Bookworm Transcripts

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It's a momentous day, Joe Buellig, because we are officially on circle, thanks to all

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of your hard work and moving everything over.

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Well, it's moving most things over.

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It seems like there's a few things we keep finding.

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It's like, "Oh, yeah, we had this tied to that."

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Oh, yeah, recommendations aren't there.

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We should figure that out.

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Okay.

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Well, good news is I have a backup of the whole previous structure, so I can still go

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get all the things if we need to.

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Question is, where does it all go?

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That's the main thing to answer.

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But yes, we are on circle.

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Super exciting.

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I know that for our pro members, what we've been calling premium members, pro members,

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those words are all kind of the same thing at this point anymore.

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You should have gotten an email from the system or me.

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I'm not sure how that actually came out with an invite that gets you access to the premium

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side of it, the pro side of it for a trial period.

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Then you'll just have to enter in your card information and then it will continue from

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that point on.

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If that gives you any fits, let us know.

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That's really the only part of the process that is that important right now.

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Super exciting.

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Yeah.

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By doing this, we have basically been able to clean a lot of things up.

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The URL, I think, stays the same, right?

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It's bookworm.fm/membership if you want to join.

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You can actually join the circle community without paying for the extra stuff.

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Just come, make recommendations, join the chat, all that kind of stuff inside the community.

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There's also, we have added events.

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When we do the live recordings, you don't just find out an hour before when Joe sends

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the tweet out.

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We usually pick the time at the end of the recordings and we put that on the calendar.

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Well, actually now there's a calendar event that you can RSVP to if you want.

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It's got the link to the YouTube live stream, which I think is pretty cool.

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Then there's also a couple of additional feeds.

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We have the occasional sponsor for bookworm now, which is awesome.

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If you are a pro member, then you get access to a special section of that circle community,

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which has not only the book notes, but also some additional goodies like the wallpaper

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and the extra feeds.

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So I say feeds, plural, because Joe committed to this.

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I created more work for him, but he's good with it, which we all need to thank him for.

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Well, there's the normal podcast, which you've been listening to, subscribed to for very

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long time.

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There's also the pro version, which is ad-free.

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And then there is the bootleg, which is basically the moment that we connect for the live calls

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on YouTube.

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Joe hits the button for the backup recordings.

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He's going to take that audio.

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So all of our mistakes, all of our fighting with our gear, all of the pen chatter before-

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Why do people want this?

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Well, I don't know.

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One thing I think is kind of cool is this running joke between Blake and Carol and us

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and the live chat is the "Pend of the Day" thing.

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So we tend to talk about things that we know not everybody is going to care about, but

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when we see people in the chat, we'll sometimes talk about some- or go nerdy about some of

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some different things.

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I don't know.

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This is a nerdy podcast to begin with, but we get extra nerdy sometimes.

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We get a little bit silly sometimes.

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That is available also right after we record the live show.

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That's typically like a week before the actual show comes out.

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So if you want to get the episodes early, that would be another reason just to get the

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bootleg.

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But if you can wait, no- no- no, you don't need to do anything, but if you want all the

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extra stuff, it's the same price, $5 a month, $50 a year, and it's a great way to support

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the show.

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So thank you to everybody who has done that.

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But yeah, I'm excited that this is now in circle.

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Circle is what I've been using for the Faith Base Proactivity community, and I've used it

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for part-time YouTuber Academy and Ship30 and stuff like that.

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It's just a great platform for connecting with people, and I'm excited to see you all

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over there.

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Yeah, it's really cool.

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So I'm excited to see everybody make their way over there.

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So yeah, if you want to join, again, you don't have to join the pro side of it if you don't

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want to.

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But if you want to join the community even without that, it's just club.bookworm.fm.

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Same place the Discourse site was sitting.

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We just moved it over to circle.

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So same URL, all the things.

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But if you had an account on the Discourse and were not a pro member, you'll need to set

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up a new account on the Circle account.

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Once you already have a Circle account, then you just join the community, I guess.

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I think that's how that works.

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I'm still figuring out Circle, in case you didn't know this.

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I'm a part of, I think, six different Circle communities at this point.

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So one of the things I like about Circle is you've got the switcher on the sidebar.

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So you can jump back and forth between the different communities without ever having to

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leave that website.

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And there's a pretty great iOS app, probably Android app too, I think that's out now.

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I know that came after the iOS app, but which can give you access to all your different

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Circle communities.

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So yeah, thanks, Joe, for making the switch.

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I think we're there.

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Yay.

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All right.

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Let's talk about action items.

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You've got one here.

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How'd you do with your tech shutdown?

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Yeah, so I've had, I think, a couple Sundays since we talked about this.

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This was mainly like a Sunday afternoon type action item, which was basically to try shutting

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down as much tech as I can on Sunday afternoons, trying to create a bit of a, like, I don't

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want to say oasis, but a separation zone, if you will, from tech in general.

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And basically what I did was make sure that my phone was sitting on a counter right next

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to our Bluetooth speaker, where like, because we tend to use it for playing music on Sunday

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afternoons.

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Like that was all it was allowed for.

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And it's something that I believe is going to continue to sit there on Sundays because

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it was honestly pretty freeing just to not have to worry about anything on Sunday afternoons.

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So again, I would do it all day, but my job is on Sunday morning, mostly.

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So can't really do that.

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That would be a bad day.

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So I don't do that, but whenever I get home, a lot of times I'll connect it to the speaker,

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hit play, and that's as far as it goes.

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So then it stays there the rest of the afternoon.

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So that has been super helpful.

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I'm glad for taking that one on, probably continuing that one for quite some time.

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Cool.

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So I had a similar action item to unplug on the Sabbath.

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And I think I mentioned last time my strategy for this was going to be to create a focus

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mode, Sabbath focus mode, which I did do.

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And it does work well.

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Only annoying thing about it is that my iPhone likes to make suggestions on other things

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that I should do with this Sabbath focus mode.

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And I don't want any of the suggestions.

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So maybe there's a way to turn off focus mode suggestions that I just haven't dove into

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settings to figure out.

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But it's working well.

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I just wish the additional stuff would go away because I have intentionally kept it simple.

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Thanks, Siri.

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I got this one.

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I know that for a while I've been using the work focus mode for a variety of reasons.

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But this is super nerdy.

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I set up a Siri shortcut that will, when I run it, it turns on that work focus mode

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and then also starts a timer in toggle.

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So it does both of those simultaneously.

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And then I can trip it again and it'll reverse the process, shut the timer off and turn the

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focus mode off.

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But because I was doing that for three or four days, it learns like, oh, when you get

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to this location, you're turning this mode on.

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Do you want us to do it for you automatically?

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No, I want to control that.

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Because sometimes I want to turn that on when I'm not at that building somewhere else.

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I don't want you to do all this fancy stuff.

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Just let me turn it on and off.

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It's OK.

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But after like three or four days of telling it no, it quit asking.

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So I don't know how long it takes for it to stop asking that question, but it's annoying.

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Yeah.

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So speaking of shortcuts, by the way, I need to point this out.

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I would be derelict in my duties of mentioning obsidian every single episode if I did not

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do this.

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Are you aware of this app?

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And I'm using air quotes here called actions for obsidian.

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No, what is this?

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I've not heard of this.

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So this is basically a bridge between obsidian and shortcuts.

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So it's made by this guy who also developed a community plugin, which adds the ability

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for these different callback URLs to be accessible in obsidian via shortcuts.

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And then it adds 30 plus actions to shortcuts.

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So you can do things like take the output from a shortcut and insert it into a placeholder

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in your daily note, or you can get the results from a data view table, or you can transfer

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all of your appointments from your calendar into your daily note at placeholders, things

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like that.

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It basically turns obsidian into like an Apple native app in terms of the support for shortcuts.

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And interesting.

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And using this at a very, very low level, but it is a really cool.

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And I feel like if you looked at this, you would probably really like it.

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Actions for obsidian.

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This is on iOS.

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It's on the Mac.

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I believe it's coming out for iOS soon.

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But right now it only works on the Mac.

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Yeah, it's on the Mac app store, the website.

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If you hover over the iOS one, it actually changes to available soon.

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So he's still trying to figure out some of the sandboxing stuff on iOS.

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But if you use obsidian on your Mac, this is pretty cool.

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It's got a couple different pricing tiers based and you pick the one based on like how

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useful it is for you, which is kind of a cool pricing model and it's got a 14 day free

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trial.

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It starts at 799 as a one time purchase.

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But the URL is obsidian.actions.work.

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And it's pretty great.

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Has nothing to do with our action items though.

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So I see that.

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I will go back and report on my last action item, which was to check out Bookshop.

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I did.

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I didn't buy anything off of Bookshop.

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I don't think I'm going to buy anything off of Bookshop.

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Why is that?

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I feel like it's the sort of thing that would be like a gold mine for us.

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So the fact that you're saying you don't think you'll buy anything off of it makes

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me very curious now.

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Well, I mean full disclosure, we do share affiliate links to books that we talk about

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in Bookworm.

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So if you are going to buy a book that we recommend and you click on the link in the

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show notes, that takes you to Amazon and we get a small kickback from that.

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So that is another way you can support the show.

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Even if you don't like affiliate links, now you know, and you can avoid them.

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Obviously there.

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So I'm not going to use it for any of the Bookworm stuff unless we just made that decision

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together that we don't care about that extra affiliate income and we're just going to support

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the local bookstore because it's the right thing to do.

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I would be okay with that.

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You could talk me into that.

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But it's just not as simple.

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It's not as efficient.

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I buy so many books.

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I don't want to have to go there first every time and then go somewhere else when they

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don't have what I want.

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So they did have the book that we're covering today.

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And I don't really blame them for that.

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This one I hadn't really heard of until Martin recommended it.

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So this isn't like everybody's got this one sort of a deal.

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But just the fact that they may or may not have what I'm looking for.

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That's additional time, additional complexity.

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I'm not going to do that.

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Maybe I should.

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But I can tell you, I know myself.

