Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, I have some shameless self promotion to do again this week.

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If that's okay, Joe Buellig.

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As long as it's good self promotion and not bad self promotion.

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I released another course.

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This one is digital journaling and obsidian.

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This one has kind of been a long time coming because I've been journaling

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and obsidian since January of 2020.

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I went back and looked.

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See, I thought you were going to say you've been journaling and obsidian

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since preschool.

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Well, if obsidian had existed in preschool, I probably would have been, but it did not.

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So essentially what it is, is it's 13 videos on how to step by step walk

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through the individual pieces of the daily journaling template that I have.

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And then you can use the pieces of that to tweak them and apply it anyway that you want.

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I had somebody who has been using obsidian quite a bit.

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I think I introduced them to it.

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Maybe a year and a half ago.

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And they went through the course and they were messaging me like, oh, I just discovered

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this, this one trick from this quick ad thing that you do.

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And that was a total game changer for me.

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And it's always really cool to hear that kind of stuff.

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And that's what I'm hoping people get out of this, not just here's how to do exactly

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what Mike does, but pretty proud of this one.

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So it is available inside the faith based productivity community.

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All my courses are moving to circle.

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I'm absolutely loving this platform.

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It is perfect for this type of stuff that I want to do.

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And as we record this, it is $27.

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By the time it publishes, it will probably go up to 37.

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I think that's what I announced in the newsletter.

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So I guess if you want first steps on this kind of thing, you should check out the newsletter.

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And if you had previously purchased the journaling bootcamp, I moved everybody over

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and gave them access to digital journaling as well.

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But that is not an ongoing open offer.

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So it'll be a separate course, but pretty proud of this one.

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And people should go check it out if they are looking to journal for personal development

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inside of obsidian there, exit soapbox.

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And I promise I will not keep releasing courses every two weeks.

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I just have some ideas for low hanging fruit here.

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And I want to build out a stable of these courses in the faith based productivity

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community because eventually I want to have a tutor where people can get access to all

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of those with like a monthly membership sort of a thing.

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So sneak peek there of the future plans.

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So Mike has now forgotten one of the laws of power, which is keep your mouth shut.

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Sure.

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I figure people who listen to bookworm, these are my peeps.

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So you get rewarded for following the stuff, listening to it in a time.

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I'm just that they should be the first ones to know, but yeah.

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Because power is the ultimate thing.

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You're after right here.

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I know that.

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So yep, you know me.

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I'm a big fan side note here of the circle stuff.

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We tried to do this back in the day with the discourse stuff, but the the in line,

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like the comments with the course materials, people are going through it is pretty great.

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And I think people are a little bit.

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It's really easy to do that inside a circle, but it's not something people are really used to.

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I'm starting to see a little bit of that happen where people are like sharing stuff.

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And then other people are like replying.

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So it just takes like a little bit to get it going, but going through it together, like as a community is really, really cool.

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And it totally changes the game when it comes to these sorts of courses.

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So I'm really, really digging this and faith, best productivity community currently is is free.

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So you should check it out.

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I will again, I will break the rules here, give away my power.

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When it hits a certain threshold, I won't say what threshold is.

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I am not going to just leave it open as a freebie forever.

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I do want to reward people who are like the early adopters though.

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So if you've been on the fence, think it might be interesting.

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Go check it out because at some point, you know, there will be a I'm doing like these, these Friday video calls, these workshops to, which I know I've done them in the past.

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I just did one this week for Sean Blanc, like I've done these paid and I know I can deliver a crazy amount of value with these.

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I'm just kind of dipping my toes into those waters.

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And so right now, like you get not just the community, the courses are there again, those are separate things, but you do get with the community.

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These Friday video calls that I do.

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So I walk through like, I'm doing my journaling workflow.

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Actually, this Friday, as we record this, it'll all have already happened by the time this this publishes.

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So if you're not joining the live YouTube recordings, you're missing out.

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I did one on what did I do last time?

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I think I did some life-themed stuff.

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I'm doing one on my task management workflow, you know, stuff like that.

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And it's always really fun to get a group of people together and talk through that stuff.

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So just come check it out community.faithbasebreaktv.com.

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Totally going to do this.

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I'm not familiar with circle at all.

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So I got a I got a I got a I got a the things to figure it out.

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Based on what you're telling me, it cannot be too hard.

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No, it's it's really fun.

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And I was thinking about that because there's certain things that happen with the bookworm community where I'm like, hey, Joe, can you take care of this?

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Because I can't do anything.

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Yes.

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And I keeping in the back of my mind, you know, maybe circle makes sense for bookworm at some point, but way more expensive than what we're currently doing.

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So I'll just say that.

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But maybe, maybe I'm not sure you see all the the expenses that go with running a discourse of the size of the bookworm.

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Probably not probably not.

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That's fair.

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All right, let's talk about action items.

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You want to go first or should I?

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I can go first.

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So I had to one of those was to do green tea over breakfast.

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Now to be completely upfront and honest with all of our favorite people on the internet here on bookworm, I I've been doing tea in the mornings for a while.

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Maybe a year and a half now.

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I got away from the coffee habit and we'll probably talk about that a little bit more later on in this episode.

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But I started doing a tease and primarily I was doing like black teas and such did green tea occasionally.

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This action item for me was to intentionally do green tea in the morning.

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And then if I'm going to have tea, say mid or late morning, it's okay for me to do a black tea or a new lawn or something.

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But I will do those later and then I'll do like the herbal's later in the afternoon and such.

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That way I'm staying off the caffeine and such.

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But the green tea over breakfast is something I started doing.

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I obviously like this is not something I think you're going to see like massive changes because I started drinking a different type of tea.

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I just know that the consistency of green tea every morning over breakfast, like something about that makes it simple for me.

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I like the routine that comes with that.

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So I've been doing that.

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It's a pleasant add to me.

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It obviously doesn't have any form of withdrawals from backing off on the amount of caffeine in the morning.

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So I have zero of those effects, but I like it.

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It's good.

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I know this is one that you had.

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Have you been doing this?

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I don't like green tea.

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Turns out it's a bitter.

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To you.

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Yeah.

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I don't know.

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I just I enjoy my coffee and I don't I hesitate to say this because this is like denial for everyone who has a substance addiction.

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Right.

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It's like I could quit any time I want, but I intentionally have chosen a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, actually, like to forgo coffee.

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So like it does not have a to prove to myself, it does not have the hold on me, essentially, like fasting coffee, etc.

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Sure.

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Certain points, but I just really enjoy the taste of a good cup of coffee.

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Yeah.

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And so I feel I felt like that like I don't enjoy this.

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I I don't think this is going to provide it enough benefit for me to justify trying to acquire this taste.

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So I have given up the green tea pursuit.

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I did have more success with some of the other action items, though.

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Sure.

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Yeah, I know one of mine that I had the other one that I had, I had those two.

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So I had the green tea bit, which I think is going to stick pretty easily for me.

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The other one was to add yoga to like my workout routines in the mornings.

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I did this, I think three times and was feeling like I was starting to get some traction on that.

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But then I quit very abruptly.

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But that actually has nothing to do with yoga.

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I had more to do with I had basketball last Friday and I tweaked my calf muscle somehow pretty severely, but it was a weird thing.

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So I'm in the middle of like trying to do a recovery on that.

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So I've been doing like arm workouts and stuff because my right leg is just

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torturous at the moment.

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So Joe has a limp.

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People like to call me old man Joe now.

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Super fun.

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Given the beard and the limp, it goes over real well.

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I told them I need to get a cane just to complete the whole look and.

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Your kids get off my lawn.

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Right, right.

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I was yelling at who was it?

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I think it was my middle daughter.

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She was like, you need to quit doing.

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And I was, I just made some stuff up.

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Like I need to quit brushing your hair with your toothbrush or something along those lines.

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And I remember what I said.

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And she's like, you are a cranky old man.

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It kind of seems that way.

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Anyway, I hurt myself basically.

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So all of the twisting and stuff that goes with the yoga routines I was doing.

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Not happening here for a bit.

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So got to do some recovery.

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Great fun.

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Not what I wanted to do, but here we are.

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Bummer.

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Well, I hope you have a quick recovery.

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I did not have yoga as an action item, but I did have more stretches, specifically

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Sunsell mutations, which I don't like.

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So you're aware that Sunsell mutation is yoga, correct?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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You could argue that the.

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Don't want to call it that.

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Yeah, that's fine.

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OK, the stretches that I do are very much like yoga because it's not you do this one,

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and then you stand up and then you do another one.

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I kind of like I've done them enough.

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I kind of go from one to the other.

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Like looking at the diagrams of the Sunsell mutations, it's all like one continuous

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movement, right?

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And that's kind of what I do with my stretches.

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There's at one point, I'll like do a plank, another point, like the downward dog

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sort of thing from yoga, right?

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But I refuse to call this yoga.

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It's just stretches.

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I'm not going to do more though.

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Like this is enough.

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Fair enough.

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I tried it.

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Yeah, the sun salutations specifically seem like the way that those

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movements were like that would be really good for me.

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And I have no doubt that it would be.

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However, the last couple weeks have been a little bit nuts at the day job.

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So I consider to win that I have done the bare minimum of my stretches.

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And just trying to add the sun salutations to it was too much.

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Didn't enjoy it when I did it and it.

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Yeah, limited, limited benefit.

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I guess, you know, part of this is not an indictment against the actual action items.

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A lot of this I realized is totally timing.

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And this is probably the worst time for me to try green tea, but I did, you know, so.

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All right, whatever I can do is report on the results.

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But yeah, I recognize that maybe didn't give it a completely fair shake.

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That's OK.

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I need some stability right now.

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I did, however, get some success with the no screens one hour after waking up or one

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hour before going to bed.

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OK.

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Not 100%, but I'm moving in this direction.

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And I mentioned last time the onyx books tab, ultra terribly named, amazingly

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expensive, eink Android device that I've been using.

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So I don't consider this a screen.

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And you could argue that and say, well, it really is, but it is essentially a journaling tool.

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I'm not.

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I don't even have access to the stuff that I would do on a screen and there's no blue

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light.

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So win, win for me.

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But other than that, this has been going well.

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I've been doing the analog Bible reading.

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I actually subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and I read a physical paper every

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morning now.

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So we got old man Mike coming in here too.

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Yeah, it's not not always like right at the beginning of the the morning.

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Sometimes I I'm halfway through my workday by the time I crack it open, but it's been

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it's been enjoyable.

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And my son has gotten into reading the Wall Street Journal.

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I don't know how many 15 year olds read the Wall Street Journal, but Toby does.

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Yep.

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That makes them cool, weird, whatever.

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I don't know.

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I told him that when I was a freshman in college, I had this professor who would

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have us read the Wall Street Journal and then once a week, write like a one page

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paper on a current event from it, you know, analyze it and economic impact.

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What are the factors that contributed to this story?

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He's like, that's such a great idea.

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I think I'm going to start doing that.

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But nice.

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I don't know.

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I like it.

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I like it because the Wall Street Journal specifically seems less political.

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It's all about the markets, right?

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So it's the market impact of the current events.

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I think you said you read the Wall Street Journal to it one point.

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I used to for a couple of years.

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I did have debated getting back into it, but pro tip with the Wall Street Journal.

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Whenever it comes time to renew, like for your annual renewal, cancel your service,

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release attempt to cancel it and they'll cut your renewal fee almost in half.

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Nice.

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Just a heads up because, you know, they do the market thing too.

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But I remember doing that.

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Like it was like 50 some dollars to do the first year or something.

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I think that's what it is right now.

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And it was like 170 something I think to renew at the time.

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And then I was like, I'm not like I'd do the 50 to 100, but I am not doing that much.

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So I went into cancel and then it cut me a discount for like 80 something dollars.

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Like, well, that I would do.

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So it's done.

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So yes, pro tip, try to cancel.

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That probably goes for a lot of services.

