just talk about that a little bit

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I mentioned he kind of explains his approach at the end of the book

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But I don't think it really fits with the arguments and the things that we're going to be talking about

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So let's just talk about it here. Okay

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He says essentially there's a couple different ways that you can attempt to write a book like this

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You can select a single

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Example or very few examples and that is your case study

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You're going to go really deep on this one example

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The problem with that is that you have potentially cherry picked one example and it may not represent the larger sample size

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Doesn't really tell you what's going on in that particular domain

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You really have to have confidence that you picked something that represents the whole

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So another option would be that you can select a whole bunch of

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Stories and kind of piece them together and that's kind of what he's tried to do here

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There's a whole bunch of stories and I would argue that he is a pretty does a pretty good job of telling those stories

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But again, he's working them into this framework with these three metaphors that we mentioned at the beginning

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And he calls out that again

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There's a possibility here that you're cherry picking things and you get it wrong

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So essentially he's saying like you got to pick the the lesser of two evils here

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Right, right if you really want to go in any sort of depth

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And so he basically calls out this is what I have decided to do and this is why I've made the decisions that I've made

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You can see his

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Perspective and I don't think that either of us would 100% agree with everything that he says in here

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But I at least appreciate the transparency there

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I don't think I've ever read another productivity book like that where essentially they're saying

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You know, I recognize that what I'm sharing here is not just obvious fact and you're going to have to trust me

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Right and I wish more authors would would take that approach

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Yeah, and this is where

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And I was trying to figure out where to put this in this episode, but that sets it up really well in that

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Because of the way he's approaching this it lends a lot of credibility to what you're about to read

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Because there's so much that he calls out here saying

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You know, they're potentially flaws in this kind of like what I was saying

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Like there are points in each of these three concepts that I feel like I would disagree with or argue with

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but collectively

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The idea comes across like I can nitpick on his examples and his metaphors here

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because I've

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read darwin's on

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Uh on origin of origin of species like because I've read that

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Like I know some of the things that are in there that he's not calling out here

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that might change what he says here

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but

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He didn't call that out and he did use that particular route of thinking and that is not

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The point that he's trying to make here. Like that's that's an adjacence issue. That's not impacting

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The the topic or the idea that he is presenting. So that said like it doesn't take away from the book

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I don't find it's simply something I would disagree with

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but because he has these three different examples

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And he calls out that hey, there's probably problems with this

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Like oh, okay

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But that means that now this is an open dialogue between me and this author about

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Whether or not the concepts are true like the the the philosophies that he's going to present here

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Are they true or not? Well

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He's working his way through it. I'm fine having that dialogue because he's allowing me to have that dialogue

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He's not telling me hey, this is the only way this works and you have to listen to me

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That's not what he's saying at all. He's like I'm working through this as well

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So because of that, it's it's a lot easier to give grace when you're working through it

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Yeah, that's a really good description

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I had the same

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reaction

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So just to call it out, obviously he uses Darwin a lot and

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Evolution big bang stuff like that. I was a biology major in college and I remember sitting my freshman biology class

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And my professor who was teaching the theory of evolution

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Was like yeah, so the basis for all this stuff is radiocarbon dating and this really doesn't make any sense

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I'm sorry. Just take my word for it. Yeah, and I've never done well with somebody who just

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Take my word for it

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Yep

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So the only nitpick I really have is with the the dates

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I don't really know and I don't I don't want to argue

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Specifics with that because it's not relevant with what he's really trying to do here number one

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He's using three different examples like you said so it's a framework for discussing a concept not debating

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facts, which

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Means that we can have that dialogue like you said there's no direct challenge. You're either right or wrong

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We can just have a conversation

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We can learn from it, which is really the whole idea when you read a book going back to how to read a book

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There's our obligatory how to read a book mentioned for this episode

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So true so true has to come up a lot

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It's so good though

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I mean one of the most important things I got from that was that when you read a book

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You're having a conversation with the author and what you are supposed to do

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Is not just blindly except that everything that they tell you is true

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But you're supposed to understand their arguments and then respond I feel like this book is perfect for that

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Yep

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If you're reading how to read a book and then you're like, okay

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Now I need one to practice on pick up this one

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No kidding

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Yeah, because it it does

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It does all the things right the well

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There there there's probably a couple that it doesn't

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in minutes he in

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In adler's book how to read a book he has a specific call towards

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A very well laid out table of contents. That is not here

00:25:01

It's just almost single words per segment

00:25:03

So it it really doesn't give you a whole lot about what you're going to cover in each section

00:25:08

And then it also doesn't really do a very good job

00:25:11

like if you were to just flip through and try to scan the book

00:25:14

because it's so story heavy and because it's

00:25:19

got very little for like subtopics within a segment within a chapter

00:25:25

It's it's kind of tough to get a general idea when you're skipping through it ahead of time before you start reading to get your general

00:25:32

Just of the book before you dig in so like according to adler like those two components would be missing here

00:25:39

So not to say that it's bad in any way. It's just different

00:25:43

but

00:25:46

That all said there's a lot to love here for sure

00:25:48

All right, so let's get into meet here

00:25:52

chapter one

00:25:55

Is the first very interesting idea that this book about ideas introduces us to and that is the adjacent

00:26:04

possible

00:26:06

I love this term and this idea the adjacent possible basically are the first order possibilities

00:26:14

So if you are

00:26:16

In a room the adjacent possible would be the four doors that lead out of that room

00:26:22

But nothing beyond that so if those rooms had other doors that went to other rooms. That's not the adjacent possible

00:26:28

It's what is right next to you that you could take action on

00:26:32

What do you think about this idea?

00:26:36

To me it makes perfect sense that it's the first chapter in the book because I feel like this is the most common

00:26:40

Like how so it might be technically wrong, but I feel like

00:26:44

The type of innovative ideas that come out like this is probably how most of them

00:26:50

come about that

00:26:53

Save maybe chapter six

00:26:55

Exaptation like that one might be there as well. But anyway things that are like right beside it

00:27:00

um

00:27:02

This this is a really cool concept and I especially like the term as well because when you you have an existing technology or concept an idea

00:27:10

And then like see something like right beside it like it's just like tipping over

00:27:15

It's like oh that that'll make sense like that concept is really it's really powerful when you start thinking about it that way

00:27:22

Yeah, I mean when it comes to

00:27:25

good ideas

00:27:29

Like a single good idea can change your life is something that I've

00:27:31

Set off and I don't know where I originally got that but when you think about that phrase

00:27:36

You really are thinking like

00:27:38

Well in order to totally transform my situation this idea has got to be completely different

00:27:44

But this whole bucket where good ideas come from basically is saying it's not going to be something that's completely out of left field

00:27:54

It's going to be something that is very close to where you are

00:27:59

That's the thing that's going to be the the breakthrough and I feel like that releases a lot of pressure in terms of

00:28:06

Trying to find and develop

00:28:10

good ideas

00:28:12

Because you don't need to go search a whole bunch of domains that

00:28:16

You have no experience with you don't have to give in to the FOMO that's associated with that

00:28:23

I feel like when it comes to

00:28:26

Making the most of what you've got to work with

00:28:28

That's the danger at least for me is like well there must be something I'm missing

00:28:33

There must be some podcast that somebody's listening to that they're

00:28:36

Getting the answers that I'm not or they're reading some books that are giving them the answers that I'm not getting

00:28:42

And this kind of diffuses all that it's really just saying you know the things that are really going to

00:28:48

Change your life are

00:28:51

To the left and to the right of you

00:28:53

They're not way out there and you need this crazy roadmap that's going to lead you right there

00:28:58

You just need to be curious enough and look up from the day-to-day and what's directly in front of you long enough to consider what is possible

00:29:04

Yeah, if if you're willing to do that

00:29:08

Like you're saying it can make some pretty massive

00:29:12

changes for you

00:29:14

just in your entire existence really because

00:29:17

whenever you take something that's small

00:29:21

And then look right beside it like you you've got a particular issue. I'm trying to think of a good example

00:29:26

but

00:29:27

you know if you've got things that you're doing every single day and then

00:29:30

you come across

00:29:33

something that's right beside that like

00:29:36

Can't think of a good example right now

00:29:39

Well, here's one so

00:29:42

We were talking about earlier on about you know how I've been changing my environment and stuff

00:29:47

And there are a lot of different ways that people store sound equipment, right

00:29:52

Some people will put the microphones in bags and then they make a pile of the bags

00:29:57

Some people will drill holes and things and stick all the microphones down in that so that they're all in a line

00:30:02

and

00:30:03

It

00:30:04

It really occurred to us as of like last week that

00:30:08

We could really combine a couple of those things and take better care of our microphones

00:30:14

And yet have them easily accessible. So we just have little bins that are labeled with the mics in their bags

00:30:21

That can be stacked so I can actually use more space that way

00:30:25

but that idea came

00:30:28

from

00:30:29

Us walking from the work room

00:30:32

Which is literally right next door to the sound storage room

00:30:37

Where they had a whole bunch of bins sitting there like this is a very physical like it's right beside it sort of thing

00:30:43

So to me, it's kind of like that in that like we saw this idea here

00:30:47

It's kind of delves into chapter six a little bit

00:30:50

But it takes an idea from this spot right beside us and then we can use it in this existing place

00:30:56

so

00:30:58

It kind of floats over from side to side there, but it it is an easy way to take existing ideas or

00:31:04

Taking idea that you need to or probably you need to solve and take an idea right beside it to come in

00:31:10

Feel like I keep saying the same thing, but it feels different in my brain, but hopefully you get the point

00:31:14

I do

00:31:17

The example that they use that really stood up to me from this chapter was Charles Babbage

00:31:22

He created the difference engine and the analytical engine, which was over a hundred years before the first computer