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I'm not going to do that.

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So I don't know.

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I'm not going to say other people shouldn't use it.

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Go ahead.

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I love the premise.

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But yeah.

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I looked at the website, poked around on it.

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They didn't have the book for today.

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So I'm like, well, that's a bummer, but I'll try it again.

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Went back and looked at it again and I could feel my motivation waning every single time

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I went to the website.

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So yeah.

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All right.

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So I won't do it then.

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Did you check it out?

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No, I have not looked at it.

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Yeah.

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I think it's easy to get excited about some of these action items and the books that we

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read and the more distance you get from them, the less important they are.

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This one was never really that important to begin with.

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And so let's just say this one failed.

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It was such a, at least to me, it was ended up being such a minor thing that I completely

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forgot that it was the thing you were doing at all.

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Yeah.

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It didn't even register past the recording time.

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So.

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Fair enough.

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All right.

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Let's talk about today's book.

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Today's book, which I foreshadowed as not available on Bookshop, is Master Your Motivation

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by Susan Fowler.

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And this was a recommendation from Martin.

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He I think is on the chat today.

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So yeah, this will be a part to hear your insights as we go here, Martin.

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This is a pretty short book, broken down into three parts and an introduction.

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I actually don't mind that.

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I think I had a kind of moment of clarity when I was looking at this book because it

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is pretty small.

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And the subtitle is three scientific truths for achieving your goals.

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So you could take the approach of like, Oh, well, they obviously just landed on the three

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things and then they develop this whole message around this because it was a convenient number.

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However, there's actually a lot of science you can tell has gone into this.

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And I did not think that that was a superficial thing for a simplicity of organization.

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And by the time I got done with this book, I was like, you know what?

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Maybe I need to reconsider my stance on three part books because we tend to write that off

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right at the beginning.

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And to be fair, a lot of the books that we have read don't need to be three different

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sections.

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It is a bit of a stretch.

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But I feel like this one's pretty clean.

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So there's the introduction, which is why motivation science matters.

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Then part one is the truth about motivation.

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Part two is motivation is a skill.

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And then part three, what is stopping you?

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And there's different models associated with specifically part one and part two.

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So part three is basically everything else.

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And I feel like it's structured pretty well.

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What was your first impression of this book?

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And even more granular, you know, what about the topic of motivation?

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When I picked this one, were you excited by it or did you find yourself resisting this

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topic?

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It was kind of a mix of both in that, like, I know motivation is something that I tend

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to struggle with.

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I'm aware of that.

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So the concept of reading a book about motivation, pretty excited about that.

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But whenever it has something like three scientific truths for achieving your goals and master

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your motivation, like that's pretty high claim.

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And kind of makes me think, hmm, is this going to be one of these philosophical grand ideas

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books that is like almost impossible to implement except for like .01% of the population?

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What was my skepticism coming in?

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Pre-read on the book?

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So it's like, okay, how's this going to go?

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It's either going to go in the territory where this is life-changing for Joe, anyway, or

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it's going to go down the territory of this is baloney.

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It's possible it fits somewhere in the middle, but my expectation was it was going to go

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one of those two directions.

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All right, what did you think overall just at the beginning here, like, which way do you

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find yourself being pulled?

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Between those two directions?

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Honestly, I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

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As weird as I think that that is, like, I don't know that I have clean, like, this is

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going to make a big difference to me in this area.

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Like, this is a lot of, like, here's how you should think type of book, and those types

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of books can be awesome, but I think it's sometimes difficult to know, is this book one

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that's going to be awesome for me long term until I've had, you know, a few months to

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just see how it impacts my continual mindsets beyond the time I'm reading the book.

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But I don't know that I'm going to have super clean answer to that right now.

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At the same time, like, I know that the way that she's coming at this, again, you mentioned,

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like, the three-partedness of this, and it's one that we tend to rail on a little bit.

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It's like, oh, no, here we go, another three-part book.

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But at the same time, this is doing a pretty good job of just kind of walking us through

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the process of, here are the components of motivation.

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And then here are some ways that you can go about learning the skill of motivation, basically

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explaining how that works.

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And then at the end, kind of walking us through what is the process that's going to break

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it down.

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So when you've got it laid out like that, it gets kind of hard to argue with.

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But I think the proof is in the action on this one, like, sure, what actually comes to fruit

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after having read this.

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I can tell you that just noticing different scenarios, like, okay, well, what's motivating

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me to complete my credit card statement for the month?

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And what is the method that I'm using to motivate myself on that?

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And then seeing how that is terrible is super helpful.

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But I can't say that I would have expected understanding that until I read this.

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So it has been helpful in that sense.

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Okay.

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Well, I guess I picked this book because I was interested in the topic of motivation, but

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didn't have anything specific that I was looking to change.

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There wasn't a reason that I wanted to do a book on motivation just other than it was

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an interesting topic to me because we've talked about willpower and a lot of like the creative

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stuff is there's this imagery of conquering the resistance and things like that.

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I've kind of long believed that motivation is more important than willpower or maybe even

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discipline.

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I've over-ride that certain situations, but I didn't have like a specific situation where

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I was like, I want to apply this.

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Just the topic was interesting to me at the time.

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And this was a recommendation that that looked pretty good.

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So we picked it up and let's jump in here.

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The first part we're going to talk about is just the introduction.

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And one of the things that I liked about this introduction is just the way that the stage

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is set for this discussion on motivation.

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The introduction has a subtitle of why motivation science matters.

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And there's two big things here that kind of stood out to me.

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Number one, she directly addresses Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

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I'm not sure what you think about Maslow's hierarchy.

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Do you think like, oh, this makes a ton of sense and this is the way the world works or

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do you think it's a bunch of baloney?

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I don't know what it's it's it's one that like I've seen it so many times and then I've

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also seen so many people break it down in different ways.

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It's like, okay, this is one that sure, I mean, there's there's got to be some foundational

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truth there somewhere, but the subtleties might break down in a variety of ways.

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So I can't say that I have a strong opinion.

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I wouldn't come up to you and say, Maslow's hierarchy is horrific.

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You should never pay attention to it.

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I would never say that.

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I'm also not going to come up to you and say, Hey, you really need to think about this.

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This is a big deal.

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I'm not going to do that either.

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It's like a neutral point for me.

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Well, she basically says the first in the nicest way I've ever heard.

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She says that Maslow's hierarchy of needs has never been empirically proven, which that

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statement kind of was shocking to me when I heard that because I know people who take

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Maslow's hierarchy as like this is gospel truth on the way that humans are wired.

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And I've always thought it was a little bit, I don't know, just never really sat right

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with me whenever I looked at that.

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Like you look at it and it kind of makes sense, but I never was able to buy into it 100% and

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I never really understood why.

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And so I felt validated by that statement.

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And then she kind of talks about the thing that is more important in her words.

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And I think I would side with her on this and that is the self determination theory, which

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is the foundation of motivation science.

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Now, that term self determination, basically what that means is that you are the captain

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of your own ship and you have the ability to chart your own course and you can become

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the type of person that you want to be and create the life that you want to live.

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And that is something that I have actually brought up many, many times on this podcast.

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We've talked about it a lot, but it stems from me from the family business.

00:23:20

My dad started a software company and developed a whole bunch of products based off of a whole

00:23:25

bunch of research on the topic of emotional intelligence and social emotional learning,

00:23:30

things like that.

00:23:31

Self determination is a big part of that.

00:23:33

So for a long time, I worked with the family business and we sold educational assessment

00:23:39

skill building products to schools and the populations that we worked with were special

00:23:44

education primarily or at risk and self determination specifically is the thing that can turn an

00:23:50

at risk kids life around because they typically don't come from the best scenario and they're

00:23:56

firmly entrenched in victim thinking.

00:23:59

And as long as they continue to think that way, it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

00:24:03

Your environment doesn't create an opportunity for them to succeed and I want to reiterate

00:24:09

here that that doesn't mean that I recognize that bad things happen to people and sometimes

00:24:15

it's not your fault.

00:24:16

But when it happens, you can accept that you have the power to change it or not and it's

00:24:22

much more freeing to embrace the self determination theory.

00:24:26

So self determination, I totally understand how this can be the foundation for motivation.

00:24:33

And I really enjoyed selfishly, I guess, seeing it here.

00:24:38

What do you think about this?

00:24:41

The self determination piece.

00:24:43

Yeah.

00:24:44

And also just as like the, this is kind of a launching off point for the rest of the

00:24:48

book, obviously on motivation.

00:24:50

Do you see the connection there and what do you, what do you think about the case that

00:24:54

she's making here?

00:24:55

Yeah.

00:24:56

I think she's got a pretty solid case in that you've got a lot in your head that can completely

00:25:06

change how you see a situation or see a scenario happening.

00:25:12

Whenever I think about like what, what motivates me to get up in the morning and exercise.

00:25:18

When I think about something like that, it can change from the simple thought process

00:25:25

of this is a great way for me to get energy in the day.

00:25:27

I'm excited to go get my energy for the day.

00:25:31

That's very different than, I don't want to get out of bed.

00:25:35

Like those are completely different ways of thinking about the exact same scenario.

00:25:39

And in one of those cases, it makes it easy to get out of bed and get going.

00:25:44

And in the other case, you don't ever want to get out of bed.

00:25:48

So just, just knowing that and that's kind of what she's laying out here.

00:25:51

And she does end up talking through that throughout the book, pointing the whole topic

00:25:57

at that concept and knowing that that is all in my head, it gets kind of hard to argue

00:26:05

with, especially when she's got a lot of the science that proves that that's the case.

00:26:11

So I don't know that I have any arguments on it, but I think she does a pretty good

00:26:14

job of setting up the foundation for the rest of the book with it.

00:26:17

What's your mental state after this point in the book?

00:26:21

Are you, all right, I'm excited, let's make this happen.

00:26:24

Or are you like hesitant as you walk into the next section?

00:26:32

At this point, I'm like, prove it.

00:26:35

Okay, this might be great, but I need you to prove it.