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But yeah, Audible has a thing like that too, or they did because you it's like a credit

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a month or whatever.

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And I've been an audible member for long enough that I have a whole bunch of audio

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books that I need to listen to.

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So I went to cancel it and they they said, well, what about?

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You know, one every other month.

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And that actually is a pretty decent cadence.

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They call it a silver plan, I think, but it's not available on the website.

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Of course.

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Yeah.

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It's one of those like you can get to the plan, but you got to go down in like the

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terms of service, footnotes to find the link to do it.

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One of those.

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Yep.

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Exactly.

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And then the last one I had was the Harahachi boo, the failure belly to 80%.

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And this is kind of coupled with an idea from today's book on savoring and just

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enjoying the meal as opposed to just eating because you're not full yet.

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And this has worked.

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I've lost almost five pounds.

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Nice work.

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Yeah.

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So I will continue to do this.

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I've actually gained a little weight recently, which is actually good for me.

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Um, and my wife has joked that it comes from the beard.

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So like everything's like beard jokes here lately.

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It seems like.

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Uh, it comes from the beard and the stuff that gets caught in it.

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Probably.

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Yeah.

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Though I'm meticulous about getting things out of it.

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If it happens to get in it, so I don't like the whole thing.

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I can handle that.

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Gets to that point where it's constantly that messy.

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It's like it needs a trim.

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That's, that's kind of where I'll end.

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Yep.

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All right.

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Should we get into today's book?

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Sure.

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Cause this is going to be fun and possibly long.

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Uh, yes, maybe.

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Hopefully not.

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Uh, today's book is how to call him your mind by Chris Bailey, who has been on.

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He's actually been on the bookworm podcast.

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We've had just a couple of guest interviews, but one of them was when we

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covered hyper focus, we had a special segment at the end of that where we talked

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to Chris about his writing process and how he uses text edit to write all of his

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books.

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Fascinating conversation about writing processes and clicking keyboards.

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So go back and listen to that one if you want.

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We also covered back in the day, the productivity project.

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And, uh, Chris is a cool guy and you can, I bring those up because there's a,

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there's a trajectory I feel here with Chris's career.

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The productivity project was there's all this productivity advice out there.

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I tried all these experiments on myself and here's what I learned.

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Right.

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So all the standard advice that you have heard work really long weeks, work really

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short weeks, like number of hours and everything in between Chris did and he

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documented this is what impact it had on me.

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And, uh, that was a really interesting read and they followed that up with hyper

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focus, which is a little bit more moving away from the pro standard productivity

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advice and focuses obviously deep work, that sort of thing, uh, very much becoming

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a, uh, a superpower in today's culture, the ability to focus on and complete

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the things that you mean to do.

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That's how you become excellent and almost any field going back to deep work by,

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by Cal Newport.

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I'm mentioning all sorts of books here.

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I hope you are grabbing some of these links as I'm just talking.

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I'm not probably should be, but that's okay.

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Uh, and then this one is even more in line with the, it's not, you know,

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how efficient you can do things, but how effective you are.

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And the limiting factor here is not the computers that we all use all day,

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every day, but it's really our brains.

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And I think this is fascinating.

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I feel like this is the perfect timing, uh, for this type of book.

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And this is broken down into nine different chapters.

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Um, we're going to attempt, I think, to get through all of these today, but if we

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have to jump around, I'm okay with that.

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Chapter one is the opposite of calm.

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Chapter two is striving for accomplishment.

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Chapter three is the burnout equation.

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Chapter four is the mindset of more.

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Chapter five is the heights of stimulation.

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Chapter six is stimulation fasting.

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Chapter seven, choosing analog.

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We're definitely going to have a conversation when we get there.

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Chapter eight, calm and productive.

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And then chapter nine, where calm lives.

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And what's interesting about this is it's kind of wrapped up in a personal

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story, uh, by Chris in chapter one, but before we get there, uh, what were your

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initial impressions as you crack this one open?

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Yeah.

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So I, I originally when I pulled this up to look at it, it's like, okay, this will

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be interesting.

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I was thumbing through it, doing the whole how to read thing.

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Thank you, Adler.

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And, uh, it was just kind of getting a feel for, you know, how is the book laid out?

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And whenever I started doing that, I noticed a bunch of stuff where it was

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talking about anxiety.

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It was talking about a whole bank of terms that I know we've covered a lot.

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So I was a little bit leery that like this was going to be a continuation of

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things we've already talked about and that there should probably be an entire

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book about each of these topics.

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And this is maybe just going to be complete overlap.

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So that was my original thought.

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Um, then he started off the book in the preface, I think it's in the preface where

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he tells the story about his anxiety attack in the middle of giving a speech,

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giving a talk on stage.

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And that's when I realized, you know, he might cover some of that, but just

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knowing Chris Bailey's style, it's very likely going to end up with lots of

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science behind it because it tends to be a lot of what he does.

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Uh, was not disappointed by that.

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But I have to say, like, I was a little bit leery because of the initial, like,

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what I was finding in it, but I was also leery because how to calm your mind.

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An ADD person reading this is like, sure.

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Okay.

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Yep.

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You're going to calm that race car down.

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All right.

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We'll see.

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And I have lots of thoughts around that particular intersection that I'm sure

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we're going to get into.

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But, um, for now suffice it to say that like this is, this was one that I was a

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little leery to read at first, but as I got even just through the preface, it's

00:21:19

like, okay, I'm on board.

00:21:20

Let's, let's go for this ride.

00:21:21

So he quickly caught, caught hold of me.

00:21:24

Well, let's jump in here because you mentioned the panic attack.

00:21:30

Uh, that actually is in chapter one, which is the opposite of calm.

00:21:34

Uh, this is kind of the setup for the whole book.

00:21:38

Uh, Chris was giving a talk and Chris has done a lot of speaking.

00:21:43

Uh, kind of my first introduction to him was a TED talk that he gave.

00:21:49

I think it was around the productivity project and the TED organization mentioned

00:21:57

in his bio that he is the most productive man you would ever hope to meet.

00:22:02

Now, Chris doesn't go around talking about himself that way, but the TED

00:22:07

organization did.

00:22:08

So that's kind of a big deal, right?

00:22:10

And I know he's given talks for big companies, big audiences.

00:22:17

And so this story that he shares is kind of interesting because he said that he

00:22:20

suffered a panic attack right before he was giving a talk to a hundred people,

00:22:24

which you could read this two ways.

00:22:26

You could hear that story and be like a hundred people.

00:22:28

That's a lot.

00:22:28

Most people I've ever spoken to is a handful that, that would intimidate me.

00:22:32

But also if you understand what Chris had done, this is nothing.

00:22:36

He's done this a million times.

00:22:37

Right.

00:22:38

So this was interesting to me.

00:22:40

And the other thing that's interesting about this is he describes the panic

00:22:43

attack and he describes kind of what was going through his head, processing it

00:22:47

afterwards, all that kind of stuff.

00:22:49

And it does not feel sensationalized.

00:22:54

He, I mean, a panic attack is, is not a great thing to have, but it's not like

00:23:00

your life is completely debilitated after that point either.

00:23:04

So if you're following the, the playbook of writing a book off of personal

00:23:09

experience, I could see one aspect of this, which is that it are being like,

00:23:14

no, you got to make this more severe.

00:23:16

I'm thinking of like James Clear and atomic habits where he almost died when he

00:23:20

got hit with the baseball or the baseball bat.

00:23:22

Right.

00:23:23

Right there.

00:23:24

That's a very emotional beginning to the book.

00:23:26

And you get sort of that with this with Chris Bailey, but it's not that extreme.

00:23:32

And so because it's not as extreme, it doesn't evoke the same amount of emotion.

00:23:38

And I actually think that's a good thing.

00:23:39

I feel like it's, it's tempered a little bit here and that makes it probably a

00:23:44

little bit more relatable.

00:23:47

Um, but I'm curious what your perspective was on that story that he shared at the

00:23:53

beginning of this in chapter one.

00:23:54

Uh, it was, it was a little weird to me because I'm, I've never really had someone

00:24:01

attempt to explain the details around a panic attack to me.

00:24:05

It's one of those that like, I'm not even really aware that I don't understand the

00:24:08

details around it.

00:24:09

And then when he started spelling out all of those details,

00:24:13

it occurred to me that this isn't some massive breakdown, like the, the visual

00:24:19

that I had in my head, like when someone tells you, yeah, I had a panic attack.

00:24:22

In my head, that's like this massive freak out moment where people hit the

00:24:28

ground and they don't know what to do and they're debilitated.

00:24:30

Like that's the image that comes in my head.

00:24:33

And it occurred to me as he was explaining this, that that's a very flawed view of

00:24:36

what that is.

00:24:37

And I'm not sure where that image came from in my memory and like where, where

00:24:43

was that concept submitted in my brain?

00:24:46

I don't know.

00:24:46

I don't know where that picture comes from.

00:24:48

This is absolutely not it.

00:24:50

And it made me wonder if I've had something like that or if there've been

00:24:57

people around me, because obviously I work in, you know, the AV world as well.

00:25:02

Like that's a big part of my job.

00:25:03

So I'm around people speaking on stage all the time.

00:25:07

And sometimes as people who've done it hundreds, if not thousands of times, I

00:25:12

just had one of those speakers come in this past Sunday, just wanted to know, you

00:25:16

know, what Mike do you want me to wear?

00:25:18

And he's got the rest of it under control.

00:25:20

And then I have people who come in.

00:25:21

It's our first time speaking and it's like, Oh, I have to wear a mic.

00:25:24

Um, how do I, how do I put that on and where do, where do you want me to stand on

00:25:31

stage?

00:25:31

Like in the middle, like, you're the speaker.

00:25:35

You stand in the middle.

00:25:36

Like that's, that's kind of the conversation that we have to have.

00:25:39

Uh, so I kind of wonder, have I witnessed panic attacks before and not been aware

00:25:46

of it?

00:25:46

Cause this was a very personal, like, here's what was going through my mind.

00:25:51

I blanked out, like felt like I probably looked like I was ill as I was

00:25:57

speaking, like that type of thing.

00:25:59

Not what I had in my head as far as what this could look like.

00:26:02

Um, but it was more of a, you know, as he was explaining what led to that and

00:26:07

like what his process was for preparing to speak per all stereotypes, he was doing

00:26:14

absolutely everything right.

00:26:15

Mm hmm.

00:26:16

He was relaxing before he went out there.

00:26:19

He was collecting his thoughts.

00:26:20

He was preparing well.

00:26:22

And then he goes up and has a panic attack in the middle of the talk.

00:26:26

Like that, that was very difficult for me to wrap my head around and a little

00:26:30

alarming on my part.

00:26:31

Yeah.

00:26:33

Well, uh, since reading this book, I have experienced one of these.

00:26:38

Oh, fun.

00:26:40

I mean, it's not fun, but it also like, I was in just that it's not, it's not

00:26:47

debilitating.

00:26:48

Um, I, I, uh, don't want to get into the specifics of it, but, uh,

00:26:56

there was a point in the last week or so where I was under a pretty significant

00:27:01

amount of, of stress.

00:27:02

And some of it was of my own making as it tends to be.

00:27:05

I'm the person who wants to know exactly how to hook up the microphone, like

00:27:09

you were talking about and want all their, their questions answered.

00:27:11

That's just my personality.

00:27:13

It gets me in trouble sometimes.

00:27:15

And, uh, yeah, like one night, my heart was racing.

00:27:19

My start sweating, like just as I was laying in bed about to go to sleep, just

00:27:23

like all of a sudden, my body just cranked it up to 11.

00:27:27

And I had to like get up and walk around.

00:27:29

I could not sit or lay underneath the, the weighted blanket anymore.

00:27:34

It just felt completely suffocating.

00:27:37

And I didn't even realize it until after it was kind of over.

00:27:40

And I was like, wait a second.

00:27:41

That's what Chris described.