00:31:28

And it did not take off

00:31:31

And the argument that Stephen Johnson makes is that it was because it was outside of the adjacent possible for

00:31:38

Everybody in the culture at the time

00:31:40

And I feel like the same argument could be made for something like apples newton

00:31:45

And i'm sure there's a million other examples that non apple people can use to fill in this

00:31:50

This too, but that's the one that comes to mind for me

00:31:53

It's essentially an iPad before the iPad, but it was so far before the iPad that no one really saw

00:31:59

The value of the tablet like device like that

00:32:02

And that's generalizing a ton. I get it

00:32:06

But we can all identify those different examples

00:32:09

Where something is a good idea, but it's the wrong time, you know, and that's just because in

00:32:17

Stephen johnson's words

00:32:19

The culture is not ready to accept that yet because it's not yet in that adjacent possible. They can't figure out

00:32:26

Why that's beneficial because there's no clear path from where they are to

00:32:32

Where that is

00:32:35

I think that's an interesting idea

00:32:38

I don't know what practically comes from that other than to look back and at history at some of the

00:32:44

The things that were quote unquote before their time

00:32:47

But I think if I were to pick something that's a applicable takeaway from this it's

00:32:52

not to assume that

00:32:54

Everybody is going to be as excited about whatever new thing you're bringing as you are

00:32:59

and you have to consider where they are

00:33:03

And what they are experiencing and what they are able to see

00:33:07

If you can't chart a real clear and short path

00:33:11

From here to there

00:33:14

It's just not going to work because this is how people operate. This is

00:33:18

Where good ideas come from is that adjacent possible? It's like if it's not in the adjacent possible for a lot of people

00:33:24

It's not even an option

00:33:26

Yeah, probably a good example of this is

00:33:28

from the book is the story of youtube

00:33:32

and it's beginning where like people were able to

00:33:35

Watch videos online, but they didn't really have a place to share their own

00:33:39

online so like that

00:33:42

That the things that were currently happening like you could watch videos online

00:33:45

In a lot of places the bandwidth capabilities were fast enough that you could watch videos online

00:33:54

Which meant that it was

00:33:57

Adjecently possible now for people to upload their own to a social network of sorts

00:34:03

Way back in 1995 like that became possible

00:34:07

But if they had done that 10 years prior the web was already around

00:34:10

And the concepts were there like technically they probably could have pulled it off

00:34:16

But because people weren't used to watching videos on the web yet and because the download speeds were not there yet

00:34:22

It would not have been really possible for it to take off

00:34:26

Whereas when it did release it exploded within a year

00:34:30

because

00:34:32

That that collection of requirements made it a possibility for it to take off

00:34:37

Yep, I forgot about the youtube example

00:34:41

There are so many examples in this book. Yeah, and that's really the powerful thing about this

00:34:46

I gave up trying to detail all the

00:34:48

All the stories that they're telling because it was impossible

00:34:52

But that's the beauty of it too is that

00:34:54

There's so many examples one of them is going to resonate and that's the one that you dive deeper into and that's the one that

00:35:00

Allows you to to connect the dots that you weren't able to connect before

00:35:03

That's actually a good place to go into the next chapter. So let's do that chapter two is liquid

00:35:11

networks

00:35:14

Do you have a definition for a liquid network?

00:35:18

so maybe

00:35:22

The the best way I could come up with this is

00:35:25

Like the easiest example I can think of off top of my head is if you think of a cup

00:35:29

Full of water and it's overflowing

00:35:32

And then that water goes everywhere else

00:35:35

Like that to me

00:35:36

That's the easiest way to think of it just because by a liquid network

00:35:39

I think what he's referring to is you have a collection of people in an area

00:35:44

That because they're simply around other people you can't help but absorb some of the ideas from those other groups

00:35:53

And then that can inform your own thinking on an idea and develop an idea

00:35:57

And those ideas can come out of that kind of oozing out of

00:36:01

Concepts from other groups. That's kind of how I think about it now

00:36:05

Whether that's the way he would explain it or not. I don't know, but it seems to make sense in my brain

00:36:09

Well, I like that definition. I'm glad I asked you first

00:36:14

Because I think the the big thing I got from this is that a good idea is always the result of a network

00:36:20

The size of the network is important for good ideas

00:36:23

And you have to be able to bump into things like you were talking about. It's not clean

00:36:28

It's not tidy even though

00:36:30

That's what we tend to do. We tend to condense

00:36:32

The origin stories of our best ideas into tidy narratives, but it's never really that

00:36:38

Simple

00:36:41

And I like the idea of a cup overflowing and because there is no way to prevent those things from bumping into each other

00:36:47

I think the big thing I took away from this when I read it

00:36:50

Was that the network has to be plastic is a definition that he uses able to adopt new configurations

00:36:57

So essentially it doesn't need to be as messy as an overflowing cup of water

00:37:02

I think but it does have to

00:37:04

Not be

00:37:06

Solid in its configuration and it has to be adaptable. It has to respond to different

00:37:10

Forces from the environment

00:37:13

I think this this concept is one

00:37:17

I don't like people would have said it, but this concept is one that

00:37:20

Had a pretty big impact on the idea behind open layout offices like this this

00:37:28

Kind of connection and letting people run into each other sort of thing like building those networks

00:37:34

I think is a big part of why people were doing that because they're trying to create those instances where you're

00:37:41

Sharing information across departments and such

00:37:44

so like that idea is kind of what he's getting at and

00:37:48

It does work

00:37:52

I don't think that people would say that it's forced

00:37:55

Liquidity in that case is a good idea

00:37:59

We've learned that that's not a great thing long term. So don't do that. Please

00:38:04

Open layout offices are

00:38:07

Terrible, please don't please don't build them

00:38:12

Yeah, it mentions that the innovative systems tend to gravitate to the edge of chaos

00:38:18

So that makes me a little bit

00:38:22

Uncomfortable, I guess i'm getting better at being okay with being uncomfortable when it comes to that sort of stuff though

00:38:30

I recognize that that's where a lot of the the good stuff happens, but

00:38:34

And he also mentions that to make your mind more plastic you need to put it in an environment that resembles a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible

00:38:42

That's interesting and that kind of ties back to your

00:38:45

Action item of considering your environment. I feel now that could be physical environment, but it could be a bunch of other things as well

00:38:54

So I thought that was

00:38:57

That was interesting and then ends or one of the last things he talks about in this chapter is that the most productive tools for generating good ideas are humans around a table

00:39:04

That is going to make

00:39:10

The introverts who don't like open offices uncomfortable

00:39:13

But I do think it really is important to recognize when to deploy that tactically that is absolutely the the best

00:39:21

Scenario if you want to generate good ideas is get face to face and talk about things

00:39:27

Yeah, and just just to piggyback on that idea like the the idea of

00:39:32

Like getting together in a room to talk through

00:39:35

Situations or a new concept of some kind

00:39:40

Uh that that is something that as an introvert. I am always like no don't make me do that

00:39:45

But then when it's done, it's usually a good experience like I know that I've got one of these coming up here soon. We're in the middle of

00:39:52

remodeling our church website, so I'm kind of quarterbacking that whole process and

00:40:00

There's a fair amount of let's talk through our existing website. What do we like what don't we like?

00:40:07

Let's find new ideas for things like let's talk through each potential feature

00:40:11

And then we can start to wireframe some ideas for what that could become

00:40:15

based on all of that feedback, but

00:40:19

All of that is dependent on us getting together around a table

00:40:22

And just talking through all of these potential things and trying to make sure that everybody gets a voice

00:40:27

In that process right or wrong doesn't matter. Let's just talk about it

00:40:31

And keeping that group small you don't want that to be a huge group just saying

00:40:36

Agreed anything else from this? Should we move on to the next chapter?

00:40:40

No, we should slow down though

00:40:43

Uh, I don't know. I think uh, there's some good stuff to get into here in a little bit

00:40:49

so uh chapter three is the slow hunch

00:40:54

And this essentially if I were to summarize this is

00:40:59

That you're never going to have that eureka moment right away

00:41:05

It takes some time to connect those dots

00:41:09

You have to kind of brew on things for a while

00:41:13

And he used a phrase in here which reminded me of

00:41:18

The five sees a creativity that I put together. I hadn't read this book at that time

00:41:22

But it's uh, the middle step for me is cultivate

00:41:27

And that was that was like a big aha moment for me is that I have these ideas

00:41:30

I put them in to my system

00:41:32

And then I don't really know what they're going to be for a while. I have to

00:41:35

Give them the right conditions and and let these ideas mature

00:41:39

It's kind of like you put seeds in the ground and you got a water them and give them sunlight

00:41:44

And then they poke through and then you kind of see what you what you've got

00:41:47

Maybe you're a master gardener. You know what those seeds look like. I'm not so

00:41:50

It's not till I till they poke through and they actually start producing some fruit that I'm maybe able to tell what they are

00:41:55

And that is essentially the what he's talking about here with the slow hunch and he even used that word cultivate

00:42:01

Which I thought was really interesting. Yeah, and there are again, there's a whole bunch of

00:42:06

Examples here, but the the concept of a slow hunch is probably

00:42:12

Well, no, I wouldn't say it's like your

00:42:16

classic hollywood version of eureka moment

00:42:19

Uh, but it's one of these where

00:42:22

You've been thinking about something for a long time

00:42:26

And you probably can't put your finger on what the grand idea is quite yet

00:42:31

But you're like one step away from it like you've got a whole collection of

00:42:36

Background that you're leading up to something and you don't really have

00:42:42

The final answer, but you're you're building it could take decades to get that all

00:42:46

Built up for example one of the ones that I like personally that I've been kind of working through as this concept of

00:42:53

building daily routines and seasonal routines around the sun clock

00:42:58

Like when the sun is up versus when the sun is down like during the winter we tend to slow down