00:26:39

Gotcha.

00:26:40

Well, I was definitely excited by this.

00:26:44

Yes.

00:26:45

And I want to point out that a lot of my opinion on that and the reason I had that viewpoint

00:26:53

is just the whole ADD thing.

00:26:55

Like, sure, that's great in general population terms, but does that hold true in every scenario?

00:27:02

She didn't really call out as far as I remember anywhere in the book, exceptions to these

00:27:07

rules.

00:27:08

Yep.

00:27:09

So that being the case, it would make me think that her assumption is this works for everybody.

00:27:14

Yeah.

00:27:15

So I don't think she really has any qualifiers to any of it, which is sometimes, in a lot

00:27:24

of cases, that usually means that they either didn't think about it or they have thought

00:27:28

about it and chose to leave that wide open because they know that it is applicable to

00:27:33

everybody.

00:27:34

And I think it's really hard to know which way they intend that or the way that it came

00:27:39

across.

00:27:40

Like, did they even think about it?

00:27:41

I don't know.

00:27:42

I think going through this, like, I think at this point, I understand that this is very

00:27:49

likely going to apply in my scenario, but when I was going through it at the time, it's

00:27:57

like, "Okay, I need you to back this up.

00:27:59

I need you to prove it."

00:28:03

Sure.

00:28:04

Well, I mean, that's a great place to go into the next section.

00:28:09

So the actual meat of the book starts with part one, which is the truth about motivation.

00:28:17

And there are five chapters here.

00:28:19

I don't want to go through all five of these chapters.

00:28:21

I've kind of grouped the outline here under the three different parts, but I will outline

00:28:27

the chapters here real briefly in this first part.

00:28:29

So chapter one is three scientific truths.

00:28:31

Chapter two is motivation isn't what you think.

00:28:33

And then chapters three through five get into the three truths.

00:28:37

So chapter three is create choice, chapter four, create connection, chapter five, create

00:28:41

competence.

00:28:42

Okay.

00:28:43

So that actually is the first thing I wanted to discuss here is I feel like in chapter

00:28:51

one, she makes a very good case for the way that she has deconstructed maybe the whole

00:29:00

idea of motivation.

00:29:02

She mentions that we have a natural yearning to thrive.

00:29:04

And I like that word thrive.

00:29:07

That's not the word I was expecting, but it was the one that instantly resonated with

00:29:11

me.

00:29:13

And then she says that to thrive, we need three things.

00:29:15

We need choice.

00:29:16

We need connection and we need competence.

00:29:20

And in the back of my mind, the whole time I'm hearing her talk about these three things,

00:29:24

I'm thinking about the burnout inventory that we took and how these things are directly

00:29:29

connected there, although I couldn't map them live here for you.

00:29:33

It is clear to me that these things and whether you have these or not have these this and

00:29:38

this is directly or inversely maybe connected to the amount of burnout that you feel and

00:29:45

burnout essentially is the complete absence of motivation.

00:29:50

You can't summon the energy to act.

00:29:53

And that's how she defines it actually is the energy to act.

00:29:56

All right.

00:29:57

So that being said, there are these three things that we need choice connection and

00:30:02

competence.

00:30:03

I think we should talk about these a little bit.

00:30:06

So when you create choice, your energy is increased.

00:30:15

When you don't, your energy is diminished.

00:30:18

When you create connection, the energy is there that you need to act.

00:30:25

But when you don't, your energy is compromised.

00:30:28

It's kind of like sabotaged.

00:30:31

When you, you need to create competence, when you don't have competence, then your energy

00:30:37

is blocked.

00:30:38

Like it's there, but it can't manifest.

00:30:40

And when you create choice connection and competence, you can flourish.

00:30:45

But when they, these things are eroded, you languish.

00:30:50

I will pause there and just, you know, get your thoughts on the, that, that those things

00:30:55

as a whole.

00:30:56

And maybe we can dive into these a little bit deeper component by component.

00:31:02

Yeah.

00:31:03

These three different pieces, like choice connection competence, like those are the three parts

00:31:09

that she's going to use as like that.

00:31:12

If you have those three motivation comes and she did define motivation as the energy to

00:31:17

act, which is interesting to me just because like so many times we think about like, I'm

00:31:23

just not motivated to, I don't even know, it seems like whenever I hear people talk

00:31:28

about not being motivated, it's usually around something they need to act on.

00:31:33

But there's also times when it's something they just need to think about like, no, I

00:31:37

just wasn't motivated to think through that scenario.

00:31:39

Like that, that seems to come up as well.

00:31:41

So it is interesting to me that it's the energy to act is what she's referring to here.

00:31:48

Though you could argue that thinking through a scenario would be an action, like it could

00:31:52

be a physical, like typing something out or writing it out by hand.

00:31:57

That's a digression.

00:31:58

But the three pieces, choice connection competence, I don't have anything that would tell me

00:32:03

that I could argue with these.

00:32:05

I started trying to like process the scenarios in the past where, and she calls us out when

00:32:11

you have these three, the flow state tends to come.

00:32:15

And I was trying to process like, what are the, what are the times when I achieve that

00:32:20

flow state?

00:32:22

And then I was attempting to figure out if I had those three different components, but

00:32:25

at the same time, like some of those are so far removed that I don't know that I could

00:32:29

accurately answer that question of, did I have all three of these?

00:32:33

I know that some of the more recent scenarios, the answer was yes.

00:32:39

And the times when I don't want to do something, because this is common, I don't want to do

00:32:45

that.

00:32:46

And though in those scenarios, at least one, if not two, in a couple cases, all three of

00:32:53

these were missing.

00:32:56

At least my view of it, they were missing.

00:32:59

We'll talk about that a little bit later, what I mean by that.

00:33:01

But the, the, the construct here of choice, the, like these C three C's, like it just,

00:33:08

it seems like it's the sort of thing that just makes sense.

00:33:10

Once she explains it, and once she starts kind of going through some of the science behind

00:33:14

each of them, it's like, yeah, I, sure.

00:33:17

Yeah, I guess I don't have anything to argue with you on.

00:33:21

I kind of want to have something to argue with you on, but I just can't find it.

00:33:26

And as much as I wanted to, like this is, this is kind of the part in the book, whereas

00:33:30

okay, this is, this is probably something I need to embrace and just take on like my

00:33:35

skepticism was starting to fade a little bit here.

00:33:40

Really because of like the scientific proof that comes with it.

00:33:44

I don't know that like it's a scenario where there are stories and examples of each of

00:33:51

these, and you could easily take those stories and then internalize them as like, yeah, this

00:33:57

works really well.

00:33:58

I should do those things.

00:34:00

But I don't know how that pans out real world internally for each of us.

00:34:06

Like what is that?

00:34:07

What does that even mean?

00:34:12

Are these fluke scenarios that she picked out?

00:34:17

I doubt it.

00:34:18

But at the same time, it's like, I've not done this firsthand.

00:34:22

So there's a piece of me that's probably always going to be a skeptic until I've done that.

00:34:27

So which is why like, I'm just kind of curious to see how the next two weeks goes and seeing

00:34:32

how this pans out.

00:34:33

Pieces tie together to help create motivation.

00:34:37

But again, I haven't quite figured out how to write that down.

00:34:41

Like how do I tell you this is what I want to do other than just here's a way that I'm

00:34:46

hoping to think over the next two weeks.

00:34:49

Sure.

00:34:50

Did I do it or not?

00:34:51

Maybe?

00:34:52

I don't know.

00:34:53

I don't know that I could tell you when we're done.

00:34:54

But it's something I'm curious about.

00:34:56

Yeah.

00:34:57

Let's kind of break these down one by one.

00:35:00

So the first one is choice.

00:35:04

And she points out that when you think you can't have something, it ends up becoming

00:35:10

the only thing you can think about.

00:35:14

And how again, with all of these, she would say we have this innate need for these things.

00:35:20

But when she's talking about choice, she's talking about we need to perceive that we

00:35:23

are the ones in charge of our own actions, that we have options.

00:35:26

And to create choice, there's different things you can do.

00:35:29

You can perceive you have choices.

00:35:31

You can recognize and feel you have options within your boundaries.

00:35:33

You can feel it here and control of your actions.

00:35:36

But the thing that really stood out to me from this section is that even if you don't

00:35:40

have freedom, you can still experience choice.

00:35:44

So this is entirely based on your perspective.

00:35:48

Now I have felt this way before where it's like, I don't have any options.

00:35:52

I have to remain committed to this choice that I made.

00:35:57

And reading through this chapter, I was able to identify different scenarios out the course

00:36:01

of my life where it's like, you know what, I was totally looking at that from the wrong

00:36:05

perspective.

00:36:06

I felt trapped and I felt my motivation being diminished.

00:36:12

Right?

00:36:13

I've been in that place where it's really, really hard just to get up and go to work

00:36:18

in the morning.

00:36:20

And I realized after reading this chapter that nothing about my situation would have

00:36:27

needed to change in order for me to feel completely different about it.

00:36:32

And that can make you feel uncomfortable again, depending on whether you buy into the self-determination

00:36:36

theory or not.

00:36:37

Right?

00:36:38

But when you admit that it's your fault, that's actually freeing because it means that you

00:36:42

are the problem, but you're also the solution.

00:36:45

The power lies within you to change your world.

00:36:50

And I think that's a pretty powerful idea.

00:36:53

What about you?

00:36:54

Do you feel currently like you have choice or maybe you pick a scenario from your previous

00:36:59

experience and maybe how this played out a little bit different?

00:37:02

Well, I know that this is, you know, in Martin's comments and hang on it.

00:37:07

This is the section where she talks about man's search for meaning because it's important

00:37:10

to point out that this is, you know, choices not

00:37:15

freedom.

00:37:16

Like those are two different things.

00:37:18

And the fact that she calls out Victor Frankel here in this choice piece, he had no choice.

00:37:24

He could not leave.

00:37:26

He was in camp and there was no way he was going to get out of that concentration camp.

00:37:32

Like that's, that was his sentence, basically.