00:27:42

So yeah, I think we should probably move on.

00:27:48

The next chapter is where we get into some of the, the stuff that contributes

00:27:52

to this and I have an action item from this actually.

00:27:55

So I'll continue that, that story from chapter two or one.

00:27:58

Uh, this is chapter two now.

00:28:00

So chapter two, striving for accomplishment.

00:28:02

He talks about the stress inventory, right.

00:28:05

And, um, actually chapter three is where he gets into like the

00:28:09

Maslek inventory.

00:28:10

Uh, I took that and I discovered that there's three different scales at work there.

00:28:17

And, um, one of them is how you deal with it.

00:28:21

And like Chris, like I've got pretty good ways of dealing with stress, but then

00:28:24

there are the other two, which are factors of your environment.

00:28:28

And those were all, those were off the charts.

00:28:30

Right.

00:28:31

So I had a little bit of a inkling that, you know, something needed to change and

00:28:36

then just coincidentally right after that, before we recorded this, experienced it.

00:28:41

And I was like, that's not fun.

00:28:43

We're going to fix this.

00:28:44

Right.

00:28:47

But chapter two, um, this is really setting the stage for that kind of thing.

00:28:52

And this is me in a nutshell, striving for accomplishment.

00:28:55

Right.

00:28:55

Because we construct our identities based on what we achieve.

00:29:00

And that kind of sets the standard in our minds of what we should, quote, unquote,

00:29:10

be doing.

00:29:11

And there's a couple of different kinds of stress he describes here.

00:29:16

There's acute stress, which is the temporary significant one off events.

00:29:22

And I've experienced some of that in recent history, just stuff has happened

00:29:28

with the day job that you got to deal with.

00:29:30

But the real thing that like pushes it over the top is this chronic stress,

00:29:34

the continual and repeating stuff.

00:29:36

And so that's the thing that I want to take inventory of.

00:29:41

Um, he talks about the stress inventory here, making a list of all the things that

00:29:45

stress you out, I'm totally going to do that.

00:29:48

And, uh, this, I think this chapter does a real great job of, of just laying the

00:29:55

foundation for the way we think about productivity.

00:29:58

He defines it as accomplishing what we set out to do, but we have this

00:30:01

accomplishment mindset that's just ingrained in us, the set of attitudes and

00:30:06

beliefs that drives us to constantly strive to accomplish more.

00:30:09

And, uh, this is insidious.

00:30:13

Like you don't even realize it.

00:30:15

Um, this is why I think I take such a strong stance on habits versus goals,

00:30:20

because I tend to lean that way.

00:30:23

If I fixate on a goal, like I'm going all in with it, it's happening no matter

00:30:28

what, and it'll kill me if I'm not careful.

00:30:31

So that's just like a, a boundary I've got to put in place there.

00:30:35

Yeah, this is, this is a, uh, a challenging chapter, I found.

00:30:43

You know, he's talking about this accomplishment mindset, which he, he

00:30:47

defines as a conditioned set of attitudes and beliefs that drives us to

00:30:52

constantly strive to accomplish more.

00:30:54

And then he talks about like the more mindset, uh, a little bit later too.

00:30:59

And, you know, that, that, that's hard.

00:31:05

Like, you know, as, as you and I both have been in this productivity space and

00:31:08

like, how do I make sure I am doing the right things and doing as many things

00:31:12

and filling the time appropriately?

00:31:14

The problem with that particular view is that that what I just said,

00:31:18

filling the time isn't the answer.

00:31:21

And that's what we tend to do is like, I got an extra 20 minutes.

00:31:25

I can, you know, put this in those 20 minutes.

00:31:28

That's the wrong view there.

00:31:30

And trying to like deconstruct how many different places that this

00:31:38

permeates is a challenge.

00:31:40

And a good way to attempt to do this is what you're saying in this stress

00:31:44

inventory.

00:31:45

The part about that that really struck me was how many things were like small,

00:31:51

like borderline pitiful things that attribute to this stress, this

00:31:59

chronic stress, this low grade stress that builds.

00:32:01

And it was simple things like, you know, the printer doesn't work well in the office.

00:32:09

Well, number one, no printers work well in the office.

00:32:12

And two, like, yeah, that is a form of stress.

00:32:16

If you have, you know, all the social media apps on your phone,

00:32:20

it's pretty easy to find stress whenever you want by checking those constantly.

00:32:27

And it's, it's very easy to like even, even the very, very, very low grade stress

00:32:35

of did I get an email or not?

00:32:38

Like that's a very minor thing, but compounded with all the other little tiny

00:32:45

things that add just that itty bitty, tiny stress moment.

00:32:50

That's all it takes to slowly build this.

00:32:53

He mentions later on that stress is, you know, it goes in and out.

00:32:58

I think he used the analogy of a pipe, like as you have stress and it's putting

00:33:03

it into this pipe, unless you have an outlet, it's just going to keep building

00:33:07

the pressure until something explodes.

00:33:09

Like that's, that's essentially what you're up against.

00:33:11

And I really like that picture that leaks that mental picture.

00:33:14

It's like, okay.

00:33:15

Every time I'm checking my email and wondering if my boss has responded to the

00:33:22

thing that I need to hear about or I'm waiting for that video file that I

00:33:26

haven't received from that member.

00:33:27

And I really should have had that yesterday.

00:33:30

Is it in yet?

00:33:31

Like that stress can start to build and you start accumulating all of those

00:33:36

and it gets to be a big deal.

00:33:37

So I want to do this stress inventory.

00:33:39

I'm a little nervous about how long this could be.

00:33:42

Yeah.

00:33:43

And I'm a little nervous about the ramifications of identifying these.

00:33:47

If you follow what I'm saying, like it could get to be rough.

00:33:55

Like he even calls out, like, you know, some of this might mean that your work

00:33:58

environment doesn't allow you to get away from it, which is very possible

00:34:03

and for a lot of people.

00:34:05

So then you got to make some decisions on or you don't want to cope with it,

00:34:08

or you're going to make some massive changes to to your work environment.

00:34:12

Like that's what you have to come up with.

00:34:14

So I do want to do this.

00:34:15

Uh, but again, we'll see what the results are.

00:34:19

Well, the thing with that, I think is, uh, yes, these are environmental

00:34:25

stressors, but that doesn't mean that it's purely the other people in your

00:34:32

environment's fault that this is happening.

00:34:35

Some of it, for me anyways, I realize is just self-inflicted.

00:34:41

Like no one's expecting me to do this, but I do it anyways.

00:34:44

So if I can just control my own behavior, then I can make some of this stuff go away.

00:34:49

So that's what I want to do with the stress inventory.

00:34:51

I'm not building the list so that I can realize how bad I have it.

00:34:57

I mean, if you're looking for that sort of evidence, I'm sure you'll find it.

00:35:01

Yep. But that's not, I don't think that's a productive use of this, this action item.

00:35:08

But if you recognize where it's coming from, then you can figure out tweaks to the

00:35:11

systems in your environment to help alleviate some of that stuff.

00:35:16

I think that's what we should be trying to do with this.

00:35:18

But anxiety he talks about.

00:35:21

This is a normal response to a stressful situation and anxiety is the unpleasant

00:35:25

emotion that's characterized as a state of high mental arousal.

00:35:29

Calm is the polar opposite of that.

00:35:31

And that is the pleasant emotion characterized as a state of low mental arousal.

00:35:36

We tend to live in this state of high mental arousal.

00:35:40

So that's why I'm reading the analog paper.

00:35:43

That's why I have the onyx books instead of looking at my phone or my iPad at night.

00:35:47

Could I do this stuff on those devices?

00:35:50

Yeah, I could, but I don't even want the possibility.

00:35:53

I don't want the door to be open to any of that stuff.

00:35:56

So I'm building stronger barriers there to keep my brain on track.

00:36:02

And he, oh, one other thing I wanted to point out from this, we do this to ourselves

00:36:08

a lot of times because we want to know what's going on.

00:36:10

We want to stay informed, right?

00:36:11

That's one of the things I think everybody probably fell into that trap during

00:36:15

COVID is constantly checking the news because you want to figure out what the heck

00:36:18

is going on in the world.

00:36:20

But that is very detrimental.

00:36:23

He shared a statistic that watching six hours of news about the Boston marathon

00:36:27

bombing actually caused more stress than being in it.

00:36:30

I'm guilty of that.

00:36:33

High back finder.

00:36:34

So be careful there, I guess there be dragons.

00:36:39

Yeah, I'm not a news fan by any means.

00:36:43

But yeah, no, there's there's a lot in this chapter.

00:36:45

One thing we haven't talked about was he has this strategy called productivity hours.

00:36:51

You know, we were talking about the stress inventory.

00:36:53

Obviously you can take that too far, but the productivity hours are basically

00:36:57

defining the time you're going to do different types of work with time.

00:37:01

Like what hours in a day are you going to be productive?

00:37:04

What hours are you going to put towards your work?

00:37:07

What hours are you going to put towards?

00:37:09

You know, hobbies and such that way you're not feeling guilty about having taken

00:37:16

time from your family to go do work because you already set aside that time for the day.

00:37:22

It's very reminiscent of like the whole time blocking thing in my head.

00:37:25

That's what that was.

00:37:26

It's a it's probably a little bit different the way he's explaining it.

00:37:31

Like here are the eight to nine hours I'm going to put towards my work for the day.

00:37:35

And then I must been three hours with the family.

00:37:37

Like that's kind of the broad level that he's talking about.

00:37:40

But just having that defined is what sets the expectation, which then can help

00:37:46

your mindset when you're off those productivity hours.

00:37:51

Because then you don't have that accomplishment mindset where you're

00:37:54

feeling like you constantly need to do more.

00:37:55

Yeah.

00:37:57

I have an action on with that to add a transition time block to my schedule as a

00:38:02

result of that.

00:38:03

I think that's really a powerful idea.

00:38:05

I want to address something that Black is talking about in the chat about the seems

00:38:10

like that's absurd that statement that I made on the research that Chris was

00:38:15

referencing about the stress from being in the Boston.

00:38:19

Not marathon bombing as opposed to reading about it.

00:38:21

I have a sister-in-law who has run the Boston Marathon several times.

00:38:26

So I understand this.

00:38:30

He is not saying that you were physically hurt by the explosion.

00:38:36

But there is psychological trauma when that happens.

00:38:39

You're like, Oh, that could have been me.

00:38:40

I was there five minutes before that happened.

00:38:43

And so plants the seed in your head of, do I really want to go back there?

00:38:46

And like, I don't know if I want to be in that same place again.

00:38:49

And you, you just that fear directs your, your life that way, right?

00:38:54

Well, the same thing can happen not from being there, but being way on the other

00:38:57

side of the country, having no possibility of being in that place when that

00:39:02

thing happened, but just reading about it, you're self inflicting that stress on

00:39:05

yourself.

00:39:06

And who would consciously choose to do that?

00:39:09

Right.

00:39:10

So our brains are, are leading us down a dark path at that point.

00:39:15

And that's, that's what he's talking about.

00:39:17

That's what we should be careful of.

00:39:19

It's not the physical effects of, of that.

00:39:22

I was trying to find it, but I was vaguely recalling that the, the way that he was

00:39:29

saying it was the same as was as far as results in the world of like PTSD and such.

00:39:35

Like you're having this traumatic stress response.

00:39:39

And I think that was the part that was worse after watching the six hours versus

00:39:46

having been in it.

00:39:47

Yeah.

00:39:48

And one specific event, you know, Chris has tons of research.

00:39:52

So you can go read all those research papers if you want to.

00:39:56

I did not, but I do trust his research.

00:39:59

I feel like he's earned that in my, my opinion.

00:40:02

But this actually probably leads into the, the next chapter.

00:40:08

So let's go there because the next chapter is a chapter three, the burnout

00:40:12

equation.

00:40:13

That's the ultimate end of all this chronic stress.

