Bookworm Transcripts

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Are you excited about learning how to be powerful, Mike?

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Uh, no, honestly.

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[laughs]

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It's totally fair.

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Totally fair.

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I am hesitant to discuss this book.

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Yeah?

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Yep.

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I will say that after I read the preface to this book,

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I understand why there is such a division around this particular book,

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and why there's competing sides and a lot of conflict around it.

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Sure.

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I'm like super excited to cover this with you.

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Probably a lot of the same reasons that you are not excited to cover this one with me.

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[laughs]

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Sure.

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Just the way it goes.

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So, I think it'll be fun.

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The entire time I was reading this one, I had the scene from Pinky and the Brain playing

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in my head.

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What are we going to do tomorrow, not bright?

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Same thing we do every night.

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Try to take over the world.

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Yep.

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So, this will be interesting because you're not wrong on that at all.

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It will be entertaining to say the least.

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So, we have some follow-up here.

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You have the focus course as number one on this list.

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Yeah, this isn't actually follow-up, but I do want to announce to all the Bookworm listeners

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that I will be part of the focus course academy that's going to be coming out in January.

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The January cohort, I will be presenting one of the workshops on PKM.

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So, the focus course is run by my friend Sean Blanc.

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I've worked with Blanc Media for a long time.

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Sean told me at one point that I was the first person to actually buy the focus course

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back in the day.

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I didn't know that.

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It's a good job.

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Yeah.

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It's a great course and it's exactly what it says on the tin.

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So, if you feel like you've always wanted to check out the focus course but you haven't

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yet, this January cohort would be a great time to do it because I will be a part of it.

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I don't know who the other speakers are but there's a couple other workshops that will

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be part of it as well.

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The URL that you can go to for this, which I think it opens up after we record but before

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this releases, it'll be just the focus course.com.

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And it'll show the Focus Academy once it's ready to go.

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But yeah, it's four weeks long and it's a lot of fun.

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I've been a part of these as a member of the Blanc Media team.

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Now I get to participate as a workshop leader, I guess.

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And if anyone wants to go through it with me, that'd be cool.

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Yeah.

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There you go.

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Super exciting.

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Good job.

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Do good.

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Some other follow-up here.

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I've got three items on my list.

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And I made progress on all of them.

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Attempted one of them twice that I said I was going to do once.

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That one was scheduled my week ahead of time.

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So the idea here is to think about the week coming up and then plan out when certain tasks

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are going to happen.

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And I did this.

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It took a lot longer than I thought it would.

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So I did it on week one and by day two, so on Tuesday it had completely fallen apart.

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And then the entire week needed to be done.

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And some of that was out of my control.

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Some of it was definitely my fault.

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I will absolutely take credit for some of it.

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Basically what had happened is we're end of year, so we're neck deep in all the budgeting

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stuff for next year.

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And with tech, it tends to flirt with all the other departments it seems like.

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So you end up in a situation where I'm pulled into a lot of things and they don't necessarily

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know that they need me there until last minute and we're in the middle of the meeting.

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So getting pulled into those meant that I had multiple hours that were yanked from my

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days that I absolutely was not planning for.

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So the fact that I had that happen told me that there's a lot more flexibility in my

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schedule day to day that I don't have.

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I guess there's a lack of flexibility and I don't know where that's going to be pulled.

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So that made it a bit tricky.

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So then week two, meaning this particular week that we're working through right now, I decided

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to try it again, Mike, even though I told you I would try it for one week.

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And this particular week, I made an attempt to do that for the entire week, but only in

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the mornings till about 11 o'clock and just kind of left the afternoon where wherever

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it lies.

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I'd either be buffered a catch up on the stuff I did not get done in the morning or I can

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use that to get ahead for tomorrow and just kind of leaving that open ended.

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And that kind of coincided with one of my other action items, which was to map my week

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according to energy levels and types of work, knowing that a lot of my hard knowledge work

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is always done in the mornings, primarily before 11 o'clock.

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So that's why I was choosing to do that.

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So far it's kind of been okay because some of why I did that was knowing that most of

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the time whenever I get pulled into things last minute, it's literally last minute, meaning

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in the end of the day.

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So somewhere between two, three, three, 30 or so is when a lot of that stuff will happen.

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Not always, but that's generally where it occurs.

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So I'm trying to like work around that particular component and knowing that I've got to be

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a little bit flexible at those times.

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It's been all right.

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It's been interesting to see what the ramifications of trying to plan your week ahead of time

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are and how difficult that is.

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And right now what I'm trying to weigh is the payoff of planning this ahead of time

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compared to how much time it takes to do that.

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And is the amount of time I'm putting into building that plan worth the maybe mediocre

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gains on how much I'm getting done and the effectiveness of what I'm getting done?

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So I don't know that the payoff is there, but it does seem to work.

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And what I don't know is is this something you need to do for a while in order to reap

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the benefits or is there something fundamentally flawed in the logic with this process?

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So right now I would say juries out unless you have an immediate, this is why Joe duh.

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No, you don't have that.

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I did not have that.

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Yeah, scheduling your whole week ahead of time.

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I've never really done that to begin with because I felt my schedule was too fluid for

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that.

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And I've always done time blocking instead.

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So when you said time blocking was difficult.

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I kind of figured this wouldn't stick.

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Yeah, these things rarely do.

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And yet I feel like I need to keep trying them.

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I don't know why that is.

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Seems like the thing I should do.

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Everybody tells me I should be doing it.

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Every time I try everything I possibly can to make it work, it never works.

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I don't know if that's just a factor of my job or my brain.

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I don't know which one it is.

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It's probably an 80/20 here for everybody, but specifically for you.

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I think that's where time blocking kind of was it for me.

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I know other people who do plan their entire week ahead of time, but I don't know exactly.

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I don't expect that part of it to really stick, but there's probably a version of this that

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clicks for you if you want to still explore it.

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I don't blame you if you decide to quit it though.

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At some point I'm just like, I need to stop trying.

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I'm learning that I can pretty much nail down what tomorrow morning is going to look like.

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But if I try to nail down what tomorrow afternoon looks like and pick whatever day of the week

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you want, I don't really have a clean answer on what tomorrow afternoon is going to look

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like.

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And I sure don't know what the following day's morning is going to look like.

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Not cleanly.

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So I'm only ever about one day out of being able to make those types of plans.

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And I think that is primarily just the nature of how fast paced things are with both my thinking

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and with the job that I hold.

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So between those two I think it just makes it extremely difficult.

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Yeah, knowing tomorrow morning may be good enough.

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Correct.

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Get the two or three things I know I absolutely have to get done that are super high importance,

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get those done and then try not to worry about the rest.

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That seems to be the cleanest way I can come at it despite people telling me you need

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a time block.

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You need to plan your things ahead of time.

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You need to bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

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Don't do it.

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That's what I'm learning.

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Don't do it.

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Well, I still am going to advocate for time blocking, but that's just me.

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What about these eight week cycles?

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Maybe that's the...

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Started.

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Okay.

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So this could be the sweet spot here, by the way, is like the eight week cycles instead

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of the week.

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But then the time blocking, so you have the long view and the short view.

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Right.

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Right.

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So I started this planning process for putting together basically six weeks of work.

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Right.

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So then I've got a week of buffer and then a week to plan the next eight week cycle.

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So I've been working through what the first six weeks of 2023 is going to look like specifically

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at work.

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I feel like that's the place I need to start with this.

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It's the cleanest area I can start on this.

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Going outside of that, I think it's going to get to be too much too fast.

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So trying to nail down what the first six weeks of January into February is going to

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look like for 2023 as far as work I'm doing with my assistant and with some of the volunteers

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here at the church.

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So knowing that process and working through it and seeing what projects are going to be

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on the front burner for that seems to be a good planning process at the moment.

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So again, juries out won't know until sometime in February how that goes.

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But that particular planning process is proving quite fruitful so far.

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Nice.

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So how about you?

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I have two action items.

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The first one was to consider my environments in my rituals.

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I can tell you that one thing that has happened with this is I have a routine of reading my

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Bible and praying every morning.

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And I have been using apps for this with the discipleship group that I lead at my church.

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There's an app called Echo that we use for like a group prayer request thing, which is

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kind of cool because when you're done it can send notifications to people be like, hey,

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so I'm so prayed for you, which is kind of fun to get.

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And then the other thing that we've been doing is going through you version together with

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the shared Bible plan or Bible reading plans so you could do like chronological reading

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plan.

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And then at the end of the day it says, what did you get?

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And there's a space for you to put your little little comment.

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It's kind of cool to see like as you're reading it together what people are getting.

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However, I don't like grabbing my phone first thing in the morning.

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Yeah, I wonder how that was going to go.

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Yeah, it is.

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It is this this year I am committing to changing the way that I do my my morning Bible reading

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specifically because that's the thing that I usually do right away in the morning.

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And I'm going to do it analog.

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I've already talked to my guys and they're going to do it too that I recognize that even

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if I am able to, which probably there's like a 75% success rate, like grab my phone and

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go directly to the thing that I was going to do with it.

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But still there's the possibility there.

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And it just changes everything even having that as a option in the morning, I feel.

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So that's one thing that has changed from this.

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But I haven't really done a whole lot else with it in terms of like, I'm going to do

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this thing in this place because it's better for this or anything.

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If I'm going to do anything with any amount of privacy or quiet, it has to be in my office.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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I could try to be in the bedroom with the door closed, but that's not very successful.

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It's still upstairs by everybody.

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So the actual place that things happen, like that I have limited options there.

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So I think just getting that one change though is ultimately a win for that action item, but

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I don't think I'm completely done with it.

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I don't want to continue to kind of just think about that a little bit more.

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The other one I had was to document my weekly rhythms.

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This is harder than I thought it was going to be.

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Yeah.

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Partially because my weekly rhythms are in large part dependent on what other people

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need.

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And for I can make a weekly rhythm that I can stick to, I need everybody else to establish

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their weekly rhythms and communicate them to me.

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Yep.

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That's fair.

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I don't know if or when that will ever happen.

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So I have identified a couple things.

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I've identified, well, let me just back up a little bit.

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So I want to get into a regular writing rhythm.

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I want to write every single day.

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And one of the things that I have identified with this exercise is that Monday is the day

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that I will do the one I want with my kids.

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So I'll take one of them once a week.

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We'll go to a coffee shop, play games for an hour in the morning, something like that.

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And Monday is the day that works best to do that.

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So I have identified that Monday's, this isn't like a theme, but one of the things that's

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going to happen is Mondays are going to be the days that the one on one happens.

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So I'm probably going to have to pass on the writing for Monday unless it happens later

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on in the day like after the day job stuff is done.

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The other thing I have identified is that we have with the day job, we call it focus Fridays.

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So Fridays are really the day to really work on a project without any interruptions.

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And so by the time Friday comes around, I usually have very clear like I need to finish

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up these things.

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And I have a little bit more flexibility on my Fridays because there's no meetings that

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I have to work around.

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So I've been thinking about how I could make Fridays my creative days, not theming like

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the entire day, but how could I do something a little bit extra on a Friday?

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Last week I tested just doing like over lunchtime a Q&A in my circle community.

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So people join in live zoom style thing and just chatted for a little bit.

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That was really fun.

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And I want to do more of that type of stuff.

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If I don't have a zoom hangout sort of a thing, maybe it'll be when I record stuff for the

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YouTube videos.

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I have a lot of ideas that are percolating and I'm working on.

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So if I just have the space to regularly work on the videos, if I force myself to sit in

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the chair and actually record them, they don't take that long.

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Within an hour I could get the raw footage done and then it's up to me to delegate the

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next part of that because I'm still figuring out what is my brand, my vibe, all that kind

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of stuff.

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And then process that.

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So we'll make a process out of that so I can hand it off to somebody like Joshua or

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Toby to help me with some of the editing potentially.

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So yeah, that's kind of a thought process there.

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But other than that, I haven't really identified a whole lot in terms of themes other than

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Tuesdays and Wednesdays seem to be all day meetings.

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You like meetings?

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Good job.

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I don't like meetings, but they're necessary and they don't have to suck.

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They're getting better.

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They are getting better.

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So that tells me that currently they are not better.

