Bookworm Transcripts

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So I made a thing, Joe Buleg.

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Cool. What did you make?

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I made a website for a cohort that I will be leading on Obsidian.

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And it is called Obsidian University, and you have given me a testimonial, so thank you very much for that.

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Very excited about this, actually.

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There are very few of these types of things that I get super stoked about.

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One that you've done recently is this Life-themed cohort, which I'm a little behind on,

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and I'm planning to get caught up in the next day.

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And two, when you told me you were going to start this, I thought that is awesome.

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I have to go through this because my Obsidian game, although I take borderline full credit for trying to get you,

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or for getting you on to Obsidian over Rome, like I'm, I'll take full credit for that.

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I know I don't get full credit for that, but I'll take it just because I want it.

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But I know that you are the person I go to when it comes to Obsidian,

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so I definitely need some help in upping my Obsidian game at this point,

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so I'm glad that you are the person that gets to do that.

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So I'm hopeful that going through this cohort will help me do that.

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So I'm very, very, very excited that you're doing this.

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Awesome. Yeah.

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Well, the genesis behind this, I guess, for full disclosure, I don't think we've really talked in detail about it,

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but I have left the day job.

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I am now a full-time indie creator.

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I'm going to try to do a couple other things to, like, some business consulting and things like that,

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but primarily the focus here is on having more time to create things.

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And so don't have the day job to pay the bills anymore.

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I was thinking through what are the things that I've kind of always wanted to do.

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Well, one of the things I've always wanted to do was to go through a cohort on Obsidian.

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I lacked the confidence to do a cohort until I started doing this Life Theme cohort, which has been going really, really well.

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But yeah, Obsidian is my jam. I love it.

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It's my favorite app of all time.

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And I've done webinars before on Obsidian.

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I've even made courses on Obsidian previously, but never been able to go deep in, like, a done-with-you format,

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which is what this cohort is intended to be.

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I spun up a website last week, which, by the way, can you tell what platform that website is?

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No. Should I?

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I don't know. I just shared it with a couple other people, and they're like, "Oh, is that WordPress?

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Oh, is that, you know, fill in the blank?" And it's Squarespace.

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So...

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I was going to say, I didn't look at it that close when I saw it, so I don't remember...

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See, I would have guessed WordPress on this.

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But yeah, Go Squarespace.

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It looks pretty good, eh?

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I like this.

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Yeah, so Squarespace should sponsor Bookworm, but they haven't yet.

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Oh, there's that.

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But it's cool. It's a really great platform.

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And they have, like, this block editor now, so I was able to tweak all the different sections,

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and there are all the details on that web page of CityIniversity.com.

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The big thing you need to know is that it's going to have eight different live sessions,

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and it's going to take four weeks.

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So I'm going to do two live sessions a week, plus an office hours, probably Monday, Wednesday,

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Friday.

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And there'll be, you know, eight sessions, so two sessions per week, starting from...

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First time you've run Obsidian, here's the settings that you should enable,

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which Obsidian has come a long way.

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It's version 1.3 now, I believe.

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They've got the Canvas feature.

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Like, they keep adding stuff to it all the time, so there's a lot of stuff in there that has changed

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in the last several months.

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But giving you the foundation, and then from there, just adding on different workflows and things like that,

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culminating with some of my crazy nerdy workflows, like the Bible Study in Obsidian,

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which...

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Where I've got not only the Cross Reference Library, but I've got, like, link to the Greek and Hebrew,

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all the original words, so you can, like, do word studies in Obsidian.

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It's kind of nuts.

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So all of that is going to happen starting June 12th,

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and the cost is going to be $247, which I think is pretty fair for eight group coaching sessions

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and then four office hours.

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There's a separate circle community that I spun up for this, really, really excited about it,

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so if you want to come nerd out about Obsidian with me, please come check it out.

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This is my first real big venture since going indie.

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I call the Life-Themed cohort kind of an experiment, but this is the one where, like,

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I could see myself doing this forever.

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Like, if I was going to pick an identity for myself online, I'd love to be the Obsidian guy.

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Yeah.

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I have a lot of respect for people who use Obsidian in different ways, like Nick Milo, for example,

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linking your thinking, but he's more conceptual.

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He's the idea-verse guy, you know, and it's all about, like, the way that you interact with your notes.

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I want to give people, like, practical wins on, like, "Here's this crazy application,"

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which you opened it, and probably were like, "Nope, too complicated for me,"

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and close it, at least that's what I did the first time.

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Yeah.

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And you just need someone to kind of show you the ropes and get your system off the ground

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so it can start contributing to your productivity and creativity workflows.

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So that's the goal.

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I remember I was listening to a podcast.

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I think it was MacPower users.

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Dr. Dr. Drang was on, and he made the comment.

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Somebody asked him if he had tried Obsidian, and he said that he downloaded it once,

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opened it, and went, "Ew!"

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and promptly uninstalled it.

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And from there on, he decided that that was not his thing,

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which is classic Dr. Drang, right?

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Like, that he always wants to build his own thing.

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That's not really most people's style, like, using an existing tool is usually

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what people are going to do.

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They're not going to go code their own thing.

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The beauty of something like Obsidian is, like, you can really make it your own tool,

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which is why something like this is so helpful.

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So, yeah, I think this will go well.

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I'm really, really excited about it for you, Mike, and also for myself.

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So there's that.

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A little bit of selfishness there involved.

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[chuckles]

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Awesome.

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Well, should we get into follow-up?

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We've got a couple different action items here.

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Mine was already completed by the time we ended recording last episode,

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which was to consider joining the Farnham Street membership.

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I did that.

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It's pretty cool.

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They've got some courses that they've recorded, including one on

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reading books.

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But the courses are not the reason, I think, to join that thing.

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The courses are actually fairly old.

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You can kind of tell.

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Some of them are several years old at this point.

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And the material is still pretty good, but really I wanted to be able to get access

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to some of the members.

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They've got, like, a discourse form.

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And I know they're working on this, like, homeschool curriculum.

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So they had additional details in there for members, which I wanted to get access to.

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But I haven't had a whole lot of time to explore the depths of the membership.

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Seems pretty cool, though.

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I think I probably would recommend it if you are interested in it.

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But, you know, don't sign up for it because you heard somebody talking about it.

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You'll look at the page and you'll either feel like, "Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I am looking for."

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Or, "I'm not so sure about this."

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If you're not so sure about it.

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Don't do it.

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But it is basically what it says on the Tim.

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It's more far enough street and better.

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Which you really can't go wrong with.

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Like, even just their base stuff is pretty top notch, so you can't go wrong with them.

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Yep.

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I don't mind.

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But that's me.

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Exactly.

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Yeah, I had one, which is to start writing some blog posts again.

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I actually have three written.

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One of which is scheduled to go out this Thursday.

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I'm going to release those on a Thursday schedule.

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First one is kind of like classic Joe.

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This is simplicity and task management.

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That's kind of what I need to start with just to get the blog post thing rolling.

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But then I'm kind of working my way into more of these, like, how do you use tech at a church scenario?

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Because that's the world I live in.

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I'm learning that as I tour other churches and I try to figure out, like, how are other

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churches using tech at the scale at which I'm using it and slightly under or slightly

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above.

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Just learning that I have a really weird perspective on it.

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And that it's one that I'm trying to get out there a little bit more.

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Like, how do I use tech in a way that helps people sing on a Sunday morning during the

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songs versus just watch a performance?

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So, like, I have a lot of that mentality, but I haven't really found many other people

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who do.

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So, I'm trying to, like, okay, well, let's write about this and maybe we'll find this crowd

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in the process.

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So, that's kind of where I'm starting with this.

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We'll see where it lands.

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We'll see what happens from there.

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But that's the blogging world that I'm heading down.

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We'll see where it lands this time.

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Cool.

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Super fun.

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I'm also going to be joining you on this action item, though, not related to the book.

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But I have been doing a little bit of research just around, like, topic ideas and things

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like that.

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And I'm excited to get back into writing consistently as well.

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I feel like writing is a great compliment to the speaking that happens on a podcast.

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There's that, yeah.

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It's not.

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I think maybe the tendency is to think, well, I'll pick one or the other.

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I would encourage people to do both because it comes out different via audio than it does

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when I have time to sit down and think about what I'm going to write.

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So I'm excited to read your blog posts.

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That'll be fun.

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I hope we'll see.

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All right.

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Well, let's talk about today's book, which is The Gap and the Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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and Dan Sullivan.

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I have brought up this concept I feel many times on not just bookworm, but other podcasts,

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newsletters.

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And it's just one of those things that seems to bubble up in a lot of different conversations

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that I have.

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And it's an idea that was created by Dan Sullivan.

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He's the creator of Strategic Coach.

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And it's been around for a while.

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However, in the last year or so, I think he got together with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who

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also helped him put together a book, I think it's called Who Not How.

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So basically, Dr. Benjamin Hardy has become Dan Sullivan's writing buddy.

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And it's kind of like a partnership to help create these bookworm-style books from these

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concepts that Dan has taught for a long time.

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And he has had these little self-published leaflet booklet type things on these different

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ideas.

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But this was the first time I've seen The Gap and the Gain in an actual printed hardcover

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format, like a lot of other books that we read.

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Now going into this, I have to admit this is a very short 170 pages.

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There is definitely an opportunity here to judge this as well.

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This could have been just a blog post because there's a whole bunch of single pages with

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single quotes on them because Dr. Ben Hardy is the one who's writing this.

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But Dan Sullivan is the one with the idea.

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So basically, those pages with those quotes, those come from conversations about this topic

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with Dan Sullivan.

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And I will say before we get into the book itself that this is one that I would actually

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recommend that people check out on Audible because the Audible version of this after

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each chapter has basically like a 15, 20 minute, maybe that's too long.

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I don't know, but there's like these informal podcast episodes where Dr. Ben Hardy and Dan

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Sullivan are sitting there having like a conversation over coffee about the concepts from the chapter.

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So you get a whole bunch more context.