00:43:03

During the summer we speed up

00:43:06

Like that concept is one that I've been like working through from a productivity stance. No, I don't know what comes of that

00:43:13

I don't really have

00:43:15

any like

00:43:16

Here's what that means like here's the routine process. I feel like you should work through and here's what that

00:43:21

leads to in my life personally like I don't have any of that

00:43:24

But I've got this whole thing that's like slowly putting puzzle pieces together that I've been working on for maybe four years now

00:43:32

Around that concept. So it's something that I know like I'm working my way towards

00:43:37

To me that feels like the type of thing he would refer to as a slow hunch

00:43:41

Like I have a feeling that there's something connected here

00:43:44

But I can't quite tell you what it is

00:43:47

So the scientists out there need to reach out and let me know the answers to the questions

00:43:50

Because I'm sure somebody has solved it already. I just don't know what it is

00:43:53

A couple of quotes

00:43:57

Here actually one one quote and then another idea that I wanted to call it page 78

00:44:02

Sustaining the slow hunch is less a matter of perspiration than of cultivation

00:44:06

There's that word that I was looking for

00:44:08

You give the hunch enough nourishment to keep growing and plant it fertile soil where its roots can make new connections

00:44:14

And then you give it time to bloom

00:44:17

And then related to that keeping a slow hunch alive can be difficult

00:44:20

I agree with this and this is the the thing that was always difficult for me

00:44:26

Prior to get the bell ready obsidian

00:44:29

I would

00:44:32

I would just capture things whenever I would think of them into drafts and then I would have this giant list of things and then

00:44:39

Transfer all of that stuff without any sort of

00:44:43

Quality control cut to a task manager like omni focus

00:44:47

And then I've got a whole bunch of things in there and that initially it was like hey great check this out

00:44:52

I've got all these things that I can possibly take action on whenever I want to but they just sat there

00:44:57

I never did anything with them. They got old and they got stale and then I threw them out after a while

00:45:02

And so yeah, it's a lot more work to put stuff into a software program and create links and connections between things

00:45:11

But I kind of feel like that's part of the cultivating effort and you don't want to do that with everything

00:45:15

You want to do that around the stuff that

00:45:17

Really matters to you

00:45:20

So for me for example

00:45:22

When I did the linking your thinking workshop with nikmylo you have like this capstone project

00:45:27

And mine was this cross reference of all of the sermon sketch notes that I have taken

00:45:33

Which by the way, if you want to see what that looks like i've got a public version of it at notes.bathbasepredictivity.com

00:45:41

Now

00:45:42

Essentially what I do is I take sketch notes of the sermons that I

00:45:45

I listen listen to and then I you have a

00:45:48

A coding system I draw a box around the verse references and each one of the verses is an individual note in obsidian

00:45:55

Thanks to joe buleg and his fantastic scripts

00:45:58

And then what I can do is link those things together based on the notes that I've taken and kind of build my own cross-reference library

00:46:07

I'm taking that a step further by the way getting maybe a little too nerdy here, but in the yeah

00:46:11

I added a yaml section to each one of those

00:46:15

verses

00:46:16

Okay

00:46:17

And I'm applying tags at the note level for bible slash whatever and those are going to be like broken down into different themes

00:46:24

Once I have gone through and added all those because I have all those like different color highlights in my paper bibles

00:46:31

Right, so I'm going to add all that stuff

00:46:33

And then I'm going to package that all up as something that people can download as like a starter of

00:46:37

Nice. Nice. Yeah, I think that is pretty cool

00:46:42

But that's kind of the point is like I know exactly how I want to be able to use this and the value of

00:46:46

linking those things together how that can help me

00:46:48

See new things and cultivate new ideas based on the stuff that's that's in there

00:46:52

I'm that's really what you need in order to make this this stuff work

00:46:56

You can't just say okay every note I've ever connected I'm gonna or ever collect it

00:47:00

I'm gonna try to connect them all that is the path to madness

00:47:04

Well, this this chapter is one where the common place book comes up. Yep, and that's how I was gonna talk about next this this one

00:47:13

Like as soon as I read the word commonplace

00:47:17

And I I didn't write down what the first place is that that word occurred, but the first time it came up

00:47:22

I actually had to put the book down

00:47:26

I remember doing this because it was still dark outside and I set the book on the arm of the couch

00:47:32

but

00:47:33

When I read the word it occurred to me that a lot of

00:47:36

This book up to this point. This is like in page mid 80s

00:47:41

at that point it occurred to me that

00:47:43

So much of what people talk about in the world of note making and obsidian roam

00:47:49

PKMs like all this world of note

00:47:53

connection and linking process

00:47:56

It it really can come back to

00:47:58

this slow hunch concept

00:48:01

But it can also come back to a lot of these other idea

00:48:05

mechanisms that we're talking about here simply because

00:48:07

when you have things like you know take the adjacent possible

00:48:13

because you can

00:48:16

See other connections to notes

00:48:18

It makes it easy then to see what could become possible

00:48:23

We'll talk about in the next chapter about serendipity. That's easily connected into

00:48:28

This this concept of note making the slow hunch you're continually working on particular topics and trying to put them together so you can slowly build up that

00:48:36

Knowledge base to come to an idea

00:48:41

You can do the same thing with like liquid networks like you can start to see

00:48:45

Connections and spilling over from one area into another like you can start to apply these to different

00:48:52

components of that note database of sorts and

00:48:56

It might be partially why so many people are excited about it because they've started to have a lot more ideas on what they have

00:49:03

previously

00:49:06

That might come up more as we talk about this especially when we get to the software thing here before too long

00:49:11

So that that particular concept of the commonplace comes up here and like all those bells started going off for me

00:49:19

That's really what he's talking about like what just happened in my brain at that moment reading this book

00:49:24

That concept of having the idea pop up like that. That's that's exactly what he's referring to

00:49:29

Yeah, I mean we've heard about the commonplace book before

00:49:33

I think the most recent thing that we've read that has spoken to this is probably building a second brain

00:49:39

by uh tiago forte

00:49:42

But there was a phrase that they use here which made the whole idea of the commonplace book

00:49:47

Click a little bit better for me and it's with this definition of common placing. I love that term

00:49:53

I'm going to start using that

00:49:55

What you're doing? Oh, I'm common placing

00:49:57

But common placing is writing down

00:50:02

interesting quotes and phrases

00:50:04

That word interesting

00:50:07

for whatever reason that unlocked a whole bunch of stuff for me

00:50:10

because

00:50:12

You can read a book and everyone can agree

00:50:16

There is some great information in this book and you may not find it interesting at all

00:50:21

And then according to this definition of common placing then you should transfer

00:50:26

None of the information in that book into your commonplace book

00:50:30

Does that

00:50:32

feel revolutionary to you at all it does to me because I've always I guess felt a little bit of pressure at least to like

00:50:39

Collect the good ideas even if I don't think they're good

00:50:44

I should collect the things that other people say are good

00:50:46

And this is basically saying no

00:50:48

Don't do any of the don't do any of that

00:50:52

Just keep the stuff that stands out to you

00:50:54

And I know that I've talked about how when I write my mind-note files

00:50:57

I really just capture the things that are interesting to me

00:50:59

But there's always been that voice in the back of my head that's like you're doing it wrong

00:51:02

You're missing some stuff

00:51:04

And this basically was the release that I needed to like no just keep keep doing it the way you want to do it

00:51:10

Yeah, this this is actually I was trying to find it. I wrote it down somewhere, but I can't place it

00:51:16

Um where he was talking about that concept of the interesting components because I had the same

00:51:21

Feeling that you did in that

00:51:24

Like I always feel like whenever I'm taking book notes or I'm taking notes in a meeting or something or on a sermon

00:51:31

You name it. I'm always like trying to catch. Okay. What are all the topic points?

00:51:35

What are the sub points like I'm not writing down verbatim quotes

00:51:40

that

00:51:41

Struck me I'm trying to capture the entire

00:51:44

Thing whether it's a meeting whatever book

00:51:48

It's more like I'm trying to capture the gist of it as opposed to the things that I found

00:51:55

Fascinating or I wanted to dig more into and

00:51:59

when when you come at it from the perspective of no, I'm just going to write down the things that are of interest

00:52:06

Or that I want to come back to at some point because sometimes it is a high point sometimes it is a known thing that

00:52:13

a known topic that

00:52:16

It's not especially interesting, but you do want to come back to it because you feel like you missed something there like those two pieces

00:52:22

Starting to capture just those and being free to just let the other stuff go away because it's no fun

00:52:28

I think that's incredibly freeing

00:52:32

But I also know that some of maybe my angst with that and maybe this is some of yours as well

00:52:38

Mike is probably because we make things for the internet

00:52:41

In that like I feel like I got to capture all this stuff because all the people who follow me on twitter are going to expect that

00:52:48

and

00:52:50

That expectation then kills the

00:52:53

Process as opposed to me just grabbing what's interesting. So

00:52:58

I'm not real sure what to do with that particular component of this

00:53:02

but I

00:53:03

I definitely like the freeing concept of like let's let's

00:53:07

Write down. Let's commonplace the interesting. Let's not commonplace everything that that part is freeing. Yes

00:53:14

Okay, cool

00:53:17

Well, let's go into the the next section here because we kind of talked about this a little bit already

00:53:22

But this I think is the reason why you just need the stuff that is interesting the stuff

00:53:26

That isn't interesting is not going to contribute to chapter four

00:53:29

Serendipity

00:53:31

And serendipity is the power of accidental connection

00:53:35

So if it's not interesting you're not going to be turning these things over in your brain

00:53:39

And really the thing that

00:53:42

Makes me uncomfortable about this is a phrase at the beginning of this chapter the more disorganized your brain is the smarter you are