00:40:16

In any, in isolation, any of these one things is you could argue, not really that big

00:40:22

a deal.

00:40:22

It just is what it is.

00:40:24

And I can learn to deal with it, right?

00:40:27

But when you continually submit yourself to this kind of stuff, when you

00:40:32

continually put yourself in that environment, your body's not really equipped to handle

00:40:38

that.

00:40:38

And we're not on the Savannah, trying to escape, say we're two tigers, but our

00:40:45

brains still kind of trigger that way.

00:40:48

And so when we do our just checks and we pull out our phones when we're waiting

00:40:52

in line at the grocery store and we go to the news site and we see the, the headlines,

00:40:57

which are designed and written in a way to make us angry so that we continue to read,

00:41:05

you know, with no consideration of the effect that that's having on the, the

00:41:10

psyches of the people who are reading those, those sorts of things.

00:41:14

We need to go into this with both eyes open.

00:41:17

So burnout is more than just exhaustion.

00:41:21

It also makes you cynical and unproductive.

00:41:24

It's also not an individual disease and there's two ways to deal with it.

00:41:28

You can decrease your chronic stress or you can increase your burnout threshold.

00:41:32

And so that assessment that I took, there were a couple of different scales to that.

00:41:36

One was basically, how do you deal with the stress that you experience?

00:41:43

And that score actually for me was, was pretty good.

00:41:46

And then there was one, which I hate this term, but it was cynicism.

00:41:49

And it's basically, do you feel like you are making a difference in what you are,

00:41:55

are doing?

00:41:56

And essentially the, the core driver there is, do you feel that your actions translate

00:42:02

into results?

00:42:04

And then the other one is just kind of like, if I remember right, trust, like the,

00:42:09

your relationships with the people around you and do you feel like you can let stuff

00:42:14

go when you delegate it to people and things like that.

00:42:16

And those two scores were, were pretty high for me.

00:42:20

And I realized that I was a lot closer to this, this red line than I cared to admit.

00:42:29

And then shortly after that, as I mentioned, having the panic attack,

00:42:32

my eyes were really open to this.

00:42:34

Like, Chris, it didn't just say this.

00:42:35

This is really true because I just experienced it too.

00:42:38

Um, so a crappy way to verify the information I just read in this book is, is accurate,

00:42:47

but I feel like I just started to live that out in a, in a sense.

00:42:51

So what do we do about this?

00:42:53

Number one, I think figure out where you're at.

00:42:55

I mentioned this is where he mentions the Maslek burnout inventory.

00:42:58

I took that test.

00:42:59

Uh, he gave me a link to the one that he recommends, the one that he took for this book.

00:43:07

Cause there's a bunch of them online, but there's, there's one specific one.

00:43:10

I forget the, the person who put it together, but I'll grab the link and put that in the show notes

00:43:15

that people want to, want to go through that for themselves.

00:43:17

Uh, but then figure out how you can reduce the, the stuff that's going on in your life.

00:43:23

And again, you don't have to just like bail.

00:43:25

Sometimes you can't do that, but there are little things that you can do to kind of

00:43:28

ratchet down some of that chronic stress.

00:43:30

And then there are other things that you can do to increase your burnout threshold.

00:43:33

That's where like all the analog stuff comes in, but we'll put a pin in that till we get to the chapter seven.

00:43:38

Yeah, they call out.

00:43:40

Uh, he's got the six burnout factors here.

00:43:44

You know, these are things that, uh, can contribute to burnout.

00:43:50

Uh, one of those is workload control.

00:43:54

You have control of your environment or not insufficient reward.

00:43:57

Underpaid is probably the easiest way to understand that one.

00:44:01

Community, are you connected with the people around you fairness?

00:44:05

Obviously is it fair to work where you're at, uh, and values?

00:44:08

Do you have a little, an alignment with values, uh, in the process?

00:44:12

So those are all pieces of the pie that can go into the equation as well.

00:44:19

And you know, the easy ones to understand are like workload and insufficient reward.

00:44:25

Like those are easy ones.

00:44:26

You know, am I being overworked?

00:44:29

You know, am I being compensated?

00:44:31

Well, am I enjoying the work I'm doing?

00:44:33

Like those are all components of that.

00:44:35

If the answer is no to all of those, like you've got too much work and you're not.

00:44:39

You know, fulfilled in the work.

00:44:42

Guess what?

00:44:42

You're on the fast track to burn out and it's not going to, you know, be kind to you.

00:44:49

So that that's where, you know, we talk a lot about like values, missions, goals,

00:44:56

micro flows, New Year's resolutions, uh, you know, we talk about these things and we

00:45:00

absolutely love some of them.

00:45:02

And some of them are like, hmm, interesting not doing that.

00:45:05

Uh, but a lot of it is, you know, are you on the right mission?

00:45:08

A lot of things come back to that.

00:45:10

I feel like that has a big role to play in this just because your tendency to

00:45:18

tolerate the factors that go into burnouts become much higher.

00:45:24

Like that's what you were saying, like increasing your ability to, you know,

00:45:28

your burnout threshold.

00:45:29

That's essentially what you're doing when you don't have an alignment of goals or

00:45:34

mission, then that threshold can decrease.

00:45:37

Thus burnout is achieved much quicker.

00:45:40

So it is interesting to see this equation.

00:45:43

I've not really thought about burnout as being a combination of cynicism and being

00:45:48

unproductive on top of exhaustion in my head.

00:45:50

It's just an exhaustion and lack of motivation that goes into burnout.

00:45:55

So seeing some more of the detail around it.

00:45:58

Super helpful.

00:46:00

I'm glad he put this in there.

00:46:01

And it's not just the, uh, the environmental stressors.

00:46:06

A lot of it is, like I said, self-inflicted.

00:46:09

That actually is probably the place to go into the, the next chapter here.

00:46:13

Um, because burnout is, he mentions in this chapter, chapter three, uh, it's not

00:46:20

individual disease, but chapter four, the mindset of more.

00:46:23

Um, the problem with is really the way that we think about our work and what we're

00:46:30

doing.

00:46:31

Uh, we always want to do more and more always has a cost.

00:46:35

He says that the problem with more is that it conflicts in the areas that we

00:46:39

strive for more in.

00:46:40

It's a delusion or a mirage.

00:46:44

If you want to think of it that way.

00:46:45

And this is where he gets into the whole idea of dopamine and the neurochemicals

00:46:50

of the here and now network, which I think is fascinating.

00:46:52

But the big thing to call out here, I think is that dopamine is not the

00:46:56

pleasure chemical.

00:46:57

Like we've traditionally heard it defined.

00:46:59

It's actually a chemical of anticipation.

00:47:02

So the more that we achieve and accumulate, we think we're going to be more

00:47:08

satisfied, but actually it just feeds this desire for even more.

00:47:14

It's more, more than we want.

00:47:16

Um, and he mentions that the polar opposite of anxiety is calm, right?

00:47:22

Well, the polar opposite of burnout is engagement.

00:47:25

So this is really where we start to fight this battle.

00:47:30

I feel is in our own heads and being satisfied, learning to be satisfied with

00:47:36

the things that are going well.

00:47:38

This is where he talks about the idea of savoring and I have an action item to

00:47:43

make a list of the things that I savor.

00:47:44

And I mentioned savoring in, in connection with the, uh, uh, what was the name of

00:47:51

that thing?

00:47:52

Hara heat, hachi boo.

00:47:54

Oh, right.

00:47:54

From icky guy and how fill your belly to 80%.

00:47:58

But also just savor the food that you're, you're eating.

00:48:01

Um, I experienced this last night.

00:48:05

My wife and I went on a, a date and we have the sushi place that we like to go

00:48:08

to.

00:48:08

And it's good food.

00:48:10

So traditionally just keep popping the sushi rolls.

00:48:14

Yep.

00:48:15

Right.

00:48:15

And, uh, I think normally my experience with that is we over eat because we

00:48:22

order a couple at a time and a couple more and then a couple more.

00:48:25

And, uh, I went into it just with this mindset of I'm going to savor the food

00:48:31

as I, I eat it.

00:48:32

And, uh, I'm not going to focus on am I hungry yet, but just focus on how good

00:48:38

this actually tastes.

00:48:39

And that resulted in us eating one less role than we normally do.

00:48:43

[laughter]

00:48:44

So this is, this, this whole chapter is like it's, it's chock full of all the

00:48:51

dopamine stuff.

00:48:52

Right.

00:48:53

And, and compounds that with how we tend to do multiple things at one time.

00:49:02

Like we can't just go to the grocery store drive to work.

00:49:04

We have to pop on a podcast while we do it.

00:49:06

Or I'm going to do a workout, but I'm going to listen to podcasts at the same

00:49:10

time or trying to think of another example.

00:49:14

We always have to listen to music whenever we're doing a lot of things as well.

00:49:18

You know, those types of things, uh, you know, if you throw in the filling of

00:49:24

gaps as well, whenever I'd go warm up my lunch, it's not uncommon for me to

00:49:29

pop it in the microwave and immediately pull out my phone and check on a few

00:49:32

things while I'm waiting for it to heat up.

00:49:35

And then when it's done, I'll put my phone away, grab my lunch, come back, set

00:49:39

the desk, watch a couple of YouTube videos while I eat.

00:49:41

Like that's a very common routine, but that's from this accomplishment mindset

00:49:46

and this mindset of more of like constantly trying to make sure I'm filling

00:49:50

all the time with potential things and always trying to do more.

00:49:55

Like the problem with more is there's never a completion point.

00:49:58

There is no finish line with that.

00:50:00

So at some point you have to decide that you are content with where you're at.

00:50:07

Otherwise it's this constant striving for destruction without realizing that

00:50:11

that's what you're striving for.

00:50:12

And, you know, this, this is where the reason we're doing that is because

00:50:18

we're looking for these dopamine hits, right?

00:50:19

My problem comes in.

00:50:22

It's like, okay, the ADD world, that's the main crux of the problem is a lack of

00:50:27

dopamine.

00:50:28

So the, the flip side of dopamine is that's also your motivation and focus drug

00:50:35

as well.

00:50:36

Like that's the problem that comes into this mix is like, okay, you can get dopamine

00:50:41

from, you know, the YouTube hits or the TikTok hits, but it's also the thing

00:50:47

that you need in order to focus.

00:50:48

So if you're extremely light on it, then what do you do?

00:50:52

And he'll talk about this a little bit more on the, in the next chapter, but that,

00:50:58

that was like what I was processing.

00:51:00

It's like, okay, I specifically medicate this problem.

00:51:04

And what he's telling me is not wrong.

00:51:08

It's actually probably on a very heightened scale, even more so than what he's

00:51:13

explaining, which is a bit alarming in itself, because he goes into a lot of

00:51:18

detail on how we do this.

00:51:19

And it kind of left me with, hmm, now what do I do?

00:51:23

Now that said, I did try a couple things today, one of which I did right

00:51:30

before we recorded it.

00:51:31

Did what I just explained to you, went to go warm up my lunch at the office, but

00:51:37

I did my best to not pull out my phone for that.

00:51:41

The only way I managed to stop the habit was I left it at my desk when I went to

00:51:44

go warm up my lunch, which did work.

00:51:48

That minute and a half in the microwave was an eternity.

00:51:52

Like that took forever to warm that up.

00:51:55

And that was enough to convince me like, okay, I have a problem here.

00:52:01

Like I'm filling these gaps, even though this is a thing that I've talked about.

00:52:05

I don't want to do, don't want to fill all these gaps all the times.

00:52:08

And somehow this is crept back in.

00:52:10

Uh, thankfully he addresses that one a little bit later as well.

00:52:13

But that, that's the mindset he's talking about.

00:52:15

When you're constantly trying to fill all these little tiny holes with something,

00:52:20

that's, that's when you get to where you're just doing way too much.

00:52:23

So.