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All right.

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Well, they're better than they used to be.

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We're still making progress.

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But yeah.

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I still remember the days when I would hop in my car at five till six in the morning, dial

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into my first meeting at six o'clock and would be on the phone all day long until I hopped

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in the car to come home at somewhere around four, four fifteen and would be on a call until

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I made it home around five and then would sit in the garage with the car running.

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Well, maybe not necessarily with the car running, but we'll sit in the garage with my headset

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still on and finishing up my meeting at five and always wondering, it's like, why?

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I don't think I did anything today other than just listen to people or, you know, correct

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some things, but we didn't actually decide anything.

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We didn't progress anything, but they're paying me pretty well to do this.

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So that would never fly in one of my meetings.

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Yep.

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I kind of look for people who are not paying attention and then I just ask them, like,

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so what do you think?

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Just to catch them and they have to admit, like, I wasn't paying attention.

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This is pre-video call days.

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You could do that, but it was not, it was far from normal.

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It was always conference calls.

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That's what it was.

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So I kid you not.

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Most of my day was spent on mutes walking laps around the building.

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That's what I did.

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Yep.

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So I got my steps in a lot.

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So there it goes.

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All right.

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Let's jump into today's book, which is a national bestseller, despite some people's

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opinions of it.

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It's The 48 Laws of Power.

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This is by Robert Green and this is a monster of a book at what we decide.

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409 pages?

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Is that what I have?

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No, it's 430.

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430, there you go.

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Plus another 200 sum in the margins.

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Oh, yes.

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Yes.

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I did my best to read all of this.

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So what Mike's referring to is there's the main portion of the book, which is the 430

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pages, but the margins are wide enough that you can write in them, which is handy, except

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for the fact that there's a lot of times when they fill them with, like, poems or short

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stories or quotes or all sorts of stuff.

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And if you want to read all of that, there's 200 is probably an exaggeration, but maybe

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another 50 or 60 or so pages worth of stuff in there.

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It's large.

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There's a lot in here.

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And this is a book that I know has been, I don't want to say divisive, but it's controversial

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in the aspect of why would I ever want to do a lot of these things?

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Or these are genius.

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I'm going to do all of these things.

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Like, it seems like people have one of those two reactions when I did some searching on

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it.

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But I know that you had some qualms with the size of this book, Mike.

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What was your initial reaction to it when you first started reading it?

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Oh, man.

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Reaction when I first started reading it.

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I was apprehensive.

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It starts, well, let's talk a little bit about the structure because there are no sections.

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It's just the 48 laws.

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So what I noticed is with the first law, the same format is kind of used throughout.

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There is the summary of the law right below the law and like a title page for that section.

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And then generally there's like the origin and historical examples of it in action and

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then the keys to the law.

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And at the end, there is a quote about the authority of the law, an image that goes along

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with it, and then the reversal of the law when you can go against it kind of most of

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the time.

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And right out of the bat, in the first law, there are these stories which I started to

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document in my mind map.

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And after the first one, I was like, I give up.

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Yeah, I did something similar.

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I wrote down the first one because what I like to do is whenever I have those stories,

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I like to put them in my notes and make a link out of it because then it'll tie it all

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the other places.

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Yep, and so I did that on the first one, but then I remembered when I was writing it in

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my notes that was like, okay, well, what was the date on that?

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Because sometimes I'll want to put the date on it.

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And when I did that, I had flipped somewhere in the middle and it occurred to me when I

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had flipped through the book at the beginning, thank you Adler for how to read a book.

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I was flipping through the whole thing and was remembering, I was like, okay, I've seen

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a lot of dates and stories like, let me just kind of flip through all of this because

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by that point, I had figured out some of the flow, like what you're talking about for each

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of these laws slash chapters.

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And I quickly realized that this is a huge number of stories.

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And there's, I think I remember one that overlapped.

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Like one person was brought up twice, I think.

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And then a lot of them are all.

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Because more than that, he actually does a pretty good job weaving stuff throughout the

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book.

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He'll reference a person and kind of assumes that you've read the previous anecdote about

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that person in previous laws.

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However, the style of these stories is very Ryan Holiday-esque.

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However, I feel like he's, because they're all, most of them are like ancient history.

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I feel like he's filling in a lot of blanks with these.

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Like just as an example, the first one that I jotted down, Nicholas Fokay, King Louis,

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the 14th's finance minister, he throws a huge party to honor the king.

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Instead the king feels threatened, has him thrown in jail, replaces him with someone

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that wasn't a threat.

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He has a very convenient narrative that fits the law that he's telling you.

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But you can see that there is a lot of opinion in that story.

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Yes.

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And I'm not saying that the story that he's telling around this is wrong, but I also think

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that there are multiple ways to view events that happen.

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And it's obvious he's coming at it from a singular perspective.

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I don't blame him for that given the very clear objective of the book itself.

00:23:12

But I didn't feel like I wanted a whole bunch of notes about somebody's opinions on historical

00:23:18

events.

00:23:20

So I stopped capturing them after that and really just jotted down the principles and

00:23:24

the big ideas of laws that he was trying to tell.

00:23:28

That's ultimately what I landed on too.

00:23:30

Something that you're explaining, some of the threads, I didn't catch that, which is interesting

00:23:36

to me because I did not catch that there's some stuff that was reiterated in names that

00:23:41

came up multiple times because in my head they were all completely different stories.

00:23:47

Some of that just might be that there's a lot of, and they'll say this wrong, there's

00:23:52

a lot of foreign names that I don't resonate with.

00:23:55

You should say Mike or John or Matthew, I can generally keep those apart.

00:24:00

Chinese names, I struggle to do that with.

00:24:03

Yeah, there's a lot of French and Chinese history in this.

00:24:06

So because of that, it all fell together and it's like, wait, these must all be different

00:24:13

people because you wouldn't reuse the same one.

00:24:16

And that might be a misnomer.

00:24:19

I may not have connected that.

00:24:20

So yeah, he talks about Mao Zedou and Cao Cao Bunch.

00:24:26

He talks about Napoleon multiple times.

00:24:29

Marie Antoinette is one I saw a bunch of times.

00:24:34

And after a while, I saw that he was really just building off of the stories that he was

00:24:40

telling, adding a little bit more shading when he brought up their names again.

00:24:46

But it's too much to keep track of.

00:24:48

It's a lot.

00:24:49

It is a lot.

00:24:50

And it's 48 laws.

00:24:53

And depending on the law, he either starts with a success story of using this law of power

00:25:02

or a negative of what happens if you don't follow this.

00:25:06

He starts with one of those two.

00:25:08

But in most cases, you're getting one or two stories on both of those sides of the coin.

00:25:13

Yep.

00:25:14

Not always, but you generally do.

00:25:15

And then when he explains it, he's going to give you a couple more.

00:25:18

Yeah, what I found confusing, by the way, is the story.

00:25:21

And then there's the interpretation.

00:25:23

But because the stories are so impeninated, I felt like by the time I got to the heading

00:25:27

of the interpretation, I rolled my eyes a little bit every time.

00:25:30

Like you already gave me the interpretation.

00:25:32

Right.

00:25:33

Right.

00:25:34

Yes.

00:25:35

But he doesn't want you to think of it that way.

00:25:37

Yeah.

00:25:38

He's inflicting one of these laws of power over you by doing it that way, I'm sure.

00:25:41

So just how it goes.

00:25:43

So like we said, there's 48 laws here.

00:25:47

We are absolutely not covering all of these.

00:25:50

I wrote down six.

00:25:52

And we can go through those.

00:25:54

If you want to add to that, Mike, go ahead.

00:25:56

But before we do that, I think we need to talk about the preface slash introduction of

00:26:02

this particular book because in this, he's kind of laying the groundwork for power itself.

00:26:08

And these laws are basically power games.

00:26:12

He kind of references that at the very beginning.

00:26:15

Yeah.

00:26:16

But during the preface, he makes a couple of quotes here at the beginning.

00:26:21

One of which of these is that the most important of the skills or the talents that go into

00:26:29

all these power laws, the most important of these skills and powers, crucial foundation

00:26:34

is the ability to master your emotions.

00:26:36

Now, as we talk about each of these different laws, at least the ones that we're going to

00:26:41

cover, I think it's fairly important to remember that whatever you're doing, you have to have

00:26:48

control over yourself in order to do any of this.

00:26:53

I think at the moment, I'll let aside whether or not you should do this.

00:27:00

And I say that knowing that whenever I looked this book up to do some research on it, I

00:27:05

found an interesting stat that this was one of the most requested books in prisons for

00:27:12

prisoners to read, which is an interesting thing to stick in the back of your brain whenever

00:27:16

we're going through this.

00:27:17

Well, anyway, let me defend that a little bit because I think the principles that he's

00:27:22

teaching here, obviously just by the names, they're going to rub you and me the wrong

00:27:30

way.

00:27:31

But I don't think it's necessarily good or bad.

00:27:37

I think his approach, what he would like to do with the book anyways, is have these principles

00:27:42

be a moral.

00:27:45

And I do think there is room to view power as a moral.

00:27:51

Like you could use it either way, just like money is a tool and you can use it for good

00:27:58

or bad.

00:27:59

I feel power is the same way, just maybe brand it a little bit differently.

00:28:06

Okay, so maybe instead of power, maybe this is influence or leadership, right?

00:28:14

Even was talking with my discipleship guys about this last night.

00:28:18

Leadership, we tend to think of that's a good thing, right?

00:28:21

But people will have an aversion to sales.

00:28:25

Why?

00:28:26

Because they have this picture in their head of somebody using it the wrong way, the snake

00:28:30

oil salesman who's trying to sell you a lemon of a car, right?

00:28:34

But that's not all sales.

00:28:37

Sales is really being able to sell somebody on an idea.

00:28:40

And I told all my guys, like you're all married, you sold yourself at least once.

00:28:45

Right.

00:28:48

And it was at church that I've mentioned.

00:28:49

Jesus was the best salesman that ever lived.

00:28:52

Yeah.

00:28:53

That's what it is.

00:28:55

But so we have this picture that's associated with it.

00:28:59

And I think a lot of people with something that they don't understand, like power specifically,

00:29:04

they probably have a negative view of that.

00:29:09

And you can take that negative view and be like, "Oh, I want that so that I can manipulate

00:29:13

people."

00:29:14

That's the example that you were kind of alluding to with the prisoners who want this

00:29:18

book.

00:29:19

Yes.

00:29:20

I think everyone should want to understand the principles that are in this book.

00:29:24

I'll just leave it at that for now.

00:29:27

Yep.

00:29:28

Totally fair.

00:29:29

That's probably a good point too.

00:29:31

Let's just start diving into this.

00:29:32

I think what we're alluding to will make more sense once we start talking through some

00:29:36

of this.

00:29:37

And I will say this, the laws that I've picked out to talk about are not necessarily the

00:29:42

most controversial ones either.

00:29:46

They're simply the ones that I feel like I'm most interested in and that I feel like

00:29:50

you would be the most interested in.

00:29:53

It's not necessarily the ones that are the flash bang exciting ones.

00:29:58

Yeah, I do have a couple more that I just jotted down examples and stories.

00:30:05

We don't have to discuss the laws, but I'll interject those as we go in between here.

00:30:09

Sure.

00:30:10

No, it sounds good.

00:30:11

So let's start with Law 1 because I feel like it's a good spot to start, which is never

00:30:16

outshine the master and he's got like these little paragraphs that come with each of these.

00:30:23

I feel like it makes more sense if I read those.

00:30:25

So I'm going to read this.

00:30:27

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior in your desire to please or impress

00:30:31

them.

00:30:32

Do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite.

00:30:36

Inspire fear and insecurity.

00:30:38

Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of

00:30:43

power.

00:30:44

And this is one that I kind of wanted to bring up because I feel like this is something that

00:30:49

some people do unintentionally and it's a good one to be aware of.

00:30:57

This is one that I know when you work in tech at a church, you are the expert on a certain

00:31:03

area.

00:31:04

So you can very easily accidentally outshine somebody who thinks they know tech pretty well.

00:31:12

We've all dealt with folks like this that think they know a certain area but then they

00:31:15

don't.