00:53:49

I don't like that. I'm really smart then

00:53:53

It's true

00:53:58

because

00:54:00

Last night we were pecking over running errands kids where to wanna and

00:54:05

There was a a conversation we had earlier

00:54:09

I'm not gonna give you all the details because it'll take too long

00:54:12

We had a conversation when we're at the house

00:54:14

We were headed to the store and she mentioned something else and then I brought something completely unrelated to either one of them up

00:54:21

And I was like, okay

00:54:24

Before I bring this up like here's what i'm gonna bring up

00:54:28

Just so you're aware and I stepped her through there were 12 points of

00:54:32

lawn mowers pto shafts

00:54:35

spinning rods like

00:54:38

It went all the way through this progression to the topic we were talking about which was like gardening seeds

00:54:43

How we got to that point like that was just the way my brain worked and it was like

00:54:49

Instant like I just immediately jumped to it like sorry

00:54:53

racecar brain we got there quick

00:54:56

That is interesting. I did not make that connection at all, but it totally makes sense the adhd

00:55:02

um

00:55:04

tendencies and how that could encourage more

00:55:07

Serendipity so uh

00:55:10

Yeah, I'm after noodle on that one

00:55:15

This is because one that I feel like I run into a lot so I really liked this one

00:55:20

Sure sure. Well, I like the idea of the serendipity

00:55:24

I feel like that's the promise of a lot of these pkm apps which speaking of apps

00:55:28

This is where we tease this a little bit. This book was written. I don't have the book in front of me

00:55:33

I don't know the the copyright date 2010 2010. Okay, so roman obsidian are not a thing

00:55:39

However, devinthink is and he talks about using devinthink and really the ai in devinthink to make

00:55:47

the connections between different things and

00:55:53

uh, I really want to updated version of this and what he thinks of obsidian, but

00:55:58

That's kind of the way that I've chosen to apply the principles that he's talking about here

00:56:03

however, the main takeaway is that

00:56:05

Software can help us think better by encouraging serendipity

00:56:10

And that clearly articulates this idea the slow hunch I guess that I have had in my head for a long time

00:56:18

And I have not been able to articulate well

00:56:21

He says that it's not just a dumb search

00:56:25

And I feel like you really have to read this book up until this point to really get the context of this

00:56:31

However, this is the response to anyone who would argue

00:56:36

Oh, well, it's just a bunch of notes and you can search and find things. No, you're missing the point

00:56:41

By using a search you've already

00:56:44

Determined what angle you're coming at this from

00:56:49

So that filter is going to reduce the serendipity

00:56:53

Does it take more time to set this up and to just play with your notes like this?

00:56:58

Yes, it absolutely takes more time

00:57:02

However, if you are concerned about having more and better ideas

00:57:06

I think he's saying at this point that it's essential

00:57:09

This this is where like he spends three pages on devinthink

00:57:15

Remember what we talked about early on like he he called out that

00:57:19

There's going to be problems with his metaphors or going to be issues and that's okay

00:57:25

And but we need to have these things in order to have the conversation

00:57:28

Because he made that point

00:57:30

He brought up devinthink and I immediately said oh that's probably what they used to the time

00:57:34

Probably wasn't a bad tool to use at the time. We've moved on since then. That's okay

00:57:38

Like that was as far as my brain went

00:57:41

But if he had been

00:57:43

Pitching things is this is the way this works. This is the way you should do it

00:57:47

I'd have been like no, it's a terrible idea. I'm never doing that

00:57:50

You're terrible even recommending that like that's probably what my reaction is

00:57:54

So this is very different because of the way he has positioned the entirety of the book

00:57:59

So I'm very grateful that he did that number one

00:58:01

Uh, and number two like this is absolutely like what you're saying

00:58:05

the linking process with notes

00:58:09

This is something like I didn't really get for quite some time

00:58:12

And if you go listen to or watch some of my old streams or even some old bookworm episodes like

00:58:18

I don't even know that pkms are the thing you should be doing

00:58:21

but if you can stick with it for a little bit and then you have

00:58:26

A linked note show up that you weren't expecting

00:58:29

that

00:58:31

makes a connection

00:58:32

like mentally not in the software

00:58:36

And then you have an idea that you would not have had otherwise

00:58:39

That's when the light bulb will go off and you'll realize the whole system works

00:58:42

But until you get to that point and until you have that first

00:58:46

Huh hadn't made that connection before until you have that

00:58:50

It's it's probably not going to be there and it's just going to feel like a total

00:58:54

Waste of time. Um, emosies are a terrible idea Blake

00:58:59

Call them a map

00:59:02

and be done

00:59:04

Same thing though. Same thing. I am nodding my head vigorously over here

00:59:09

Because I agree with everything that you're saying and you're right. You need to experience that

00:59:13

You can't just describe what is going on

00:59:17

Technically the moment that you get that first connection that you would not have gotten otherwise

00:59:22

You're like, oh, this is magical

00:59:26

And I feel like what most people do is they add all the obvious connections

00:59:31

Which are not going to give them any future value. They're just another way that they can organize things

00:59:38

Which again, it's not the purpose serendipity requires disorganization

00:59:44

It's these unexpected links that provide the the insights

00:59:50

Now I do I am curious if he is still

00:59:54

Let's say he's he's a apple nerd like we are

00:59:58

Is he still using dev and think I don't know because I think there's a potential that he's still using dev and think

01:00:03

I don't think it's automatically that that's what they had available to them back then

01:00:06

Uh, I know a lot of people who use dev and think and

01:00:10

Obsidian together because dev and think is better at this kind of stuff

01:00:14

Just like searching a whole bunch of files and grouping metadata together

01:00:17

It's kind of

01:00:20

Crazy how powerful that is

01:00:22

It's not the direct connection backlink or bidirectional links that obsidian has but they're they're kind of different things and you can

01:00:28

You don't have to use one or the other really just find one that's going to increase the serendipity for you

01:00:33

now I have

01:00:36

A bunch of action items from this particular chapter

01:00:39

Uh, three of my four action items actually are from this chapter

01:00:44

So one of the things he mentions and then he talks about reading books is that you need to allow ideas to bounce into each other

01:00:51

I don't know how you read books

01:00:55

In the past, I have tended to read one at a time

01:00:58

He's basically saying that's not a good idea because again you want to allow these ideas to bounce into each other

01:01:04

Okay, reluctantly

01:01:08

I'm going to read more than one book at a time

01:01:10

You're gonna be okay

01:01:13

I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I have trouble deciding which book to read when i'm reading

01:01:17

One at a time for whatever reason that is enough friction to cause me not to read sometimes I always say has been

01:01:23

But I understand the benefit of this and it makes total sense. So i'm going to try and do that

01:01:27

Another thing he talks about in terms of allowing be ideas to bounce into each other is reading a whole bunch of books in a short period of time

01:01:34

He calls it a reading sabbatical

01:01:37

Which i've done this before when i've gone on vacation, but i'm totally going to schedule a reading sabbatical

01:01:43

I was going to say i've heard of one other person doing this

01:01:48

uh

01:01:50

outside of the book and

01:01:53

They they

01:01:55

Likened it to two things one doing a silent retreat

01:01:59

It's it's very similar to that

01:02:02

um and two doing a meditation retreat

01:02:05

It tends to flow in that

01:02:09

realm

01:02:10

Uh, they they actually recommended that if you're going to do a reading sabbatical

01:02:14

Do your best to have zero devices around and and make it a silent

01:02:21

Thing like you're gonna do like three days on a reading sabbatical. Okay. Well, no words coming out of your mouth

01:02:27

For those three days and no devices allowed like kind of combining some of those just because then

01:02:33

To what you're getting at like it forces you to think about the material and doesn't give you an outlet to focus on other things

01:02:39

Yeah, I could I could see that. I don't know if i'm ready to go that far with it though because all my notes i take

01:02:46

I know i know is breaking the rules, but

01:02:50

I don't know. I think I have enough self-control to get the

01:02:52

the 80/20 benefit there

01:02:55

Um, the big the thing I thought of right away when I yeah exactly Blake. I was thinking of bill gates think weeks

01:03:01

When uh talked about this which was the original inspiration for my personal retreats

01:03:07

So I don't think I want to bring a stack of books on a personal retreat

01:03:12

But I do my personal retreats every quarter already anyways following the framework that I put together

01:03:16

And I think I could easily add another day

01:03:20

to read

01:03:23

And so i'm thinking of how I can do that

01:03:26

Um, I think that's what i'm going to do in terms of taking action on on this particular idea

01:03:32

And then the last one

01:03:35

Was to create an idea exchange at the day job

01:03:38

A place where ideas can bump into each other. All right, so i've already had this idea for like an ideas board

01:03:46

Uh, just like one percent improvements that anybody in the company can just add whatever they think

01:03:50

Would be a benefit to the the company and then we can

01:03:54

Together select. Okay. This is the one we're going to implement and here's what we're going to do a scrum style to find it ship it whatever

01:03:59

Uh, so I have had that on like the back burner, but i'm going to prioritize that because I

01:04:06

Think that if you do this with multiple people then there's obviously a lot of more benefit that can come from that

01:04:13

Whole idea of like the cities and allowing different perspectives ideas bump into each other

01:04:17

That's the digital application of this for me at the day job. So that's my my third action item from this one chapter nice

01:04:25

Nice I have one from this chapter, but it's dependent on actually your answer to a question

01:04:32

Which is kind of weird

01:04:35

in that

01:04:37

Reading the section the section in here on dev and think and how it

01:04:41

Like connects things together and suggests things

01:04:44

I feel like there should be something like that in obsidian

01:04:47

But does something like that exist that i'm unaware of like some form of like an AI service that can try to find