00:52:24

Yeah, he talks about how we find balance when we reduce our dependence on the

00:52:29

dopamine and that the neurochemicals of the here and now network, the serotonin,

00:52:33

which makes us happy, the oxytocin, which makes us feel connected and the

00:52:37

adorphins, which make us feel euphoria.

00:52:39

Those are not active when the dopamine network is active and vice versa.

00:52:44

So it's not that dopamine is terrible and should be avoided at all costs, but

00:52:50

this is the place to go into the next chapter because chapter five is heights

00:52:57

of stimulation.

00:52:59

And this talks about how algorithms are designed to give us dopamine and

00:53:05

sell us stuff.

00:53:06

So our digital world drives us away from comedy makes a point, which I really

00:53:12

appreciate in this chapter that companies aren't charities.

00:53:15

It's not their job to protect us.

00:53:18

But the things that they give us, we need to recognize these are super

00:53:24

stimuli, which he defines as highly processed, exaggerated versions of things

00:53:28

that were naturally wired to enjoy.

00:53:30

And the insidious thing about the super stimuli is combined with the molecule

00:53:37

of more, we always want the next level, right?

00:53:40

So super stimuli makes us less happy with the natural things that we are wired

00:53:46

to enjoy.

00:53:47

And the example that he uses here is, well, there were a couple of them, but

00:53:54

the one that I wrote down was pornography and sex.

00:54:00

Sex is not bad.

00:54:01

Sex is not pornography.

00:54:03

It's a, it's a super stimuli version of something that we are naturally

00:54:09

wired to enjoy.

00:54:11

And actually, if you engage a pornography regularly, it's going to make you less

00:54:16

satisfied with the sex that you have, right?

00:54:19

This is not a sex podcast.

00:54:20

So I'll just drop it there.

00:54:22

But that's the one that I feel like is constantly in our face and recognizing

00:54:31

the goal behind that.

00:54:34

It's not in alignment with the overall maximization of the enjoyment that

00:54:41

you get out of your life.

00:54:42

And again, there are a lot of different places that you can, arenas that you

00:54:48

can apply this or see this, this playing out.

00:54:52

But that's the one that stands out to me probably because I'm the men's

00:54:56

ministry coordinator at my church, but this super stimuli is everywhere.

00:55:02

And you got to recognize that your brain craves this stuff, but every single

00:55:05

time that you go to it, you're essentially rewiring your brain and making

00:55:12

it impossible to be happy without more and stronger doses of that super stimuli.

00:55:20

I mean, it's hard to talk about this and not compare it to substance

00:55:26

addiction, but it kind of works the same way.

00:55:29

So I don't know.

00:55:32

We don't think about dopamine as that big a deal, right?

00:55:37

Everyone does it.

00:55:38

All pick up our phones 200 times a day.

00:55:41

So I'm not that bad.

00:55:43

This person does it more.

00:55:44

I quit anytime I want to, but I don't know.

00:55:48

I kind of feel like we don't realize what it's doing to us until it's too late.

00:55:54

And then if you had to like cold turkey, you know, the reaction you had when you

00:55:58

were standing there waiting for your food to get warm, that's a very minor

00:56:02

version of this, right?

00:56:03

But we should all be doing those tests on ourselves to try to locate, you know,

00:56:08

how addicted am I really?

00:56:10

Right.

00:56:11

Yeah.

00:56:11

And it's one that you don't realize what's happening, right?

00:56:18

People talk about pornography and say, well, I'm not hurting anybody.

00:56:22

I don't know that that's true.

00:56:25

Like in, in, there's a lot of science that would say the opposite.

00:56:28

And in a lot of cases, you know, that's just one example, you know, there, there are

00:56:35

other ways that people can get addicted to things that are specifically trying

00:56:39

to increase dopamine, probably one of the biggest out there outside of the

00:56:45

pornography addictions, fitness and workouts.

00:56:48

Like this is huge.

00:56:49

You know, people absolutely get addicted to this.

00:56:52

And it's hard to really explain that.

00:56:57

Like, are you addicted to exercise?

00:57:00

Well, let's process that a little bit.

00:57:03

If, if doing exercise gives you dopamine, which it does, and you're doing things

00:57:10

like pre workouts and such to help with your workout, like that's essentially what

00:57:16

you're doing is you're giving yourself a dopamine boost before you give yourself

00:57:19

a dopamine boost.

00:57:20

You're going to get to a point where this is now a requirement to have a normal

00:57:26

day.

00:57:27

And, you know, well, let's, let's take me for example.

00:57:31

So I medicate for this, right, for my ADD.

00:57:34

And what I specifically do is try to take at least a day off, if not two days a

00:57:39

week off of those meds, so that it kind of somewhat resets that baseline for dopamine,

00:57:47

knowing that I'm flooding with that whenever I take my medication.

00:57:51

So I'm aware of that.

00:57:53

And yet you slowly like work your tolerance up to that.

00:57:58

So then even with like trying to watch YouTube over lunch, like that's another

00:58:02

way of like getting small amounts of dopamine, even on top of that, you wouldn't

00:58:05

think that would be necessary if you're medicating for it, but yet it is still there.

00:58:10

So every, you know, maybe six months or so, I'll try to take an entire week off of

00:58:16

medications where I can to help like bring even the upper levels back down.

00:58:21

So you have to play those games whenever you're doing the medication piece, but this

00:58:25

is where it leaves me like, okay.

00:58:28

If I'm not helping myself with all these little things, it's obviously going to be

00:58:34

hurting the major ones as well.

00:58:35

So that's what I'm trying to, you know, balance with all of this, knowing that I

00:58:42

play this game in a lot of detail so much.

00:58:46

So like I can, I've done this long enough and paid attention to it.

00:58:49

I can kind of feel when those dopamine hits come in at this point, because I've

00:58:53

watched it so closely for a while.

00:58:56

That's kind of where I'm at with it, but it happens way more often than you

00:59:00

would think.

00:59:01

Like, and it's, it's one that's gotten me a little like, hmm.

00:59:04

This is more prevalent than I was aware of and I'm probably causing more problems

00:59:09

than I want to admit.

00:59:10

So Joe has some more work to do.

00:59:14

We all have more work to do.

00:59:17

And the thing that we can do about it is actually probably the subject of the

00:59:23

next chapter, so chapter six is stimulation fasting.

00:59:26

All right.

00:59:27

So one of the things that I side note here that I really like about this book is

00:59:31

how these kind of lead from one chapter to the next very organically.

00:59:36

So heights of stimulation, we talked about the majority of that, but essentially

00:59:41

like the higher the dopamine hit, the harder you'll come crashing back.

00:59:43

So lowering your average stimulation height is the goal here.

00:59:47

That's the purpose of our downtime.

00:59:48

That's the column more after, but we have trouble achieving that a

00:59:53

lot of times.

00:59:53

So stimulation fasting, the big question here is, do you have more stress

00:59:57

flowing into your life or out of it?

00:59:59

And is what it is, right?

01:00:02

Measure it, figure it out for yourself.

01:00:04

But this is where he gets into the idea of the dopamine fast, which is stepping

01:00:08

back from stimulating rituals that lead us to convenient hits of dopamine.

01:00:12

I remember talking to Chris when he was just starting to play around with this

01:00:16

idea.

01:00:16

It was probably like a year and a half ago before he was going to write this book.

01:00:21

He's like, I'm going on a dopamine fast.

01:00:22

I was like, what the heck is that?

01:00:25

You know, but he explained it to me in 30 days, you know, not going to use my

01:00:30

iPhone, et cetera.

01:00:31

And that standard Chris Bailey, the productivity project, you know, it's like,

01:00:37

well, that seems kind of crazy, but cool.

01:00:39

Let me know how it goes.

01:00:40

Yeah.

01:00:40

He did.

01:00:41

Yep.

01:00:41

This is par for the course.

01:00:42

It's just what he does.

01:00:43

All right.

01:00:44

Yeah.

01:00:45

But reading this chapter and kind of the idea behind this, I feel very, very,

01:00:51

very strongly after reading this, that this is something that I should

01:00:54

could I should consider how to do this.

01:00:56

I don't think I'm going to go all the way like he did, but that's really not

01:01:01

the point.

01:01:01

Like you can just totally cut it off.

01:01:03

And that would have a very positive benefit probably in your life because we

01:01:07

probably have more stress flowing into our life than out of it.

01:01:10

And a lot of it comes from this, this dopamine that's attached to the computer

01:01:14

that's in our pockets 24/7.

01:01:17

But that doesn't mean that you won't get any benefit from even a little bit of of

01:01:22

this.

01:01:23

And so I mentioned I'm reading the Wall Street Journal every morning.

01:01:26

I'm using the the Onyx books.

01:01:28

These are all things that happened actually after I read this book the first

01:01:33

time.

01:01:33

So this really got me thinking like, how do I lower this in a regular way?

01:01:38

And I do want to actually do a dopamine fast.

01:01:41

I want to figure this out for myself.

01:01:43

What are the specific things that I would just completely cut out if I were

01:01:46

to fast it, you know, for a set period of time?

01:01:48

And I'm looking forward to reporting back on that because I feel like I'm

01:01:55

getting more inspiration from this daily.

01:01:58

One of the things that I would have not included in this previously would have

01:02:04

been checking Twitter because I still think there is value in creating for

01:02:11

Twitter for the stuff that I do and the people that are are still there.

01:02:16

But as we record this about a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, by the time you

01:02:20

listen, Twitter turned off access to third party clients like Tweetbot, Twitterific.

01:02:25

Twitterific was the one that I always used to look at Twitter.

01:02:28

So I didn't have the ads.

01:02:29

I didn't have the algorithmic timeline.

01:02:31

I just had the people I wanted to follow in a list.

01:02:33

Right.

01:02:33

Well, I can't do that anymore and I don't like it.

01:02:36

So as a result, I don't have a way of checking Twitter.

01:02:42

So I will respond to mentions and DMs, but I don't go there anymore.

01:02:46

And at the time when I first came across this, like that was something that I

01:02:51

wanted to keep.

01:02:52

It's been taken away from me sort of involuntarily, but I realized afterwards

01:02:57

like, Oh, actually, I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

01:03:00

Yeah.

01:03:00

So thanks, Elon, for incentivizing me to not use your service as much.

01:03:07

That's cool.

01:03:07

Uh, but that's got me thinking, like, what other things had, what I have

01:03:12

said previously, no, I got to keep this that I should consider giving up, at

01:03:16

least for a little while.

01:03:17

I don't know.

01:03:18

I feel like I got some momentum with this.

01:03:19

So I want to think about this and figure out what my dopamine fast is going to look like.

01:03:23

Yeah.

01:03:24

I kind of want to do the same, but I don't think I'm, I'm not going to call it a

01:03:29

dopamine fast.

01:03:30

I'm calling it a dopamine reduction, but I'm kind of coupling it with the stress

01:03:34

inventory because my suspicion is that those two are connected in some form.

01:03:38

So I'm kind of going to buckle.

01:03:40

I'll put it as two different action items, but I think it's actually buckled together,

01:03:43

but I'm not 100% certain on that.

01:03:45

So I'll leave it as two different thing.

01:03:47

Yeah, as far as like the whole Twitter thing, I was always a tweet bot user.

01:03:53

So then I got the notification that popped up like, Hey, this has been shut down.

01:03:57

And that's when I realized, wait, I also have another way that I've checked Twitter,

01:04:01

which I've like turned my timeline into an RSS feed.

01:04:04

I forget how I did that, but I've got an RSS feed for my timeline.

01:04:08

I've just kind of checked it there and the way that I check it, it lets me reply,

01:04:12

retweet like all those things from there without actually having to go to Twitter

01:04:16

at all.

01:04:16

Kind of the same thing is what I was doing.

01:04:20

So like, I'll just do that.

01:04:22

Like that, that makes it easy, but I do the same thing with mass it on.

01:04:25

So it's, it kind of all looks and operates exactly the same to me.