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And honestly, that's where some of the really great stuff comes is when Dan Sullivan is

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just kind of talking.

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But what was your first impressions of this book and ultimately this idea?

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So I'm kind of new to the idea of the gap and the gain.

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As I learned about the difference between those two different mental models of sorts,

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I guess I would use that term.

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I realized that this is something like I've thought this way with the gap mentality for

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a while and a lot of arenas.

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But I also sometimes will step out of that and think with this gain mentality.

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So once I understood like what is he referring to by the gap in the game?

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My next question was, okay, if that's the entire book, what's the rest of the book going

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to hold?

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So like the blog post thing you were talking about, it's almost where you could say, yeah,

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you could probably do this in a blog post.

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You write like a 2000 word blog post and you could probably get this there.

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I don't know that that really would do the topic justice though because I feel like this

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is a big enough idea that it warrants putting a book around it even though there are a lot

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of, I don't want to say filler because that's not the right word.

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There's a lot of like detail put around subtopics for those that helps put a lot of meat behind

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the ideas.

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So this might be a weird case where yeah, this probably could have been a blog post.

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And I'm not sure I would want it in that format.

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If I had a blog post sent to me that was called the gap in the game and I understood like roughly

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what that was, read the whole blog post.

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I don't think it would have the impact that an entire book like this would have.

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So I don't know how I feel about that because I normally don't like it when people do a

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book that could have been a blog post.

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So I'm a little bit torn in that regard.

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Well it's, it can and it can't be done as a blog post I feel.

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It can be done as a blog post in that you can get the gist of the idea in probably a

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package of about 2000 words.

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However, you're not getting the real value of the idea without diving deep into it.

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And that's exactly what Dr. Benjamin Hardy has done here.

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I'm not sure if you looked at the back of the book with all of the references.

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There's a ridiculous number of references.

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A ridiculous number of references, right.

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And so that's really what I feel validates a lot of the ideas in here.

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And if you just lose all that context, it's just something somebody said and it loses

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some of the punch, I guess.

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So I actually am very glad that this format exists, but I think people need to understand

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that going into it.

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There will be the opportunity to be like, oh well, they're just extending this.

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But honestly, I think it's actually not nearly as long as it could have been.

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A lot of the references, for example, he'll have a single sentence and he'll have three

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different references of studies that support that statement, whereas maybe other books

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that we have read, they'll talk about that for the next several pages, trying to summarize

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everything that those studies said.

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So I feel like it's in terms of the number of words, it's a pretty quick read.

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But that is actually the author doing the job of condensing it down for us, which honestly,

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I wish more books that we read took that approach.

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Yeah, I just glance.

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There's 40-ish 42 pages at the back of the book, which are all in notes, references,

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index, and the like.

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So the book itself is 172 pages with 40-some pages at the back after that to cite things

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and such.

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So yeah, he definitely covered his tail as far as like, here's where this came from.

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So good job.

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Good luck, Mr. Hardy.

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All right, so maybe let's start here by going into the introduction.

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And I guess I should kind of preface this.

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There's two different parts to this book.

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There's an introduction before the first part.

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Part one is get out of the gap.

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Part two is get into the gain and then there's a short conclusion at the end.

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So only two parts, not three, which is kind of refreshing because it's right there in

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the title of the gap and the gain.

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There's really no need for a third part.

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You probably could spin one up if you really, really wanted to, but that's not the approach

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that they took.

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You could have, I guess, done the gap, the gain, and then getting from one to the other.

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Like you could have done maybe some of that, but he kind of does it all on the two.

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Yeah, there are opportunities here to extend this for sure, but they did not take that approach.

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In fact, the real concept of the gap and the gain really comes through in this introductory

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section.

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There's a visual here where it talks about your brain and I'll try to describe this via

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podcast and audio, but it's not going to be effective.

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So basically there are two approaches we can take to things.

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And one is to look at where we are right now.

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So imagine a dot like right in the middle of the screen, right?

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And then on a vertical axis, you compare that to your ideal, which is above that dot.

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And that results in you always looking at how far you have to go.

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And this is the problem with goals is that when you are striving for a goal, you never

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can get there fast enough, you can never do it good enough before long you get frustrated

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at the lack of progress that you're making.

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You're noticing all the things that are going wrong and getting in your way.

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And that creates what's known as the gap.

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And he says the other way to do this is to take where you're currently at and measure

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backwards, look at where you're at versus where you started.

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And obviously what that does is it helps you to recognize the growth that has occurred

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in the progress that you have already made.

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And when you look backwards like that, when you try to measure your progress, you get

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excited about, hey, this is actually working, even though I don't see it happening moment

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to moment or day to day.

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So it creates this motivation to keep going.

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And this is definitely the better approach of the two.

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However, this is not a knowledge problem.

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And you can't just decide, I am going to now live in the game instead of the gap.

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In fact, in the audio from the audible version, I remember one of those like podcast interviews,

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sections, Dr. Benjamin Hardy asked Dan Sullivan, like, so how often do you fall into the gap?

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He's like, oh, every single day, multiple times a day.

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He's like, I do it all the time, but I'm getting really good at recognizing when it happens.

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And then I flip the switch and I go back.

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And that's really the value here.

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I think the recognizing these two things is really important because in this first section,

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he kind of talks about how only 14% of American adults say that they are very happy.

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And he kind of starts with this quote by Thomas Jefferson about how we have the right to

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life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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But just by saying that we're going to be pursuing happiness, we're implying that we

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don't have it.

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And when you're chasing happiness externally, it's because you're disconnected internally

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and you're trying to fill that gap.

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He also talks about how high achievers are particularly prone to be in the gap.

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And everything in life happens for you, not to you.

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So a couple of really important perspective changes here coupled with this idea of hedonica

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adaptation, which is where we're never satisfied with what we get because we get used to it

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quickly.

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The goalposts keep moving as soon as we get somewhere we feel like there's somewhere

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else we should be.

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This is where a lot of light bulbs clicked for me.

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Obviously, it's the introduction, he's kind of explaining the difference between the gap

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and the gain.

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But I hadn't really considered the detriments of like the scale of the detriments of constantly

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looking at what you're trying to achieve and measuring between where I'm at now and that

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spot.

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It never really occurred to me that that's a negative or could be a negative till he

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started explaining this.

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By the end of the introduction, then I'm like, "Huh, apparently I do that a lot because

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I constantly see the stuff that I have not accomplished, that I want to accomplish, and

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then by proxy, all the things that I need to do, that I continue to not do, that I have

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to achieve in order to get the goal that I'm trying to work towards."

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So maybe that's the bad word to use, the goal term, but I just find that the picture that

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you can see in your brain of where I'm at now, where I want to be, and then if you're

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constantly looking at that, instead of seeing all the steps to get there, which you may do,

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but you tend to see all the shortcomings that you have that would be preventing you from

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achieving that.

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As if you're looking at, say, yesterday, are you better off today than you were yesterday?

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Have you gotten closer to that ideal versus yesterday?

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If I think about last year and how I was handling myself at work and how I was able to help

00:23:00

the people who have events going on at the church, I would consider really better at that

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now than I was just a year ago.

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But I really only see how the event that I've got coming up in a week, I don't have all

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the stuff I need to get there, so I don't feel like I'm adequate to run that.

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That's what I see versus if I had been asked to do this a year ago, this could have been

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a real bad ordeal, but now it's actually feasible.

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I'm just shy of that.

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So little things like that, you wouldn't think that that's a big deal, but if you're constantly

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seeing where you're short, especially now that I've read this, I can definitely see

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where that can lead to long-term effects that are just not pleasant.

00:23:45

This was very eye-opening and I think a really good place to start with this.

00:23:49

Let's talk about the needs that you brought up there because that is addressed in the

00:23:57

first chapter.

00:23:59

Because I mentioned the first part is get out of the gap, the first chapter is embrace the

00:24:06

freedom of wants.

00:24:08

And the core idea there is to recognize that everything that you're striving for is a

00:24:18

want, not a need.

00:24:20

It defines a need as unresolved internal pain.

00:24:26

And on the surface, I think there's a lot of narrative in the productivity space, which

00:24:31

would kind of say that's not the way to do it.

00:24:37

If you don't really want something enough, if you don't believe in it enough, if you

00:24:41

don't need it, then you're not going to put in the effort in order to get it.

00:24:49

And this is where right away the book starts to get really interesting for me because page

00:24:56

90 talks about Nval Ravekant.

00:24:59

So great timing picking that one right before this.

00:25:03

But the idea there is that success and life really is a single player game.

00:25:09

You're not competing against anybody else but yourself.

00:25:12

And so you got to ask yourself, what do you feel you need in order to be happy?

00:25:16

What do you measure yourself against?

00:25:19

But then he gets into the story of Trevor Lawrence, the quarterback for the Jacksonville

00:25:24

Jaguars and formerly the quarterback for the Clemson Tigers.

00:25:31

I forget.

00:25:32

He was a very, very successful college quarterback.

00:25:34

Just one.

00:25:35

And it was Clemson.

00:25:36

I don't know about the Tigers piece.

00:25:37

Okay.

00:25:38

Yeah.

00:25:39

He was an insanely good quarterback.

00:25:42

He gets to the NFL and he's drafted by a terrible team.

00:25:48

And they made the playoffs last year, which was kind of cool to see, but they were bad

00:25:53

for a while.

00:25:55

And so this like high draft pick quarterback, I don't know if he was picked number one or

00:25:59

not.

00:26:00

I think maybe he was.

00:26:01

So a top pick in the draft or one of the top picks in the draft goes to this bad team.

00:26:05

And you're used to thinking, used to hearing people be like, Oh yeah, well, I'm going to

00:26:09

do everything I can to turn this around.

00:26:12

I'm not going to sleep until we reached the playoffs and we're winning a Super Bowl and

00:26:16

yada, yada, yada.

00:26:17

And the sports commentators were kind of beating up Trevor Lawrence because he was basically

00:26:27

saying that I love football.

00:26:29

I'm going to give it my best.