01:04:54

thematic or conceptual connections

01:04:57

outside of raw metadata connections

01:05:00

Inside of obsidian not that I know of I

01:05:04

Don't think it's a stretch to envision something like that

01:05:08

however, dev and think in addition to

01:05:10

Having a better AI brain for connecting these things also is going to allow you to ocr your pdfs and incorporate stuff from that

01:05:18

It's just a better solution for that kind of stuff

01:05:22

Which is why people use it in conjunction with obsidian obsidian is a full as a

01:05:26

A folder on your desktop. So if you have dev and think you can do this just point at that same folder get double benefit

01:05:32

But I don't have dev and think

01:05:35

And don't want to pay for it

01:05:38

Well, then you're in what we call in the business of pickle

01:05:40

thus I want to do some research on this one because

01:05:45

I'm curious because I know there are

01:05:48

Like AI based services that do that type of thing

01:05:52

given text that's thrown at it

01:05:55

And I don't know if that could be incorporated into obsidian

01:05:59

So dear listeners if you know of this

01:06:02

Please let me know

01:06:04

If you don't know of this, please let me know if this is something you're interested in

01:06:08

Because i'm very curious about it

01:06:11

Ready to go on to the next chapter

01:06:14

Sure

01:06:16

All right, so the next chapter

01:06:18

Which is number five is error

01:06:22

And essentially what this whole chapter is about is that a shockingly large number of the transformative ideas that have

01:06:32

come can be contributed

01:06:34

to contaminated lab environments basically a discovery that was made by accident they were trying to

01:06:41

Find or prove something else and then discovered this thing by accident instead

01:06:46

Which is a really fascinating idea on one hand, but on the other hand is kind of discouraging

01:06:53

Because every time you think you've got things figured out essentially this is saying you have no idea what you're talking about

01:07:01

That's how we have the microwave

01:07:03

There's a few of these like the microwave was found because

01:07:06

I don't even remember the full story anymore, but he was

01:07:10

The the scientist was trying to develop some way of sharing. I think it was information or like radio waves that sort of thing

01:07:17

um

01:07:19

And then discovered on his way

01:07:21

Walking home that his chocolate barry had in his pocket was completely melted like that doesn't make sense

01:07:26

it's cold in the lab

01:07:28

and then

01:07:29

Through checking things discovered that the system he was working on he was microwaving his pocket

01:07:34

And melting his chocolate with it thus they package it up and make the microwave like that's that's where that comes from

01:07:42

So a complete error, you know or a translation of an existing thing into something completely different

01:07:47

The one I found fascinating was I think the guy's name was wilson great batch

01:07:53

Who accidentally created the first pacemaker when he grabbed the wrong spare part

01:07:58

Yep, yep

01:08:00

Like that's kind of fascinating to

01:08:03

Think about and really what this chapter

01:08:07

Reinforced for me is you have to be willing to consider that you're wrong

01:08:13

If you're never willing to second-guess things you're never going to be able to benefit from the errors

01:08:19

and I feel like this is

01:08:21

maybe even more important now because

01:08:24

going all the way back to

01:08:27

liminal thinking by dave gray

01:08:30

The internet is a grocery store for facts and you can find whatever fact you want quote-unquote fact

01:08:37

Because facts aren't truth

01:08:40

You can have a fact and you can manipulate that data to tell the story that you want and reinforce the belief that you have

01:08:47

Which may actually be wrong, but you don't ever consider that possibility. You're never going to know

01:08:53

and I feel like that is a

01:08:56

a sad missed opportunity and

01:08:58

Not something I want to find myself falling into

01:09:02

Yeah, I feel like this this one on error

01:09:05

It's easy. I think to see where something happens because of a mistake that was made or you discover something by accident

01:09:14

and

01:09:15

Immediately dismiss it as bad because it's not what was expected

01:09:19

to me to me that's the part that

01:09:23

Could be a bit detrimental here is like if I don't accept that I made a mistake first off

01:09:28

And that something good came of it then I don't really have a good view of actions in general

01:09:35

because if

01:09:37

My expectation of an outcome dictates whether or not I view the end result is good or bad

01:09:44

Then my own brain is coloring the actual results of what i'm seeing

01:09:48

That's a bit of an alarm bell

01:09:51

Going off because then simple things like my expectations of my kids at a sports event

01:09:56

Whether they did well or did poorly

01:10:00

If my expectation is that they should do well, but they didn't quite live up to what I expected them to do

01:10:06

It's immediately a bad performance, but if that's the case I may miss those instances where they're encouraging their teammates or

01:10:14

Like I can't hit a basketball shot today to save my life

01:10:18

But I can run like the Dickens and wear people out and make some passes

01:10:22

But if you just see me failing to hit your expectation of the basketball shots

01:10:29

Then you're not going to see those other things

01:10:31

That to me is the part that could be a problem here's like

01:10:35

Just because it's not what you wanted because you made an error

01:10:39

Doesn't mean that it immediately becomes a bad thing

01:10:42

True

01:10:45

I think it doesn't translate as easily to sports as other things though

01:10:50

I think it definitely definitely could have applied there

01:10:53

I think uh basketball for example though. There's kind of

01:10:57

Generally accepted principles that

01:11:00

Everyone who plays basketball agrees like this is the way to do things. Obviously there's exceptions to that like uh

01:11:06

in college

01:11:08

We played a d3 team that was occasionally on espn

01:11:15

Uh

01:11:16

I think their name was Grinnell because they would score like 200 points a game

01:11:20

All they did was shoot threes and they shot within the first six seconds of the shot clock

01:11:24

Yep, so they just forced this crazy fast tempo

01:11:27

Game and they were they're really good at it, but you know, not very many people do something completely outrageous like that

01:11:33

uh, I think when you consider the the field of of science and

01:11:38

invention

01:11:39

It's probably the

01:11:41

The place where this has the most

01:11:44

benefit

01:11:45

And really as it pertains to what is a good idea

01:11:48

I think you have to define for yourself. What are you really going after here?

01:11:52

Is it a new way to do something?

01:11:55

Is it a different spin on something that currently exists like you're trying to just figure out how to express this in your own voice

01:12:01

Or are you really looking for something that is a completely revolutionary way of of doing something?

01:12:10

As it pertains to creating which is the lens that I was coming at this book from

01:12:15

I don't really know how to how to apply this

01:12:19

um, I think it's really just continuing to connect dots collecting connect dots

01:12:26

And for me the big takeaway is

01:12:29

All of those things that you have made up your mind about

01:12:33

Be willing to change your mind about those things again that the closest connection

01:12:37

I can think of is liminal thinking by dave gray where you got this whole bubble of belief

01:12:41

Uh, well bubble belief is is what reinforces your your perspectives, but it's all built on this tiny little sliver of what is

01:12:49

actually knowable

01:12:51

I guess what i'm trying to say is like in the field of sports there's a greater percentage of

01:12:56

What is knowable that is already known

01:12:58

But when it comes to just general ideas and creative ideas specifically, I think we're just scratching the surface there

01:13:07

Yeah, I think my point is that not necessarily like the making an error in the sport

01:13:12

It was just about expectations

01:13:15

Like because you didn't achieve

01:13:17

A result like you made an error and came up with something different than what you wanted

01:13:23

Just because of that it doesn't mean that the overall thing was a failure. I think that's sure

01:13:28

That's my point there

01:13:30

Got you. So as a coach then basically you either win or you learn right correct. Yes

01:13:37

[laughs]

01:13:38

Good job coach smits good job. That makes that makes a lot of sense

01:13:41

And I feel uh, that is an important takeaway

01:13:45

So I'll I'll just restate this and maybe some different words

01:13:48

That whenever you try an experiment and it doesn't turn out the way that you thought it was going to

01:13:54

Don't write that off as a failure figure out what you're going to take away from that

01:14:02

If you don't you're missing an opportunity to convert that time that you've invested and really produce what

01:14:09

The potential that it has for you

01:14:11

Just as a just a maybe put some more teeth to this

01:14:15

If you remember one of my action items from a couple times ago was the concept of a portable routine

01:14:21

Like having these yep things that I wanted to do each day

01:14:25

But I wasn't sure like when they were going to happen in order and such

01:14:28

um

01:14:30

And I found that I was cherry picking certain ones on certain days in certain times

01:14:36

and

01:14:38

After I looked at some of that I realized that on certain days

01:14:42

You know on Tuesday and Thursday mornings I would tend to pick the ones where I was writing

01:14:47

And then on like Wednesday mornings I would pick the ones around video

01:14:51

so

01:14:54

I intended to do this portable routine concept

01:14:58

But that really didn't work out too well because I was always just picking the ones I wanted to do on different days

01:15:02

But what did evolve out of that what I realized is that

01:15:05

Essentially I was picking

01:15:08

Certain tasks for certain mornings and other tasks for certain afternoons

01:15:12

So that that has led me to like theming each morning of

01:15:16

The week in each afternoon of the week based on the tasks that I was cherry picking for those times

01:15:21

It's like so

01:15:23

Basically taking is like, okay. Here's the thing that I attempted to do. It didn't work

01:15:26

I made a complete mistake and what I thought was going to happen

01:15:29

But it led me to something completely different and I was willing to take that and adapt it

01:15:34

To then become something that I've now been doing for a while with some success. So there's that

01:15:39

Cool

01:15:41

Should we talk about?

01:15:42

Exaptation

01:15:43

I really like this one

01:15:44

You want to introduce it then? Yeah, so exaptation is

01:15:47

uh, basically taking an idea that works in one realm

01:15:51

And morphing it to work in a different realm

01:15:55

Like it's it's an idea that already works somewhere else

01:15:58

But we're going to take it and put it in a new place

01:16:01

And this isn't in the book, but the one that actually came to my mind right away whenever we explain that

01:16:06

was

01:16:08

There's a movie that's called what is it the boy who harnessed the wind have you seen this?