01:04:30

So I'm not real sure which one I'm on at any given time.

01:04:34

Probably better that way.

01:04:36

It probably is better.

01:04:38

I've been playing around with the Readwise Reader service lately.

01:04:43

And I'm loving that.

01:04:44

That's one of the things that I'll look at on my on X books, just the RSS stuff that

01:04:50

sure typically I would not go to that.

01:04:53

I'd go to the higher dopamine sources, but that's better and more calm.

01:05:01

OK, we got to talk about analog versus digital.

01:05:05

That's the next chapter here and this one I have been excited to talk to you about

01:05:12

ever since I first read this book.

01:05:15

Before we get into the specifics here, I want to ask you what you thought of this

01:05:20

and this this chapter and the way that it addressed the analog versus digital question.

01:05:26

That was an interesting way of coming at it.

01:05:29

You know, there's there's basically a what are the things that you're.

01:05:33

Doing and some things are you can only do them digitally checking email.

01:05:39

You can't do that in an analog form.

01:05:41

As far as I know, there are no services out there that will take your emails,

01:05:46

turn them into letters and mail them to you and then take your handwritten letters

01:05:49

and turn them into emails and email them for you.

01:05:51

I'm not aware of that service.

01:05:52

If it does exist, that would be fascinating.

01:05:55

I'm probably not paying for it, but that sounds terrifying actually.

01:05:58

It kind of does.

01:06:00

The thing is like some things are primarily digital.

01:06:04

Some things are only analog.

01:06:06

I cannot split wood on a computer that would not go well.

01:06:09

And there are the things that float the line or can sit in the middle journaling.

01:06:18

Like, well, you can do that digitally.

01:06:21

There are some perks to doing it digitally.

01:06:23

Should you do it analog instead, you know, planning your day.

01:06:27

I think that was an example that he had.

01:06:30

You know, there are a lot of ways that you can do that digitally.

01:06:33

He does it in an analog form.

01:06:35

And if you have things that can float the line between those two, he's encouraging

01:06:42

you to choose the analog.

01:06:44

He's also a Twisbee fountain pen fan, which he called out, which I was.

01:06:48

We can be friends.

01:06:50

And as far as like my opinion, how he came at this whole analog conversation,

01:06:56

I feel like he did a pretty good job with it.

01:06:58

And it was encouraging to me to see that, you know, in the midst of all of this,

01:07:03

you know, I've read books where they talk about, you know, the benefits of analog,

01:07:07

obviously.

01:07:08

And that's one that I know, you know, can come up quite a bit.

01:07:13

I've not really seen someone take the task of not really gone through the task of

01:07:20

here are the things that I do on a monthly basis, which one of those can I do in an analog form?

01:07:28

Like, I haven't really seen somebody take that approach, which he kind of does.

01:07:33

So I was appreciative of that.

01:07:35

Honestly, it was just kind of cool to see, you know, him encouraging the analog space as well.

01:07:41

But I also want to point out that he's also not referring to

01:07:46

just pen and paper world, which is what we tend to think of and where like you would

01:07:53

tend to go, he's also referring to like communication and friendships and relationships.

01:07:59

Yeah, which that part of the conversation is not typically brought up whenever this

01:08:04

particular divide is discussed.

01:08:06

And he's referring to even like actual talking on the phone as an analog piece,

01:08:15

like he's referring to that particular component as well.

01:08:18

So it's knowing that he's referring to get together with people in person.

01:08:23

And that's a big deal.

01:08:25

And that's very important.

01:08:26

That's what he's encouraging here, not just the let's text or, you know, I'll like

01:08:33

your stuff on Facebook.

01:08:35

Like that's not what he's referring to.

01:08:37

He's like getting in person with each other and talk.

01:08:42

Be people.

01:08:43

Don't do the fake stuff.

01:08:45

Don't just do texts and little interactions.

01:08:49

Do actual conversation.

01:08:50

So that was challenging.

01:08:52

Like I like the safety of sending text messages.

01:08:55

So having to open up and do the phone calls, like I get it.

01:08:59

So he's not wrong in that.

01:09:01

Yeah.

01:09:04

So I think you're right.

01:09:06

He does talk about some of the other stuff, but I think that the way he described

01:09:12

like analog versus digital, because there's a lot of activities that we could do

01:09:16

in either of those.

01:09:17

In fact, he's got like a Venn diagram of the analog activities, digital activities

01:09:21

and the stuff that we could do either way, right?

01:09:24

The way he described that I think is the best I have ever heard anywhere.

01:09:32

I have heard about the Oppenheimer study about people who retain more

01:09:36

because they take analog notes, right?

01:09:39

That's the whole genesis behind why I started doing sketch notes and stuff like that.

01:09:42

I've picked up like bits and pieces of this all over the place, but I've never

01:09:49

heard it condensed down the way that he did it.

01:09:53

So I want to just highlight a couple of things that he says here at the beat in

01:09:57

this chapter, which I think are just great.

01:09:58

Number one, finding calm in the analog world is far easier.

01:10:02

Okay.

01:10:03

So that should start to move the needle that way a little bit in terms of the

01:10:07

defaults, right?

01:10:08

Page 158 says the digital world is valuable only so far as it supports what we intend

01:10:13

to accomplish.

01:10:14

So can it help us follow through on the intentions?

01:10:17

Not just do stuff more efficiently.

01:10:18

Okay, great.

01:10:19

That's all set up for two specific criteria.

01:10:23

When we want our activities to be efficient, we should use digital.

01:10:27

When we want our activities to be meaningful, we should use analog.

01:10:31

I think that is brilliant.

01:10:33

It's probably a gross oversimplification of analog versus digital, but I'd never

01:10:39

heard it phrase that way.

01:10:40

And when I heard I was like, that makes so much sense, right?

01:10:46

And there are things that I do digitally that you could argue, like, be better to

01:10:51

do these analog, but I recognize that there's efficiency that I'm gaining by doing it

01:10:57

digitally.

01:10:57

That supports the analog function.

01:11:00

So we talked at the beginning about the course that I created on journaling

01:11:03

and obsidian, right?

01:11:04

Journaling and obsidian, I'm doing that digitally, but I'm doing it digitally so

01:11:11

that it can support the analog practice of my personal retreats every 90 days.

01:11:16

Right.

01:11:16

So recognizing what is the actual benefit to me of doing this activity and using

01:11:24

that to help choose the right tool for the job.

01:11:27

And then I have an action item here of deliberately choosing analog tasks that

01:11:31

straddle that digital analog divide.

01:11:33

I actually think that I've started to do that already.

01:11:36

That's kind of the genesis behind the the onyx books.

01:11:39

That is a digital device, but I'm using it in an analog way.

01:11:42

It's shifting the needle more towards analog.

01:11:44

I already mentioned the paper that I'm reading every day.

01:11:47

Like there are things that I am.

01:11:49

I have stronger and clearer definitions for the boundaries to be established.

01:11:56

And what that does is it makes me less likely to cross them because I'm surrounded

01:12:00

by this technology all the time.

01:12:01

I could go grab my phone and I could go to these places and do these things.

01:12:05

But when I know why I'm doing something a certain way, then it's easier to resist

01:12:10

the siren song of the screen.

01:12:13

Yeah, it definitely reminded me of Neil Gaiman writes all his books with a

01:12:20

fountain pin in a notebook.

01:12:22

And when I heard that, it's like, huh, fascinating.

01:12:27

But then I remember, oh, shoot, what was the I think medium is the message?

01:12:33

Neil Postman, I think is the book where he was talking about, that might not be right.

01:12:40

But he was talking about how when the typewriter came out and it became a thing

01:12:47

that people could write books on a typewriter.

01:12:49

And it was a bit weird to people who had written by hand and they made the comment

01:12:58

that they just don't write the same words on the typewriter as they would with a pin.

01:13:02

And that's always stuck with me that, huh, something about the medium that you're

01:13:10

using to write does inform the output that you're creating.

01:13:15

And whether or not we want to admit that, like it's my brain in both cases, but

01:13:21

whether I've got a pin that I'm writing on a piece of paper with or I'm typing on

01:13:26

a keyboard, because those two mediums are so vastly different and they have

01:13:32

different potential and different speeds with which you can think and articulate

01:13:37

your thoughts, it changes the entire outcome.

01:13:41

Now, it doesn't really matter if you agree with me on that particular point or not.

01:13:46

The final result is true.

01:13:50

Like that does happen.

01:13:51

And they've proven that many, many, many times with all sorts of studies.

01:13:55

So you can't really argue me on that one.

01:13:57

The difference is which one are you going to choose?

01:14:00

Like they're not saying one's better than the other.

01:14:02

They're just saying it's different.

01:14:03

And this is where like I tend to do this with when I'm choosing technologies for

01:14:09

what our church is going to do.

01:14:12

The question isn't necessarily as a technology or a thing that you're going to

01:14:17

use good or bad.

01:14:18

You know, everything either adds and it adds into tracks in some form.

01:14:23

Like it's going to add some benefits, but it's going to have some negatives that

01:14:26

come with it.

01:14:26

Almost everything does that.

01:14:28

You know, a hammer is that an inherently good or bad thing.

01:14:32

Like this is the classic example, right?

01:14:34

And it has a lot of benefits, but it can have some downsides.

01:14:38

Like it, the fact that it exists has some negatives that come with it.

01:14:42

Whether you want to admit that and I'm not going to discuss those because they're

01:14:45

too gruesome, but that's, that's the concept here is like, okay, I can do this

01:14:51

digitally, but is that the right choice?

01:14:55

If I use it appropriately, if I, if I'm able to control it, maybe, you know, like

01:15:01

what you're saying with journaling, that's probably perfect for you.

01:15:04

For me, that's a bad idea.

01:15:06

Just because I know like the, the accumulation of that journaling each night

01:15:13

into a digital tool, the, the benefit of doing that is exactly zero to me.

01:15:19

But the benefits on a daily basis of doing it in a notebook are quite high.

01:15:24

So the benefit that I would have to get collectively to do it digitally would

01:15:29

have to be extremely high to overcome the negatives that I would deal with

01:15:35

on a daily basis of doing it digitally.

01:15:37

But that, again, that's me personally.

01:15:39

I'm not saying that's most people.

01:15:41

That's probably an anomaly, but that's ultimately what he's getting at.

01:15:47

You're like, okay, well, there are pros and cons of doing this each direction.

01:15:50

And I love the whole efficiency versus meaningfulness thing.

01:15:54

Cause that, that like hits home.

01:15:56

Like, maybe this is why I like pen and paper so much.

01:16:00

Yep.

01:16:00

Definitely a pen nerd, paper nerd.

01:16:03

Well, I think the thing that kind of solidifies this for me is that the best

01:16:09

parts of the digital world, there's three criteria here.

01:16:12

They save us time.

01:16:12

That one's easy.

01:16:13

Add features to our analog lives.

01:16:16

You can't say that about a lot of the digital stuff we choose to use and

01:16:19

connects us with others.

01:16:20

He talks a little bit about loneliness in this chapter too and how that is

01:16:24

important, but the big thing that we need to recognize is that for my situation,

01:16:31

for me specifically, is this ultimately a net good or net bad thing or a different

01:16:38

way to say that is, is this helping me be more productive, which kind of gets into

01:16:43

the next chapter here.

01:16:44

So let's go into chapter eight, which is calm and productive.

01:16:51

We have to identify what our productivity inhibitors are.

01:16:54

We become less productive as we become more anxious.

01:16:57

We have less attentional space going back to hyper focus.

01:16:59

We talked a little bit about that.

01:17:01

Anxiety makes us work, makes our work take longer.

01:17:05

This is not a surprise here.

01:17:08

But it also isn't just that anxiety makes us less productive.

01:17:13

Calm makes us more productive.

01:17:14

So this is where he like takes everything that we've talked about here in terms of

01:17:20

the stress and the anxiety and the scientific case for calm and then applies

01:17:26

it to the productivity world, which is probably where a lot of people like you

01:17:30

and I first came to Chris Bailey, right?