00:26:31

But if things don't work out the way I want them to, it's not going to define me.

00:26:37

They didn't know what to do with that.

00:26:38

Well, they knew what to do with it, which was just drive him into the ground because

00:26:46

he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't obsessed.

00:26:49

Like that's that's the kicker here.

00:26:51

Like he wasn't so obsessed with football that it defined his entire being.

00:26:59

That was the problem in the whole situation, but he's he's got an awesome mentality there.

00:27:05

Right?

00:27:06

He's able to realize that his entire identity is not wrapped up in football, which is great

00:27:12

because at some point you can't play football anymore.

00:27:15

At some point you have to retire from football.

00:27:18

I don't know many 80 year old who are playing football.

00:27:23

At some point you have to retire.

00:27:24

So if you do that, you know, think of like all the heartache that a lot of pro sports

00:27:30

players have when they retire, how many times do these superstars retire and then come

00:27:35

back when they have their entire identity wrapped up in that sport and then step away

00:27:40

from it.

00:27:41

Well, what do they have left to do?

00:27:43

Well, he's got a great mentality there's like, well, he'll just do something else.

00:27:47

So it's cool to see.

00:27:49

But again, the media doesn't know what to do with that.

00:27:52

Like he's he's super healthy.

00:27:53

Well, we only want unhealthy pro sports players.

00:27:56

Like that's like that's that's that's really all we want.

00:27:59

We want people who have an unhealthy relationship and just work constantly.

00:28:03

That's what we actually want.

00:28:04

Yeah, we want people who are obsessive and that's kind of the point is he talks about

00:28:09

obsessive versus harmonious passion and obsessive passion is highly impulsive.

00:28:14

It's fueled by emotions and unresolved internal conflict.

00:28:20

It's regularly associated with addiction correlated with low self esteem.

00:28:24

Like you don't want to be in that camp, right?

00:28:26

But harmonious is healthy intrinsic motivation.

00:28:29

You control your passion instead of your passion controlling you.

00:28:32

But that's not the narrative that the the world wants to hear.

00:28:40

One of the things that they they talk about in this chapter, which I really appreciated

00:28:45

that story about Trevor Lawrence and I felt like it illustrated was that when you are

00:28:50

in the gap, you are desperate to get there because you're trying to escape being here.

00:28:57

That phrasing resonated with me because I can see how I slip into that sometimes.

00:29:05

I'm definitely susceptible to that.

00:29:09

And I don't want to be.

00:29:11

So there's definitely room for growth having gone through this this book.

00:29:16

But related to that is another key idea here called the two types of freedom, which is

00:29:22

really, really powerful.

00:29:24

The first type is freedom from, which is external, objective.

00:29:28

You're not a slave, you know, that kind of thing.

00:29:30

I don't have to do this thing anymore.

00:29:33

But then there's freedom to, which is internal, subjective, you're your own master.

00:29:38

You get to do something else.

00:29:41

And that's kind of what Trevor Lawrence is talking about.

00:29:42

He's like, I get to play football, and that's great.

00:29:44

I'm going to do my best to to be the best that I can be.

00:29:48

But ultimately, whatever that best is, I'm good with.

00:29:52

I'll know that I gave it my best shot.

00:29:56

And I will be completely satisfied when it is time to move on to something else because

00:30:01

he recognizes that he has the freedom to make that transition when he wants to.

00:30:05

You definitely see people who are just kind of holding on, right?

00:30:11

And maybe they hold on longer than they they should because they have trouble letting go.

00:30:16

They have trouble embracing a different identity.

00:30:20

So I think there's a lot of different applications of this, but obviously one of them would be

00:30:24

transitioning between major life stages.

00:30:30

The two different freedoms are interesting to me.

00:30:33

You really don't think about like, I have the freedom to do something, but you also have

00:30:39

the freedom from something, right?

00:30:43

So like, it's the difference between being a slave and a master as he uses here.

00:30:48

This is an interesting concept to me because I don't usually think in those terms.

00:30:52

I can't say that I've really thought about, you know, I have the freedom to run a soundboard

00:30:57

the way I want to run it.

00:31:00

I'm not free from something.

00:31:03

I just like, I have the autonomy to be able to do that.

00:31:06

Now, that's a bad example because I don't know many sound boards or people who are dictated

00:31:11

to use a thing like that in a certain way.

00:31:14

But I think you get my point.

00:31:16

I just don't think I really have processed that at a deep level.

00:31:21

So there's some action items later on.

00:31:22

We'll talk about that.

00:31:23

I think will maybe help me with that to some degree.

00:31:27

But this is like getting into the territory where, again, I haven't really thought through

00:31:34

that terminology.

00:31:35

So this goes back to that whole blog post concept, right?

00:31:38

This is starting to put some meat on the bones for the gap side of this in a way that

00:31:45

I haven't processed it this way.

00:31:47

So yes, I understand the gap, but now you're starting to give me a little bit more around

00:31:52

that.

00:31:53

So again, I'm grateful for that.

00:31:55

All right.

00:31:56

Well, let's go into chapter two, which is be self-determined.

00:32:03

And by the way, all these chapters have like subheadings as well.

00:32:08

So this one is define your own success criteria.

00:32:12

And it starts with a story about public education, which was invented in 1918 to get kids out

00:32:22

of factories.

00:32:24

I'm kind of paraphrasing his words.

00:32:26

So if that's factually incorrect, I apologize.

00:32:29

Obviously you and I both homeschool so people know our thoughts on this already.

00:32:34

But the big point he's making here is that it wasn't to train kids to become leaders

00:32:41

and creative thinkers.

00:32:43

It was an investment in our collective economic future.

00:32:49

And this whole structure or system teaches our kids to measure themselves against an

00:32:57

external reference point.

00:33:00

Just think of like all the standardized tests that you can take and the scores that you

00:33:04

get and the percentiles like I totally see the evidence of this.

00:33:10

And I think you and I probably at some level have internalized this already.

00:33:16

Maybe this added some more context, some more color, some more detail.

00:33:21

But one of our goals as a family with homeschooling our kids was that we wanted our kids to become

00:33:28

a lifelong learner's.

00:33:30

We wanted them to love the process of learning because I recognized with my internet career

00:33:37

and the things that I've done online creatively that I started off not good at any of these

00:33:43

things.

00:33:44

But I was smart enough to put something out there, learn from it and do it better next

00:33:49

time.

00:33:50

In fact, one of the first things that got me into screencasting, I don't know if I've

00:33:54

ever told you this story, when I was first starting to talk to Tan at Asian efficiency,

00:34:00

I had seen some of David Sparks screencasts.

00:34:04

I think he had just done the whole Omni Focus series at that point.

00:34:09

I was like, "Wow, these are really cool.

00:34:11

I'm going to try to make one."

00:34:13

And I recorded one on TextExpander and it was terrible.

00:34:18

It was awful.

00:34:21

I did it sitting on my couch one afternoon.

00:34:26

It was 15 minutes of rambling.

00:34:28

I didn't really show anything.

00:34:30

I made every mistake in the book, but I published it to a now defunct YouTube channel called

00:34:36

"Semicro Workflows."

00:34:37

It was the only one that I had ever published.

00:34:39

I don't even think I ever made it public.

00:34:41

But somehow Tan found it and we were talking and he's like, "Hey, I like the screencast

00:34:47

stuff you do."

00:34:48

And I was like, "What are you talking about?"

00:34:49

He's like, "The Semicro Workflow stuff."

00:34:50

I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you found that?

00:34:52

I'm so ashamed."

00:34:53

He was able to see the potential there.

00:34:57

He's like, "No, no, this is pretty good.

00:34:59

I think you could be pretty good at this."

00:35:03

So I accidentally published the first one.

00:35:06

That was by far the hardest one and the most embarrassing.

00:35:10

But then I was able to learn from that and iterate on it.

00:35:14

Now I'd like to think that I've gotten pretty good at it.

00:35:18

But that iterative cycle, if I had not...

00:35:25

I can see if I was in this environment that he's describing with public education and

00:35:30

I think once you get into the workforce, there's the same sort of tendency to compare

00:35:35

what you're doing with other people who are doing certain things and that can keep you

00:35:38

from ever trying anything.

00:35:41

If I had recognized that that sort of situation was there, I probably never would have done

00:35:47

it.

00:35:48

However, that was the thing that kind of catapulted me into this whole creative cycle.

00:35:53

So it doesn't take a lot to get it going.

00:35:56

And that's really what we want to teach our kids.

00:36:00

Create not consume.

00:36:01

That's a big part of it.

00:36:02

So we're not saying you can't use the technology, but use it with a purpose.

00:36:06

Don't just go through the endless feeds.

00:36:08

Don't just consume the stuff.

00:36:11

Determine for yourself what success looks like with these different tools, different platforms,

00:36:20

etc.

00:36:21

And I've got a couple different action items associated with this.

00:36:27

The first one is to list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when.

00:36:34

And this is not associated with an outcome.

00:36:38

That's why it's specifically worded.

00:36:42

It's not I know I'm successful when.

00:36:45

It's I know I'm being successful when.

00:36:48

So it's the conditions present tense that have to be satisfied in order for me to okay, yeah,

00:36:56

I'm doing the right things.

00:36:57

I'm not not associated with an outcome.

00:36:59

And then the other one is to come up with my own filtering questions.

00:37:02

There's a bunch that they use on page 45 about what they should be what you should be engaged

00:37:07

with.

00:37:08

And I love me some questions, but I want to identify my own questions.

00:37:13

But I want to use the ones that are necessarily provided for us in the book.

00:37:18

But I guess that's one other thing I'll mention here is as he goes through this, there's six

00:37:21

different chapters here, but he gives you lots of different questions and lots of different

00:37:24

practical like try this out.

00:37:27

Think through these questions, write down some things.

00:37:30

You know, if you're keeping a journal and you're following along at home, it's almost

00:37:33

like a workbook.

00:37:34

And I would encourage people to spend some time wrestling with this stuff, not just

00:37:38

cranking through the words like we did for this podcast.