00:37:36

And yet he felt he had a choice.

00:37:41

So who am I to argue with this concept of I can change my mind and I do have a choice,

00:37:51

no matter how bad the situation appears.

00:37:54

Like that, that's not something I'm allowed to use as an excuse.

00:38:00

That gets kind of difficult for me to come to grips with just because I want to blame

00:38:05

something.

00:38:06

Like I want to have an excuse if I don't get something done or I don't want to be in

00:38:11

a situation.

00:38:12

Like I want an excuse and in, you know, most cases I want to blame somebody else.

00:38:18

But whenever I think through, you know, different scenarios where, you know, maybe I've got

00:38:24

an event at the church and they need help setting up a specific set of tech for it.

00:38:31

And I don't want to go help.

00:38:32

Like that does happen.

00:38:35

You would think I would be all over it, but there's some situations where I just don't

00:38:39

want to.

00:38:40

And some of that has to do with the attitude of the other person and how they approached

00:38:47

me and how they asked for help, what their expectation is of me.

00:38:51

Do they expect me to do everything last minute and tell me an hour before it's supposed to

00:38:55

be done?

00:38:56

Or do they tell me it's going to be a really big deal three months out and then they give

00:38:59

me tons of time to work on it.

00:39:01

I'm still not going to do anything until, you know, the week of, but at least we know

00:39:04

what's coming and I don't have to try to gather all the details.

00:39:07

Like those two different scenarios, I tend to have very different reactions to and it's

00:39:12

primarily just because of an external thing that I've placed at the forefront of what's

00:39:17

motivating me to act.

00:39:19

It's my choice on what I'm focusing on.

00:39:23

And to me, that's the critical point here is like what you're focusing on is the choice

00:39:27

you're making.

00:39:29

I could focus on the positive aspects of it and have one viewpoint.

00:39:35

I have a very optimistic viewpoint on it or I could focus on the negative sides of it

00:39:40

and have a very pessimistic, you know, kind of an upset mentality over it.

00:39:45

So having that choice is super important, but I don't like coming to grips with that.

00:39:52

Well, the relationship aspect of it leads into the connection part, which this is interesting

00:40:01

to me and I would actually defend your lack of motivation to go help somebody after reading

00:40:08

this because I had to kind of wrestle through this part, but connection is authentically

00:40:13

caring about others and feeling cared for by them.

00:40:18

And I think it is okay to say I don't have the relationship that I should have with this

00:40:29

person.

00:40:30

And do what you will with that, right?

00:40:32

And you can do things on your end maybe to fix that relationship.

00:40:37

I'm thinking of a situation from the day job where there was somebody that I work with

00:40:43

very closely now.

00:40:45

And just the way things went down at the beginning of my work there for six, nine months, there

00:40:52

were a lot of changes being pushed through.

00:40:53

And I was the new guy and basically the entire team kind of assumed that all of these in

00:40:58

their view negative changes that were happening were being pushed through by Mike.

00:41:03

And to this day, there are still attitudes that I need to work on, but this one person

00:41:10

specifically, they had that because of the atmosphere of the day job.

00:41:16

And then all of a sudden I'm working very closely with her.

00:41:19

She's on my team, right?

00:41:22

And we've been working closely together now just for a couple of months, but the way that

00:41:29

we work is totally different.

00:41:31

And essentially what she found out was what the narrative that was being told through

00:41:37

the grapevine at the company was not reflective of me as an individual.

00:41:43

And it's kind of been completely different to the point where that narrative is still

00:41:48

being spun and in our connect yesterday.

00:41:50

She's telling me that she heard stuff from people and I don't want to know who it was.

00:41:54

I don't need to know who it is individually, but she's like, just, you know, this is still

00:41:59

going on.

00:42:00

And she's getting visibly upset that people are thinking about me that way.

00:42:04

Yeah.

00:42:05

And I share that story just because it became clear to me when we had that conversation,

00:42:11

how much the connection and the relationship had improved and how differently the way that

00:42:18

we work and the quality of the work that we're able to do together has changed.

00:42:25

And is that my fault that it's still that way with the rest of the people?

00:42:31

No, not at all.

00:42:35

But you know, I'm going to do what I can to improve it still.

00:42:39

I'm not going to be like, well, you guys are the ones who need to change your thinking

00:42:42

about things.

00:42:43

It'd be nice if I had a little bit more support there, right?

00:42:47

I'm asking for that.

00:42:49

Maybe I'll get it.

00:42:50

Maybe I won't.

00:42:51

We'll see.

00:42:53

But I'm not going to let it stop me.

00:42:55

But also I'm not going to because the other approach that I would typically take as well,

00:42:59

this is my fault and it's completely on me to change this.

00:43:03

No, I have choice.

00:43:04

I have options, right?

00:43:06

So for me, I'm starting to see how these things kind of fit together.

00:43:11

And overall, what it's done is it's helped me feel more confident in my abilities.

00:43:16

Maybe that is the third one here too.

00:43:18

And I don't want to just talk through this whole section of my own.

00:43:20

I want to hear what you have to say too.

00:43:21

But the competence piece is being able to experience progress, gain mastery, feel confident

00:43:28

and resilient.

00:43:29

Well, what I realized was that I have grown a lot in my abilities and my skills.

00:43:34

When I first came into this position, I didn't think I could do it.

00:43:37

I've learned a lot though.

00:43:38

And I realized I'm actually really, really good at what I do.

00:43:43

I looked at some charts of the revenue for the organization and it's actually gone off

00:43:48

a cliff since January of last year.

00:43:50

And you just look at that when you're like, "Holy cow, this company is in big trouble."

00:43:53

But then you look at the profit one and you see it in the last six months, we're just

00:43:56

crushing it.

00:43:57

Right?

00:43:58

So, hey, good job me.

00:44:00

I am actually good at this.

00:44:03

And so I was viewing myself as not very good at my job because of a lack of connection,

00:44:11

which I have no control over.

00:44:13

I can't change the story that people tell in their heads.

00:44:17

I'll pick away at it here and there when I can.

00:44:19

But I realized that that was creating this limiting belief in my mind and I was starting

00:44:24

to feel depressed.

00:44:25

And that's really a big reason why I was so burnt out.

00:44:29

It's like, "Nothing I do here matters.

00:44:31

Nobody cares."

00:44:32

Right?

00:44:33

I had to get over that.

00:44:35

Yeah.

00:44:36

I know that as I look at these three different components, like choice, if I have a choice

00:44:42

about what I'm going to do or how I perceive the thing I'm going to do.

00:44:46

And I'm well connected with the people I'm doing it with or at least with the purpose

00:44:52

behind it.

00:44:53

And then I feel like I have all the skills to do it.

00:44:55

Like if you start putting those three pieces together, getting the motivation to do something

00:45:00

is easy.

00:45:03

But you remove one of those three.

00:45:05

Like take the competence piece you were talking about in your role.

00:45:09

If you take on a new role and you feel like it's outside the zone of your current skill

00:45:14

set, you really have one of two things you can do.

00:45:17

You can either go at it and try to figure out how to do that well or you can say, "I'm

00:45:24

terrible at this" and do a terrible job.

00:45:28

You can get better at it.

00:45:29

And if you take it and get better at it and you develop your competence in that area, it

00:45:34

then becomes something you want to do more of.

00:45:37

And I've kind of seen this in the world of running sound boards for church events and

00:45:43

bands and such.

00:45:44

I've found that when I first started doing it, it was interesting but I was always frustrated

00:45:48

by it or didn't really want to do it just because I felt like I could never quite get

00:45:53

the band to sound good.

00:45:57

And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that.

00:45:59

Learning how to mix live is a whole different animal than from the recording and editing

00:46:04

piece.

00:46:05

It's different in so many ways.

00:46:07

It's the same in a lot of ways but at the same time it's very different.

00:46:10

You don't have the time to work through things so you just treat things differently.

00:46:15

And learning how to do things live and getting better at that, right now if you told me I

00:46:21

needed to go run sound for a band, I'd be pretty amped about that.

00:46:24

That would be pretty exciting to me just because I know even if it's on a sound board

00:46:29

I've never used before, that's totally fine.

00:46:32

I know the concepts well enough at this point that I would be pretty excited about that

00:46:36

but that's because my competence level in that world has increased such that it's something

00:46:41

that I feel like I could do a really good job at.

00:46:45

So anyway, when you have these three, it's a big deal.

00:46:48

And I feel like the more I think through different scenarios and what's motivating me

00:46:52

to do something or not to do something, I can usually trace it to one of these three

00:46:59

is missing somewhere.

00:47:01

So again, I don't know how to argue with her on this.

00:47:06

Yeah, that's the main point with chapter two.

00:47:12

So I kind of doing this out of order.

00:47:14

So we talked about choice, connection and competence already but that's three, four

00:47:18

and five.

00:47:19

Now going back to number two, when it comes to motivation, the quality of your energy

00:47:22

matters.

00:47:23

So when you create choice, connection and competence that generates this high quality

00:47:26

motivation, which leads to optimal motivation.

00:47:32

And this is the point where she talks about how willpower and discipline are red flags

00:47:36

because they're a warning of suboptimal motivation.

00:47:41

And I specifically chose this point after we talked about choice, connection and competence

00:47:46

because I think it's really easy to see that she's right here.

00:47:51

And all the studies about willpower and discipline, it doesn't mean that those things should

00:47:56

be ignored.

00:47:58

But I do think that at least myself, I was tending to view willpower and discipline,

00:48:07

the Roy Bauma, my studies and all that kind of stuff.

00:48:11

I was relying on that stuff too much.

00:48:14

And it's easy to see after going through chapters three, four and five, how if you really can

00:48:18

dial in choice, connection and competence, you can create that feeling where you get

00:48:22

up in the morning and you're excited to do what you have to do.

00:48:25

And it doesn't matter how much willpower or discipline you have, that perspective is going

00:48:31

to make the difference.