00:31:17

Or like when someone tells me that they know sound systems really well and they walk in

00:31:22

and they want to mix something.

00:31:26

That's fine.

00:31:27

Go for it.

00:31:28

But don't get upset if I come fix things because I don't know you.

00:31:33

I don't know if you know what you're doing.

00:31:37

And if you have your electric guitar EQ, like a bass guitar, it's going to be a bad day.

00:31:44

So trying not to outshine someone is not always as a.

00:31:47

As a random hypothetical example.

00:31:49

As a random hypothetical that has never happened ever.

00:31:55

Yeah.

00:31:57

So the big thing I think that you need to realize right from the beginning here again

00:32:04

is that there are multiple ways to look at these things and never outshine the master.

00:32:12

Another way to say this but you could say this about a lot of these different laws is

00:32:17

be self aware, right?

00:32:19

Don't make somebody else feel like an idiot.

00:32:24

And this is where like you use the church example.

00:32:27

I think the church is one place where people maybe could benefit from understanding the

00:32:33

other perspective here.

00:32:35

So the way he so explicitly states is like never outshine the master.

00:32:40

Realize you cannot shine the master simply by being yourself.

00:32:43

Never imagine that because the master loves you.

00:32:45

You can do anything that you want.

00:32:47

The big thing I took away here though is that it's okay to let others outshine you.

00:32:50

You don't have to say everything that you want to say.

00:32:56

Even if it's true, you don't have to say it.

00:33:00

And that's the thing about all of this stuff.

00:33:03

You mentioned like the self control and the introduction.

00:33:07

Essentially all of these laws, strategies, if you want to use this as the manipulation

00:33:13

handbook, right?

00:33:16

Is exercising because I'm sorry.

00:33:18

I use that term because I've heard other people describe it that way.

00:33:22

So you're not necessarily wrong.

00:33:24

Yeah.

00:33:25

That's the dark side of this that people who have an issue with this book, that's how

00:33:29

they describe it, right?

00:33:31

Because they see how other people have applied this stuff for manipulative purposes.

00:33:37

And yeah, you can totally see how that would work because it's all based on how humans

00:33:41

are wired.

00:33:44

But the big thing that if you're going to take that approach, all of these laws are

00:33:49

simply exercising self control long enough to get what you want.

00:33:54

That doesn't have to be manipulative though.

00:33:59

You can apply these laws, I think, to get what you want in a way that doesn't necessarily

00:34:04

mean that it hurts the other person or they don't get what they want.

00:34:07

I think there's win-wins here.

00:34:09

However, it's not really told that way because almost every one of these laws is like, "This

00:34:15

person did this and then they got power and then they killed the other guy."

00:34:19

Yep.

00:34:20

And then that became a repeating pattern.

00:34:22

And then somebody finally had to break it.

00:34:25

There's those patterns that happen a lot, right?

00:34:27

Yep.

00:34:28

So this is also, I think, about my corporate days when I was doing data analysis.

00:34:34

And one of the things I would do is take a lot of the data and whatever results we had

00:34:39

come up with and put them into slide decks for my superiors to then use in their presentations.

00:34:49

And it was always a thing that did me a lot of good if I made those very flashy and very

00:34:58

well done because then it made my boss look like a genius.

00:35:04

Even though I know I did all the work, I got all the data put together, I ran the reports,

00:35:12

I took it all and made it into a pretty slide deck and then I handed it all off.

00:35:17

And he goes and does a presentation with my 40-some hours worth of work and looks like

00:35:23

a genius in the process.

00:35:25

So if I can do that and he looks good, then he's excited and wants to keep me around because

00:35:31

I make him look good.

00:35:33

So if I don't ever try to outperform him or try to say, "Well, I'll present it."

00:35:39

No.

00:35:40

That's not the point.

00:35:42

This is an interesting one.

00:35:43

I totally do not say, but this is an interesting one for me because my official title in the

00:35:48

day job is a second in command.

00:35:51

So I have to walk this line all the time.

00:35:55

And there'll be times where it's clear to me what needs to be done, what needs to be

00:36:00

said.

00:36:01

But I recognize that I'm not the one it should be coming from.

00:36:05

So I talk to the CEO, like, "Hey, do you see it this way?

00:36:09

Yeah, I do.

00:36:10

Okay, well, this is what you should do.

00:36:11

Okay, yeah, I'll do that."

00:36:12

Yep.

00:36:13

You know, I'm fortunate that we've got a good enough relationship, working relationship

00:36:17

that's...

00:36:18

I don't know.

00:36:20

There's no politics in that, but yeah.

00:36:24

Politics are fun, right?

00:36:27

There's another one I want to jump into here though before we get to law 17 and that is

00:36:33

law number seven.

00:36:36

Just real briefly, this one is get others to do the work for you but always take the

00:36:40

credit.

00:36:41

And these law titles are terrible.

00:36:46

However, I will give you a practical example.

00:36:48

Are they terrible or are they genius?

00:36:50

No, this one I don't like.

00:36:52

The way it's stated.

00:36:53

But I apply this one and I'll tell you how.

00:36:57

So long time ago, I used to play Carxon all the time with Tan at Asian Efficiency, a couple

00:37:06

of other people Brooks and there was another guy in Scott that lived in the Austin area.

00:37:12

And Tan was a ruthless Carxon player.

00:37:17

Carxon is a board game where you get points for completing cities and roads and things

00:37:22

like that.

00:37:24

And you can start building a city and then end up sharing it with somebody.

00:37:28

So Tan's strategy was always get in on something, share it with somebody and then never complete

00:37:34

it.

00:37:35

But the other person complete the city and you split the points.

00:37:39

And in the meantime, you go build something else on the side.

00:37:44

And that's genius.

00:37:46

And I've adopted that strategy myself.

00:37:49

It means that I almost always win whenever I play with my family.

00:37:56

Well done, Mike.

00:37:57

I think.

00:37:58

So that's a non nefarious way that you could implement one of these laws board games.

00:38:02

Sure.

00:38:03

I have to watch this one a little bit because sometimes I want to give credit where credit

00:38:12

is due.

00:38:14

And I don't think that's necessarily bad.

00:38:16

So that's the reverse of this one.

00:38:19

And I'm aware that my assistant tends to do a lot of leg work for me and we'll do things

00:38:27

like setting up a stage, building entire scenes on our sound board.

00:38:31

He will do a lot of that for me.

00:38:33

And then I walk in and run the event.

00:38:37

And then whenever they do the things at the end and thank you for this person and thank

00:38:41

you for they point at me and say thanks to Joe.

00:38:44

But I'm not the one with a microphone.

00:38:46

So I can't also say and it's also my assistant here.

00:38:50

I can't say that.

00:38:53

So I end up taking the credit for things that he has done.

00:38:57

Now he's aware of this and we've talked about it before.

00:39:00

It's like we're behind the scenes.

00:39:01

If people notice what we're doing, we're not doing our job.

00:39:03

Like that's that whole thing we talk about.

00:39:06

So he's aware of that.

00:39:07

I make sure I applaud him where I can.

00:39:10

But I end up doing this inadvertently.

00:39:14

So it's not necessarily bad in every case, but playing board games is probably an easy

00:39:19

one to take full advantage of a lot of these.

00:39:23

Yep.

00:39:24

Yep.

00:39:25

Board games are like a microcosm of society.

00:39:30

You can learn a lot from playing board games as someone.

00:39:35

You may not want to either.

00:39:37

All right.

00:39:38

Let's look at Law 17 and there's a specific story on this one that I want to kind of

00:39:44

tell you about.

00:39:45

Anyway, Law 17 is keep others in suspended terror, cultivate an air of unpredictability.

00:39:52

Again.

00:39:53

I know you don't like some of these titles, but they're kind of fun, honestly, in a morbid

00:39:58

sort of way.

00:40:00

The paragraph underneath of this.

00:40:02

"Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people's

00:40:07

actions.

00:40:08

Your predictability gives them a sense of control.

00:40:11

Turn the tables.

00:40:12

Be deliberately unpredictable.

00:40:13

Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off balance and they

00:40:17

will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves.

00:40:21

Take into an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize."

00:40:26

And there's a story in here.

00:40:29

This is from 1972.

00:40:30

This is what he would call the observance of the law.

00:40:34

And he's telling the story of a couple of chess champions.

00:40:38

So Boris Spasky and Bobby Fisher.

00:40:41

Yep.

00:40:42

And I think this is an awesome story.

00:40:46

Let's see if I can get the two set up correctly here, but Fisher, these two are supposed to

00:40:53

face off, right?

00:40:55

And this is the world championship of chess that they're talking about.

00:40:58

So they're supposed to face off against each other.

00:41:01

Fisher is like not showing up.

00:41:04

He's late.

00:41:05

He's not responding to things.

00:41:07

He's just being unresponsive, which is very out of character for him.

00:41:12

Spasky is being very impatient, cannot wait to start this and is becoming very anxious

00:41:17

about it.

00:41:18

There's a big to do about it.

00:41:20

Eventually, Fisher does show up and then shows up late to the actual event itself.

00:41:25

Spasky's like, "Come on."

00:41:27

So then they finally after a bunch of to do, yeah, he almost gets disqualified.

00:41:32

So he shows up last minute and they do the first match and Fisher loses because he makes

00:41:41

some weird off the wall move that he can't recover from, which is again, completely

00:41:49

out of character for him.

00:41:52

And the thing you need to know about these types of championships is once you've lost

00:41:55

the first game, it's actually very difficult to come back from that.

00:41:59

And if you lose the first two, which he did, because he didn't make it in time for the

00:42:04

second one and got disqualified for the second game, if you lose the first two, it is like

00:42:08

almost unheard of to come back and win it.

00:42:12

Yeah, so real quick with Bobby Fisher, he's a weird dude.

00:42:15

So actually, this is normal for him.

00:42:19

Okay, maybe now.

00:42:21

The way it was pitched is he didn't used to be.

00:42:24

Yeah, so I guess I'm adding maybe some more context here to the story because I grew up

00:42:29

playing chess, played in the tournaments.

00:42:32

I had the Elo ranking and all that.

00:42:35

But I was never like grand master.

00:42:37

I was not going to compete in any of these tournaments.

00:42:40

But Bobby Fisher was popular when he had just written a book when I was in middle school

00:42:48

in high school.

00:42:49

So everybody, he was the hotness, but he was always really, really strange.

00:42:54

Yeah.

00:42:55

So he's starting to play these games and he's making bad moves, but then winning.

00:43:02

And he does this whole throw him off thing to spasci so much that spasci starts like

00:43:09

going nuts, thinks that Fisher is hypnotizing him, thinks there's something in the chairs

00:43:13

or in the food, like thinks that they're like playing mind games with him.

00:43:18

And ultimately, Fisher wins because didn't spasci resign.

00:43:23

Yeah, he resigned.

00:43:26

And then even though he was still young, he never fully recovered from that defeat.

00:43:31

Now, this is exactly what he's getting at here.

00:43:33

Like keeping others in suspended terror, cultivating an error, an error of unpredictability.

00:43:38

Like, if you're continually throwing things off and you're not following a set pattern,

00:43:42

people have no idea what you're doing.

00:43:43

So then trying to, now again, this is when you're in the middle of doing like power moves,

00:43:48

right?

00:43:49

That's when this would apply because if I were to do this to Mike when it comes to recording

00:43:53

times for bookworm, like, what does that gain anybody?

00:43:57

Yeah.

00:43:58

So the unpredictability of Joe's schedule, which is probably more unpredictable than Mike

00:44:02

would like, but I'm not this bad.

00:44:06

I don't think you're no Bobby Fisher.

00:44:09

No, I hope not.

00:44:10

I hope not.

00:44:12

Uh, yeah, this is interesting.

00:44:16

So chess players in particular, I mean, I grew up around chess players.

00:44:22

So I was one.

00:44:24

It am one?

00:44:25

I don't know.

00:44:26

I have in our living room right now, one of those, like you can hang on a wall chessboards,

00:44:32

therefore like clubs and classes where you can teach people like from famous games and

00:44:39

things like that.

00:44:40

So, um, we have those things set up in our living room and whoever happens to be playing,

00:44:46

they'll just like make one move when they're walking by.