00:37:43

That's a good point because there are, like you get to the end of these chapters and there

00:37:48

are like chapter takeaways, but there's a lot of like time for a quick exercise.

00:37:53

Pull out your journal and simplify the success criteria you've listed above.

00:37:57

Like, and then he has questions for you to work through.

00:38:00

And I didn't do hardly any of these completely upfront about that right now.

00:38:07

But I have a couple, three action items here of these to do.

00:38:13

This is, I'm going to join you on this particular one.

00:38:16

I'm being successful.

00:38:17

I know I'm being successful when one through ten.

00:38:20

What are those things?

00:38:22

And that, that in itself I think is like the starting point for if these things are happening,

00:38:31

then I know I'm on the right path.

00:38:34

And like some of those things, like sometimes I feel like it's helpful to like hear some

00:38:39

of those examples.

00:38:42

And some of these are like I can wake up every day and ask, what would I like to do today?

00:38:46

If my passive revenue exceeds my lifestyle needs, I can live anywhere in the world I

00:38:51

choose.

00:38:53

There are no whiny people in my life.

00:38:55

I wear my watch for curiosity only.

00:38:57

I can quit anytime.

00:38:59

And these are things that aren't necessarily like data driven.

00:39:04

My brain tends to go there.

00:39:05

It's like when I have this much money per month, I know I'm being successful.

00:39:09

It's like no, that's not, that's not even remotely what he's getting at here.

00:39:13

This is primarily like the non-tangibles, I guess, of day to day life.

00:39:20

So like that's, I feel like that can be very, very helpful.

00:39:23

So I definitely want to do this one.

00:39:25

So I'm joining you on this action item.

00:39:28

Nice.

00:39:29

And it's not so much I've gotten to a certain point.

00:39:33

I've got enough passive income and I, these conditions can be met.

00:39:37

It's really the things that are tied to progress in that direction.

00:39:45

Like there's a story in here, which I really liked about the British rowing team.

00:39:50

And they had not won a gold medal since 1912, but they won a gold medal in Sydney in, in

00:39:57

2000, I believe, by using a single sentence filter, which was just, will it make the boat

00:40:07

go faster?

00:40:09

And that's pretty brilliant when you think about it.

00:40:14

I mean, when you're talking about like teams and organizations and empowering individuals,

00:40:23

whether they be employees or volunteers, to really run with the vision, this is the kind

00:40:30

of thing that you need.

00:40:31

They don't need to know all the individual details and all the OKRs and all like the,

00:40:36

the vivid vision and all that kind of stuff.

00:40:38

They need to know what's the filtering criteria so that I can make the decisions on my own

00:40:43

and apply the speed of implementation and move things forward without a whole lot of

00:40:49

back and forth.

00:40:52

And I love this story, but I also need to figure out what is that single sentence filtering

00:41:00

mechanism for me.

00:41:01

So we mentioned the life theme cohort earlier.

00:41:03

I have that, that life theme and I'm continuing to refine it as we go through that stuff.

00:41:08

But each one of the weeks, I give people a whole bunch of clarifying questions, which

00:41:13

I think are really valuable.

00:41:15

The whole goal of the life theme cohort is to end up with the single sentence.

00:41:19

But I like this as a separate version of that, I guess, is like a single question.

00:41:24

Right?

00:41:25

So yeah, the life, the life theme, tying it to the life theme, that maybe answers the

00:41:29

question of what we do.

00:41:32

But then the, this question is almost like how we do it.

00:41:37

And I love this approach.

00:41:39

I like the idea of the, how do you say this?

00:41:46

Ethemia, which is being on the right path and not being led astray.

00:41:55

And he also mentions how living in the game is living by clearer measurables that you've

00:42:00

defined for yourself.

00:42:01

You know, so it kind of, for me, ties back to the daily questions that I do inside of

00:42:07

Obsidian all the time.

00:42:09

Did I do my best to move the needle in these particular areas?

00:42:13

You know, I think there's a chance, I don't have an action I'm associated with this, but

00:42:17

I want to continue to just kind of think on this.

00:42:19

And I think this may influence some of that stuff a little bit.

00:42:23

I think primarily I'm doing the right things, but maybe the, the flavor is going to change

00:42:28

a little bit.

00:42:30

Before we started recording, I told you that I had three action items and I could only

00:42:33

find two of them on my notes.

00:42:35

This was the third one was that filtering system trying to get narrowed down to that

00:42:38

single question.

00:42:39

The trick here is that I'm not done with your life theme cohort.

00:42:43

So I don't have that part nailed down here.

00:42:46

So that might end up being a delayed action item here, but I'm going to at least write

00:42:50

it down, start working towards that.

00:42:52

Because I feel like that would be crazy helpful.

00:42:55

Like, should I get donuts this morning?

00:42:57

I mean, the answer is yes, but how do I justify with that question?

00:43:01

So.

00:43:02

Sure.

00:43:03

Well, you may not want to get donuts in the morning when you read through the next chapter.

00:43:10

So you just got to skip that one.

00:43:13

Can't do that.

00:43:15

Can't do that.

00:43:16

You got to read the whole thing.

00:43:17

Sorry.

00:43:18

All right.

00:43:19

Fair enough.

00:43:20

Chapter three is the compound effect of the gap or the gain.

00:43:23

Train your brain to see the gains.

00:43:26

I like that a lot.

00:43:29

There's a lot of talk in this chapter about optimism and how being continually in the

00:43:35

gap wears down your physical body.

00:43:38

One of the studies that they shared in this chapter, I really liked mentioned that optimistic

00:43:44

people live on average 10 plus years longer than pessimistic people.

00:43:48

And they tie that specifically to a study of the sisters of Notre Dame where they had 180

00:43:55

nuns who were all born before 1917, right?

00:44:00

Autobiographical journal entries.

00:44:02

And then the nuns whose entries contained overtly joyful content lived on average of

00:44:07

10 years longer.

00:44:09

And by age 85, 90% of the happiest nuns were alive compared to 34% of the least happy nuns.

00:44:17

And I mean, you could nitpick that study, I guess there's only 180 people, but I think

00:44:24

this is true.

00:44:26

I, for a while, we were going into a local nursing home for a church ministry.

00:44:34

Like once a month, we would just go visit with the residents there.

00:44:37

We would sometimes play music, play games.

00:44:41

One time the kids came and they brought their favorite storybooks.

00:44:44

And so they sat with the residents and read their storybooks to them, done like Christmas

00:44:50

caroling in the halls, stuff like that.

00:44:53

And there are definitely people there who are, they don't want to be there.

00:44:57

There are also people there who are just, they don't really care.

00:45:01

They're loving their best life.

00:45:03

There was one guy I remember who his name was Carl.

00:45:06

He was an army veteran.

00:45:09

And every time that we came, he would like get on the intercom and make the announcement.

00:45:14

He like prided himself on being the guy, you know, who was announcing all the social

00:45:18

happenings.

00:45:19

And he just loved it when we came in there, you know, and he was our best buddy.

00:45:24

And there were a couple other people like that that really they stick out in my mind.

00:45:30

But there are also other people there who obviously they're upset at their circumstances.

00:45:35

Their family members aren't around or even if they are, they're not coming to visit and

00:45:40

they just get real negative and bitter.

00:45:43

I think I mentioned this at one point, but there's a book that I read as a gap book a

00:45:48

long time ago called 30 Lessons for Living, which is a really, really great book.

00:45:54

And basically, it was by Dr. Carl Pillimer and he went into all these nursing homes and

00:45:59

found these people who are just, they're full of joy.

00:46:02

They're having a ton of fun and interviewed like 10,000 of them about, you know, what

00:46:08

was, what's the secret to your happiness?

00:46:12

And I definitely think there's, there's something to this idea.

00:46:17

And the pessimistic response to this, I guess, would be, well, you can't just choose to be

00:46:23

happy all the time.

00:46:25

And he's kind of saying, yeah, yeah, you can.

00:46:29

Which is frustrating to be quite frank because it means that if this is, this is like going

00:46:38

back to like a handful of the last few books, like if it's not going well, I don't like

00:46:44

where it's going, it's in my brain.

00:46:48

And I don't like being told that it's my fault that I'm unhappy about something.

00:46:55

But it's absolutely true.

00:46:57

And it's absolutely something that I need to work on.

00:47:00

Like, and obviously, like, I feel like this is something that I need to definitely work

00:47:04

on because it keeps like beating me over the head here recently.

00:47:08

Like, Joe, have you got this through your thick skull yet?

00:47:11

This is in your brain, like, quitting, quitting frustrated by these things?

00:47:15

Like, quit it.

00:47:17

So I kind of want to blame you for the books that you're picking for this particular feeling.

00:47:23

So thanks for that, Mike.

00:47:24

But I also know that this is my own doing as well.

00:47:28

So yeah, I don't really have an action item with this one because I'm not really sure

00:47:31

how I would write it down or what it would be tangent.

00:47:34

However you say that wouldn't be tangible.

00:47:38

But I do know that this is one thing that I need to continue to work on.

00:47:41

So maybe this is the thing.

00:47:44

It is trying to get this to where I'm noticing when I'm going down one path mentally versus

00:47:50

the other.

00:47:51

So maybe I'm getting there.

00:47:52

But continuing to read books that tell me to get my head in the right place is helpful,

00:47:56

too, because it keeps pounding me over the skull with it, which is a good thing.

00:48:00

Well, this one is interesting because it doesn't say get your head in the right place,

00:48:05

but it basically paints a picture of, okay, there's two options.

00:48:08

And this one's good and this one's not so good.

00:48:09

So choose the good one.

00:48:11

Yes, which is the same as telling me get your head in the game.

00:48:15

Yeah, it's less abrasive, I feel.

00:48:19

But yes, like he does talk about in this section how comparison makes you unhappy.

00:48:24

The gap robs you of enjoying what you have.