01:16:13

And it's a story about a small african

01:16:17

village where

01:16:19

this boy

01:16:20

is able to take

01:16:22

uh, a device that's on a bicycle

01:16:25

That generates electricity for a light bulb on the bike

01:16:29

He takes that device and he takes the bike and turns it into a windmill

01:16:34

That can then drive a pump to pump water onto their gardens because they weren't able to get water to the gardens

01:16:39

Like they needed to

01:16:41

He took that technology and used it elsewhere to get something to happen

01:16:45

Like that's that's the concept like this concept of a bike

01:16:49

and this little

01:16:51

I don't even know what the thing was called. It was a name for it and I can't think of it

01:16:54

But it drove the whole thing

01:16:57

That little device got used elsewhere to do the exact same thing just for a different purpose

01:17:02

And that's really what he's talking about with

01:17:05

Exaptation like you're adapting something and moving it from one realm to another

01:17:10

Yeah, the the story that he tells at the beginning of this chapter. I really liked which is the the gutenberg press

01:17:20

And how this is so weird

01:17:22

So I was familiar with this story. This gave me some additional details though

01:17:29

Um, all the pieces of the gutenberg press had been around on their own for a really long time

01:17:35

And kind of the thing that made this all work

01:17:37

Was the fact that gutenberg had very little experience with the wine press itself

01:17:43

Which is what it was based off of

01:17:45

That allowed him to see other ways to use it

01:17:47

So basically he combines that a couple other things the big one being the concept of movable type

01:17:53

Which was invented by a chinese blacksmith three centuries prior

01:17:58

So we've got this wine press and we've got this movable type which have both been around for a really long time

01:18:05

And gutenberg is like hey, I know we can use this to print bibles

01:18:09

Which anyone who had

01:18:15

Domain knowledge of either of those things probably was like what that's ridiculous

01:18:19

You don't do that with a wine press. That's not what movable type is

01:18:23

But because he was inexperienced in those different areas, uh, the term I think for this is like weak ties

01:18:30

That allowed the cross pollination of those ideas across some different domains and allowed

01:18:36

something totally new to be

01:18:38

To be created because of that the definition for adaptation

01:18:43

By the way is an organism

01:18:45

That develops a trait for a specified use, but then that trait gets hijacked for a completely different function

01:18:50

And the example that he used was feathers originally being

01:18:55

Developed for warmth and then being instrumental to flight

01:19:01

His argument is that the warmth came before the flight, which is an interesting idea

01:19:06

but

01:19:08

Regardless like I feel this is really interesting and i'm trying to think of of practical ways to

01:19:15

To apply this myself. Uh, he also talks about

01:19:19

How the most innovative companies he mentions apples specifically they function more like a coffee house than an assembly line

01:19:25

And really just putting yourself in a place where you can bounce all this stuff around and the fact that you're not an expert

01:19:32

And you're talking about things is actually a benefit

01:19:35

so

01:19:37

I don't know I guess it's validation for us to continue bookworm

01:19:40

Yeah, there you go, but i'm thinking of other ways that I can do that

01:19:44

Typically when it comes to different communities and things

01:19:47

My initial reaction is well, I don't want to say anything because I don't want to be wrong

01:19:52

I don't want to appear stupid. I want to figure it out first

01:19:55

And really reading this chapter what it's shown me is that no actually

01:19:59

You've got a lot to contribute in the fact that you don't know a whole lot about something actually means that you should contribute

01:20:05

The more that you get immersed in a subject the more you're going to sound like everybody else who has those strong ties and the fact that you have weak ties allows you to

01:20:12

Suggest things that other people aren't ever going to see

01:20:15

Yeah, I consider it a strength sometimes to not know all the details about a certain

01:20:20

sector

01:20:22

I I find that I can come up with ideas for

01:20:26

Like building websites and writing code

01:20:29

In really strange weird ways that work really well

01:20:34

Because i'm not trained in it like that that is something that I find super helpful at times

01:20:39

Uh, there are other times I wish I had the training in it like it's definitely a two

01:20:44

Two-sided coin, but I know that there are many many times that like okay

01:20:50

I would rather have somebody help out or at least look at this that has no idea what or how it's supposed to work

01:20:57

Uh, you know if i'm working on something mechanical or technical

01:21:02

Sometimes I'll have my wife come look at it and just I'll talk her through it

01:21:06

She has no idea how it works or what it is or even what it's supposed to do

01:21:11

But she can at least it's like well

01:21:13

We do this when i'm cooking with cast iron. Why don't you do that with it like brilliant. Let's do that

01:21:19

So sometimes bringing somebody in from a completely different domain

01:21:24

Is exactly what you need like that sort of thing works really well

01:21:28

Uh in the world of like creativity and like making things online

01:21:32

It it's not uncommon for people to see someone in a different

01:21:36

realm doing something like doing something innovative with

01:21:40

um

01:21:42

specific coursework or articles and such or

01:21:46

web development and the like oh that's really cool

01:21:49

I'm going to take the same thing you're doing but apply it to this other domain

01:21:52

Like that that sort of thing can happen quite a bit

01:21:56

You just have to be willing to see it like that that's the hard part with it

01:21:59

It's like being willing to see or look high level enough in order to see the concept to move over

01:22:04

Like to me. That's the idea side of it

01:22:06

Yep, totally agree

01:22:09

All right, the last chapter here is number seven platform

01:22:15

Uh, what's a platform joe? Something you stand on

01:22:19

Wait, you didn't like that

01:22:21

Sure

01:22:24

That works. I mean the the easy way of thinking about this at least the way I took it was like

01:22:29

This is this is a basis on which you're going to stand

01:22:32

Like again, this is in this why I was being you know obnoxious with that

01:22:36

The series here. Yeah, but it's it's not wrong

01:22:39

It's not wrong. It's not necessarily right either

01:22:42

it's basically

01:22:46

A a foundation of ideas that you can move

01:22:50

Like you can move from one foundation to another in order to change your viewpoint on something

01:22:56

Like that's that's kind of the way I came at it. It's like, okay. Here's here's a a base worldview

01:23:00

If you will that I'm going to stand on and this is going to color everything that I look

01:23:05

Uh, you know, it's going to color all the things I'm looking at based on that worldview or that that system that I'm

01:23:11

Coming from

01:23:13

Is that fair? Yeah, so let's let's talk about that thing that you stand on

01:23:18

Uh, I like the term foundation. There's a couple of things that he talks about here

01:23:23

Uh, again, I was a biology major for a little while so this stuff is kind of fascinating to me

01:23:27

Keystone species which is an organism that has a disproportionate impact on its ecosystem

01:23:32

So essentially every species has an impact on the ecosystem and the ecosystem has an impact on the species

01:23:38

But there are certain species that just really contribute to the ecosystem itself

01:23:44

And there's another term here ecosystem engineer, which is a keystone species that actually creates the habitat

01:23:53

itself

01:23:54

So that is the habitat in that example is the platform

01:23:59

It's the people who are creating the thing that is going to uphold

01:24:04

Everything else that comes after that

01:24:06

Quote on page 183 platform builders and ecosystem engineers do not just open a door to the adjacent possible

01:24:13

They build a whole new floor

01:24:16

And

01:24:17

That makes a ton of sense for me

01:24:20

Uh, the most generative platforms says come in stacks

01:24:24

And this is where he gets into technology stacks

01:24:27

Which i'm sure you have thoughts on on this and i'm curious what you think of of this analogy here

01:24:34

Um, he mentions twitter though and for a long time twitter had this limitation of 140 characters

01:24:40

Do you know what that why that?

01:24:42

Number was selected that 140 characters. Did you catch this when you read it?

01:24:47

Uh, I did not what was it?

01:24:49

It was based on the sms limitations. So twitter was essentially based off of

01:24:55

text message technology

01:24:57

That was in the tech stack

01:24:59

And the approach which twitter was different the reason that he used this as an example is that they built it differently

01:25:05

Then almost every other web software out there because most software is built and then the api is built

01:25:11

But twitter built the api so people could post a twitter from their cell phones

01:25:16

And then the site was built which is kind of interesting because then if you're following this narrative

01:25:21

twitter tried to take back control of the api and it didn't work and there was an uproar and

01:25:26

Still is yeah, yeah, but this is also why I think twitter is still a thing

01:25:33

Is the fact that they have these these api's and it's so firmly entrenched and there's this platform

01:25:39

Which is larger than just the the website and the first party app that

01:25:43

People are concerned like facebook would be the other example

01:25:46

I can't think of anybody who has a positive impression

01:25:50

Of facebook at the moment

01:25:53

I mean, even if you like the platform you assume that the app is doing crazy things and recording your audio and all sorts of stuff because

01:26:02

Big tech and no one trusts that specific company an individual company that is gone though when you have an api and you have a community that's kind of

01:26:10

policing itself and

01:26:13

I know there's a a lot of people who would argue that twitter does a terrible job policing itself

01:26:17

So I don't want to go any further down there

01:26:19

But you can kind of see like the reason I think twitter still has a whole bunch of momentum is the fact that there's not a single entity that controls

01:26:27

everything they

01:26:29

They delegated the platform building to some key players the developers which is contributed to some

01:26:35

ongoing success

01:26:38

if you want to talk about like tech stacks and platforms like the

01:26:43

Your your choice of technology stacks is like crazy important

01:26:47

Because to change that stack later

01:26:50

It's super painful. This is why like facebook is built on php

01:26:56

Which is kind of laughable in today's world like really

01:27:00

really

01:27:03

and

01:27:04

It just as an example like how platforms can have an impact

01:27:08

on my website

01:27:10

if I post a note to my website it automatically syndicates it to twitter

01:27:15

and

01:27:16

It's a real simple like two liner two code lines

01:27:20

That I have written that take whatever I've written in markdown

01:27:24

converts it to

01:27:26

Twitter's formatting that they want and then post it to twitter

01:27:29

That's really all it is

01:27:32

I can post a picture to twitter as well with like four lines of code

01:27:37

Like that that's all we're talking about because their api's their their stacks their platform that they have built make that super easy