00:44:48

Another person will come and they'll make the other move.

00:44:51

So games take days to complete.

00:44:54

But sure.

00:44:55

Um, but chess players are very smart in specific ways.

00:45:02

And uh, if you get them outside of their comfort zone, they, they don't know what to

00:45:09

do.

00:45:10

So this other guy that the Bobby Fisher was playing spasci, I think he said his name was

00:45:15

I didn't jot down the names.

00:45:17

He is very good at what he does inside of this little bubble.

00:45:24

Right.

00:45:25

And then Bobby Fisher just walks in and pop.

00:45:28

Yep.

00:45:29

Yep.

00:45:30

Now he's totally discombobulated.

00:45:33

Uh, I think there's another lesson to be learned in this chapter.

00:45:37

I mean, obviously this is written from the sense of the four yet laws of power.

00:45:40

So you can assume the upper hand by being unpredictable, but also be a little bit flexible

00:45:47

and then you won't get so upset.

00:45:50

Like you picked an example, an extreme example, obviously for the illustration purposes of,

00:45:55

of this particular law, and we can all relate to this a little bit.

00:45:58

Uh, but I think we can all deal with it maybe a little bit better than spasci did.

00:46:04

It doesn't have to be completely demoralizing and cause you to go insane.

00:46:08

Yeah.

00:46:09

And it is interesting story because like spasci was known for being able to calculate and

00:46:15

plan moves like 30 and 40 moves out, which was significantly more than Fisher was able

00:46:22

to do and Fisher knew that.

00:46:25

So came at it from a completely different strategy.

00:46:28

So he's employing this very well and he held the upper hand in the match from day one,

00:46:35

well, even before day one, whether spasci knew it or not, uh, didn't matter, but it eventually

00:46:41

won one out because of that.

00:46:44

Well that advantage that you're, that you're talking about there, like that's all based

00:46:48

on predictability, right?

00:46:50

And as a chess player, it's really satisfying to tell my boys like, Hey, mate in four,

00:46:57

they're like, what?

00:46:58

Yeah.

00:46:59

Like, no, just watch four moves later.

00:47:02

You know, you got them.

00:47:03

Yep.

00:47:04

But Fisher comes out of the box with like these moves that no one in their right mind

00:47:09

makes and it totally disorients spasci and it changes him the, it forces him to completely

00:47:15

change the way that he's thinking.

00:47:17

He can't predict things anymore.

00:47:20

Yes.

00:47:21

Now this is, this is one of those that I don't really know.

00:47:28

There's a lot of these.

00:47:29

I should preface this.

00:47:30

I don't really know how you would use this in a positive way in day to day.

00:47:36

There's a lot like this.

00:47:37

Like, hmm.

00:47:38

I don't think I ever want to do that.

00:47:40

Like that is so deceptive.

00:47:42

I don't think I could bring myself to do that.

00:47:46

So there's a lot of these.

00:47:48

Now I also am aware like if you can see it through the right lens, it does have positive

00:47:53

sides to it, but that's not always easy to see throughout this book, at least not for

00:47:59

me.

00:48:00

I feel like I'm usually pretty good at that, but I struggled with it on this one.

00:48:02

This isn't necessarily positive, but let me give you a non, I don't know.

00:48:08

I don't think it's really that big a deal if you were to employ something like this.

00:48:12

Let's say you're part of a group, right?

00:48:15

And there's a established time.

00:48:18

Everyone's going to be here at this time.

00:48:20

Hypothetical example here.

00:48:23

And you are the one who is always on time and the rest of the group, 60 to 70% of them,

00:48:29

about 75% of the time, always show up 15 and 20 minutes late, right?

00:48:35

Weird protocol, I'm running even a few minutes late.

00:48:38

I'm going to tell everybody, hey, I'll be there, you know, whatever time I'll be a little

00:48:42

bit late.

00:48:43

I think it's good for the group every once in a while, for me not to say anything and

00:48:48

to show up late like everybody else.

00:48:51

Why?

00:48:53

Just to, just to, well, number one, I guess is it, it's easy to see what other people

00:48:59

are doing, but you can't necessarily see what you're doing, right?

00:49:03

So if you try and talk to these individuals like, hey, it's really important, you're on

00:49:07

time.

00:49:08

Yeah, yeah, I understand, but they just never do it.

00:49:10

Like shock to the system.

00:49:11

When somebody does it to them, now actually they realize, oh, this is a jerk move that

00:49:15

I've been doing every single week.

00:49:17

Sure.

00:49:18

Right.

00:49:19

And I'm not saying like, just do this, but as a tactic, like if talk, if words aren't

00:49:23

working, maybe something like this does.

00:49:24

And in the grand scheme of things, you know, it's not, it's not that big a deal.

00:49:28

15 minutes, right?

00:49:29

Whatever.

00:49:30

Another thing I think is it forces a conversation.

00:49:35

So I'm never the one to shy away from conflict, right?

00:49:38

But I get sick of being the one who's like, hey, this is what we all agreed upon over

00:49:43

and over and over and over and over again.

00:49:46

So if you have implicitly said we're not going to play by these rules anymore, fine,

00:49:52

I don't play by me either.

00:49:54

Let's go back to the beginning.

00:49:56

Let's redefine the terms of engagement here.

00:49:59

Right.

00:50:00

I don't know.

00:50:01

Is that manipulative?

00:50:03

Uh, maybe I guess you could frame it that way.

00:50:07

But I also don't think like if, if you are trying to talk to people and people aren't

00:50:12

willing to talk or nothing actually changes, you know, sometimes you need something that's

00:50:16

a little bit more shocking to the system.

00:50:18

And this is one of those things that's shocking to the system.

00:50:20

But I don't think it necessarily needs to be completely disruptive or destroy relationship

00:50:24

sort of a thing.

00:50:25

Just like, whoa, that's weird.

00:50:27

Mike's usually here.

00:50:28

Five minutes early.

00:50:29

Where is he?

00:50:30

Yep.

00:50:31

It's totally fair.

00:50:33

I think what you're talking about there, like fine, I'll be unpredictable in this case.

00:50:38

That also plays into, I don't have this one on the outline, but law 22, which is use the

00:50:42

surrender tactic transform weakness into power.

00:50:45

It's kind of what you're talking about.

00:50:47

It's like, fine, you want to play by those rules?

00:50:48

I'll play by those rules.

00:50:49

Like, I'll surrender to that.

00:50:51

And like, there's a policy at work right now that they're implementing.

00:50:55

I'm not going to explain it and I'm not going to explain what I'm going to do.

00:50:58

But I'm basically like, fine, you can put that policy in place.

00:51:02

I'll play by that rule.

00:51:04

I don't think you understand the ramifications of that rule.

00:51:08

But I can now be unpredictable, kind of like what you're saying, because you decided to

00:51:12

put this policy in place, which I think is a very bad policy in general.

00:51:18

But if you see it on the surface, it doesn't appear that way.

00:51:22

But it has ramifications on down the line.

00:51:24

I kind of wish I could talk about it, but we're in the very depths of this at the moment.

00:51:30

So I'm not going to say anything right now.

00:51:32

Yeah, that's fine.

00:51:33

And I just want to like reiterate here, these are a moral, these laws, these tactics, right?

00:51:40

So you could, even the exact scenario that I described, like I could go into it with the

00:51:46

attitude of, oh, I'm going to stick it to this person.

00:51:48

And that would be wrong.

00:51:50

But if it's just, you know what, it's not that big a deal.

00:51:53

I'm in the middle of something and would I normally just like absolutely kill myself

00:51:58

in order to be there on time?

00:51:59

Because I made the commitment.

00:52:00

Yeah, I would, because that's my personality.

00:52:02

But I might decide, you know, it's really not that important as evidenced by other people's

00:52:07

behaviors.

00:52:08

So I'll be okay with letting that boundary get a little bit softer, you know, and that

00:52:16

is, I'm not doing a very good job of explain this, but I feel like it's very important

00:52:20

the attitude that you go into this.

00:52:23

I'm not trying to hurt somebody.

00:52:24

I'm not trying to like damage them.

00:52:27

I'm not trying to kill anybody examples in this book, but I could still use the tactic

00:52:36

without the negative ramifications of it.

00:52:40

I think it's possible for each and every one of these for it to be like a win-win sort

00:52:45

of a thing.

00:52:46

You got to get a little bit creative maybe with the execution of it, but it's possible.

00:52:50

Yes, yes.

00:52:51

This is why I brought up at the very beginning that one of the most important skills that's

00:52:57

crucial to power is mastering your emotions.

00:53:00

Yeah.

00:53:01

Like this is why I brought that up because if you go through these, it's very easy.

00:53:05

Like take this policy thing is very easy for me to get upset about it, complain, moan,

00:53:10

wine.

00:53:11

Like I could do that or I could play by the rule and let them see the results of that

00:53:20

rule and try not to get all emotional about it.

00:53:23

Now do I want to get emotional about it?

00:53:25

Yeah, I think it's a terrible idea and I think everybody should know about it, but I'm not

00:53:30

going to go find a bunch of coworkers and collude together and complain about it.

00:53:38

No, I'll just bite my tongue, go along for the ride, be okay with that, and just let

00:53:46

the actions do the speaking in this particular case.

00:53:49

It's kind of the route that I'm going with it.

00:53:51

But this is the application of something like what he's referring to in these laws, just

00:53:56

not with the results of somebody being beheaded in the process.

00:54:00

Yeah.

00:54:01

So I know we're not talking about the one that's actually on the outline yet, but let's just

00:54:05

continue this.

00:54:06

Use the surrender tactic, right?

00:54:07

So there's this policy that goes forth and you may be your emotional about it because

00:54:12

you know it's going to make it harder to do your job the right way.

00:54:17

Well, you could say your piece and eventually disagree but commit.

00:54:24

You lose that battle.

00:54:26

They'd go ahead with the policy anyways.

00:54:28

Just stick to the policy and don't like your job will suffer because of it.

00:54:34

So they will feel that, right?

00:54:35

You'll have to cut corners.

00:54:36

You won't be able to do things the same way that you use to type a theoretical example.

00:54:40

But eventually they'll come to you and be like, well, why aren't you able to do this?

00:54:45

Because this is the policy.

00:54:47

So this is the way I have to do things and I just can't do it the way I want to do it

00:54:50

anymore.

00:54:51

Oh, okay.

00:54:52

Well, now you've got the upper hand.

00:54:54

Correct.

00:54:55

Yes.

00:54:56

So inflicted this pain upon yourself.

00:54:58

You just didn't realize it.

00:55:00

So yeah.

00:55:02

So the actual law that I have in the outline is law 23 and just came up short on 22 there,

00:55:08

which is concentrate your forces.

00:55:11

The paragraph here, conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at

00:55:15

their strongest point.

00:55:16

You gain more by finding a rich mind and mining it deeper than by flitting from one shallow

00:55:22

mind to another.

00:55:24

Intensity defeats extensity every time.

00:55:27

When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who

00:55:32

will give you milk for a long time to come.

00:55:37

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons.

00:55:39

One, if you want to think about terms of power and like trying to gain an upper hand in some

00:55:45

scenario is something as simple as like a policy at work or maybe it's a relationship

00:55:51

online.

00:55:52

I don't even know what that would be.

00:55:53

But if you're thinking about these things, it pays if you follow this thought process,

00:56:00

it pays to think about it long enough to decide what is the one place that would have the

00:56:06

full impact and have the ability to carry me in perpetuity without having to spread myself

00:56:13

thin.

00:56:14

Can I focus all of my energy on that one place?

00:56:17

That's essentially what he's getting at here.

00:56:20

And he's not wrong in that because I can think of all sorts of times whenever I've spread

00:56:24

myself too thin and ended up with myself spread too thin and got nowhere when I would be better

00:56:31

off focusing on one direction and coming out at the other end with some form of success

00:56:36

instead of a whole bunch of failures littering the field behind me.

00:56:40

So I think this is a good one to keep in mind, but it's also one that if you redirect what

00:56:47

he's getting at, it doesn't have to necessarily mean power plays, but it can be applied elsewhere.