00:48:28

It's a really powerful idea here about changing the context and changing the meaning because

00:48:33

a pushback with what you were just sharing was well, so I'm just supposed to pretend

00:48:39

that this bad stuff didn't happen to me.

00:48:42

And not exactly, but sort of.

00:48:46

You don't have to attach like you don't have to stay attached to the negativity of those

00:48:53

situations later on in the second half of the book he talks about this experience transformer

00:49:00

where you take what happened and you kind of spin it and you use it for good.

00:49:05

And I think one of the things he says in this chapter that highlights the pushback to this

00:49:11

is that people with low emotional intelligence, you know, I love that topic emotional intelligence

00:49:17

obviously, but people with low emotional intelligence are highly sensitive to fairness violations.

00:49:24

So if you find yourself saying that's not fair in his words, maybe you have low emotional

00:49:31

intelligence.

00:49:33

And again, like that could be heard the wrong way and be like, Oh, well, you're telling me

00:49:38

that I'm not skilled or you're better than I am.

00:49:42

No, no, because emotional intelligence, you have the ability to develop that.

00:49:46

It's not something that you're just born with.

00:49:48

It's not talent.

00:49:50

It's not innate ability.

00:49:52

It's something that if you embrace a growth mindset, you can develop and you can become

00:49:57

a better version of yourself.

00:50:00

One of the best stories in this whole book, by the way, is comes from this chapter of

00:50:04

the Principia College women's soccer team.

00:50:08

This is what I was just getting ready to bring up like this is gold.

00:50:11

Well, I'll let you talk about it if you want.

00:50:14

Yeah.

00:50:15

So this is 1984 to 1988.

00:50:16

Kim Butler was a college soccer player at Principia College.

00:50:20

And they were not doing well.

00:50:21

They were doing very poorly.

00:50:22

And the coach decided that once they got on the bus to drive back, they had an hour

00:50:31

or two back after games, there weren't locker rooms.

00:50:35

So they didn't do a debrief after the game.

00:50:37

They just went straight from the field onto the bus.

00:50:39

And the coach would start a five minute timer and they were allowed five minutes.

00:50:43

Again, this is the beginning of the game, beginning of the season they were doing very

00:50:47

poorly.

00:50:48

They were allowed five minutes to sulk.

00:50:51

In other words, they were given five minutes to just be upset about how the game went.

00:50:57

And then the coach would set a 10 minute timer and they had to collectively talk about

00:51:02

good things that happened during the game.

00:51:05

And then they would set another 20 minute timer and every player had to point out one

00:51:10

specific good thing that another player did during that game.

00:51:14

In other words, they were given five minutes to sulk over this and then they were forced

00:51:17

for 30 minutes to focus on the positives.

00:51:20

This is exactly what he's referring to here is that you're allowed five minutes in this

00:51:25

gap territory, which I can appreciate that he's willing to admit that we're not all superhuman

00:51:32

and we can't just force our brains to step away from it.

00:51:35

But if you allow yourself a short amount of time in that, it's literally set a timer.

00:51:41

I would totally have to set a timer and then flip the script and go into the gratitude practice.

00:51:47

And noticing the things that were improvements or that went really well and flipping the

00:51:53

script and either like just externalizing those in some way, whether it's writing them,

00:51:58

whether it's talking to somebody about it in some form, doing that can change your attitude

00:52:06

about it.

00:52:07

So you're not like you were saying, Mike, like it's not, you're not playing pretend like

00:52:12

we're not getting the dollhouse out here and building some stick figure thing that is fake

00:52:17

and we're just going to pretend that everything is happy, go lucky.

00:52:20

No, that's not the case at all.

00:52:23

You're actually putting yourself in a different mindset so that you can focus on those gains

00:52:29

and so that you can focus on the positive side of it.

00:52:33

That type of thing is the sort of thing I need to hear.

00:52:35

So thank you for that team.

00:52:37

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on in that format there, but the main point that he's

00:52:45

making there is that didn't allow them to stay in the gap for very long.

00:52:50

And the beginning of that story, he talks about how they were pretty terrible.

00:52:54

A lot of them had never played soccer before.

00:52:57

In the first half of the season, they lost every game.

00:53:02

The second half of the season, they won every game and they ended up winning the division

00:53:07

to NCAA championship, which is kind of crazy to think about.

00:53:13

Yeah, but it's, I don't think it's far fetched.

00:53:20

I think this is a really, really powerful idea.

00:53:23

The problem is from all speaking from myself, I tend to get stuck in that gap, right?

00:53:28

And I continue to brew on what went wrong.

00:53:31

I could benefit a lot from just setting the five minute timer and like, okay, let's turn

00:53:34

the page.

00:53:36

And for whatever reason, it's easier for me to see this in other people, like when I was

00:53:39

coaching the middle school soccer and basketball teams, I told my kids this all the time, like

00:53:46

when they had a rough game, you're like, okay, so you've got five minutes to be upset about

00:53:51

that one.

00:53:52

Then we turn the page and we don't talk about it ever again.

00:53:55

We move forward.

00:53:58

But yeah, there's, so there's the switching from the gap to the game.

00:54:02

There's the bonding with the teammates by calling out the things that other people did

00:54:07

well.

00:54:08

That positive focus, that's another thing.

00:54:11

Dan Sullivan talks a lot about just from the different things that I've read and heard

00:54:17

from him.

00:54:18

In fact, at the day job, we tried to begin and end every single meeting with a positive

00:54:23

focus.

00:54:24

So the beginning of the meeting, you're calling out and sharing the good news, right?

00:54:29

And then at the end of the meeting, we're sharing gratitude.

00:54:33

So in the middle of the meeting, we're arguing, we're fighting, we're pushing to get our way,

00:54:39

right?

00:54:40

But we're talking about ideas, not people, and then we always wrap it up cleanly at the

00:54:45

end.

00:54:46

I think this is a very generalizable approach for any sort of team.

00:54:52

The other thing I want to mention here with the calling out something good that you saw

00:54:56

someone else do.

00:54:58

You've embraced this in our family before.

00:55:01

Got five kids, and that means that every seat in the suburban is filled, which means

00:55:07

on long road trips, sometimes tempers flare a little bit.

00:55:13

And I remember one time being in the car, people were fighting and I was like, all right,

00:55:17

that's it.

00:55:19

Now everyone is going to share one thing that they appreciate about Malachi.

00:55:24

No one wants to do it at first, but after they start, you gain a little bit of momentum.

00:55:29

All right, now share one thing that you appreciate about Jonathan.

00:55:33

15 minutes later, it's completely changed the atmosphere in the car.

00:55:39

So I have a little bit of experience with this and I can confirm it definitely works.

00:55:44

I took a different approach about a year ago.

00:55:47

All my kids were in the back and they were fighting.

00:55:50

And this was in January in Minnesota.

00:55:53

So not exactly warm outside.

00:55:55

And they were just on each other.

00:55:57

And I told them, it's like, fine, you need to cool off.

00:56:00

And I rolled down all the windows in the back.

00:56:03

We're doing 65 down the road.

00:56:05

It's freezing.

00:56:06

I think I want to say it was like zero, five degrees outside.

00:56:10

So you guys need to cool off.

00:56:12

It's like, I left the windows for exactly 60 seconds and then rolled them back and was

00:56:16

like, okay, are we all settled now?

00:56:18

All good?

00:56:19

Okay.

00:56:20

They were fine after that.

00:56:21

So you just need to cool off of it.

00:56:23

It's like, literally your approach is probably significantly better life lessons than mine,

00:56:28

but it works.

00:56:31

Say whatever works.

00:56:33

All right.

00:56:34

Let's go into the next part.

00:56:38

So part two is get into the gain and chapter four is always measure backwards.

00:56:46

And that is kind of exactly what it says on the tin.

00:56:50

I think the second half of this book is going to go significantly faster because some of

00:56:54

this stuff has been discussed already.

00:56:58

But the big thing here is that progress is everything.

00:57:02

I like the idea that they talk about with inattention blindness, which is you're being

00:57:07

so fixated on one thing that you fail to see anything else.

00:57:11

Definitely see how that applies to me.

00:57:14

But then the big section here is talking about journaling and questions for journaling, which

00:57:22

these are good.

00:57:23

I'm not going to use these.

00:57:24

I've got my personal retreat framework actually instead.

00:57:27

So where am I right now?

00:57:28

What are my wins in the last 90 days?

00:57:30

What are my desired wins for the next 90 days?

00:57:33

Where will I be in 12 months?

00:57:34

Where will I be in three years?

00:57:36

Basic idea is the same.

00:57:39

But I'm not going to apply these questions.

00:57:46

Actually, there's one other idea here which is worth unpacking.

00:57:49

That's four levels of competence by William Howell.

00:57:53

You start off with unconscious incompetence.

00:57:57

You have no idea what you don't know.

00:58:01

And then you get into conscious incompetence.

00:58:03

You recognize what you don't know or you're like a skill.

00:58:07

And then conscious competence where if you apply yourself, you realize that you can do

00:58:13

a thing and then unconscious competence is kind of the highest level and that's where

00:58:16

it just becomes automatic.

00:58:19

And that's really what we're striving for.

00:58:23

That's what we're moving towards when we embrace this whole model.

00:58:26

But we can forget about the progress that we've made, especially ones we get to that

00:58:30

top level without taking the time to look backwards.

00:58:36

Which is the big idea here.

00:58:39

Always measure backwards because that's where you can see your growth.

00:58:44

The journaling piece here is the part that caught me the most.

00:58:49

He kind of got into this whole, I think this was the section where he was talking about

00:58:52

the last hour of your day is the most important because you're like wrapping up your current

00:58:58

day and preparing for the next.

00:59:00

And I have an on again off again relationship with journaling and I do it maybe a couple

00:59:08

times a week right now.

00:59:11

After reading this, I'm starting to realize that's a really good way to keep an eye on

00:59:16

am I focusing on the distance between where I'm at right now and where I feel like I should

00:59:22

be or want to be, need to be.

00:59:25

And or am I focusing on where I'm at right now versus where I was like a week ago or even

00:59:32

yesterday or earlier in the day.