00:48:32

You compare that to the burned out stage where you're dreading going into the office and

00:48:36

you look at your output at the end of the day, absolutely, you're going to get more work

00:48:39

done and better work done when you have the motivation regardless of whether you wear

00:48:45

the same thing every day or you are trying to decide what to have for breakfast.

00:48:51

I mean, those are the types of things that all those little productivity tips and the

00:48:55

life hacks, which really just kind of drive me nuts now.

00:48:58

It's like, got to preserve your willpower, got to make sure that you have it for the

00:49:02

decisions that really matter.

00:49:04

Well, no, if you're excited about the decisions that you have to make, then it doesn't really

00:49:07

matter.

00:49:08

It's kind of my takeaway from this.

00:49:11

If you have limited motivation, if you haven't ever considered choice, connection and competence,

00:49:16

then yeah, probably you do need to make sure that you manage that stuff because you don't

00:49:20

have much to go around.

00:49:22

Yeah, this is, I mean, it is a big deal, right?

00:49:26

The more I think about what motivation isn't and how we've previously thought of, like,

00:49:34

you got to be disciplined, motivate yourself.

00:49:38

That concept, whenever she starts talking about, here's kind of my view on this whole

00:49:44

first part, right?

00:49:45

So the three pieces, these three C's, choice, connection and competence.

00:49:49

If you just replace the term discipline, self-discipline specifically, and replace that

00:49:57

term self-discipline with choice, connection and competence, like that collective motivational

00:50:02

framework, you can pretty much do a straight copy, replace, find and replace just anywhere

00:50:10

you see that.

00:50:11

And I was trying to think through, like, you know, you got to be disciplined to do your

00:50:14

workouts in the mornings.

00:50:15

So if I do these three things, workouts get to be a lot easier.

00:50:22

You know, it takes simple stuff, like doing push-ups.

00:50:25

Like, if you're going to do push-ups for your exercise, like, if you're not good at push-ups,

00:50:30

or you can't do more than one, you don't have competence in doing push-ups.

00:50:36

So you don't want to do a workout because it's just going to accent the point that you

00:50:40

can't do this.

00:50:41

But if you go, if push-ups is the thing you want to do, go look up progressive push-up

00:50:46

workouts, like, ways that you can make them easier so that you can do a bunch of them,

00:50:53

and then it gets to where you can eventually get to where you're doing 10 push-ups at a

00:50:57

time, like, legitimate ones.

00:50:59

So finding ways to make yourself competent in that, like, that's just a silly, simple

00:51:04

cartoonish type answer, right?

00:51:07

But it isn't self-discipline in that case.

00:51:11

It's just purely trying to make it so that you have these three components so that you're

00:51:16

motivated to do it.

00:51:18

Having self-discipline and disciplining yourself so that you have the motivation to do something,

00:51:23

like, that doesn't really work that way.

00:51:26

At least not long-term.

00:51:27

It can in the short-term, but this is why our wonderful New Year's resolutions last about

00:51:34

a week and a half, because they just don't make it past that point.

00:51:38

Yep.

00:51:40

So you're talking about the discipline, and I think another word that goes along with

00:51:46

that is, like, diligence.

00:51:49

And I'm going to share something in the chat here.

00:51:51

Toby, while all of our kids are homeschooled and we do classical conversations, part of

00:51:56

classical conversations is you have to learn Latin.

00:51:59

Yeah, our kids are learning Latin, too.

00:52:02

Okay.

00:52:03

So Toby posted this thing in the faith-based productivity community about -- he did a word

00:52:08

study for diligence.

00:52:11

And what he found was that the English word for diligence is a very different definition

00:52:19

than the Latin root that it's kind of based off of.

00:52:22

And the Latin root, essentially, I'm paraphrasing this.

00:52:25

It's all about love, right?

00:52:26

So when we think about diligence, we think about, "I have to do this thing that I don't

00:52:30

want to do," or discipline.

00:52:33

It's like, "I'm going to show up and do the hard thing."

00:52:36

And I realized, as I was reading through this post that Toby put together, if it's based

00:52:40

out of love, then really do what you love.

00:52:43

There is some truth to that, but you have to create the motivation to love what you do.

00:52:49

It's not -- you just find the fun thing, and then you do that the rest of your life, but

00:52:53

you find the thing that you have to do, and you create the motivation through the three

00:52:57

levers that she's talking about here, choice, connection, and competence, and then you bring

00:53:03

that perspective to the thing that you have to do.

00:53:09

And I thought that was pretty fascinating.

00:53:12

He gets into some different Bible verses that talk about diligence.

00:53:16

And if you read those through the lens of it's being motivated by love, it totally changes

00:53:22

the definition.

00:53:25

You can pick and choose, obviously, individual things and do the big Hebrew and Greek word

00:53:30

studies and make those mean what you want, which you've got to be careful when you're

00:53:34

doing that sort of interpretation of a religious text.

00:53:37

But I think it's a pretty cool idea.

00:53:39

Yeah, I'm just kind of glancing through Toby's post here.

00:53:44

It's like, "Huh, that'll make you kind of wonder."

00:53:47

The root of the word diligent coming from the Latin word that involves love.

00:53:55

And then...

00:53:56

Interesting.

00:53:57

That'll mess with your head a little bit.

00:53:58

Complementary to that is the Latin root for the word passion, which is petit, which means

00:54:04

to suffer.

00:54:05

Right?

00:54:06

So passion isn't do what you love, but what do you care enough about that you're willing

00:54:09

to go through some things?

00:54:10

In other words, what do you have enough motivation for to show up?

00:54:15

Yeah.

00:54:18

And round around we go.

00:54:20

Yeah.

00:54:21

That's the whole point, I think, leading into part two here.

00:54:25

I think this is a great place to transition because part two is motivation is a skill.

00:54:31

So all of this stuff that we're talking about in terms of your perspective and bringing the

00:54:34

motivation to what you need to do, you have the ability to get better at this.

00:54:42

And this one is broken down into three different chapters.

00:54:45

So chapter six, identify your Outlook, chapter seven, shift your Outlook, chapter eight,

00:54:49

reflect on your Outlook.

00:54:50

She's got a very simple diagram here of how these things are kind of like a flywheel day.

00:54:56

They feed each other.

00:54:58

Let's start with identify your Outlook.

00:55:01

She shares the spectrum of motivation model here.

00:55:04

Do you remember this?

00:55:05

Yeah.

00:55:06

She's got it in the back cover of the book too.

00:55:08

Yep.

00:55:09

It makes it easy to find.

00:55:10

Yeah.

00:55:11

I like this a lot.

00:55:14

You want to try to explain this to kind of walk through like what this is visually?

00:55:18

Yeah.

00:55:19

So basically there's six different ways that you can view your, maybe not view, but six

00:55:26

different ways that your motivation, your Outlook on motivation can be seen.

00:55:31

And three of these are what she calls suboptimal and three of those are optimal.

00:55:36

And the three suboptimal would be disinterested, external and imposed.

00:55:44

The easy way to come at that is the disinterested is you just don't care about something at

00:55:50

all.

00:55:51

So your view on a specific situation is you have no interest in it whatsoever.

00:55:56

So obviously you're not going to be motivated to do anything about it.

00:55:59

You could have an external Outlook on a situation or a thing, which would just mean you're looking

00:56:05

at external rewards incentives and the like to motivate you to do something.

00:56:11

You could have an imposed Outlook, basically someone else, someone else's view being given

00:56:17

to you.

00:56:18

This probably comes into play a lot from like what your parents told you, things you said

00:56:22

over and over and over again.

00:56:23

She told the story about someone who parent, his parents always told him he needed to finish

00:56:29

what he started and he was obese.

00:56:33

So he took it literally in every sense and didn't even realize that that's what he was

00:56:37

doing.

00:56:38

He would load his plate up and then eat more than he wanted to, but he had to finish it

00:56:42

because you always had to finish what you start.

00:56:45

So like stuff like that is where that one comes in.

00:56:48

But then you get to the three that are kind of above the fold, if you will, that are in

00:56:53

the optimal Outlook territory, aligned, integrated and inherent.

00:57:00

Basically you're aligned with like the values of something.

00:57:05

There is the integrated where you're kind of like, I kind of struggled with this one,

00:57:09

but like you're a part of the whole thing, like what you value and what they value is

00:57:13

the same thing and you're good at it, blah, blah, blah, all the things.

00:57:17

So you become really well intertwined with the situation.

00:57:21

And then there's inherent where you're motivated to do something just because the nature of

00:57:26

the thing aligns so perfectly with what you see your mission in life is that you can't

00:57:34

see why you wouldn't do it.

00:57:36

So it kind of takes it so far that not doing it is more of an issue than doing it.

00:57:42

So the motivation is like second nature at that point.

00:57:45

So those are the six different parts.

00:57:47

At least those are in the chart graph of sorts in the back of a back of the book.

00:57:52

Yeah, exactly.

00:57:53

And the point that she makes around this is that you're always motivated.

00:57:56

The question is what kind of motivation do you have and add a little bit of additional

00:58:00

context to this, there is an X and Y access to this.

00:58:06

So from the point in the lower left, that is low quality.

00:58:10

And then whether you go up or to the right, it's a scale of high quality.

00:58:15

And the two axes are on the X axis on the bottom, you've got psychological needs on

00:58:20

the Y axis.

00:58:21

So going up, you have self regulation.

00:58:24

So there's this kind of curve with these different types of motivation.

00:58:29

What's most interested is way in the bottom.

00:58:31

And then there's external and that is all based off of like the carrot and the stick

00:58:36

analogy.

00:58:37

Yep.

00:58:38

And she kind of dispels that throughout the rest of this book and saying that's not a

00:58:42

good way to do it.

00:58:43

Although I think a lot of businesses and organizations still view that as like the way

00:58:48

to motivate people.

00:58:52

And then the imposed one is the one that's interesting to me.

00:58:54

That's the third one and you're getting kind of like right in the middle of the graph

00:58:58

them, but you're still a little bit below that line that you were talking about.

00:59:02

And that's the one that I think it's easy to slip into.