01:27:43

To do that for say instagram and I know that some people like instagram doesn't have an api yes they do

01:27:50

Because I post pictures to their from my own system from my own site as well

01:27:55

If you want to use that system because instagram's owned by facebook in case you didn't know that meta technically

01:28:02

uh

01:28:03

In order to do the same thing the exact same thing

01:28:07

on their platform

01:28:09

It's like these multi-function processes that I have to write in order to get the right

01:28:15

Authentication codes in order to format things correctly to post the picture and get the code and then take the code and then post it to a thing

01:28:23

And then it's like this back and forth like a 40/50 line or deal

01:28:26

Because it was built after the fact and because they have so many restrictions on it

01:28:31

Which means that when people build

01:28:35

Like external systems like here's here's an example of why this matters

01:28:38

If you have a system similar to buffer if you know buffer

01:28:43

Where you can schedule posts and it'll kick them out at different times

01:28:47

Buffer has had twitter support from day one like that was their primary thing

01:28:51

And that meant that buffer took off because people could schedule things for twitter the platform was made for and it did really well with it

01:28:58

I don't think they can do that with instagram even today

01:29:01

Like I still don't think they have instagram support

01:29:04

Truly they can like post a notification to your phone and then you can go manually post it

01:29:09

But they don't do anything automatic because the system is so complicated and so painful

01:29:15

So it's just not built for it

01:29:18

The difference between those two platforms means that in depending on your circumstances you're going to thrive on one

01:29:24

And be destroyed on the other

01:29:27

Yeah, well, I've got a more modern

01:29:29

Example, I think than buffer because I've went going through ship 30 and the tool that they've created is called type share

01:29:34

And there's other ones that do the same sort of thing

01:29:36

The value proposition of type share is they give you a place where you can write once and publish multiple places

01:29:44

And it's formatted for the different places that it things can go

01:29:47

So out of the box

01:29:50

I know they're adding additional things, but you can publish to twitter you can publish to medium and you can publish to linked in

01:29:56

those three things

01:29:58

And it appears different in each one of those platforms, but type share takes care of all of the formatting and things

01:30:04

There is no facebook. There is no instagram

01:30:06

They talk about because i'm part of the captain's table thing that they they've had

01:30:11

Different like mastermind calls about here's what we do in order to format things and share via those platforms

01:30:18

But yeah, you can't natively do it

01:30:21

Which means I would guess that most people who are using type share

01:30:27

Are not caring about those platforms

01:30:29

So in the long run, this is gonna end up hurting them and actually this is a great place to

01:30:34

Transition to the conclusion if you've got nothing else to say about platforms. Yep. Go for it. Yep, because I was actually going to do the same

01:30:41

Okay

01:30:43

So the last chapter is

01:30:45

The conclusion and it's titled the fourth quadrant and there's this visual here two by two grid as every productivity book needs to have

01:30:56

And it talks about the different innovations which were created for the market by an individual

01:31:01

For the market by a network not for the market by an individual and not for the market by a network when I say for the market for

01:31:08

commercial gain

01:31:11

They did it because they wanted to make money from it

01:31:14

So so just to just to expand on it because this is important for the rest of this conversation

01:31:18

The the individual side is like a single person working on it

01:31:23

The network side is a collective group of people working on it

01:31:26

Market is it's being worked on specifically for

01:31:30

Profitable gain. Yep. The non market is purely like a passion project like this is cool and i'm going to share it with you

01:31:38

Exactly put some more on those. Yep

01:31:41

And then throughout the conclusion

01:31:43

They take different time periods and they chart the really big innovations from those time periods into the different quadrants

01:31:51

And the big takeaway from this is that there's been a shift in the last couple hundred years towards innovation for non market

01:31:59

And by networks. So it's no individual person that gets the credit and it's not for financial gain

01:32:05

And that is the fourth quadrant the bottom right one

01:32:09

And they make the argument again. This book was written 10 years ago

01:32:13

That today new ideas are published just so people can build on them

01:32:17

And I feel like that has just gotten

01:32:20

Exponentially more true as information flows faster than it ever has before

01:32:27

It's also interesting because it talks about how ideas can't be a subject of property to talk about this person who was

01:32:35

Suing somebody and Thomas Jefferson was the the person who was overseeing the case and basically it was like no

01:32:41

You can't copyright an idea

01:32:43

It's like you just mashed together a couple of things that already existed anyways and that's uh

01:32:50

Number one, uh, it's an interesting way to end the book

01:32:54

And as i've been thinking about this, I think really what he's trying to encourage us to do is like

01:32:59

Go ahead and have your good ideas. Don't feel like you need to capitalize on them from a capitalist perspective

01:33:07

The value of the idea is going to come back to you by sharing it

01:33:12

This this section is so when I when we first started this I said something about how the conclusion

01:33:18

Was the breath of fresh air because it actually tied the book together

01:33:21

Right, that's something I was saying early on. This is what I mean by that in that

01:33:28

They just took us through he just took us through these seven different ways that ideas

01:33:34

come about

01:33:36

Doesn't really give you anything about how to encourage those to happen, but you can kind of deduce those based on your situation

01:33:42

This is where the dialogue with the author piece comes in

01:33:46

But then you get to this section and he's talking about okay, that's cool now

01:33:50

Once you have these ideas, how do you go about it? Like what is your purpose behind having ideas?

01:33:56

Like let's let's tie this whole thing up in a nice little pretty package

01:33:59

and say like okay, here's

01:34:02

When you're coming up with things, how do you go about coming up with them number one?

01:34:06

And two, what do you do with it once you've come up with it?

01:34:10

And this is definitely a play to try to do this with other people and make these free

01:34:15

freely available so that more ideas can come about freely

01:34:19

This is the world of open source software like 100% which he brings up here in that like open source software

01:34:27

Is a big group of people working together to build something and there is no monetary gain to it like that is the way

01:34:34

It is designed by nature now. There are run-offs people do monetize these things that is possible blah blah blah

01:34:41

But that's not the main core driver there

01:34:43

it is a thing that

01:34:46

He definitely encourages and that is to me awesome as somebody who contributes to open source software fairly regularly

01:34:53

Like that is something I think is

01:34:56

Absolutely worthwhile. So

01:34:58

I like it. I like that this all came together in this whole concept of a fourth quadrant

01:35:03

And I love that he came up with a name for it in that so

01:35:06

I like it. Good job. Mr. Johnson

01:35:10

Hmm

01:35:11

All right, should we talk about action items?

01:35:13

Sure

01:35:15

How many you got?

01:35:17

14,000 got a few. I've got four actually

01:35:22

so the

01:35:25

First one I mentioned I want to read more than one book at once. That's a reluctant action item

01:35:33

I also want to take a reading sabbatical not a true sabbatical extended time just where I read

01:35:39

But maybe adding a day to the personal retreat where I just read a bunch

01:35:43

The third one is I want to create that idea exchange at the day job

01:35:47

a place where we can capture ideas and decide on

01:35:50

Taking action and shipping certain ones

01:35:53

I feel once we start doing that and we actually ship some things that's where we'll really get the traction from that by the way

01:35:59

I think at the beginning people will

01:36:02

Drop some things in there, but you're not going to really have a whole lot of focus on it

01:36:06

Because it's it's kind of like an additional thing into it as opposed to

01:36:09

All the other stuff that you would normally be doing for like billable hours sort of a thing

01:36:13

It'll feel like one additional thing

01:36:15

But I'm hoping that after we do it and I have we continue to make these 1% improvements and it makes people's work easier that

01:36:21

They'll uh start contributing things as they see things and trust that you know

01:36:26

We're going to follow through and take action on them and then the fourth one

01:36:31

Obviously this whole book and the concept of p.k.m

01:36:34

It's got me jones in to go through the linking your thinking workshop again

01:36:39

So I actually a while back nick had a an option where you could upgrade

01:36:45

to a lifetime

01:36:47

Pass and I did that

01:36:49

So he's got another one as we record this which is going to be starting very shortly and I have opted into it

01:36:55

And i'm hoping I can keep up with it

01:36:58

But I really just want to I want to rethink

01:37:01

How i'm using obsidian not that there's

01:37:04

drastic changes that I want to make but I just want to consider the options and see if there's

01:37:10

Some low hanging fruits some things where I can tighten things up

01:37:13

Maybe there's some things that i'm doing that are a waste of time

01:37:15

And just reconsider how i'm using it

01:37:18

Obviously, I mean I continue to use it

01:37:21

But see if I can't make it a little bit better

01:37:23

How about you

01:37:26

So I have

01:37:28

Two primarily here

01:37:32

One is the one I talked about earlier which was doing some research on an AI based obsidian

01:37:39

something

01:37:41

Not sure what that's going to come out to be but i'm at least want to do a little research on it because that might be

01:37:45

Much bigger of a project that i'm ready to take on right now

01:37:49

And it could also be something that I feel is very simple and i'm super interested in

01:37:55

Attempting to do so I want to at least do some research on that

01:37:58

uh, and then to kind of piggyback on your

01:38:01

You know pkm thing

01:38:04

Like this this was definitely a reminder to me that I need to be trying to make sure i spend time with that every day

01:38:09

I do two or three times a week

01:38:11

But it really cemented how important that is

01:38:15

So it's something that I want to spend some more time with

01:38:18

essentially, so that is uh

01:38:21

It's what I got

01:38:23

Cool

01:38:24

So on the topic of like the spending time in the pkm every day, I feel like this is

01:38:31

That is another data point for me

01:38:34

That encourages using

01:38:37

A digital journal that really is the glue for obsidian for me is the fact that I use it as a