00:59:34

Those are things that I want to try to keep an eye on.

00:59:36

So I just wrote it as get consistent with my evening journaling.

00:59:40

Like I already have, I'm similar to you.

00:59:42

I don't have like these questions.

00:59:43

I don't really want to follow those.

00:59:45

I kind of have my own process for that.

00:59:48

So I'm going to follow my own.

00:59:49

I just want to get more consistent with it.

00:59:51

I just feel like that would be super helpful, especially after reading this.

00:59:55

So that's the one piece from this chapter I took away.

00:59:58

Well, actually, I think you're starting to get into the next chapter.

01:00:03

So where it was?

01:00:05

Let's actually go there.

01:00:06

Yeah.

01:00:07

So chapter five is measure three wins daily, but this is where he talks about the research

01:00:13

about the people who use their phones before bed.

01:00:18

Oh, right.

01:00:19

So he kind of introduces it in the previous chapter with the concept of journaling, but

01:00:25

the specific, like the most valuable hour of your day part, that comes from this chapter.

01:00:32

Yes.

01:00:33

I believe.

01:00:34

Yeah.

01:00:35

No, you're right.

01:00:36

I'm flipping through it right now.

01:00:37

You are absolutely correct.

01:00:38

I just got ahead in my notes, apparently.

01:00:39

Well, that's okay.

01:00:40

I mean, there's, it all kind of kind of blends together here in the second half of the book.

01:00:44

The first thing he says in this section is that your behavior is before better coded

01:00:48

into your longterm memory.

01:00:50

And he talks about how reactivity breeds more reactivity, which is kind of what you were

01:00:55

talking about, breaking that, that cycle.

01:00:57

And I had kind of the same thought.

01:01:00

There's some startling statistics in here, by the way, 96.9% of people use their phones

01:01:05

the hour before bed, which I fall into that occasionally, but 90.8% use their phones in

01:01:13

bed right before they fall asleep.

01:01:17

And that seems ridiculous to me, but I, I don't know.

01:01:23

I guess, I guess I can, I can see that.

01:01:25

Now I don't do that, but I do fall into the larger group of using it the hour before bed.

01:01:30

Frequently, I forget to do Spanish until I'm about ready to head to bed.

01:01:37

And that's when I, I have to use my, my phone occasionally.

01:01:40

I'll do some journaling stuff on there too, because I'm already using my phone for Spanish.

01:01:45

So this has got me thinking about my bedtime routine.

01:01:52

And I want to figure out a way to do Spanish earlier so that when I am getting ready for

01:02:00

bed, I do not have to touch my phone.

01:02:06

Now I do digital journaling.

01:02:08

So how am I going to do that?

01:02:10

Typically that happens at the end of my day.

01:02:13

Well, I've got the onyx books, but I've kind of slipped in just crazy, craziness with the

01:02:19

last several weeks.

01:02:22

I have not been using it for journaling at the end of the day consistently.

01:02:27

I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

01:02:32

So I know that's got to change.

01:02:36

And this, I think could go a long way in, in towards helping me feel more balanced and

01:02:44

more centered.

01:02:47

Another thing associated with this and the habit of journaling, this is a separate action

01:02:51

item for me, but I want to get consistent with the gratitude journaling.

01:02:55

So that's kind of the, the whole package or the, the process that they're describing in

01:03:02

this chapter is that you want to measure your three wins every day.

01:03:09

So it's very specific.

01:03:10

You should journal your, your three wins.

01:03:14

You should pick three things that you want to work on at the, for tomorrow or at the

01:03:19

beginning of the day.

01:03:21

I don't like getting that specific with it.

01:03:27

But this really did speak to me.

01:03:28

It talked about time, they should have quote from Thomas Edison, never go to bed without

01:03:31

a request of your subconscious.

01:03:33

I feel like by using the phone before bed, I kind of just throw the possibility of that

01:03:40

out the window.

01:03:43

Whereas if I, I can see how if I really went all in with this journaling practice, that

01:03:48

would produce some of that stuff where it's like, well, let's continue to, to think on

01:03:53

that.

01:03:54

And even after I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to leave that until tomorrow.

01:03:57

Having that in your subconscious.

01:03:58

I can see the, the value of, of that approach.

01:04:01

That's definitely something that I want to do as well.

01:04:04

I have a bad habit of, I'll crawl into bed and then I'll pull my phone out to check on.

01:04:11

I, I've, I've played on and off, uh, on chess.com for a while now.

01:04:18

And I'll pull out my phone and play like some of the daily games that I've got going

01:04:21

on and just like make my one move for the day on a two or three games.

01:04:25

And I'll do that while I'm in bed and then maybe read a, an article I've saved to a reading

01:04:30

list and then put the phone away and, and roll over and try to go to sleep.

01:04:36

So like I'm, I'm absolutely in this category.

01:04:39

Okay.

01:04:40

This is not good.

01:04:42

So I really shouldn't do this.

01:04:44

I didn't write this as an action item.

01:04:46

I probably should.

01:04:47

I'll, I'll do this.

01:04:48

I'm going to add an action item here.

01:04:50

So I'll take the action item.

01:04:51

I need to stop doing that.

01:04:52

Just put the phone away.

01:04:54

I know this.

01:04:55

Things I know how many times we've read books about this.

01:04:57

How many times have I picked books about this?

01:04:59

And yet here I am in the same boat again.

01:05:01

Yeah, it's not a knowledge problem, um, which is why this whole idea of the gap in the game

01:05:10

I feel is so powerful because that perspective can create the motivation to follow through

01:05:15

with some of these things that we know we should do, but we have trouble doing them.

01:05:22

Another thing in this chapter that's kind of talked about is this whole idea of like

01:05:26

how you end the day and how you start the day.

01:05:28

So you don't want to be reacting all the time.

01:05:30

You want to be intentional when I hit the ground running and they introduced this concept

01:05:35

of Pearson's law, which is that when performance is measured, performance improves.

01:05:40

And when performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.

01:05:45

And this in this chapter kind of speaks to me about the daily journaling stuff and like

01:05:55

the daily questions, which I mentioned earlier, this kind of solidifies why this approach

01:06:02

is important to me because it's a way of measuring that performance, but not in a way where you're

01:06:09

focused on the gap.

01:06:11

I feel like when you focus on the outcomes and I did this and I accomplished this, that

01:06:16

kind of reinforces the gap thinking, but the gain is, I don't know, like the daily questions

01:06:22

talked about in triggers by Marshall Goldsmith really feels like a very complimentary idea

01:06:27

of staying in the gain.

01:06:31

So I'm tend to continue to do that.

01:06:35

Alright, the last official chapter here is chapter six.

01:06:46

That is transform every experience into a gain.

01:06:52

Big idea in this chapter is that meaning and value are not given to us.

01:06:58

We create them.

01:07:00

That's kind of a powerful idea and when you frame an experience in the gap, you lose the

01:07:06

power and the ownership over it.

01:07:09

It kind of talks about how even traumatic experiences can be changed and that your past

01:07:14

isn't fixed, but it's flexible.

01:07:17

I guess what do you think about that idea?

01:07:21

I don't like it because again, it means that it's my fault.

01:07:25

So in this chapter, he goes through a lot of transforming your viewpoint on things.

01:07:35

He starts with a story of a guy who's trying to invest and he thinks he needs $5 million

01:07:39

in the bank in order to feel financially secure, but then once he gets to like seven, he's

01:07:43

like, "Well, I actually think it should be like 10," and then he's all of a sudden,

01:07:47

at 17, but he still feels like he doesn't quite have enough.

01:07:50

It's like, dude, you're three times over what you felt like you needed, but it's exactly

01:07:54

this.

01:07:55

He's found his meaning in a bigger number.

01:07:58

It's like the Rockefeller thing.

01:07:59

I don't even know if it's a real deal.

01:08:01

It's like, "How much is enough money?"

01:08:02

He's at a dollar or more.

01:08:04

I don't know if he actually said that or if somebody's just made this up at this point,

01:08:07

but that concept is exactly what we're talking about here.

01:08:11

That gap thing that's always moving, but the whole life and meaning and you creating it

01:08:16

for yourself, I don't really have arguments against that, but I also know that trying

01:08:24

to do that and to get yourself trained to think that way, if you're not wired that

01:08:33

way, I don't want to say from birth because I know that it's more like a training thing,

01:08:38

but if you've not been taught that from early on, it's tough to switch your mindset from

01:08:45

one side to the other on that one.

01:08:48

It's a continual battle, at least for me, I find that if that is.

01:08:52

Yes, one that I don't like, but I also like because it means I have control over it, but

01:08:58

it also means that I'm bad at it, Mike.

01:09:01

Well, I think I'm bad at it too.

01:09:07

This whole idea of the experience transformer, I know this is from a strategic coach and I

01:09:15

want to try and find this resource and give this a shot.

01:09:22

However, I think I've seen this before and my recollection of it was powerful idea, but

01:09:31

too complicated in the tool.

01:09:35

So I think there's an 80/20 with this, which is recognizing that you have the ability to

01:09:43

interpret things different ways.

01:09:45

Facts don't necessarily equal truth, right?

01:09:48

Going back to liminal thinking by Dave Gray.

01:09:53

I want to try and apply this.

01:09:55

I want to be, I guess, more psychologically flexible is kind of how he talks about it

01:10:01

because psychological flexibility basically means that you can manage your emotions,

01:10:04

they don't manage you.

01:10:05

So you don't really mind what happens and that leads to less anxiety and depression.

01:10:13

He also talks about how successful people don't control events, but they control their

01:10:17

response to those events.

01:10:21

And so that's challenging to me.

01:10:22

I think I can do a better job with that.

01:10:26

So I have an action item here for finding that experience transformer and giving it a shot,

01:10:31

but I am not that confident that the actual tool is going to stick with me.

01:10:40

This is similar to the whole, it's not my fault, but it's my responsibility territory

01:10:47

as well.

01:10:48

It's also in the territory of I'm not, how do I say this?