00:59:07

You just assume these things and you don't ever question them.

00:59:11

And then they kind of drive a whole bunch of behavior.

00:59:16

And so I realized recently that I had fallen into this one specifically.

00:59:24

I didn't want to let people down.

00:59:26

So I've come pretty far in terms of my needing to be a people pleaser, but I realized that

00:59:32

this is kind of the motivation that gets me to go back to that is they have this expectation,

00:59:42

whether that's real or it's imagined.

00:59:45

I attached to that and then I kind of feel like it doesn't matter what sort of circumstances

00:59:50

I'm in what kind of obstacles I'm facing, I will produce the result that they expect.

00:59:58

And I kind of had this moment of clarity when I was looking at this, it's like, huh, so you

01:00:02

mean I don't have to just assume that?

01:00:04

Well, what does that look like that?

01:00:06

It means that I have permission to say those expectations.

01:00:12

I am not going to be in alignment with going back to the first section.

01:00:16

Like I have choice now.

01:00:18

Even if I'm not going to take that choice, it is at least a choice.

01:00:22

Right?

01:00:23

So I think there's a lot of people who maybe you find yourself in a job and you feel like

01:00:28

I can't get out of this job, but I don't like it.

01:00:31

Right?

01:00:32

Well, if you are able to actually flip that switch and say, you know what, I could actually

01:00:38

go get another job.

01:00:40

I could, I don't want to.

01:00:42

Right?

01:00:43

It's a lot of work.

01:00:44

I don't know what's out there.

01:00:46

That's scary.

01:00:47

But these are all legit resistance and legitimate things that you have to take into consideration.

01:00:54

But if you can overcome all of that and realize that you do have the option, that kind of

01:01:00

changes everything else.

01:01:04

And that's the thing that gets you from that low level motivation to a higher level of

01:01:09

motivation.

01:01:10

And that's ultimately what we're after.

01:01:12

That's what this whole part is about.

01:01:14

You have to first of all identify where you're at because you always need to know where you

01:01:19

are before you can know where you are going.

01:01:22

Okay?

01:01:23

So you kind of have to buy into this spectrum of motivation model at the beginning, which

01:01:26

is why I brought it up.

01:01:28

But then from there, the second step is to shift your outlook.

01:01:32

Okay, this is where I am.

01:01:33

I'm going to create choice, connection and competence as I attempt to shift from one of

01:01:38

these lower levels of motivation to a higher level of motivation.

01:01:41

And then there are different things that you can do in order to get to that.

01:01:45

I've got a couple of action items from this book.

01:01:48

I'm actually, I think all of them come from chapter seven.

01:01:52

So I come through my outline here.

01:01:55

So number one is to make a list of what I value.

01:02:02

And there are different things that you can use to figure that out.

01:02:05

One of the things she suggests is how do I spend my time and my money, right?

01:02:09

Or thinking through where are the discrepancies between my espoused values and my developed

01:02:14

values?

01:02:15

I think that's a really cool way of saying like everyone has this idea of the type of

01:02:20

person that they want to be, the values that drive their actions.

01:02:24

I'm this type of person.

01:02:25

Well, do your actions actually back that up?

01:02:28

Because if not, there's a disconnect there and you have to figure that out.

01:02:33

But then ultimately, I mean, I love this whole discussion of values and core values.

01:02:38

You know, we've got core values for our family.

01:02:40

This is a big thing for me, personal mission statement, all that kind of stuff.

01:02:43

But I feel like she frames it really well in this, this chapter about how not all of

01:02:47

your beliefs are values, but all your values are beliefs.

01:02:50

All right.

01:02:51

So we'll unpack that.

01:02:53

No, not everything that you think is going to be a primary value.

01:02:57

It's not going to be a driver of your actions and motivations, but all of your values will

01:03:02

drive those actions and the things that you do.

01:03:06

And ultimately, all of those values are personal choices.

01:03:09

So there's no right or wrong way to do this, but you got to figure out what these are

01:03:12

for yourself.

01:03:13

I kind of want to go back to the motivational outlooks because you were talking about like

01:03:20

this imposed outlook.

01:03:23

To me, that's the one that I probably suffer from the most.

01:03:27

Like just adopting somebody else's like this.

01:03:31

This is the expectation that somebody else has set.

01:03:34

I do not want to be that person who lets them down.

01:03:39

And that's where like the people pleaser perfectionist can come in and kind of bringing that into

01:03:47

chapter seven, the one you're talking about, shift your outlook.

01:03:50

To me, that was the, to me, that's like the critical chapter in the whole book.

01:03:56

It's not quite in the middle of the book, but it's like a core component of the entire

01:04:01

book.

01:04:02

It's like, okay, here's how motivation works.

01:04:04

Here's where it's flawed.

01:04:06

Here's how you can view that motivation.

01:04:09

Like, what is it that's actually motivating you now?

01:04:11

Now, here's how you can change it.

01:04:13

Like that's the part to me that kind of puts the rubber to the road on this.

01:04:20

Like here are some examples here are ways that you can start to identify how you're viewing

01:04:27

a situation.

01:04:28

And I've kind of alluded to this throughout the episode.

01:04:31

It's like, here's where like just knowing that these three components are there tweaking

01:04:37

one of those three or adding or subtracting different scenarios or different things in

01:04:43

a specific conversation or project, then it can completely change the way you're coming

01:04:49

at it.

01:04:50

Like there's even a story of how there was a, I think it was a branch manager found out

01:04:54

their company was going to be shut down in two years time.

01:04:59

So she could either, you know, lamented it and people could have, you know, quit ahead

01:05:05

of time because it's going to get shut down.

01:05:07

Anyway, they could have done all that, but instead she viewed it as a chance to celebrate

01:05:11

everything the company had been doing for the last 25 years and made it a big deal and

01:05:18

completely changed the whole outcome.

01:05:20

Nobody quit early on that whole team.

01:05:23

So like that's a big deal.

01:05:25

And it's purely because of a change and a shift in your outlook on the situation.

01:05:30

Like that's the part that I think would be the most critical at least for me, just trying

01:05:37

to figure out how that works and how can I get that to work for me.

01:05:42

I, again, I don't, I don't really have, I didn't write down any action items on this,

01:05:48

but like this is the part that got me thinking about, okay, I need to do something.

01:05:53

I don't know what other than like, let's pay attention to what is happening and how these

01:06:00

things are panning out because I feel like this is something that I need to continue

01:06:06

to work on.

01:06:07

And yet I know that it's one that I haven't had a lot of success with in the past.

01:06:11

So this whole section on shift, which does lead into the next one on reflect, like just

01:06:16

reflecting on the outlook that you have.

01:06:19

Like those two in conjunction with each other, like I feel like those could have a pretty

01:06:24

big impact.

01:06:25

Absolutely.

01:06:27

And the framing of the reflect section, which I think is really powerful, is that when you've

01:06:33

created choice, you can initiate more when you've created connection, you can develop

01:06:37

more when you've created competence, you can build more and just that framing, I really

01:06:41

appreciate basically what she's saying is that the minute that you start to make any

01:06:45

sort of progress, that's just the beginning.

01:06:48

There's a snowball effect here, but it's also not systematic.

01:06:52

It's not formulaic.

01:06:54

It's not just do these three things.

01:06:56

Like you have to figure out for yourself what progress looks like in these different

01:07:02

areas.

01:07:04

But I think it is really powerful.

01:07:06

At this point, the reflect piece is very important because you have to recognize your

01:07:11

success and your ability going all the way back to self-determination.

01:07:14

It's like, see, see, you could do it.

01:07:17

Even if it's just a little bit.

01:07:18

And then it's okay, so you've done this now, let's do it on a bigger scale.

01:07:23

And when reflecting, she talks about focusing on the why, the goal of asking why?

01:07:28

Mindfulness.

01:07:29

Is that word again?

01:07:32

But one thing that is interesting, she calls out here, is that mindfulness isn't much

01:07:39

harder than mindlessness.

01:07:42

And that's kind of challenging if you're going to sit and wrestle with that.

01:07:45

So you're saying that all this trouble I have with mindfulness meditation, it's actually

01:07:52

not that much harder for me to just drift from thing to thing and scroll through the

01:07:58

endless feeds.

01:07:59

I'm kind of speaking generically now, although mindfulness meditation is something that

01:08:04

I have struggled with.

01:08:05

I kind of think that my reason I've kind of struggled with that is I have a different

01:08:09

form of that in the prayer practice that I've established.

01:08:12

So I just don't see the need for that.

01:08:15

I do think I would be beneficial if I was able to cultivate it and make it a discipline.

01:08:20

But the motivation isn't there.

01:08:22

However, looking at this, maybe I need to go back and revisit that.

01:08:25

That is not an action item.

01:08:27

The thing I'm calling out here is that we tend to just default to a lot of our choices.

01:08:34

It's kind of our brain's efficiency mechanism.

01:08:36

90% of what we do is based off of habit.

01:08:39

Well, if we'd never really thought about it.

01:08:42

We never really tried to deconstruct those things and figure out ways that we can create

01:08:46

motivation to either do the right thing or not do the wrong thing.

01:08:50

Again, deciding for yourself what those are, that's our own fault.

01:08:56

And the fact that we haven't been mindful about the or intentional about those choices,

01:09:02

he's basically saying, there's no excuse here.

01:09:05

It's really not that hard.

01:09:07

You just have to be aware of it.

01:09:08

You have to be aware of your feelings.

01:09:09

You have to be aware of the reasons behind your motivations and you have to be able to

01:09:14

recognize new perspectives and try them out, which kind of gets into the whole idea of

01:09:20

the mental models and just the way that you think about things, which obviously that's

01:09:26

a topic that I'm really excited about and interested in.

01:09:30

But she kind of sets this up in a way that I feel like there's more options going back

01:09:35

to choice.

01:09:36

I feel like I have some possibilities available to me with this now that I didn't feel previously

01:09:46

if that makes sense.

01:09:47

And that's really the whole power of this last step because again, this feeds the next

01:09:52

step.