00:56:54

Yeah.

00:56:55

So when I read this one, I thought of online writing to be honest.

00:57:02

Okay.

00:57:03

Yeah.

00:57:04

So we mentioned before the call, I've been following the ship 30 for 30 stuff for a

00:57:10

while and I understand why maybe those guys, their personalities rub people the wrong way,

00:57:13

but the stuff that they talk about is really good.

00:57:15

One of the courses that they have inside their captain's table thing is become known for a

00:57:21

niche that you own and it's all about becoming like super, super specific.

00:57:26

And really all of the different webinars and things that they do, they just walk people

00:57:32

through like get more specific, get more specific.

00:57:35

Okay.

00:57:36

So now you've got your niche and now you can generate ideas that you want to write about

00:57:40

or create content about.

00:57:42

And one of the mistakes that everybody makes and I've done this myself is they try to get

00:57:47

too broad and one of the reasons that you would get too broad is because you see somebody

00:57:53

else who is doing something in a specific area and you say, I want to be like that person

00:57:59

and productivity is the easy one.

00:58:01

Who would you say is the productivity guy?

00:58:04

If you had to pick one person on the internet.

00:58:07

I had to pick one person on the internet.

00:58:09

Everybody that's alive today, who's the productivity guy?

00:58:14

I'm probably a little bias at the moment, but not going with my bias and going off of

00:58:19

history.

00:58:20

Everybody typically would think of David Allen.

00:58:22

Exactly.

00:58:23

Exactly.

00:58:24

And that's why I asked you because I knew you were going to say David Allen.

00:58:26

He's the productivity guy.

00:58:28

There's never going to be anybody else who can brand themselves as the productivity guy.

00:58:33

He owns that, right?

00:58:35

But I can get more specific.

00:58:37

I can be the faith based productivity guy.

00:58:41

But the tendency is, well, I don't want to talk about faith based productivity necessarily

00:58:46

because there's stuff that's important to me that doesn't necessarily fit inside that

00:58:52

container and the trick is just figuring out how it does.

00:58:55

But if you don't take the time to figure that out, you end up going broad.

00:59:00

Like I want to talk about this thing and that thing and the other thing and there's no unifying

00:59:03

thread between them and nobody knows what the heck you stand for.

00:59:07

So no one ends up following you because you're trying to...

00:59:10

If you try to stand for everything you'll be known for nothing, I think that's how the

00:59:15

saying goes.

00:59:17

Yeah.

00:59:18

You got to pick something.

00:59:19

And that to me is concentrating my forces, identifying what is the niche that I want

00:59:24

to create stuff for and then everything has to tie back to that.

00:59:29

And if I'm going to make a difference, if I'm going to build an audience, if I am going

00:59:33

to have an impact in people's lives, it's going to be because I was able to concentrate

00:59:38

my forces in a specific area and didn't let myself get spread too broad.

00:59:42

With my situation specifically, yours too, we're not full-time creators.

00:59:46

We got day jobs, right?

00:59:47

So there's limited time that goes into these things.

00:59:49

They have to connect.

00:59:51

If they don't connect, like what the heck are we doing here?

00:59:54

Correct.

00:59:55

So waste the time.

00:59:56

Yep.

00:59:57

This is one that...

00:59:58

This is partly why you don't see me writing really at all right now because I can do book

01:00:04

worm and I can do my day job, but book worm has its own niche, right?

01:00:12

So we're doing the productivity self-help business books and we have our cadence with

01:00:18

that, right?

01:00:19

When it comes to writing, like I can do the Mac OS tech productivity thing.

01:00:27

There's a lot of people that do that.

01:00:28

I don't really have a way that I'm different per se in that, but I also know that that's

01:00:33

only one very small piece of the interests that I would rather explore.

01:00:38

The problem is, this is why I...

01:00:41

Maybe this is why I'm trying to nail down what this actually looks like.

01:00:46

I like the pen and paper world.

01:00:47

I like the tech productivity thing, but at the same time, I really, really enjoy boiling

01:00:54

sap or building cages for quail and trying to get a little quail thing going up.

01:00:59

I would love to somehow incorporate those things, but it doesn't really fit.

01:01:03

They're so diverse that it's hard to tie that stuff together.

01:01:06

Now, you can make the argument that Joe just hasn't taken the time to figure out the common

01:01:11

thread amongst those things and then become that person and that's very likely a big part

01:01:18

of it, but at the same time, I need to know what is that arena that I want to explore and

01:01:26

make that the thing.

01:01:28

But I don't know what that is right now.

01:01:30

So that's partly why you don't see me writing really at all.

01:01:32

I write a lot for myself and where I had to nail down what that arena is, there's probably

01:01:38

a ton of content I probably already have, just needs published that I could release.

01:01:43

The trick is that right now it doesn't fit the audience that follows me based on what

01:01:48

I'm known for, which is a bit fluid in itself.

01:01:54

So a lot of people know me as the OmniFocus scripting guy, which is ironic considering

01:02:00

I've not used it for, I don't know how long, I still get questions even yesterday.

01:02:03

I got a question.

01:02:04

It's like, "Hey, can I get the Java script version of this OmniFocus script?

01:02:09

I don't see that it's been updated in a while."

01:02:11

That's because I haven't touched it in years.

01:02:14

So apologies, but that's just how it is.

01:02:18

Right.

01:02:20

Let me add one other tangential thought to this because I feel like timing here is really

01:02:26

interesting.

01:02:28

You mentioned the Apple Tech stuff.

01:02:31

Yes.

01:02:32

And that's what triggered this thought.

01:02:34

With Apple Tech specifically, there are a lot of people who are leaving Twitter, which

01:02:41

I continue to be on Twitter because I feel like it still has a lot of business value.

01:02:46

And it's kind of a weird season as people who no longer need Twitter for business value

01:02:52

because their audiences are big enough to find them other places have the luxury of

01:02:57

leaving.

01:02:59

But when they leave, there's a vacuum now.

01:03:02

There's a void that you can fill if you continue to write and publish socially.

01:03:09

So it's kind of a unique opportunity, I feel, where you still want to niche down.

01:03:15

I mean, the thing that gives you the authority is that you get so specific.

01:03:20

Right.

01:03:21

I have a little bit of authority maybe when it comes to the broad category of productivity.

01:03:27

But when you combine the Bible college degree and teaching the personal management class,

01:03:33

now I have a lot more authority as the faith-based productivity guy.

01:03:35

So you still want to do that.

01:03:38

But maybe there was somebody in the Apple Tech space.

01:03:40

I don't know who was doing a specific thing and you felt like it was just too crowded.

01:03:46

You couldn't make your claim there.

01:03:48

Just make the stuff you want to make and publish it consistently.

01:03:53

And I really believe there's never been a better time to get noticed.

01:03:58

But you got to be strategic with it.

01:04:00

Yes.

01:04:01

The trick is creating what you want, like whatever that area, whatever that niche is.

01:04:07

I don't feel solid enough to say that I know what that is.

01:04:10

Yep.

01:04:11

That's the problem that underlies that.

01:04:14

So like the marketing side of it and like how I publish things and where that's at and

01:04:17

how I go through that process, like I can nail that down all day long.

01:04:21

I know what those avenues are.

01:04:23

But the back side of it, if the, in like what we're talking about, like concentrate your

01:04:28

forces, if you're concentrating on one small, super tiny niche, what is that?

01:04:35

Because my brain is so scattered that trying to get, like this is why hobbies are a bad

01:04:41

idea for me because like I'll go do this hobby for a while and then like two months

01:04:45

later, we'll go on to the next one.

01:04:48

And that's just, you know, I have a hobby of collecting hobbies as they say.

01:04:51

So that makes it tricky.

01:04:54

Like when I'm always jumping from topic to topic, like cool, that's fun.

01:04:59

I've now learned how to handle all the voltage and amperage changes whenever you're dealing

01:05:05

with solar panels and building your own lithium ion solar panel battery packs.

01:05:09

Like I can tell you how to do all these things.

01:05:13

Why?

01:05:14

Like that doesn't fit the whole analog Joe productivity world at all, but I've been fascinated by

01:05:21

it.

01:05:22

So that's what I've spent my time on whenever I'm researching things.

01:05:26

But that has nothing to do with really anything that pertains to bookworm or stuff I've done.

01:05:34

So whenever I have those seasons, the question is, well, then how do you find the common thread

01:05:38

that underlies all that and focus on that?

01:05:41

And I don't think I'm in a good spot right now to be able to nail that down.

01:05:47

That's the hard part.

01:05:48

Joe Buleg Renaissance, man.

01:05:50

Modern day Leonardo.

01:05:52

Sure.

01:05:53

Sure.

01:05:54

Well, that said, let's go on to another law because it sounds like fun.

01:06:00

Let's jump ahead to law 29 and this is maybe kind of coinciding with what we were just

01:06:07

talking about.

01:06:08

But plan all the way to the end is what this is called.

01:06:10

So law 29 plan all the way to the end.

01:06:13

Here's the paragraph underneath of that.

01:06:15

The ending is everything.

01:06:17

Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and

01:06:21

twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others.

01:06:26

By planning to the end, you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to

01:06:30

stop.

01:06:31

Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

01:06:37

And this particular law, I feel like actually should be either towards the beginning or

01:06:42

towards the end of the book.

01:06:43

I'm not sure which one, probably at the end.

01:06:47

Because in every single one of these laws, I think it's every single one, there's always

01:06:55

the predicated notion that the person enacting the law knows what they're after and like

01:07:05

on a high level view, like everybody already knows the goal that they're trying to accomplish.

01:07:09

Like when you're hearing about one of the ministers underneath of Napoleon, he had a

01:07:14

mission that he was working on for years and he had this goal that he was headed towards.

01:07:20

And he didn't necessarily have the whole thing planned out to the end, but he did know what

01:07:25

the ultimate mission is.

01:07:28

Maybe that comes up because we're here at the end of the year and I know that a lot

01:07:31

of people are thinking about mission and goals and stuff whenever January starts rolling

01:07:35

around.

01:07:36

So maybe that's why that jumps ahead to me.

01:07:38

But just the concept of planning all the way in that has a couple things that are required.

01:07:46

If you're going to plan all the way in, number one, you need to know what you're shooting

01:07:49

for, like what is that goal?

01:07:51

What is the ending that you're wanting to have accomplished?

01:07:56

And two, you also have to have the ability to work yourself to that, I guess, is the way

01:08:04

to put that.

01:08:05

So if you're wanting to be a pro basketball player and join the NBA, you have to have

01:08:11

the ability to do that first.

01:08:14

You can't just say, "I'm going to go play in the NBA if I said that right now."

01:08:20

Everybody should join forces and make sure that I don't do that because it's a huge waste

01:08:25

of time.

01:08:26

Don't do that.

01:08:27

But all of this is dependent on knowing what the end should be, what the outcome should

01:08:30

be, and then working your way towards that.

01:08:32

That's what building that plan all the way the end is about.

01:08:35

I don't like this law.

01:08:38

Goals are dumb.

01:08:39

That's all I guess.

01:08:40

Cool.

01:08:41

All right.

01:08:42

Let's go to the next one.

01:08:43

So the things I jotted down from this, most men are ruled by their heart, not their

01:08:48

head.

01:08:49

Most people have no concrete picture of their end goal.

01:08:52

When you plan to the end, you want to come to emotion.

01:08:54

I agree with all of those points in isolation.

01:08:59

And he does use a lot of different stories of specific people who had specific goals for

01:09:03

a really long time and all the things that they did in order to make that goal come to

01:09:09

fruition.

01:09:10

But when I read those, it reminded me of interviewing the winning team in the Super Bowl or the

01:09:18

NBA Championship.

01:09:19

It's like, "Did you think that you were going to hear?"

01:09:22

"Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:09:23

We knew because we had a goal."

01:09:25

They all had the same goal, but yeah.

01:09:28

So this is fine.

01:09:32

You can talk about this principle.

01:09:34

Again, I think it's dangerous to talk about goals this way because it's not the thing that

01:09:42

creates the success.

01:09:43

Now this book is interesting because these are essentially all different tactics that

01:09:47

it's up to you to figure out when is the right time to use these different tactics.