01:10:55

I'm not sorry for the actions I've taken, but I'm sorry for your response to them.

01:11:03

It starts to fit into that territory.

01:11:05

You know what I mean?

01:11:07

It's not necessarily, I don't have to get all bent out of shape because somebody else did

01:11:11

something.

01:11:13

I can't control what they did, but I can control my reaction to it.

01:11:19

And I know like I've had a couple of crazy days, Mike has been very gracious in moving

01:11:24

bookworm recording times around for me, but I've just had some stuff at work that's out

01:11:29

of my control and I could get really bent out of shape on it.

01:11:34

Last Friday I was kind of hot under the collar, but I made sure I didn't talk to anybody

01:11:38

because I knew I was hot under the collar and I was going to say something inappropriate.

01:11:42

So I didn't speak.

01:11:43

I just chose not to say words like, "Tell me what needs to be done.

01:11:46

I'll do what I can to get it done."

01:11:49

And that has served me very well in this particular scenario because then I know that

01:11:53

I still have those relationships fully intact.

01:11:55

I didn't, you know, it didn't lead to anything, but that means that you have to be willing

01:12:01

to control your actions in those scenarios.

01:12:04

But again, I can't control what they do.

01:12:07

They may have stepped out of bounds and I feel like they're definitely in the wrong.

01:12:11

And since then I've made sure we've had a calm conversation about it.

01:12:17

They're aware of my feelings on it.

01:12:20

They realize what they did now.

01:12:22

And I think we're in a better spot overall, but it just means that in the moment trying

01:12:27

to keep a cool head, maybe I should have rolled the windows down.

01:12:30

I wouldn't have worked today.

01:12:32

But that is just something I need to make sure that I know that I can control my reaction,

01:12:37

but I can't necessarily control the circumstances.

01:12:41

That's not simple to do.

01:12:43

In that particular scenario, I know I've had some practice in that particular one.

01:12:48

But in general speaking, I'm not very good at this.

01:12:52

There are definitely a lot of areas in this specific arena that I know I need to work

01:12:56

on.

01:12:57

Well, you and me both, but I think it's really important that you try to, the collective

01:13:03

you, we, all of us together, try to transform these experiences because in the words of Dr.

01:13:11

Benjamin Harvey and Dan Sullivan, they say that when you don't transform your experiences

01:13:15

and avoid them instead, which is the other option there, you could just continue to be

01:13:20

upset about the thing that happened.

01:13:23

Then you experience intrusive rumination.

01:13:25

I've definitely been in that place before, but even more importantly or more powerfully

01:13:31

in my mind, I guess, is that I've seen other people who are close to me get stuck in that.

01:13:39

And I don't want to do that.

01:13:44

Again, it's probably easier to see in somebody else than it is in yourself, but ultimately

01:13:48

you have to take control over yourself.

01:13:55

But I have a very vivid picture of some experience that hasn't been transformed and how it just

01:14:04

ate away at people close to me.

01:14:06

I could see the effect that it was having on them.

01:14:13

The person who wronged them, they completely forgot about it.

01:14:17

They moved on.

01:14:18

There's nothing, no additional interaction, but it just continued to eat at the people

01:14:25

who just refused to let it go.

01:14:27

It's not even letting it go.

01:14:28

That's not the thing.

01:14:29

It's not pretending that it didn't happen, but it's like, "Okay, so what good can I glean

01:14:33

from this?"

01:14:34

And then I'm willing to just dismiss it.

01:14:36

I'm not going to stay there.

01:14:38

It's like as long as you hold on to it, you, the Bible would say you retain the sins of

01:14:44

others on yourself by refusing to forgive and move on from that situation.

01:14:52

I think that's really dangerous.

01:14:58

The season of life that I'm in, going into my first day, officially full-time independent

01:15:06

creator guy, right?

01:15:09

I got to be careful because I don't want to let anything steal or sabotage my future.

01:15:19

I don't even really know exactly what it's going to look like at this point, kind of

01:15:24

figuring this out as we go, which is both exciting and terrifying to me.

01:15:30

But I guess just hearing him talk about this in this chapter reminded me of the importance

01:15:36

of this, not to get stuck there.

01:15:38

The picture I got in my head, like the fear setting, worst case scenario, was my first

01:15:44

week being independent, something happens and I get offended and I just let that thing

01:15:49

eat me up for the next six months and I make absolutely no progress.

01:15:54

That's the situation I want to avoid.

01:15:58

That's the trick, right?

01:16:00

Is knowing when that sort of thing has happened and when to move on with that.

01:16:07

I know my boss is really good at this.

01:16:09

He deals with all sorts of church political stuff and people who think things should be

01:16:14

done a certain way or a different way and it's like, that's not really our church.

01:16:19

He deals with that constantly and I know there are many people that he just doesn't want

01:16:24

to talk to because he knows he's just going to get complaints from them all the time.

01:16:29

But he always greets him with a smile.

01:16:31

He always is willing to talk to him.

01:16:33

He doesn't let it get under his skin.

01:16:35

It's like, well, maybe they'll eventually understand the overarching situation instead

01:16:40

of focusing on this one little tiny thing that doesn't really apply.

01:16:45

I can appreciate his viewpoint on that.

01:16:48

It's not one that I feel like I have fully adopted but it's one that I know that I could

01:16:52

learn from.

01:16:53

Okay, this is a person that I know that I regularly have issues with.

01:17:00

That doesn't mean I need to treat them significantly different in this arena that I'm referring

01:17:08

to.

01:17:09

There are sometimes you need to but the one that I'm referring to, no, it doesn't warrant

01:17:12

that.

01:17:13

So definitely something I need to learn as well.

01:17:15

How many times have I said that this episode?

01:17:17

I didn't write them down.

01:17:19

Please don't count them.

01:17:20

Okay.

01:17:21

Lots of learning happening this episode feels like.

01:17:25

Yep.

01:17:26

Yep.

01:17:27

All right, so there's one last chapter here and that is a very brief conclusion where a

01:17:35

lot of the big ideas in this book are reiterated.

01:17:40

I didn't write down a whole lot.

01:17:42

The big thing that kind of stood out to me as I went through this conclusion is that

01:17:46

ideals are like the horizon.

01:17:48

You will never get there.

01:17:50

He reiterates that measuring backwards liberates you from the gap encourages us to make the

01:17:56

choice to be happy and reminds us that we train our brain on what to see.

01:18:01

He also shares a whole long list of all of the failures and the times where he slipped

01:18:06

into the gap, which is kind of it's very motivating to hear him describe it because

01:18:13

measuring backwards, you can see how like the first, what seemed like insurmountable obstacles

01:18:18

that he encountered.

01:18:19

Obviously, you can see now like how he's gotten to that point, but all these points is kind

01:18:24

of build on each other.

01:18:26

So I think the effect of that, you can tell me if you viewed this the same way, was that

01:18:32

you kind of see how he started at nothing.

01:18:34

In fact, he shares how like at one point he was living on his, staying at his cousin's

01:18:40

couch or something and playing Warcraft 15 hours a day.

01:18:44

It's kind of hard to see like really the same guy was that guy, but in this last conclusion,

01:18:51

he kind of chronicles every step of that journey and the failures and rejections that happened

01:18:56

along the way and how he transformed those experiences and it's kind of encourages you

01:19:00

that like you can do it too.

01:19:03

I had a hard time accepting that that was a true story.

01:19:09

There's no way, no way, but yes way.

01:19:13

He totally did.

01:19:14

I totally believe him.

01:19:17

I didn't write anything down on this chapter, but I know that like those particular here's

01:19:21

where I've struggled with this in the past.

01:19:24

It shows that, you know, so many times you read articles online, especially people in

01:19:29

the productivity space and they like paint this picture of here's this grand way of doing

01:19:34

your project management or your task management and it just seems like they've got it all

01:19:38

put together.

01:19:39

I know I've been guilty of this too.

01:19:40

I know it comes across that way sometimes, but sometimes people are writing these things

01:19:46

because they know it's the right way to do it.

01:19:48

They just can't always bring themselves to do it every single time.

01:19:51

And this is exactly what he's dispelling in that he knows that this is a thing that

01:19:58

exists.

01:19:59

This is absolutely a better way to think about things by focusing on the gain versus the

01:20:03

gap, but it doesn't mean that once you understand that you've just magically flipped the switch

01:20:09

and every time you've looked down on yourself for the things you haven't yet accomplished,

01:20:13

you can just magically not have that anymore.

01:20:16

It's not the case.

01:20:17

The man who is responsible for the idea and the guy who's responsible for this book, they

01:20:23

know this is difficult and here's how difficult it can be.

01:20:28

So he's like putting some real world, even when you know all of this, it can still still

01:20:34

get you.

01:20:35

You just have to recognize it.

01:20:37

That to me is very refreshing and motivating and I'm very, very grateful that they put that

01:20:42

in there.

01:20:43

Awesome.

01:20:46

Well, that's the official end of the book.

01:20:50

Should we go to action items?

01:20:52

Yes.

01:20:53

So I've got a bunch which I'll run through.

01:20:56

So my first one, make my list of 10 things for I know I'm being successful when way back

01:21:02

from that first section.

01:21:04

Come up with my own filtering questions like the ones on page 45.

01:21:08

I want to teach my family to call each other out when in the gap.

01:21:14

I don't know exactly how I'm going to do this yet because I feel like you got to do

01:21:19

this the right way.

01:21:21

But I want this to become a thing at our house that we recognize this in each other and call

01:21:27

each other out when we see it.

01:21:30

I mentioned the no phone the hour before bed.

01:21:33

I want to use the books instead which some people may argue that's still a screen.

01:21:37

It's an eink screen.

01:21:38

It's not the same.

01:21:40

But I'm going to use this very intentionally and it's going to require me to shift some

01:21:46

things around so that I can intentionally avoid my phone specifically.

01:21:51

That's the big win.

01:21:52

I want to get consistent with the gratitude journaling and I want to find that experience

01:21:57

transformer online and give it a shot.