01:09:53

All right.

01:09:54

So when you reflect, you're actually looking at where you are again and has that changed

01:09:59

from previously and if it has or if it hasn't, you know, why and what are you going to do

01:10:04

about it?

01:10:05

It's this perpetuating cycle and you can either direct it and it can be positive or you can

01:10:12

just default to it and it can be negative.

01:10:15

One of my favorite parts of that chapter reflect on your outlook towards the beginning

01:10:19

of it, she makes the comment, "Talking to yourself isn't crazy," which I appreciate

01:10:25

because I'm regularly asking myself questions, myself, listen to me, "myself questions," maybe

01:10:31

there's multiple of me.

01:10:32

Well, that would actually explain quite a few things.

01:10:37

I mean, you can ask yourself questions.

01:10:38

You can have conversations with yourself.

01:10:41

I've started doing this verbally, which is entertaining for my kids.

01:10:45

It's like, "Why did you do that, Joe?"

01:10:47

Like I will ask myself that question out loud, very emphatically at times and like, "Dad,

01:10:55

you dropped your hammer."

01:10:56

It's like, "That's where it went."

01:10:59

Good job, Joe.

01:11:00

I will do stuff like that.

01:11:02

Now that's not exactly what she's talking about, but she's essentially referring to asking

01:11:07

yourself questions, answering those questions.

01:11:10

Why was I afraid to go into that meeting?

01:11:13

What was it that was causing anxiety about going into that meeting?

01:11:15

Why was I not?

01:11:16

Okay, well, there was this person in there that I don't get along with.

01:11:19

Why don't you get along with them and just running down that process and just trying

01:11:25

to figure out what is it about that particular meeting that's got you out of sorts.

01:11:29

So I really appreciate that.

01:11:32

I'm glad that it's okay that I can talk to myself.

01:11:34

I'm going to continue doing that and hopefully it's not weird.

01:11:38

Or maybe it is weird.

01:11:39

It's okay.

01:11:41

That actually begins to get into this last section.

01:11:44

So let's go to part three next, which is what is stopping you.

01:11:49

This is basically where she disarms a lot of the excuses.

01:11:53

Starting with chapter nine, "I can't shift."

01:11:55

Chapter 10, "Beware fatal distractions."

01:11:58

Chapter 11 is "Work hazards."

01:12:00

And then chapter 12 is, "Can people change?"

01:12:03

All right, so chapter nine, "I can't shift."

01:12:05

This is all about limiting beliefs and knowing yourself.

01:12:09

And this is kind of where she talks about journaling, providing an opportunity for mindfulness.

01:12:15

And this is another version of talking to yourself.

01:12:17

Yep.

01:12:18

Right?

01:12:19

But she says that you can't thrive when you carry a backpack full of junk food motivation.

01:12:23

And I point and it's like, "Oh, she's reading my mail."

01:12:28

So there's a lot in this that is going to force you to take a hard look at yourself.

01:12:33

And if you bought into the self-determination theory, you're comfortable with that.

01:12:37

If not, I can see why this would, you might just disconnect at this point altogether.

01:12:43

Chapter 10, "Beware fatal distractions."

01:12:46

This is kind of where she talks about how the world is energy.

01:12:49

And the real question is, "What are you doing with it?"

01:12:52

So we can just get sucked up into the busyness or we can be intentional and direct our intention

01:12:58

where we want it to go.

01:13:00

We can be in power of it or not.

01:13:03

But the last part in, well, chapter 11 is work hazards.

01:13:07

And this is where she encourages you to look beyond the incentives and working for the

01:13:11

wrong reasons will ultimately diminish your results.

01:13:14

She talks about connection network, which I think is really important.

01:13:17

And she mentions that connection is eroded when you experience unfairness.

01:13:22

So that is really something for me to be considering with working with the team.

01:13:31

I don't have an accident associated with that, but that was one of those things like, "Hey,

01:13:34

kind of look for this, right?

01:13:36

See if you can recognize what it's happening and do what you can to avoid it."

01:13:39

But the last part, I think, is the really cool part.

01:13:42

We're all constantly changing.

01:13:44

So yes, people can change.

01:13:46

Everything everyone goes through predictable stages of concern during a change.

01:13:50

So it always is going to feel weird at first and you don't have to feel bad about that.

01:13:54

But then there are questions that you can ask yourself, which kind of gets you thinking

01:13:58

about things through the right lens.

01:14:00

Again, I love me some questions.

01:14:02

So what choices do I have?

01:14:04

What meaning can I make from all of this?

01:14:06

What can I learn?

01:14:07

You know, those are just some examples of questions.

01:14:10

I'm sure there's lots of other ones that you could use.

01:14:12

But what I really like about these questions is it's all based on what am I going to make

01:14:18

of the situation that I am in.

01:14:20

It's not how am I going to change the situation?

01:14:23

How am I going to change my circumstances?

01:14:25

Although what choices maybe is a little bit in that direction.

01:14:28

But then like what meaning can I make from all of this?

01:14:30

All of this doesn't change.

01:14:32

But the meaning that I glean from it, that absolutely can change.

01:14:37

Or what can I learn from this season or this failure that I find myself in the middle of?

01:14:42

Well, I can take something from that, something positive and I can use that next time.

01:14:46

So I think that's a really cool way to end the book.

01:14:50

Yes.

01:14:51

That kind of left me with can people change when I read the title?

01:14:57

I was like, well, yeah.

01:15:00

Duh.

01:15:01

Yes, you can change.

01:15:04

That's probably going back to mindset with Carol Dweck.

01:15:07

So that to me was an obvious one.

01:15:10

I think that's a rhetorical question to be honest.

01:15:13

I think so too.

01:15:15

You're supposed to, well, yeah, of course people can change because the next question then

01:15:19

is, well, why don't they?

01:15:20

Correct.

01:15:21

Yes.

01:15:22

And that's kind of where I was going.

01:15:23

I was like, well, yeah, people can't change.

01:15:26

But that's pretty much an obvious point at this time.

01:15:31

Like everybody knows that.

01:15:32

Yes, you can change things.

01:15:34

The trick here is she goes through the process of explaining that changing a situation doesn't

01:15:41

necessarily mean changing the situation.

01:15:45

It primarily means changing you and the way you're perceiving a situation.

01:15:52

And that's convicting in itself.

01:15:58

I don't really want to come to grips with that one because it means that I'm going to

01:16:03

have to change things.

01:16:04

My motivations are going to change because it's all in my head in making that edit.

01:16:12

So yes, there's a lot of good that can come from just realizing in my own mind what it

01:16:21

is that what can lead to that change.

01:16:25

So I just have to come to grips with that.

01:16:27

It's not necessarily something that is an enjoyable process, but it is a good one to

01:16:33

work through.

01:16:34

Yeah, anything else you want to talk about in this?

01:16:38

Or should we wrap it up there?

01:16:41

I am good to wrap it up.

01:16:43

All right.

01:16:44

Well, let's go into action items then.

01:16:47

I have two of them with this book.

01:16:52

The first one I mentioned already and that is to make a list of what I value.

01:16:59

But the other one comes from that same chapter.

01:17:02

I don't think I mentioned this one.

01:17:04

That is to craft my own credo.

01:17:05

Maybe I did talk about this.

01:17:07

The word credo.

01:17:08

I don't really like she use some examples.

01:17:12

This is just like a rallying cry for yourself personally.

01:17:16

I've got the core values.

01:17:17

I've got the life theme.

01:17:21

I want to though create kind of like a manifesto.

01:17:25

I think I talked about this previously and I've done some work on it, but this gave me

01:17:31

inspiration to go back and revisit it.

01:17:34

I don't know if this is going to be for me personally or something a little bit larger.

01:17:39

One of the things I've been thinking about is faith-based productivity is my brand.

01:17:42

What does that even mean?

01:17:45

I actually have this idea to create a faith-based productivity manifesto.

01:17:50

I think that that is going to be very much a personal manifesto, but I might make it

01:17:56

public and share it with people also.

01:17:58

I'm going to commit to working on this.

01:18:00

I don't know if it's going to be finished by next time.

01:18:02

I'm going to do some work on my manifesto/credo.

01:18:06

How about you?

01:18:08

I'll take on one just because this will make it a little bit easier to put.

01:18:13

I've been trying to think about this as we've been recording here, but I want to work through

01:18:17

these three C's on three different situations.

01:18:21

I'm going to do my best to document some of this in my own notes that I can share next

01:18:27

time because I think it would be interesting to see some of this in practice.

01:18:31

I've been struggling to figure out how to explain some of this on the show.

01:18:34

I want to work through some of this, and then that should help, at least for me, try to

01:18:41

submit some of the details here.

01:18:43

I want to give it a run because this seems like the sort of thing that could be pretty

01:18:49

life-changing, but I want to prove that.

01:18:54

How do I summarize your action item?

01:18:57

The way I wrote it was worked through the three C's on three situations.

01:19:03

That's the way I wrote it on my own notes.

01:19:06

All right.

01:19:07

Style and rating?

01:19:09

Go for it.

01:19:11

I picked this book.

01:19:13

I will go first, and I will share that I really enjoyed this book.

01:19:18

I don't really know what I was expecting other than I wanted something good about motivation.

01:19:23

I feel like this book delivered.

01:19:25

Thank you, Martin, for the recommendation.

01:19:29

It's a short book.

01:19:31

It's 150 pages-ish, but it's pretty big type.

01:19:36

It's pretty visual.

01:19:38

I didn't track the time that I spent reading this one, but felt like I could crank through

01:19:43

it pretty quickly.

01:19:44

Did you feel the same way?

01:19:45

Yeah.

01:19:46

It was a fast read for me.

01:19:48

It was one of those that I've been reading a couple other books, primarily one in the

01:19:54

meantime, because this one was pretty quick and easy.

01:19:58

Yep.

01:19:59

I will say, I was nervous when I got the book and looked at the title, "Three Scientific

01:20:04

Truths for Achieving Your Goals."