01:09:52

So there's an area of nuance that is often missed when it comes to setting goals, I feel.

01:09:58

Sometimes maybe the goal is the right thing in the right situation, but not all the time.

01:10:03

And most of the time, I'm going to argue that habits and routines are going to be better

01:10:07

than goals.

01:10:09

There's going to be reversals for all of these laws.

01:10:12

Well, most of these laws, actually.

01:10:15

So I guess in this context, it's actually kind of cool because I feel like this is different

01:10:20

than most of the other times that we hear goals talked about because it's essentially

01:10:25

like one of the 48 different strategies that you could be using.

01:10:30

But again, the way that he describes it and the way that he described it, there's a bias

01:10:37

associated with this.

01:10:39

I forget which one this is.

01:10:41

It's maybe a confirmation bias.

01:10:44

Because somebody did this and they were successful, then I should do the same thing.

01:10:50

I would caution people not necessarily.

01:10:54

I do think if you were to plan all the way to the end, like he's describing here, I can

01:10:59

think of a lot of scenarios where that would actually be really frustrating and maybe do

01:11:04

more harm than good.

01:11:08

So I just want to call that out.

01:11:09

I mean, doesn't necessarily mean that this is the wrong strategy.

01:11:13

However, you got to know a lot more about the situation before you can assume that it

01:11:19

is the right one.

01:11:21

I think you made an important observation here in that there's 48 laws that does not

01:11:28

mean you're using all of them at the same time.

01:11:31

It would be impossible.

01:11:32

Some of our contradictory.

01:11:34

They are.

01:11:35

They absolutely are.

01:11:36

Used in the right ways, these can absolutely contradict each other.

01:11:40

Now, that's why some of the opinions I have about this book as a whole that I'll share

01:11:47

later are what they are.

01:11:50

But ultimately, you're picking these depending on the situation.

01:11:55

I know you used it kind of in jest, but the manipulator's manual that you're referring

01:12:00

to, you could absolutely use this as a reference book to look back on.

01:12:06

It's like, "Okay, here's a situation I'm dealing with and I need to get to this end goal.

01:12:12

If I want to shoot towards that end goal, how do I get to that point and I'm struggling

01:12:16

to figure out how to do that?"

01:12:17

You could pull this out and read through these laws and like, "Yeah, that's what I need to

01:12:21

try for this."

01:12:23

You could absolutely do that.

01:12:25

I don't know that that's what I'm going to do.

01:12:28

But having read it, it's going to be hard to get some of this out of my brain, which

01:12:32

is probably a good thing in some areas, but in others, not so much.

01:12:38

One other book, which maybe if people are familiar with this, adds some context for how

01:12:43

you might use something like the 48 Laws of Power, is this book by Derek Sivers, How

01:12:50

to Live.

01:12:52

The subtitle is 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion.

01:13:00

This book explicitly is like, "Do this."

01:13:04

Then the next chapter is, "Do the opposite thing."

01:13:08

It's written in a way that you can't just try to do all of the things you have to think

01:13:12

about when to implement them.

01:13:15

I love that style.

01:13:16

It's classic Derek Sivers, so it's really, really good.

01:13:20

But I feel like you kind of got to take the same approach with the 48 Laws of Power,

01:13:24

even though it's not explicitly stated that way in this one.

01:13:29

Yes.

01:13:30

Now, it is interesting that one of these is put together a plan.

01:13:37

That's really it.

01:13:38

He's just telling you, if you're going to become powerful, you need to not-- you're

01:13:44

not going to do it haphazardly.

01:13:47

You need to be on a mission.

01:13:48

So there's that.

01:13:50

That's Law 29.

01:13:51

If we go to Law 40, this one is fascinating to me for a handful of reasons.

01:13:57

It might-- no, I'm not going to say it's my favorite one, but it might be up there.

01:14:02

This is Law Number 40.

01:14:04

Spies the free lunch-- I have so many different areas I could apply this.

01:14:09

Here's the paragraph.

01:14:10

What is offered for free is dangerous.

01:14:12

It usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation.

01:14:16

What has worth is worth paying for.

01:14:18

By paying your own way, you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit.

01:14:22

It is also often wise to pay the full price.

01:14:25

There are no cutting corners with excellence.

01:14:27

Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating for generosity as a sign and a magnet for

01:14:32

power.

01:14:35

This was specifically geared towards finances.

01:14:39

That's really what his chapter here is about.

01:14:42

This Law is about.

01:14:44

It's basically like, pay your way and don't take something for free.

01:14:49

Living in the attention economy, that could absolutely apply to apps, to services, to

01:14:57

all sorts of stuff at the same time.

01:15:00

If you're not paying for it, how's that go?

01:15:02

If you're not paying for it, you're the product.

01:15:05

That's how that goes.

01:15:07

I immediately took it that direction.

01:15:09

Obviously, that's Joe being privacy centered on this stuff.

01:15:14

That's where that comes from.

01:15:15

This is absolutely true, I guess, in a lot of cases, whenever you see something that's

01:15:19

for free, there's either someone wants to buy you lunch.

01:15:23

It's not necessarily a power move.

01:15:27

It's possibly possible they want information, which may just be learning about you and just

01:15:33

trying to build a relationship with you.

01:15:36

The question would then be, why do they want to do that?

01:15:40

One thing this book taught me is being skeptical is his playbook here.

01:15:46

Assume everybody's trying to get you.

01:15:49

That's kind of the underlying theme here.

01:15:54

Being the skeptic whenever you see something free is his point in this particular law.

01:15:59

It's kind of depressing, actually.

01:16:00

By the time you get to the end, you're like, "Okay, can we move on?

01:16:03

I'd like to have some hope in humanity again."

01:16:06

Yes, exactly.

01:16:07

Yeah, one of the points he makes in this chapter, which I think was pretty profound, is that

01:16:12

money is psychologically charged.

01:16:16

That explains a lot of people's view, I think, on that money is evil.

01:16:23

They'll even misquote that Bible verse.

01:16:25

No, it's not money that's evil.

01:16:26

It's the love of money that is evil because it's replacing what you should be loving instead.

01:16:32

It becomes a knightal.

01:16:35

But I think this is interesting, despise the free lunch.

01:16:39

One of the things that Rachel and I have documented from going through the book Life

01:16:45

and Air, like Millionaire, but what does it look like if you have an abundance of life?

01:16:51

It's really just ways to start.

01:16:54

If money was no object, how would you live your life?

01:16:57

And then you kind of work backwards from there and other elements of that that you can implement

01:17:00

now.

01:17:01

One of the things that we landed on was along the lines of the free lunch and the generosity

01:17:07

we want to make people feel like a million bucks, even if we don't have a million bucks.

01:17:10

That's a phrase we landed on.

01:17:12

What does that look like?

01:17:13

That means that when we meet somebody for coffee or lunch most of the time, we're just going

01:17:21

to offer to pay for it.

01:17:24

We're not doing that to manipulate somebody, although I do think because money is psychologically

01:17:30

charged and you do so in that way, you will reap a harvest from that.

01:17:38

There are a lot of times now where people understand that that's our MO and so when the

01:17:45

bill comes, they'll snatch it before we even get a chance to be like, "No, just one check."

01:17:50

Over here, is that bad?

01:17:52

No, I wasn't trying to get that out of the person, but if they want to reciprocate, I'm

01:17:57

okay with that.

01:17:58

It reminds me of verse Proverbs 11, 24, and the message version says, "The world of the

01:18:02

generous gets larger and larger."

01:18:04

It's kind of interesting to me because a lot of these laws map up with these biblical

01:18:08

principles.

01:18:09

They do.

01:18:10

It's like if you can interpret them.

01:18:12

This is not new.

01:18:13

I've been saying this for a really long time, but...

01:18:19

Yeah, I think there's a couple different ways to take this.

01:18:25

Like what you're saying, despise the free lunch.

01:18:28

Again, he's coming from a building power thought process.

01:18:34

That's where he's coming from.

01:18:36

If you accept a free lunch, you owe somebody something and that's bad.

01:18:40

Yeah, supposedly.

01:18:41

In this construct of power and levels of power and who's at what level and who has power over

01:18:49

whom, when you're in that structure, then you need to be wary of someone offering to

01:18:57

buy your lunch because the question is, are they trying to get power over you?

01:19:04

Because you're saying generosity when your generous, your world expands, and some would

01:19:12

say that that's absolutely what this law is getting at because you're expanding your

01:19:17

power because you've expanded your world.

01:19:19

So that's absolutely playing into what he's calling on here.

01:19:24

And yet the way that he wrote this, it's like this is a negative and that's not necessarily

01:19:31

bad.

01:19:33

Being a free lunch, if you're on the receiving end of that generosity is what I'm referring

01:19:39

to.

01:19:40

If you're receiving that, it's kind of seen as that's a bad thing.

01:19:43

So you don't want to do that.

01:19:45

You want to flip the tables.

01:19:47

But at the same time, sometimes me being on the receiving side and doing that with honor

01:19:55

to the person giving to me is exactly what I need to do to show respect to that other

01:20:01

person.

01:20:02

Right?

01:20:03

And the whole book is written from a scarcity mindset.

01:20:06

And all the stories support that because there can be only one king of France.

01:20:10

There can be only one ruler of China.

01:20:13

Yes.

01:20:14

Right?

01:20:15

But the truth is that for anybody who is not the leader of a nation, success is not a

01:20:23

zero sum game.

01:20:25

I don't have to, you don't have to lose in order for me to win.

01:20:32

But I do think that based on the level that he's talking about these principles, that

01:20:36

is a little bit different.

01:20:38

Yep.

01:20:39

Absolutely.

01:20:40

I guess what I was going to say is that if I'm accepting generosity from, say, one of

01:20:46

my elders, it can be a sign of respect to that person if I'm accepting that free lunch.

01:20:54

So I've had a couple people take me out to lunch.

01:20:58

They've bought and I know that accepting that is sometimes exactly what I need to do.

01:21:04

There are times I offer to buy that I weigh that depending on the situation.

01:21:08

And I'm not going to be one that's trying to always do that just because I sometimes

01:21:13

know that I don't want that persona.

01:21:16

For some people, it works really well.

01:21:17

So in your case, it might work really well to do that.

01:21:20

I just know that in my particular, with my personality, it doesn't fit to do it that

01:21:23

way.

01:21:24

So sure.

01:21:25

It's just the way it is.

01:21:27

Okay.

01:21:28

So I do law number 45.

01:21:29

This is the last one I want to talk about that I wrote on the outline here.

01:21:34

45 out of 48.

01:21:35

So 45, law 45, preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once.

01:21:43

Here's the paragraph under this one.

01:21:44

Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract.

01:21:47

But on the day-to-day level, people are creatures of habit.

01:21:50

Too much innovation is traumatic and will lead to revolt.

01:21:54

If you are new to a position of power or an outsider trying to build a power base, make

01:22:00

a show of respecting the old way of doing things.

01:22:03

If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

01:22:08

Yes, yes, and yes.

01:22:13

This is right in my world.

01:22:15

And it's because if I'm going to implement a new piece of software, that can be a major

01:22:21

amount of change for somebody.

01:22:24

And knowing how much to change at one time is key.

01:22:29

So if I'm going to change a whole bunch of things at one time, it usually is not going

01:22:32

to go well.

01:22:33

You have to choose which ones are we going to change all at once.

01:22:36

For example, I'm in the middle of rebuilding our church website.

01:22:40

And whenever we're doing that, there are lots of ramifications and things that we could

01:22:46

do to incorporate which have trickle effects down through other areas of the organization.

01:22:51

And if we do too much of that, everybody gets lost, doesn't know where to go to find a calendar,

01:22:58

doesn't know where to go to do, you name it.

01:23:02

And we have too many things that are mixed up and too difficult to locate.

01:23:06

So we can't change too many things at one time, but we can set up the structure to allow

01:23:11

us to change it over a couple of years.

01:23:13

So that's exactly what we're doing in that case.

01:23:16

And this particular case has nothing to do with power, has everything to do with helping

01:23:22

people go along for the ride and not causing problems.

01:23:25

So maybe that's a power move, but I'm just trying to create less work for myself in the

01:23:30

process.