01:22:01

What about you?

01:22:03

I have the four two of mine are replications of yours.

01:22:08

One was to do the I know I'm being successful when those 10 things list.

01:22:14

The second was to come up with my own filtering questions question questions we'll see what

01:22:18

that lands.

01:22:19

The other was consistency with my evening journaling and then the last one was to stop

01:22:25

playing chess and bed before I go to sleep.

01:22:28

That's hard to say out loud.

01:22:35

All right.

01:22:36

Well, let's go to styling rating.

01:22:41

This is a different type of book.

01:22:45

It's not like a lot of the other books that we read and that's both good and bad primarily

01:22:51

good I would say.

01:22:53

But I don't think it's necessarily that doesn't necessarily mean it's like a five star book

01:22:58

or anything.

01:22:59

Keep in mind who these two people are the relationship that they have in creating this

01:23:04

book.

01:23:05

This is Dan Solomon's idea and he worked with Dr. Benjamin Hardy in order to write this book

01:23:11

about his idea.

01:23:13

That sounds like something that could get lost in translation or something where he's

01:23:19

like, okay, here's the core idea.

01:23:20

Now just add 300 pages, make it longer, boom, done.

01:23:24

That's not the approach that they took.

01:23:26

And for the dynamic here, I think that's the right approach.

01:23:30

It's something like 170 pages.

01:23:32

I don't know how many pages are just a single quote in the middle of a page though.

01:23:39

All those quotes are kind of supplementary quotes.

01:23:41

They're not pulled from the content of the book itself.

01:23:43

It's from conversations that Benjamin Hardy had with Dan Sullivan.

01:23:48

So I think it's a really effective way for communicating about this concept.

01:23:56

I think this concept is transformational.

01:24:01

It definitely has the ability to completely change your life.

01:24:05

However, just looking at the book itself, like where do I think this actually belongs

01:24:11

in terms of a rating?

01:24:14

I think it's about a 4.0.

01:24:16

The idea itself maybe is like a 5.0 idea.

01:24:21

And this is something that I've been talking about off and on for a long time.

01:24:26

I'm very grateful and happy that we went through it together and had a conversation about it.

01:24:31

There's definitely more meat in this book than some of the other things that I've heard

01:24:34

about the gap in the game previously.

01:24:38

But I also don't think this measures up to some of the other 5.0 books that we've had.

01:24:48

I don't know if that's just the way that it was packaged or maybe this is like a really

01:24:57

powerful idea, but the real power of it comes from applying it yourself so it doesn't need

01:25:03

a whole lot of explanation.

01:25:05

I think the net result of that is that it feels more basic, more elementary when you go through

01:25:13

it.

01:25:14

It feels very simple.

01:25:16

And I don't think that necessarily means that it's not a killer idea.

01:25:24

But I don't know.

01:25:25

I'm trying to think of some of the other 5.0 books that we've read.

01:25:30

The one gold standard that always comes to mind is man search for meaning.

01:25:36

I feel like this one doesn't have that kind of impact.

01:25:42

Another one that comes to mind is Flow by Mihali or How to Read a Book.

01:25:48

I feel like the ideas that I took away from some of those books, which are in the Bookworm

01:25:53

Hall of Fame, the Golden Books, those feel weightier than the one that I've heard.

01:26:00

This does.

01:26:01

I feel like this is very approachable and just about anybody can read this and get some immediate

01:26:08

benefit from it.

01:26:09

So I would recommend that everybody read it.

01:26:12

But I also recognize that I want to be careful how I rate books like this going forward.

01:26:21

I really want to protect those higher ratings for the ones that really do feel like world

01:26:28

altering.

01:26:29

And while this is a really cool idea and I definitely talk about it a lot, it doesn't

01:26:35

feel world altering to me.

01:26:38

Maybe that's just because I've encapsulated this idea and just kind of the idea of syntopical

01:26:43

reading.

01:26:44

I've mixed it and mashed it up with a whole bunch of other things that we've read.

01:26:51

I think there's a potential that you could come to this book and be like, "Oh my gosh,

01:26:54

this is amazing."

01:26:55

Totally a five star book.

01:26:57

I think it's also possible you could come into this like we talked about at the beginning,

01:27:01

completely miss the plot and be like, "Oh, this should have been a blog post."

01:27:05

So I think the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle.

01:27:10

So I'm going to give it four stars.

01:27:13

I just want to say that from a style stance, they did really, really well with this.

01:27:18

You come into a new chapter and you got a story that I've never heard before and they

01:27:23

detail it in a way that exactly tells what that particular chapter is trying to get across

01:27:29

and they don't have so many chapters here that it gets hard to put it all together.

01:27:34

Like you got two parts, you got six chapters and a conclusion.

01:27:38

That's really all it needs.

01:27:40

But again, you can get into that blog post territory.

01:27:43

I don't think this is that given the way that they came at this.

01:27:48

So I don't see it in that territory.

01:27:51

I think you're right, it's not a 5.0 book.

01:27:54

Some of that is just because the idea is really big, but it's not necessarily a, "This is

01:28:00

going to completely change your life in one day."

01:28:03

Type of idea, but it could definitely change your life in a very short amount of time too.

01:28:11

So I'm a little hesitant on that front.

01:28:15

But I know it doesn't sit in the 5.0 territory.

01:28:21

This doesn't quite feel quite right.

01:28:23

So I think you're right on with the 4.0.

01:28:25

So I'll join you there just because it just seems right.

01:28:30

Sometimes you feel your way through these things.

01:28:33

That's my take.

01:28:34

Anyway, I really like the book.

01:28:35

I've already recommended it to a couple of people.

01:28:37

I think it's one that a lot of people should read, especially if you find yourself struggling

01:28:45

with your mindset on things.

01:28:47

If you can't seem to figure out why you always feel down about your entrepreneurial adventures,

01:28:56

you might just be thinking about it wrong.

01:28:59

I feel like this could really help you get your brain in the right spot with that.

01:29:03

I have recommended it directly to a couple of people already.

01:29:08

So I think a lot of people should pick this up.

01:29:10

I don't know if I would say everybody though.

01:29:12

I think I agree with you.

01:29:14

The other thing I'll add with this before we put it on the shelf is I really do recommend

01:29:21

that people get this one unaudible, which sounds weird because I'm generally against

01:29:27

the audiobooks.

01:29:30

The best audiobooks for me are ones that I have read previously and I just want to re-here

01:29:37

or re-listen to the book itself or they're the biographical books like creativity ink.

01:29:46

I really liked that in audible format.

01:29:50

I guess fiction books too, but I don't really do fiction.

01:29:54

I was just getting here to say, "Wait a second."

01:29:57

I recognize that that would be a good format for stories basically.

01:30:04

But this one, having the additional material where they actually just start shooting the

01:30:10

breeze in between the chapters, I feel like that adds a lot.

01:30:15

So that is more valuable, I think, than the actual content in the book sometimes.

01:30:21

Fair enough.

01:30:23

Because the book is very formal, but when you get somebody in an informal setting, I feel

01:30:27

like the way that they say things sometimes speaks louder than what they're actually saying.

01:30:34

So if you're looking for a good audible candidate, this is one of those.

01:30:41

Fair enough.

01:30:43

All right, that being said, let's put this one on the shelf.

01:30:47

What's next, Joe?

01:30:49

Up next is the things you can only see when you slow down by Haman Sunum because mindfulness

01:30:57

is the thing we need to talk about because I'm not being very mindful right now.

01:31:04

There you go.

01:31:06

And I'm going to drag you along with me.

01:31:09

This one's rated pretty high in the Amazon world.

01:31:12

So I'm curious to see.

01:31:14

I see a lot of these 50 books you need to read in the next three years or 15 books to

01:31:21

read this year.

01:31:22

And I feel like this one keeps hitting every list I see lately.

01:31:25

So right now I want to know what the hype's all about, even though it's been around for

01:31:29

a while, I think, if I remember correctly.

01:31:33

And then what, Mike?

01:31:35

Well just on that topic, I think this is a pretty cool timing for this book.

01:31:39

I mean, we just talked about the gap in the game.

01:31:41

There's definitely a mindfulness aspect to that.

01:31:43

Headspace has been a sponsor of Bookworm in the last several episodes.

01:31:46

So I've been dabbling with that again.

01:31:48

So I'm actually excited to get into that one.

01:31:52

But after that, I am picking one from the Bookworm Club award recommended decoding greatness

01:31:59

by Ron Friedman.

01:32:00

And so we're going to go through that one after your book on things that you can only

01:32:08

see when you slow down.

01:32:11

Sounds good.

01:32:12

But how about a gap book, Mike?

01:32:13

What do you got?

01:32:14

I do have a gap book.

01:32:17

Shooting right now, The Richest Man in Babylon by George Claisen, this is kind of a classic

01:32:23

book that I have heard recommended many, many times.

01:32:28

And I have never actually read it.

01:32:30

So I'm going through it right now.

01:32:32

There you go.

01:32:33

How about you?

01:32:34

I've been back into tribe of mentors lately.

01:32:37

So Tim Ferriss' book, I told you this is going to keep coming up.

01:32:42

Yep.

01:32:43

And I'm not 25% of the way through it.

01:32:45

So you may hear me talk about this for about the next year at this point.

01:32:50

So there you go.

01:32:52

Super fun.

01:32:54

All right.

01:32:55

Well, thanks for listening, everyone.

01:32:57

Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members.

01:33:01

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01:33:06

And I think also at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:33:09

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01:33:16

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01:33:17

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01:33:23

And those are all in the club along with a Profeed, which is the same show minus the

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01:33:38

we go live.

01:33:39

And so it has a little bit of extra stuff at the beginning and at the end of the episodes.

01:33:43

Today's bootleg, you get to hear me be frustrated with my technology right before talking about

01:33:49

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01:33:53

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01:33:59

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01:34:06

And if you're amazing and you read along with us, pick up the things you can only see when

01:34:10

you slow down.

01:34:11

We'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.