01:20:07

You pointed out goals, Mike, you good with this?

01:20:10

Right.

01:20:11

Yep.

01:20:12

There really wasn't a whole lot around goal setting.

01:20:16

Maybe I would, if I was writing this pick a different subtitle, but I understand why she

01:20:20

did that.

01:20:21

I mean, everybody is pretty familiar with and really she's talking about the motivation

01:20:26

to follow through and do the things that are important.

01:20:28

Right.

01:20:29

So this is a perfect compliment to all of the books that we've done on habits, like atomic

01:20:36

habits and tiny habits specifically.

01:20:40

I feel this book is a good compliment to those two.

01:20:43

Tiny Habits Kinda talks a little bit about some of this stuff, but I feel like Susan Fowler

01:20:47

does a great job of addressing the topic directly and doing it succinctly.

01:20:54

And like I mentioned, there's obviously a lot of science and research that has gone into

01:21:00

this that is evident in the way that it's written.

01:21:03

There's a lot of personal stories of people who work through this stuff, which honestly,

01:21:07

towards the end, I found myself kind of skipping through some of those.

01:21:11

But I don't think there's a whole lot of fluff in this book.

01:21:17

So pleasantly surprised by it.

01:21:19

I actually like the three parts.

01:21:22

I feel like they're packaged really, really well, especially once I got to the end of

01:21:26

this book felt like, you know, that was really well written.

01:21:31

And I think this is one that just about everybody should read.

01:21:36

I don't have any other books on motivation to compare it to.

01:21:40

I know somebody mentioned Drive by Daniel Pink in the chat.

01:21:46

But I have not read that one.

01:21:48

And from what I understand talks about these same concepts, but has some different terms

01:21:53

for it.

01:21:54

I also know that one's quite a bit longer than this one.

01:21:57

So I don't know.

01:21:58

I feel like you really can't go wrong if you're interested in this topic at all.

01:22:02

This is a pretty great read.

01:22:06

How do I rate this book?

01:22:08

I don't know.

01:22:10

Because I feel like it's really good.

01:22:12

I feel very inspired walking away from it.

01:22:14

I feel like all of this stuff is instantly applicable to me.

01:22:21

You do have to kind of wrestle through the fact that if I'm just now coming to the topic

01:22:26

of motivation, is this book really that life changing?

01:22:29

I don't have a track record to support that one way or the other.

01:22:35

But that's really the only thing negative I can say about it.

01:22:38

So I think that's going to keep me from rating it five stars, but I am going to rate it four

01:22:42

and a half.

01:22:44

I really have trouble picturing a book about motivation that I would have enjoyed more

01:22:53

than this one.

01:22:54

And again, I kind of went into it with a side eye like I'm interested, but I'm not sure

01:23:00

this is exactly what I'm looking for.

01:23:03

And what I got was something I really enjoyed.

01:23:07

And I think is going to be very largely beneficial and very generalizable to just about anybody

01:23:12

in the bookworm audience, even if you feel like you don't struggle with motivation.

01:23:17

I feel like there's very clear framework here for you to figure out how to make it even

01:23:24

better.

01:23:25

And so it's not going to give you these are the things that you need to do.

01:23:28

You have to manufacture that yourself, but it gives you the understanding of the levers

01:23:33

that you can pull.

01:23:34

And I think it's a really good book.

01:23:36

So thanks Martin for the recommendation.

01:23:39

So I have to say that the whole goals thing, I'll say this, I have this book sitting on

01:23:47

the table.

01:23:48

A lot of times I'm reading over breakfast or right before breakfast.

01:23:51

And it's usually sitting on the table and my wife will see it.

01:23:54

And I'm always interested to know what her opinion of it is because she is not a self-help

01:23:58

business book person and thinks that it's a little bit ridiculous from time to time,

01:24:03

some of these.

01:24:04

And this one was like the epitome of all the things that are like make funnable when it comes

01:24:08

to these types of books.

01:24:10

It looks like it was designed in Microsoft Word on the front cover almost.

01:24:15

And three scientific truths for achieving your goals.

01:24:17

Like it sounds kind of like a cheesy subtitle, right?

01:24:20

But at the same time, once you get through the first couple chapters, like she's kind

01:24:27

of got you hooked at that point.

01:24:29

And it's one of these that I kind of wish that there was a little bit more from an editor's

01:24:36

stance on setting this up.

01:24:39

I feel like the title and subtitle and stuff, they don't really do it justice.

01:24:44

It's one of those don't judge a book by its cover scenarios, even though like the cover

01:24:49

is kind of what we use in a lot of ways to pick books.

01:24:52

Like that, a recommendation in a short bio is sometimes all it takes to make it onto

01:24:58

bookworm despite some of the marketing emails that people send us from time to time.

01:25:04

So like I feel like this one doesn't really do it justice for what's inside of it.

01:25:08

So there's a lot of really good stuff in here.

01:25:11

I think this is one that's going to kind of permeate a lot of different arenas and have

01:25:18

a longer term impact.

01:25:20

That's my suspicion.

01:25:21

Of course, I have no way to prove that right now.

01:25:25

But that's that's my speculation at this moment.

01:25:27

Again, I don't think the like when I was starting going through it was like I was very skeptical,

01:25:33

like you giving it the side eye goals, huh?

01:25:36

Yep.

01:25:37

All right, here we go.

01:25:38

This will be interesting.

01:25:39

What are you doing, Mike?

01:25:40

Like I know you kind of look at me sideways whenever I pick certain books.

01:25:44

This was me looking at you sideways when you picked this one and going through it though,

01:25:49

I'm fairly convinced that this might have a very big long term impact.

01:25:57

And I think that whether or not you fall into the category of someone who struggles with

01:26:02

motivation or not, you're probably going to pick up some good stuff from this.

01:26:07

So like you, I'm grateful to Martin for recommending it.

01:26:12

Like you, I don't think it fits the five oh category.

01:26:17

So I'll join you at the 4.5.

01:26:19

I just feel like it's a really good book, but there are other really good books that

01:26:24

are better yet.

01:26:25

I just don't know what they would be in the world of motivation.

01:26:28

But 4.5 seems to be a pretty good spot for this one to land.

01:26:33

All right.

01:26:35

So let's put master your motivation on the shelf.

01:26:41

What's next, Joe?

01:26:43

Coming up next is a potentially controversial book, which will be an entertaining chat,

01:26:49

I'm sure.

01:26:50

12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson.

01:26:54

This is one that is written by a guy who it seems like people love or hate.

01:27:00

And I'm not sure which team is bigger than the other.

01:27:05

I know that they're both very large.

01:27:08

So it should be a good one.

01:27:12

It'll be fun.

01:27:14

All right.

01:27:15

And then after that.

01:27:17

Ah, after that, I don't know.

01:27:21

I do have to pick one.

01:27:22

Okay.

01:27:23

Well, this is what I'm going to pick.

01:27:25

This is one that Toby turned me on to was a recommendation by Ali Abdahl.

01:27:34

And Ali Abdahl, I find his book recommendations.

01:27:36

I either absolutely love them or I completely disagree with them.

01:27:40

Usually I can tell right from the video that he's recommending it.

01:27:45

This one, I feel like this one I have a pretty good feeling about.

01:27:51

So this one was recommended to me by Ali Abdahl via Toby who watched the video and then

01:27:57

I went back and looked at it and like, yeah, this one sounds pretty cool.

01:28:00

The Pathless Path by Paul Millard, imagining a news story for work in life.

01:28:08

So we're inviting some existential crisis into our lives maybe, but this one, I've heard

01:28:14

some good things about and I'm going to drag you along.

01:28:18

The whole crisis.

01:28:20

That sounds exciting.

01:28:21

Well, it should be entertaining at the very least.

01:28:26

Yes.

01:28:28

I promise that is not how we pick books.

01:28:30

It's usually something we're somewhat interested in at least.

01:28:34

Well, I am interested in this one.

01:28:36

I think I'm at the point where maybe you could call it a midlife crisis, right?

01:28:42

But I'm just reevaluating where am I at in my life?

01:28:45

Where do I want the rest of what do I want the rest of my life to be about?

01:28:48

I mean, that's part of my mission and all the personal retreat stuff kind of contributes

01:28:54

to that as well.

01:28:55

But it's just been something I've been thinking a lot about and this book looks pretty legit.

01:29:00

So I want to dig into it and hopefully it helps a few other folks along the way.

01:29:08

Cool.

01:29:09

All right.

01:29:10

Well, thank you everyone for listening.

01:29:14

Thank you to everybody who attended the live recordings.

01:29:16

Please reminder if you are in the Bookworm Club, which you totally should be, there are

01:29:20

events which show you when these recordings are going to happen and links to the YouTube

01:29:25

live pages so you can join in the chat.

01:29:29

If you want to be extra awesome, you can sign up to support the club and become a pro member,

01:29:35

five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year.

01:29:37

You get access to the book note files that I create, the Mind Node files.

01:29:42

So we've got both PDFs and the editable Mind Node files.

01:29:45

You get the Bookworm wallpaper and you get actually three different feeds for the show.

01:29:49

You got the normal one, you get the pro show, which is the ad free version and then the

01:29:54

bootleg, which gets uploaded after the live recording.

01:29:58

So you get a little bit early and you get to hear all of the mistakes that Joe and I

01:30:02

make and how stupid we sound.

01:30:04

So if you want to make fun of us, we make zero mistakes zero.

01:30:09

That is false.

01:30:11

But if you want to make fun of us, that's the one to listen to.

01:30:16

Yes, that'll be very fun.

01:30:18

Also if you want to get to the pro membership thing, I also put it in another redirect I

01:30:22

should tell you about Mike.

01:30:23

It's bookworm.fm/pro.

01:30:24

So you can get there/membership/pro either one.

01:30:28

To me, pro just seemed easier because I am what we call lazy.

01:30:32

So there's that.

01:30:33

Also if you're one of these amazing people who reads along with us, pick up 12 rules

01:30:37

for life, Jordan B. Peterson, and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.