01:23:31

So this is purely self-preservation in this particular case.

01:23:35

Yeah, exactly.

01:23:37

You mentioned the tech stuff, but I feel like New Year's resolutions falls into this

01:23:44

too.

01:23:45

It doesn't.

01:23:46

You can change at least six things at once and it's fine, Mike.

01:23:50

Let's make this tech-related.

01:23:53

It's like trying to change your life OS.

01:23:56

Okay.

01:23:57

Yeah, sure.

01:23:58

That'll work.

01:23:59

That's a thing, isn't it?

01:24:01

Life OS isn't that an actual...

01:24:03

Probably.

01:24:04

Yeah.

01:24:05

I don't know.

01:24:06

I guess you could argue that that's kind of what I do with the daily notes in Obsidian.

01:24:09

Ding.

01:24:10

There goes Bellblick.

01:24:11

But the big takeaway here is I think you should not try to change a bunch of stuff at once.

01:24:19

Whether or not you're trying to get other people to move along with you or you're just

01:24:24

trying to make changes yourself, this is the principle.

01:24:29

But everyone wants the big changes.

01:24:33

And one of the things I jotted down in this chapter is never let the seductive charm of

01:24:37

an idea cloud your reason.

01:24:40

Side Cole said that the most powerful thing you can do is create an image.

01:24:45

And this is why you might want a revolution.

01:24:48

This is why people will attach to New Year's resolutions is they have an image in their

01:24:53

head of a different life.

01:24:57

And they want the noun without having to do the verb.

01:25:04

You don't really understand all the work that's going to be part of this.

01:25:09

And if you really did, you wouldn't be choosing that.

01:25:13

Or you would run out of motivation before you actually got a chance to achieve it.

01:25:21

And that ties into the one other thing that I jotted down from this for today was going

01:25:29

back to Law 32, Play to People's Fantasies.

01:25:32

So I feel like these kind of go together.

01:25:35

This is what productivity books do.

01:25:39

They promise the revolution.

01:25:41

They promise the sweeping changes, right?

01:25:46

And that's not the true way to implement any sort of lasting change.

01:25:53

But Law 32 talks about how change is slow and gradual.

01:25:58

I wrote it down this way.

01:26:00

Suddenly never happens suddenly.

01:26:02

But when you package it and you try to sell it in a form of a New York Times best-selling

01:26:06

book, you want it to seem sudden.

01:26:12

And then to bring power fantasy must remain to some degree unrealized.

01:26:16

So I don't know, it's just interesting to me reflecting on this book specifically and

01:26:23

how it's probably leveraged several of these laws to get people to buy more copies of this

01:26:29

book.

01:26:30

So the promise, I think, is that you're going to be able to have the upper hand in whatever

01:26:35

situation you happen to be in.

01:26:38

That's probably unrealistic.

01:26:39

You can probably implement some of this stuff and get a little bit more leverage and have

01:26:42

a little bit more control.

01:26:44

And that would be a win, but that's not why people are going to pick up the 48 laws of

01:26:48

power.

01:26:49

It's going to be because they believe in the revolution and it's going to completely

01:26:54

change their world.

01:26:56

But probably not.

01:27:01

Or people are picking it up because they're now in a new situation and there are people

01:27:07

playing power moves and they're trying to figure out what's going on.

01:27:11

That's another way you could come at this.

01:27:13

But I have lots of thoughts on this overall.

01:27:17

That is fair.

01:27:18

However, I feel like if someone were doing that, I don't know.

01:27:23

I understand that people are in bad jobs and bad situations and you can't just have a

01:27:33

conversation about it.

01:27:34

But me personally, I don't think I would try the majority of these with the intention of

01:27:41

I am going to manipulate this person so that I get a better situation.

01:27:46

I think if I had to resort to any of these for any length of time, I would quickly be

01:27:50

like, I'm in the wrong spot.

01:27:51

I'm out of here.

01:27:52

Sure.

01:27:53

These are things that you can, the one we were talking about earlier where you do something

01:27:58

unexpected and it kind of jars people and it forces a look at what's really going on.

01:28:07

But I don't know.

01:28:09

I feel like I would get to the point where I would feel like there's no alignment here

01:28:13

and I would choose to remove myself from that situation long before I would really be able

01:28:18

to leverage any of these laws to any real effect.

01:28:22

But that's just me.

01:28:23

Yeah, I know that just looking at the book holistically and I went back and I skimmed

01:28:31

through the preface after I finished reading this and I did that because I didn't recall

01:28:40

if he made the comment that we should play by these rules, like that he's making the

01:28:48

claim that everyone should operate by these laws and should try to do these things because

01:28:54

that's definitely the error that the whole book has as you're reading through that.

01:28:59

It seems like that's what he's calling for but he never explicitly said that as you were

01:29:05

going through the law.

01:29:06

So I went back to the preface because that's the only thing you have outside of the law.

01:29:09

He doesn't have a conclusion.

01:29:10

He doesn't have an explanation for a group of laws.

01:29:14

He doesn't have that.

01:29:16

So I went back to the preface and he doesn't ever say, not that I found, he doesn't say

01:29:24

that you should do these things.

01:29:26

And he also doesn't say that these are all explicitly evil in their way and he also doesn't

01:29:34

say that they're explicitly good in their own way.

01:29:37

It's just left open for you to make that decision, which I think you kind of alluded

01:29:44

to this earlier, might be part of the power play he's taking here because he's now made

01:29:48

me an extreme skeptic of everything that he's doing.

01:29:52

So I'm not certain that this is unintentional.

01:29:56

I would assume it is intentional, but he even disqualifies the people who say this doesn't

01:30:03

exist because he's got a quote.

01:30:05

I'm going to read this because this is funny to me because he's quelling fears over this

01:30:10

book before you ever get into it.

01:30:12

This is what he says, "To some people, the notion of consciously playing power games,

01:30:16

no matter how indirect seems evil, a social, a relic of the past.

01:30:21

They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do

01:30:25

with power.

01:30:26

You must be aware of such people for while they express such opinions outwardly, they

01:30:30

are often among the most adept players at power."

01:30:33

Okay, so even if you're going to say you're going to opt out, does that then make you one

01:30:38

of the supreme power players?

01:30:42

That's really what you're left with on that.

01:30:44

So again, he's not telling you that you should or shouldn't do this.

01:30:47

He's not saying that these are necessarily good or bad, but that these do exist.

01:30:52

I think Blake mentioned this in the chat early on.

01:30:56

It doesn't matter if you like these or don't like them.

01:31:00

What we were saying, we may not like the way that they're expressed.

01:31:04

Like the terminology behind them may not necessarily be the way that we would term it, but this

01:31:10

is the way things work.

01:31:12

Like a lot of people play by this playbook.

01:31:15

If you think of all the political campaigns, the candidates are playing by these rules

01:31:21

constantly.

01:31:22

They're always doing these things.

01:31:24

So that doesn't mean that they're right.

01:31:26

It doesn't mean that they're a good person, but that's what they're doing.

01:31:31

So I don't really know where I'm landing on the...

01:31:35

I'm going to use this versus I'm not going to use this.

01:31:37

This is why I'm kind of stalling on getting to action items.

01:31:40

Well, let me influence you maybe a little bit here because, yeah, I agree in isolation.

01:31:46

It's hard to tell.

01:31:47

What does he really think about this stuff?

01:31:48

How should you be using this stuff?

01:31:50

However, look at the rest of the body of work.

01:31:55

His blog is called Power, Seduction, and War.

01:31:59

Yes.

01:32:00

Yes.

01:32:01

He's written the art of seduction, the 33 strategies of war, and then a couple of books, which

01:32:08

actually sound kind of decent, the laws of human nature and mastery.

01:32:13

However, I don't want to read the other ones.

01:32:17

Yes.

01:32:18

That makes me non-willing participant in the game.

01:32:24

Maybe, but I'm okay with that.

01:32:27

Yes.

01:32:28

That's the part here that is a bit dicey and maybe why this is such a divisive book.

01:32:37

This is why some people absolutely love it.

01:32:40

This is why some people think it's terrible.

01:32:42

At the end of the day, I'm kind of transitioning into action items here knowing that I get to

01:32:46

go first on this.

01:32:48

I'm not real sure what to do with this because there's a lot here that, again, if I think

01:32:56

back to working in a number of consulting roles and being in different headquarters for

01:33:01

different companies, these things happen a lot at the levels that I was participating

01:33:07

in.

01:33:10

I sensed, I could tell that certain things were happening and that power plays were happening,

01:33:16

but I couldn't necessarily tell you what they were trying to do or why they were doing

01:33:22

certain things that seemed so strange.

01:33:27

Looking back on those situations and replaying some of the moments that I remember in meetings

01:33:32

that left me completely flabbergasted that somebody would do something, it's like, "Oh,

01:33:37

that's this law."

01:33:38

Oh, that's what they were doing.

01:33:41

Things started to click.

01:33:43

I also don't know that those people knew what they were doing.

01:33:46

They just kind of intuitively knew what was going on.

01:33:50

So maybe they knew they were playing a power play.

01:33:53

Maybe they didn't.

01:33:54

I don't know, but you could kind of tell what was going on and this has kind of crystallized

01:33:59

some of that for me.

01:34:02

As far as what to do with this, as far as action items go, I have one.

01:34:08

And it's primarily because something that comes up a lot, this isn't necessarily a specific

01:34:16

law, but it comes up in a number of them in that trying not to share too much information

01:34:22

too early or at all.

01:34:25

So basically, the way I wrote it down, you'll appreciate this, Mike.

01:34:29

I wrote it down as "bite my tongue."

01:34:31

That's what I wrote it down as.

01:34:33

Just because I tend to share too much about situations, obviously on bookworm, that's

01:34:40

the point.

01:34:41

But in day to day, that's not necessarily the point.

01:34:44

Sometimes I feel like it's becoming a problem in certain relationships.

01:34:50

So bite my tongue.

01:34:52

The unknown is better than the known negative in a lot of cases.

01:34:58

So that's one thing that I've kind of collected from the bank of these laws.

01:35:03

So again, I don't really know what else to do with that other than just be aware of it.

01:35:09

In a lot of cases, I don't want to use some of these laws in other areas like, "Oh yeah,

01:35:14

I use that all the time."

01:35:15

Huh, interesting.

01:35:17

So it's kind of eye-opening, but it's definitely got me looking at things like a skeptic.

01:35:22

So I'm not sure the net outcome is positive here.

01:35:27

So anyway.

01:35:28

I just have the one action item.

01:35:29

Did you come up with any out of this?

01:35:32

You have one more action item than I do.

01:35:34

Okay.

01:35:35

See, I win.

01:35:37

I have more points than Mike on the action items list.

01:35:41

Yeah.

01:35:42

We'll talk about the book in style and rating.

01:35:46

I thought it was a fascinating read, but there's nothing from this that I wanted to implement

01:35:53

a specific way.

01:35:54

I think a lot of it is information that maybe or may not prove useful in the future.

01:35:57

There's definitely some things that I wanted to talk to you about, which were cool, but

01:36:02

not a traditional bookworm style action item to be found in here for me.

01:36:08

Yeah, totally fair.

01:36:09

All right.

01:36:10

So for style and rating, I will say that his style here is pretty engaging, actually.

01:36:17

I know that I said earlier that the stories were hard for me to keep square with each

01:36:24

other and I'll stand beside that because I did not connect a lot of dots between different

01:36:30

stories.

01:36:32

Maybe that's a factor of it's just being long and I got tired.

01:36:35

Maybe it's a factor of the names didn't connect with me.

01:36:38

Not sure what that was, but the format that he has for each of these laws, like observance

01:36:43

and I can't think of what the other term was.

01:36:48

Basically it's whenever you use it the transgression.

01:36:51

That's what it was.

01:36:52

You can use the wrong one.

01:36:54

If you observe the law, certain things happen.

01:36:56

If you transgress the law, this happens.

01:37:00

Then he'll do the keys to power or the interpretations.

01:37:03

I like that flow.

01:37:04

You're not wrong in saying that he's interpreting a story and then interpreting his interpretation

01:37:09

of the story.