01:38:44

A journal if you're going to go spend time journaling

01:38:47

It's natural to just also spend a little bit of time

01:38:49

Playing with some of the other things that are are in there

01:38:53

Just my two cents

01:38:55

Yeah, I would say like one of the things I was debating was going through the linking you're thinking

01:38:59

workshop, but

01:39:02

$1,200 for a course is just a bit spindy for me. I get it

01:39:06

All right style and rating and this is my book. So I will go first

01:39:14

I really enjoy this book

01:39:18

I feel this is one of you know, he talked about keystone

01:39:23

Species, I feel this is a keystone book

01:39:28

There's a lot of stories in here that I had

01:39:31

heard

01:39:33

a

01:39:34

different things about

01:39:35

previously

01:39:37

But he shared a a lot more detail

01:39:40

You can tell there is a ton of research that has been done in this book and as we talked about at the beginning

01:39:45

There's a huge appendix that supports that

01:39:48

I also really appreciate just the whole framing of everything that he shared

01:39:52

Essentially saying that I've chosen this approach and I recognize that I'm making some assumptions

01:39:58

And you may disagree with some of this and that's okay

01:40:01

That

01:40:03

You mentioned that that was a breath of fresh air and and I agree with that

01:40:07

I don't agree with everything that is in here and I kind of think it doesn't really matter

01:40:11

Uh, I think the value of this book

01:40:16

is really an understanding the key concepts from the different sections that he goes through

01:40:22

And for that reason I would recommend just about everybody pick this one up

01:40:29

I feel the style is

01:40:31

Really well done. He's a very good writer

01:40:35

It doesn't feel long or superfluous like a lot of the books that we read

01:40:39

Especially the productivity systems books. It's like this could have been a blog post

01:40:44

Right, but it was a stretch out to a whole bunch of pages. I feel like this could have been

01:40:48

10 different volumes and he condensed it down into one

01:40:50

He's very masterful at weaving things together through those three different metaphors throughout the whole book the coral reef

01:40:57

The cities and the worldwide web

01:40:59

So there is this very strong connection to this this thread

01:41:02

I think i'm going to rate it 5.0. I'm going back and forth to 5.04.5

01:41:07

I think i'm leaning

01:41:11

a little bit towards 4.5 just because

01:41:14

I have already

01:41:16

implemented a bunch of the ideas from this book that I didn't realize were from this book

01:41:20

We were talking about the adjacent possible for example and blake had had said yeah, I feel like i've heard this before

01:41:26

We probably brought it up before

01:41:28

Because we've talked about a whole bunch of books that were in the adjacent possible of this one if I were to pick one

01:41:33

However, this is this is probably the one

01:41:35

I think if I had to pick like a pkm book

01:41:39

Someone's interested in the concept of pkm or they don't really like it. They don't know why they want to learn more about it

01:41:45

This is the one that you pick up. I feel

01:41:47

so

01:41:49

given the fact that that's an fascinating concept to me and

01:41:53

It's really good information even though I I feel like i've already kind of achieved the transformation from some of this stuff already

01:42:00

It helped fill in a whole bunch of holes that gave me a whole bunch of more dots to connect

01:42:06

And there were a lot of aha moments that came from this for me

01:42:10

I feel like if I had come to this

01:42:12

Six to 12 months ago, maybe a little bit longer

01:42:16

When I was starting to dabble with obsidian after I've been playing with rome for a little while

01:42:21

That would have been the prime time for me to pick up this book

01:42:24

And I absolutely would have left thinking

01:42:26

Oh, this is a double this is easily a five star book

01:42:29

Right. So i'm trying to separate the fact that you know

01:42:33

I've read some other things and implemented it some other things and not detract from what is actually here in terms of of content

01:42:40

so

01:42:42

I will

01:42:43

Reluctantly give it five stars. I guess

01:42:45

A reluctant five star interesting way to come at that

01:42:50

uh, I will say that

01:42:54

This one has

01:42:57

A lot of gold in it

01:42:59

Uh, there are some stories here that i've heard before but a lot of them are new

01:43:03

And I don't know if you felt that way, but it seemed like a lot of these were

01:43:08

Like a fresh take on an existing story or telling a part of a story. I haven't heard before or something completely new

01:43:15

I've never even heard of that person. Yeah, it's ryan holiday esk in that that way. Yeah

01:43:20

Definitely is so that is that is definitely here in something. I don't want to

01:43:26

Short cuts just because that is typically something that I I value because I don't like hearing the same thing over and over again

01:43:34

It's easy for me to discount a book just because of that so that doesn't happen

01:43:38

So I can't discount it because of that

01:43:40

Um, there are a lot of things in here a lot of ideas like yeah, I I know that like the serendipity thing like sure

01:43:48

That makes perfect sense to me that happens in my brain all the time like I get that

01:43:54

Uh, the the concept of

01:43:56

Exaptation like moving an idea from one place to another like that is something I've done and worked with many times intentionally and actively

01:44:03

Uh, you know the the adjacent possible is something I feel like I've thought through a number of times the slow hunch is something i've done

01:44:11

Uh on a handful of things over time

01:44:15

I I've just not had clean names for any of these error. I've heard these stories many times like

01:44:23

The stories he's using to explain these innovative

01:44:26

idea generation processes

01:44:29

Like I don't think any of these were completely new to me

01:44:33

Uh, maybe that's because we've talked about creativity and idea generation enough that

01:44:39

Like these are all things that have come up before

01:44:42

Uh, that said I I don't think I know of another book that has them all put together in such a clean

01:44:51

setup like this like this is

01:44:53

Well put together

01:44:56

I I kind of understand where you're coming from in that like where do I rate this just because like there's a lot of really good stuff here

01:45:03

But there's a lot of this that isn't as groundbreaking just because of history

01:45:09

But I don't know that history is a good indicator of what it should be rated at

01:45:14

Otherwise our ratings are all dependent on the time frame and season of life exactly exactly

01:45:19

So that's that's tough to say now that said

01:45:23

if if you wanted to

01:45:26

Understand like how to ideas come about and you you're not

01:45:32

Someone who has read a whole bunch of books like we have

01:45:35

This is probably the right place for you to start like this is a nail down like this is going to give you all of the

01:45:42

Uh

01:45:44

specifics on how this can happen if you haven't studied this in any form whatsoever like this is a really good place

01:45:49

of start

01:45:50

Uh, so I don't know that I'm

01:45:52

Reluctant in saying this but I'll put it at five oh

01:45:55

With you I think it absolutely needs to fit there just because like I don't think seasonality needs to dictate the rating

01:46:01

But at the same time I know like this is gold as far as like

01:46:04

understanding idea generation and how they can come about and

01:46:08

understanding that in such a way that you can

01:46:11

Put yourself in those situations

01:46:15

There's definitely like a mindset piece that comes with this whenever you've gone through it

01:46:19

So yeah, I'll put it at five oh, I think this is definitely something you should pick up

01:46:23

All right, well, let's put where good ideas come from on the shelf. What's next joe?

01:46:30

Yeah, so up next we have a book called

01:46:33

ritual

01:46:36

How seemingly senseless acts make life worth living? This is by Demetrius

01:46:40

Demetris zigalatus

01:46:42

I looked up how to say his name because ain't no way. I'm gonna figure that one out on my own

01:46:46

It's basically why do we do things like

01:46:50

You know get collective chance going at sports games. Why do we have our

01:46:55

pregame

01:46:58

You know cook offs and such like why do we do these things?

01:47:00

That's just two sports examples. There are many many others

01:47:04

Around religion and such like why do we do these things?

01:47:06

And why do we think they're worthwhile?

01:47:11

I think it would be interesting to work through that. All right sounds interesting

01:47:15

Yeah, and then then what are we doing?

01:47:18

Then we are doing the laws of creativity by joey kofon. Do you know who joey kofon is?

01:47:24

We talked about this last time and I forgot

01:47:27

He is the uh the founder of barenfig

01:47:31

Yes, there you go

01:47:33

Yeah, so this book is technically still in pre-order as we

01:47:38

Record this however if you go to amazon you can order it and it'll be delivered by saturday

01:47:44

Ah good to know all right

01:47:47

So I actually have an advanced copy of this. It's a beautiful book. It's uh, well, it's a barenfig book

01:47:54

So that's really all you need to know

01:47:56

Going into it, but obviously the whole topic of creativity where good ideas come from. This is something that is fascinating to me

01:48:04

Uh, I feel like this is going to be a fun one to talk about

01:48:08

I am looking forward to going through it with you

01:48:10

That'll be fun

01:48:12

Looking forward to that one

01:48:14

Any gap books

01:48:16

Uh, do not have any gap books

01:48:18

I'm gonna it's going to be a struggle for me to get through this one to be honest

01:48:21

Uh, the laws of creativity by the way, that is a uh, a really big book

01:48:26

It is 400 pages. I think fun, but it is a lot of visuals

01:48:33

So

01:48:35

Yeah

01:48:36

It'll be a

01:48:37

Visuals, but still not enough to make it like normal book length

01:48:40

Yeah, which is why I mentioned it. So you gotta you got a little bit of a

01:48:44

I had to start hopefully

01:48:47

So get through ritual and then dive into that one ahead of time. That's what i'm hearing. Okay. Yep. Got it. Yep

01:48:52

All right, so thank you to everyone who has joined us live today

01:48:59

Uh, thank you to specifically to the bookworm club premium members the people who are willing to

01:49:05

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01:49:09

You get a couple perks

01:49:11

like a wallpaper I designed

01:49:13

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01:49:19

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01:49:24

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01:49:30

And if you want to read along with us

01:49:33

The book to pick up is ritual by Demetris zigolatus

01:49:37

We will cover that with you in a couple of weeks