01:17:33

And I feel like this is a really good transition.

01:17:35

This is really well done.

01:17:36

It's not prescriptive.

01:17:37

I don't think it can be because I think you have to kind of figure out for

01:17:42

yourself what productivity means.

01:17:45

And yeah, he defines it way back in in chapter two, I think, where he talks about

01:17:50

how productivity is accomplishing what we set out to do.

01:17:53

So applying that to analog versus digital.

01:17:56

And is it helping me be more productive?

01:17:59

Is it helping me be more calm?

01:18:00

Is it helping me follow through and take action on the things that I intended to do?

01:18:05

He says on page 211 that a calm mind is a deliberate mind and a deliberate mind

01:18:09

is a productive mind.

01:18:10

I think that encapsulates this perfectly.

01:18:14

And he says that if you value productivity, you must invest in finding calm.

01:18:18

All of the life hacks are not going to work.

01:18:21

You're going to reach a point of diminishing returns with that kind of stuff.

01:18:24

And I feel like anybody who's been in this space for any length of time, like you

01:18:29

and I have, we've kind of gone through that journey.

01:18:31

We've recognized that.

01:18:32

That's why we have or I'll just speak for myself.

01:18:35

Why I have like the visceral reaction to the life hacks and the systems books.

01:18:40

And I'm like, I don't trust that.

01:18:41

Right.

01:18:43

Because I have fallen into that trap and I recognize that it's not as simple as they.

01:18:47

They make it sound.

01:18:50

I have one additional action item from this chapter.

01:18:52

I have so many action items from this book.

01:18:54

It's crazy.

01:18:54

You do have a lot.

01:18:55

I'll say that.

01:18:56

Yeah.

01:18:57

I want to add a journal entry on how the day went when I shut down.

01:19:01

So this is getting into like the specifics of how I journal inside of obsidian,

01:19:07

but I have like different.

01:19:08

I've got the daily questions, which I've talked about.

01:19:10

I've got habit tracking that I do in there on like just a couple.

01:19:13

Of things that are really important for me every day.

01:19:15

And then I've got like these different gratitude section, journal entry section,

01:19:19

wind section.

01:19:20

Basically what I'm saying is like I have ways to enter entries into those different sections.

01:19:25

As part of my shutdown routine, which is a previous action item,

01:19:29

I want to add something here just creating a quick journal entry on how did today go.

01:19:35

And I want to do that because I feel without taking stock of how

01:19:43

I feel at the end of the day, it's easy for me to dismiss it and come back tomorrow

01:19:48

morning and be like, I really wasn't that bad.

01:19:50

Right.

01:19:51

I need to force myself to think about that at the end of the day when it's fresh.

01:19:57

Otherwise, I'll just ignore it like it doesn't exist.

01:20:01

And I feel like I've done that too much.

01:20:03

So I need to start to notice this a little bit more.

01:20:07

And I feel like this is a way that can help me do that.

01:20:11

I think one of the things that this particular chapter

01:20:14

taught me that I am probably going to hold on to for quite a while is just how much time

01:20:21

calm gains you, which is backwards in my brain.

01:20:27

Like, OK, if I'm going to be slow, deliberate

01:20:32

and only focusing on one thing at one time, obviously,

01:20:40

that is going to lead to less work being done.

01:20:42

But using some science and some quick napkin math,

01:20:48

he was able to come to the conclusion that for us to get eight hours of work done

01:20:55

with an average level of subclinical anxiety, it takes us at least nine hours

01:21:02

and 19 minutes to do it.

01:21:03

And that I'm just calling I'm going to call it an hour or 20 minutes.

01:21:09

So like that extra hour and 20 minutes, it takes us.

01:21:12

Like that that is stuck in my brain right now.

01:21:17

And I'm like, OK, if I can settle down,

01:21:21

have a little peace, have a little calm, be more deliberate with what I'm doing.

01:21:27

I should be able to get things done much faster.

01:21:32

Like it's that whole.

01:21:34

How does that go?

01:21:37

Slow is something like slow is deliberate and deliberate as fast or something like

01:21:43

that. It's in the cooking world.

01:21:44

Mise en place. Oh, yeah.

01:21:45

I've read that.

01:21:46

I'm talking about I know the phrase.

01:21:48

I don't know what it was, though.

01:21:49

Yeah, slow is precise, precise is faster.

01:21:51

It's something along those lines.

01:21:53

And I can't help but think that there's a lot there.

01:21:58

So again, I was kind of experimenting this morning just to see, you know,

01:22:03

can I can I explore with some of this preemptively to see how this

01:22:07

plays out. So I was trying to make sure it was like, OK, before I go do a task,

01:22:11

what is it that I need to do and when is it done?

01:22:14

Like just takes 10 seconds in my brain.

01:22:16

It's like, OK, this is the thing.

01:22:17

I got to finish editing this video and it's done when it's loaded on the computer

01:22:20

and ready for Sunday. OK, great.

01:22:23

And then went, cranked it out, was done in like 20 minutes because it's a very

01:22:27

quick beginning and end quick fades sort of thing.

01:22:31

And had it loaded and was done.

01:22:33

And then I came back to my desk after loading it.

01:22:35

I was like, huh, that was weird.

01:22:39

That in my head, that was going to take like an hour and hour and a half or so.

01:22:43

And it was 20 minutes start to finish.

01:22:45

Like, huh, I wonder what I normally do in that time frame.

01:22:50

Like it was just a weird experience this morning.

01:22:53

So that's that's something I don't know that I have a I got to look at my action.

01:22:57

This is I'm similar to you.

01:22:59

Like I had so many things I'd written down that's like, huh, wonder what all I've

01:23:03

got for action items now.

01:23:04

But one of them that I had written down is like not using my phone to fill gaps.

01:23:08

That's kind of related to this.

01:23:10

Mm.

01:23:11

Because it's it's one where like if I hit a spot in the video editing where I'm not

01:23:16

real sure what I need to do next, it was very common for me to just quick check

01:23:20

something on my phone as a distraction from it.

01:23:23

And it's not one that I find is helpful, obviously.

01:23:28

So trying to figure out how that's going to play into things.

01:23:32

So I feel like not using the phone to distract from something and just being

01:23:38

deliberate with let's do the task.

01:23:39

It's done when it's done defining that ahead of time.

01:23:41

I feel like that's a lot harder to do than it is to say.

01:23:45

And I know that I'm not going to do well with this, but I'm going to try to at

01:23:51

least start to incorporate those little tiny bits.

01:23:53

So we'll see.

01:23:54

But this is where things get to be like the rubber hits the road, right?

01:24:00

Well, let's try to get some things done, but realizing that the anxiousness that

01:24:07

comes with, you know, this chronic stress piece is actually slowing us down and

01:24:12

making it worse.

01:24:13

That that is kind of busted my brain.

01:24:16

OK, you're not wrong and you've got math to back it up.

01:24:19

OK.

01:24:21

Math.

01:24:23

It's hard to argue with math.

01:24:24

Exactly.

01:24:27

Let's close up here with the last chapter.

01:24:31

It's kind of extension of what you were talking about, chapter nine, where

01:24:34

calm lives because he basically says that there's lots of different strategies

01:24:37

you can use to find calm.

01:24:39

And so you were talking about some specific ones you're going to try, right?

01:24:43

The journey to calm is very personal.

01:24:44

The answer is internal, not external, right?

01:24:46

So you can start by recognizing that your environment is contributing to this,

01:24:50

but you can't stop there.

01:24:52

That's not the solution.

01:24:53

Calm isn't exciting.

01:24:55

That's the whole point.

01:24:56

So this is just kind of an admonition to think about everything that you have

01:25:00

heard so far in this book and think about what you can do to start to move the

01:25:04

needle and gain a little bit more calm.

01:25:07

One of the things that I think this book does a great job of doing before we

01:25:10

get into style and rating is just giving you not like a plan, do these things.

01:25:17

There's no system to be recognized here, but feels like it's impossible to go

01:25:23

through this without having some of these seeds of ideas that Chris has planted,

01:25:27

spark something like, Oh, I could totally try this, right?

01:25:31

Which is why we have so many action items from this book.

01:25:33

It's written in a way that it kind of inspires that.

01:25:37

And so this last chapter is really just an admonition to think about this for

01:25:41

yourself and try to do something, you know, you don't need to do one thing with

01:25:47

the goal of this is going to completely eliminate all of the stress and I'm going

01:25:50

to achieve calm and that's going to be it.

01:25:52

And I'm never going to have to deal with this again.

01:25:54

It's a journey.

01:25:55

You're going to have to constantly be looking at the contributing factors and

01:25:58

making adjustments probably.

01:26:00

You're trying to get progress, not perfection here, but do something.

01:26:03

And I think this is a great way to end this book.

01:26:06

Yeah, he does a very good job of here are some things that help with this

01:26:13

particular problem.

01:26:14

Here's a way that you can process this particular issue.

01:26:18

Here's some questions you can ask yourself if you want to, you know,

01:26:22

consider stress at a different level.

01:26:24

And there is no like prescriptive.

01:26:28

You should do these things.

01:26:30

Now he's, he's kind of got the air of you should do these things, but it's not

01:26:37

in a way that leads you to think, huh, I'm either going to agree with him and

01:26:43

do this things or he's full of it and I'm not touching any of these.

01:26:46

Like that's typically at least my reaction to these things.

01:26:50

So the fact that I've got what five down here, you know, that, that tells me that,

01:26:54

you know, there's, there's a lot of opportunity in this.

01:26:57

At the same time, it means that there's a lot in this that strikes home.

01:27:03

And I realize these are the shortcomings that I have.

01:27:09

And it's in an area that permeates all other areas in my brain and mindset.

01:27:15

So it's hard.

01:27:17

I feel like it would be very hard for somebody to read this and not realize

01:27:20

something that they need to work on here that could have a pretty major

01:27:26

impact on their life.

01:27:27

So he does end this well, like basically take it or leave it.

01:27:31

Here's some stuff you should do or could do.

01:27:34

Please do so.

01:27:36

That's, that's kind of the way I saw it left.

01:27:39

Yeah.

01:27:40

So that's, that's the perfect transition here to action items then.

01:27:45

I guess I'll go through my first because I have it gazillion of them.

01:27:49

Not actually.

01:27:50

I think I have eight.

01:27:51

So number one, edit transition time block to my schedule.

01:27:56

I've talked about that already.

01:27:58

Number two, create a stress inventory, things that are contributing to that chronic stress.

01:28:03

Number three is actually done already, but that's take them as like burnout inventory.

01:28:09

I'm curious if you wanted to do this too.

01:28:12

So I'm not going to share the specifics of my results.

01:28:14

But if you wanted to talk about that and follow up next time, happy to do that.

01:28:18

Number four is to make a list of the things that I want to savor.

01:28:23

Number five is to prep for my dopamine fast.

01:28:27

If not, begin it.

01:28:28

Number six, deliberately choose analog tasks that straddle the digital analog divide.

01:28:34

I have already done a couple of these that I called out, but I want to continue to think on this.

01:28:38

Maybe there's some more that I could, I could do here.

01:28:41

Number seven, we didn't talk about this one.

01:28:44

It's time to try meditation again.

01:28:47

But yeah, I don't have any spoilers.

01:28:54

I'll share with this, but I'm incentivized to try it again.

01:28:58

Let's just say that.

01:28:58

Number eight, add a journal entry on how the day went when I shut down, talked about that one too.

01:29:05

So this is a lot.

01:29:06

I don't expect that all of these are going to be done or have stuck, but something will have.

01:29:12

I'm excited about having this many action items to be honest instead of intimidated or feeling like this is a big burden that I have to try all this stuff.

01:29:19

I'm pleasantly surprised to see that many action items from this book, to be honest.

01:29:24

What about you?