01:37:10

You're not wrong in saying that.

01:37:11

I just hadn't connected that that's what was going on until you set it.

01:37:16

I like that he has the same format for each of them because then it allows you to compare

01:37:21

law to law knowing that you're not going to use all of them at once.

01:37:25

He's great at telling the stories.

01:37:27

There were a lot of times I felt like I kind of want to skim this so I could be done with

01:37:31

this book, but I really couldn't because every time I went to the next law, it's like, oh,

01:37:37

this is a fascinating story.

01:37:39

He's done that so many times going through this.

01:37:44

I'm fairly certain that Ryan Holiday was his research assistant.

01:37:50

Can anybody confirm or deny that?

01:37:52

I'm pretty sure there's a connection between those two, which makes perfect sense.

01:37:56

There is a connection.

01:37:57

They actually just did a webinar together, I believe.

01:38:01

It makes sense, Blake says it's true.

01:38:04

It makes sense to me because if you look at how Ryan Holiday puts together stories that

01:38:09

you really don't know, this is absolutely what this is.

01:38:13

I don't know that there were really any of these stories that I knew at all.

01:38:18

There was maybe a couple that I knew about, but not in the level of detail that he shared.

01:38:25

Maybe that means I'm not widely read.

01:38:26

I don't know what that means.

01:38:29

That all said, as far as the book itself, should you read it?

01:38:33

What are we rated as?

01:38:36

It's one of these that I think long-term, this is one that I'm going to be glad that

01:38:43

I have read.

01:38:44

I am not sure that this is one that I want to read again or come back to because it makes

01:38:49

me feel kind of icky.

01:38:51

It's a technical term for those of you out there.

01:38:55

The trick with this one is that it's positioned in a way that comes across very negative and

01:39:02

in order to find the positive, which I tend to prefer, you have to do some interpretation.

01:39:08

It's not always the case, but in most cases, that seems to be what you need to do.

01:39:12

As far as an encouragement, if you're going to read it, I don't find that that's the case.

01:39:20

You were saying when you finish reading it, it's like, "Okay, I'm glad I'm done with this."

01:39:26

There's not really any resolution to the negatives that I feel like I've worked through.

01:39:31

At the same time, knowing about these different tactics and methods that people can use to

01:39:37

climb the power wall, if you will, it tells me that

01:39:42

there's a lot of stuff that happens, whether people realize they're doing it or not.

01:39:46

I'm not sure, but you can become aware of these things being used against you.

01:39:53

What you do with that, I think, is up to you, but in my case, I'm probably going to let

01:39:58

things lie in a lot of cases, not always, but it would be good to be aware of these things.

01:40:03

I'm kind of glad that I've been through this now, just to understand that construct a little

01:40:08

bit more helps me see some of my history and of different lights, so I'm very grateful

01:40:12

for that.

01:40:13

As far as rating goes, it's weird.

01:40:18

This is kind of a weird book.

01:40:19

I feel like we say that every time though.

01:40:22

It's far from a five, in my opinion, but I also feel like it's got some value to it.

01:40:28

I'm going to put it at 4.0 because I feel like there's a lot of good that you can learn

01:40:33

from this.

01:40:34

But at the same time, you've got to come at this with a side eye, I think.

01:40:39

If you're well-read prior to going into this, I think you'll be in good shape.

01:40:43

If this is one of the first non-fiction books you pick up, you're probably getting slapped

01:40:48

in the face with this one.

01:40:50

I feel like you've got to have some background before you get into it.

01:40:53

4.0.

01:40:54

That's where I land, Mike.

01:40:56

All right.

01:40:57

Well, I will say I was pleasantly surprised with the stories.

01:41:04

I don't think there was a single story in here that was a slog to read.

01:41:09

They were all pretty fascinating.

01:41:12

So very, very good storyteller.

01:41:14

However, the rest of the premise of the book made me uncomfortable.

01:41:19

I am glad to have read it.

01:41:22

I don't think this is one you have to read.

01:41:25

I don't think I would necessarily recommend this one for the bookworm audience.

01:41:31

I don't know.

01:41:32

Maybe time will prove me wrong.

01:41:34

Maybe the further we get from this, the more value it has.

01:41:38

I'll how to read a book by Mortimer Adler.

01:41:41

Maybe I'll keep realizing that I heard about this in this book and keep coming back to

01:41:47

it.

01:41:48

But I kind of don't think that's the case.

01:41:52

You mentioned that it made you feel icky.

01:41:56

I'll say it this way.

01:41:58

You get done with this one.

01:41:59

You want to go take a shower.

01:42:01

I feel the perspective that is communicated here, whether intentional or not, is not a

01:42:12

healthy one.

01:42:14

If you are going to look around every corner and assume that everybody has it out for you

01:42:20

and try to figure out who's using what laws of power against you and then getting upset

01:42:25

that they're doing that and trying to turn the tables and actually manipulate them instead,

01:42:30

that sounds like a miserable life.

01:42:33

I have no interest in that whatsoever.

01:42:35

I also mentioned the perspective of the scarcity mindset as it pertains to the power dynamics

01:42:47

that he's describing here.

01:42:49

Maybe I'm not setting big enough goals.

01:42:52

Maybe I don't aspire for enough greatness, but I don't really want to be the president

01:42:56

of the United States or the king of France or anything like that.

01:43:00

I have a hard time believing that there's a if I am to be successful, somebody else can't

01:43:07

be, which is the prevailing thread throughout this entire book.

01:43:11

So I don't really think that's great either.

01:43:13

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

01:43:15

Like I said, the stories are great.

01:43:17

I do like the perspective of like these are all the different laws and you got to decide

01:43:21

for yourself where you're going to use them.

01:43:23

I do like the fact that at the end of every section, there is a reversal.

01:43:27

There was one where the reversal section was.

01:43:29

There is no reversal for this law.

01:43:31

I forget which one that was.

01:43:32

I remember that.

01:43:33

Yeah.

01:43:34

There was one of them.

01:43:35

But for the most part, it's all it's talking about how, you know, here's where you want

01:43:39

to use it.

01:43:40

Here's where you don't want to use it.

01:43:41

Like you said, there's that when you obey it, this is what happens.

01:43:44

And when you go against it, this is what happens.

01:43:48

So a lot of good context, a lot of content here.

01:43:52

I feel like the stuff in the margins is pretty fascinating.

01:43:56

It's all like different fables and anecdotal stuff where it kind of ties into the main

01:44:01

topic, but not directly.

01:44:04

I gave up trying to keep up with all of that stuff though to be honest, I was getting through

01:44:08

it.

01:44:09

Yeah.

01:44:10

I do think it's probably a pretty good reference work.

01:44:13

Like I'm glad I've got this one in my library.

01:44:16

However, when people are coming over and they're asking like, hey, you have any recommendations?

01:44:20

What should I read?

01:44:22

I have a hard time thinking I will ever recommend this one.

01:44:25

Yeah.

01:44:26

So better than I expected, not great in my opinion.

01:44:31

Really just I chalk that up to difference of philosophical opinion between me and the

01:44:39

author here.

01:44:41

I'm not surprised you rated it 4.0.

01:44:43

I do think there's value here.

01:44:44

However, I'm going to rate it at three and a half.

01:44:46

Totally valid.

01:44:48

7.5.

01:44:49

Okay, let's put it on the shelf.

01:44:51

What's next, Mike?

01:44:52

Next is another laws book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell, the updated

01:44:59

version by the way, because this book has been around for a long time.

01:45:03

This is one of those like, well, it's not a classic book like Stephen Covey type classic,

01:45:08

but it's been around for a while.

01:45:10

And I did see that he updated it for like the 25 year anniversary or something this last

01:45:15

year.

01:45:16

And so I bought it.

01:45:17

And this is one of those ones that I feel is going to be one that we point back to in

01:45:23

the bookworm library.

01:45:24

It was kind of surprise that we hadn't covered this.

01:45:26

I think we've both read it at different points, but we haven't covered it for bookworm.

01:45:31

And that's going to change.

01:45:33

Yeah.

01:45:34

No, I went through this with a group of men eight years ago.

01:45:38

So I have the new version on the way.

01:45:42

I think it's supposed to be at my house today, which would be good because I'm hoping to

01:45:45

start it tonight.

01:45:46

So looking forward to going through that one.

01:45:48

Now following that, I figured out how to pronounce this.

01:45:52

I picked a book knowing that the beginning of the year is a time shortly after the one

01:45:58

will cover this, but Iki guy is how you say this, I K I G A I Iki guy.

01:46:06

It's the Japanese secret to a long and happy life by Hector Garcia.

01:46:12

And this is basically if you think about like all those Venn diagrams of passion, what you're

01:46:17

good at, things you like to do.

01:46:20

This is like that center section of all of those.

01:46:23

So I know that this one is very highly rated and talked about in a lot of cases in a lot

01:46:28

of lists.

01:46:29

So I kind of want to cover this one.

01:46:31

I've been itching to do like a missions, passions, values, something book for some reason.

01:46:38

And this kept coming up, I asked Mike before via text, like, what's like one of your best

01:46:44

missions purpose book out there?

01:46:47

And it's like hero on a mission.

01:46:49

Like, well, we already covered that one.

01:46:50

I can't do that one again.

01:46:53

But anyway, I think Mike should write one.

01:46:56

That's what I'm hoping for here.

01:46:59

That's the goal.

01:47:00

Anyway, so Iki guy is what's coming up after 21 laws of leadership.

01:47:04

How about gap books, Mike?

01:47:07

I'm finishing a gap book that I had previously.

01:47:12

We should definitely do something by this author, by the way.

01:47:16

Some day is today by Matthew Dix.

01:47:19

This is a creative book.

01:47:22

And it's pretty good.

01:47:23

It's got a blurb on the very front.

01:47:25

You know how like they'll have the blurbs from famous people?

01:47:29

David Allen, Cal Newport, et cetera.

01:47:32

This one is from Dr. Ali Abdahl.

01:47:34

There you go.

01:47:37

Doctor.

01:47:38

I like it.

01:47:39

I like it.

01:47:41

I sent you a picture of this, but I

01:47:43

managed to get a pretty good deal on a couple of books.

01:47:46

And I have one that I've been kind of working through slowly.

01:47:52

When I tell you what it is, that will make sense.

01:47:54

But I've been reading little bits of it here and there day

01:47:57

by day.

01:47:59

It's Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss.

01:48:01

I've been starting to kind of work through that.

01:48:03

That one's going to take some time.

01:48:05

That one's not going to be done in a couple of weeks.

01:48:07

That one will take time.

01:48:10

I should look up.

01:48:11

It's like 600 pages.

01:48:12

It's long.

01:48:14

It's longer than the moment we just covered.

01:48:16

I know that.

01:48:17

Yeah, it's ginormous.

01:48:19

And I believe this is essentially a book that

01:48:22

was written by all the interviews that he's done.

01:48:27

So it's a pretty brilliant premise to be honest.

01:48:30

Just take all those interviews, package them up

01:48:32

in a book form, and sell it.

01:48:34

Right.

01:48:34

And it's an expensive book.

01:48:36

I want to say it's $48, $40 something.

01:48:39

I found it at a used bookstore for like 12.

01:48:43

And it was like in perfect condition.

01:48:44

It was like done.

01:48:45

That's coming home with me.

01:48:46

So that said, we're super grateful to everyone

01:48:50

who has joined us on the show today.

01:48:52

And especially those of you in the chat.

01:48:54

And even more so, those of you who have joined the Bookworm

01:48:57

Club at club.bookworm.fm--

01:49:01

see if I can get these words out of my mouth.

01:49:03

And those of you who have joined the memberships so much,

01:49:07

we're so grateful to you.

01:49:09

It's a simple $5 a month, $60 a year.

01:49:13

You get all kinds of cool perks.

01:49:15

We talk about it all the time.

01:49:17

But we're always grateful to have those of you join us

01:49:20

on the show as well.

01:49:21

And we're very grateful to those of you who do that

01:49:23

to help us keep the lights on here for the podcast.

01:49:26

So thank you.

01:49:27

All right.

01:49:28

If you are reading along with us,

01:49:29

pick up the 21 Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.

01:49:32

And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.