01:29:26

There's a lot here.

01:29:28

As I'm looking at this list, you've got a lot.

01:29:32

I've got a lot.

01:29:33

I have not taken this burnout inventory, but I will take this burnout inventory and.

01:29:41

Yeah, so send me the link, whatever you used.

01:29:44

I'll jump on board.

01:29:46

I'm being with that.

01:29:46

OK, so I'll do that.

01:29:47

I want to do the stress inventory.

01:29:49

So I'll go through that as well.

01:29:53

I need to do this dopamine reduction, basically paying attention to the things that are causing that.

01:29:58

Again, I think that's tied to that stress inventory.

01:30:01

I don't want to be using my phone to fill gaps.

01:30:06

Trying to get my evening journaling thing up and running again.

01:30:10

And because I've been doing it on and off, but I haven't been doing it consistently.

01:30:16

I also wrote down meditation here.

01:30:18

And I will attempt that once more.

01:30:25

I think I'm starting to like realize some of the things that go with it that.

01:30:31

I've misunderstood in the past.

01:30:34

Like the more times that we have this come up, the more I understand about it and the more interest I have in that.

01:30:40

You know, Blake's calling out the Huberman podcast.

01:30:43

I think he did that with Sam Harris.

01:30:45

I think I'm in the middle of that one right now, actually.

01:30:48

So hearing Sam Harris talk about it, seeing Andrew Huberman talk about it from a scientific neuroscience level.

01:30:56

It coming up here yet again.

01:30:58

Here we go.

01:31:01

Round and round we go.

01:31:04

Here's the merry-go-round.

01:31:05

But yes, I'll give it a shot.

01:31:07

I had not heard of Sam Harris previously, but I did see that come up and he's got like the neuroscience approach to mindfulness meditation.

01:31:18

Right?

01:31:19

That's the guy.

01:31:19

Yep.

01:31:19

Yep.

01:31:20

Yeah.

01:31:20

He's got a he's got an app called Waking Up, which I have just started experimenting with.

01:31:26

I'll save you some money.

01:31:28

If you download it on the app store, go into the subscription.

01:31:30

It's a hundred bucks.

01:31:31

But if you go into the website, it's first of all less.

01:31:36

I think it's 80 and then there's a big long sales page about it.

01:31:41

And there's a link for like a scholarship and click on that.

01:31:49

And then basically he says that if you apply, they'll give it to you for free because they don't want anybody to not do it because it's too much money.

01:31:58

But then they're right away offer you like the half price.

01:32:01

Thing.

01:32:02

We were talking about the beginning with like audible and stuff like that.

01:32:05

So Waking Up does that too.

01:32:07

If you do it through the web.

01:32:08

Fair enough.

01:32:08

Fair enough.

01:32:09

Tricks of the trade.

01:32:12

Yep.

01:32:13

All right.

01:32:14

Let's give this book a style and rating, shall we?

01:32:18

Sure.

01:32:20

OK.

01:32:21

So I kind of talked at the beginning about the trajectory of Chris's writing and kind of how I like where his career

01:32:31

seems to be going.

01:32:32

And I definitely really like Chris as an author.

01:32:37

I feel like he's very approachable, very relatable and has a lot of interesting science behind the books that he writes.

01:32:45

Not just, hey, there's this study that says this thing.

01:32:47

So trust me, but just interesting tidbits.

01:32:50

You know, he digs some of that stuff out from the research studies that all the other books just kind of mentioned and kind of generalize.

01:32:58

So that being said, like, I like Chris Bailey's stuff.

01:33:02

I also think this is the best book that Chris Bailey has written so far.

01:33:07

When this came out and in full disclosure, I am friends with Chris Bailey at this point.

01:33:12

But when this came out, I wrote a Amazon review, a verified review because not only did he send me a copy, but I also bought one.

01:33:21

Support my friend, but I gave it a five star review and that five star review is legit.

01:33:26

I will give it five stars here as well.

01:33:28

Because I think it's really good.

01:33:30

I think I went into the skeptical because his previous work was how to train your mind.

01:33:37

That was an audible original and that was all about mindfulness meditation.

01:33:41

So that's kind of what I expected when I heard him talking about this book was this is going to be mindful meditation.

01:33:49

While we both have an action, I'm associated with that.

01:33:51

I think it showed up on like a couple of pages.

01:33:54

Yeah.

01:33:54

It was very small.

01:33:56

It was not a big part at all.

01:33:57

No, but it was so it wasn't what I expected, but in a very good way.

01:34:04

I think this is a book that everyone needs to read.

01:34:08

There has never been a better time for this book.

01:34:10

And I feel like Chris is the right person to to write this.

01:34:14

I'm thinking of like other books that we've read that have kind of talked about this.

01:34:18

Like, I remember reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and not really enjoying that one.

01:34:25

A lot of the people who speak to this stuff, they tend to be just that doesn't click with me.

01:34:31

It feels like they're not they're not who I am.

01:34:34

They are out in their cabin in the woods and tinfoil hat society.

01:34:38

And I just have a hard time relating.

01:34:40

That's completely unfair to the people who write those books, but that's just the resistance that I have typically to this type of material.

01:34:47

Even though I totally understand it and like I should the importance of it and I should totally resonate with it.

01:34:53

Well, Chris is finally resonated with me.

01:34:55

Like this is this is a great book.

01:34:57

I will be gifting this book to a bunch of people.

01:34:59

I guarantee because it's a really fun read.

01:35:02

It's a really easy read.

01:35:03

It's impossible not to be inspired by this.

01:35:05

It it's it's good.

01:35:07

Everyone should pick this up and I'm going to give it five stars.

01:35:09

I am just going to sit here and say dido.

01:35:13

That's awesome because it's absolutely a five oh to me.

01:35:17

And it's one that I know.

01:35:20

Like we've read a fair amount of books about like digital minimalism, the shallows, like we've read a lot of these that talk about the digital stuff.

01:35:30

This does go there.

01:35:33

And then hits it from a neuroscience level.

01:35:37

And then just moves on like Chris nails how much time you should spend on that and then

01:35:44

shows all the other stuff around it. So it's obvious he's been writing for a long time because of the structure that he's able to put into this.

01:35:52

And this is absolutely one of the books I'm going to be recommending to many, many, many people when it comes to anxiety, digital control and so forth.

01:36:02

So yeah, this is a great book.

01:36:05

He's a great storyteller.

01:36:06

He's structured it very well.

01:36:08

I know one of the footnotes he had a comment about how he was telling one part of his story is like this is a little

01:36:14

out of order. I restructured my overall story somewhat so that it made more sense and was more approachable.

01:36:20

It's like huh.

01:36:21

And I hadn't even connected that that happened.

01:36:23

I wouldn't have known that had I not caught that footnote.

01:36:26

It's like huh.

01:36:27

And he did this so well that it's hard to know, you know, how did those things fit together.

01:36:32

But at the same time, like it's very cohesive and it very much builds on itself and makes it very easy to figure out what it is that you should be doing.

01:36:43

Obviously with the 4,000 action items that we have for this particular book.

01:36:48

So this is absolutely one you should pick up if you haven't already.

01:36:51

Awesome.

01:36:53

Well, let's put this one on the shelf.

01:36:56

What is next, Joe?

01:36:58

Yeah.

01:36:59

So coming up next, next time we're going to cover why has nobody told me this before by Dr.

01:37:03

Julie Smith.

01:37:04

Like I mentioned last time, she's the TikTok doctor.

01:37:07

And from what I understand, she was the first

01:37:09

psychologist, psychiatrist.

01:37:12

I'm not sure which one she is, that started a TikTok channel and started sharing like

01:37:18

mind, mental tidbits for people and apparently has a very successful practice and has written a book about

01:37:27

like little mental things that can help you that people don't really realize.

01:37:34

Thus the title, why has nobody told me this before?

01:37:36

So kind of excited to see how see what you think of that one, Mike, but I think it'll be a good conversation for

01:37:42

us.

01:37:43

Kind of follows in the same thread, I think, is what we've been covering, but I'm not going to say that for certain.

01:37:47

And then what we got after that.

01:37:51

Then we have one that I have preordered and just recently arrived and I just want to go through this with you.

01:38:00

It is the creative act, the way of being by Rick Rubin.

01:38:03

This is the one that a lot of the people that I follow in the productivity space are going nuts about right now.

01:38:11

And I think it'll be, it'll be fun.

01:38:15

It's just the one that we got tagged in on Twitter here recently.

01:38:18

I think I saw Mike Vardy mentioned it at some point too.

01:38:22

So I feel like I've seen this around.

01:38:24

It should be good.

01:38:26

Yeah, this, this looks like it'll be fun.

01:38:28

You got any gap books?

01:38:30

I do.

01:38:31

I just finished reading a book with my office mates called Glad You're Here.

01:38:37

This is Walker Hayes and Craig Allen Cooper.

01:38:41

Kind of an interesting book.

01:38:42

If you know that name Walker Hayes, he's a.

01:38:46

Semi famous country hip hop singer.

01:38:51

And this is actually the story of these two and his coming to Christ story.

01:38:57

So this is why we read it as part of our staff.

01:39:00

But anyway, fascinating story.

01:39:01

The biggest takeaway I had from it was actually building tight friendships.

01:39:05

So coming so close to people that they can share in very messy hard times in life.

01:39:11

So interesting book, definitely like a testimony type book.

01:39:14

Very cool.

01:39:16

How about you?

01:39:17

Yeah, I have one.

01:39:20

So here's the story behind this.

01:39:22

I mentioned the faith-based productivity community.

01:39:25

And I am trying some different things in there, keeping tabs on what happens in

01:39:32

there. And I have set up this space called introduce yourself where people just.

01:39:36

This is who I am, what I do.

01:39:38

You know, and so I was watching that a couple of weeks ago and I saw someone named

01:39:44

Reagan Rose appear and like that name sounds familiar, but I don't know where

01:39:47

I've seen that before.

01:39:48

Turns out Reagan Rose has also like spirituality, Christian faith based, like

01:39:54

productivity stuff.

01:39:56

And he's got a book which I had no idea existed, but looks fascinating called

01:40:01

Redeeming Productivity.

01:40:02

So I bought it and it's short and I'm going to read it for the next episode.

01:40:07

And I'm excited about this one.

01:40:08

Cool.

01:40:09

Sounds fun.

01:40:11

Sounds interesting.

01:40:12

I believe so.

01:40:14

All right.

01:40:16

Let's wrap it up there.

01:40:17

Thanks everyone who supports the podcast.

01:40:19

Thank you for listening.

01:40:21

Thank you to the live members who join us on YouTube and banter with us back and

01:40:26

forth in the the chat.

01:40:27

That always makes the episodes better.

01:40:29

I really appreciate people who are willing to do that, but I especially

01:40:33

appreciate the people who are willing to support the podcast financially.

01:40:37

It really means a lot to Joe and I and helps us keep the lights on.

01:40:40

So thank you to everyone who is willing to pitch a couple bucks our way every

01:40:45

month, five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year.

01:40:46

If you want to do so, you can go to bookworm.fm/membership and sign up.

01:40:52

When you do, you get a couple perks, some gapbook episodes, Joe recorded a wallpaper

01:40:57

and they designed the mind map files for the books that we read.

01:41:01

I do a dump every couple of months and upload a bunch of new ones.

01:41:05

So apologize if I'm a little bit behind, but there's more coming soon.

01:41:08

Please be patient with me.

01:41:09

But really the thing that that you're helping to do is to keep bookworm going.

01:41:14

163 episodes in really enjoy this.

01:41:17

Don't want to make don't want it to stop.

01:41:19

But that requires us to pay the bills.

01:41:23

And so you help us do that.

01:41:25

Thank you, everyone who's willing to financially back the podcast.

01:41:28

And for the amazing people who read along with us, pick up, why has nobody told me

01:41:34

this before?

01:41:34

But Dr. Julie Smith will cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.