Bookworm Transcripts

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So I just got back from Craft and Commerce Joe Buleg and it was amazing.

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Wish you could have been there.

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I kind of wish I had been there.

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Yeah, it's good time.

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I ended up staying in an Airbnb with a couple of our mutual friends and a couple new ones.

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And one of the people that stayed with us was a chef and he had a friend who does these pop-up dinners in Boise

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who lived a couple blocks from where we were.

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So we ended up having a dinner party at our house one night with these crazy hors d'oeuvres.

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I don't even know what was in them.

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One of them had octopus, but it was some of the best food that I've ever had.

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That sounds like a rough life.

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It was a good time.

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And then it's the standard Craft and Commerce conference.

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I'm not sure if you've ever been.

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I've been one other time.

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I have not been to that one, no.

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OK.

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It's a small conference.

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And so I keep forgetting that not many people have been to this.

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But it is definitely a worthwhile conference.

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I met a bunch of amazing people, Justin Moore, Nathan Barry, obviously, CEO of ConvertKit.

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Shared a little documentary that they've been working on sharing kind of his story,

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how ConvertKit got rolling and all that kind of stuff, really, really great people.

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And there's just something about the energy when you get into that environment

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with all those other creators.

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It's electric.

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It's great even for an inch for it like me.

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It definitely put wind in my sales.

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So I don't think there's a link to join next year yet, but they did offer a pre-buy thing

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for people who attended.

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So I have already bought my ticket for next year.

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I'm going record of saying that.

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And before I completely forget about this until next June,

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want to give a plug, go to Craft and Commerce.

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It is definitely a worthwhile conference.

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And Boise is a really cool city.

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It's kind of like a miniature Austin, but set in the mountains and more green.

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So mountains and more green.

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That's about what it takes to get me there.

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So there you go.

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It's true.

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You got the beard going.

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You kind of look like a mountain man already.

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Anyways, you'll fit right in.

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Yeah.

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So last week, there was a morning when it was kind of cool out.

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So I had none other than the red flannel shirt.

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When I say red flannel shirt, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

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And I had that on, but I was headed to the back by the shed to split wood.

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So here I am with the beard and had my hat on the red plaid shirt and an axe on my shoulder.

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And then I realized, huh, this has got to be quite a look.

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And then my wife confirmed that.

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Yep.

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That's the lumberjack there.

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Yep, it's kind of how it's become.

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That's amazing.

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All right.

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One other thing before we get to follow up.

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One of the people that I hung out with at Craft and Commerce is Mike Vardy.

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He's a good buddy and we have decided to do something together.

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So we are hosting a creative momentum masterclass.

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It's basically a paid webinar workshop, which is going to be June 29th.

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So the week after this publishes $49, 90 minutes.

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And we're teaming up basically to layer elements of his time crafting methodology on top of my creativity flywheel.

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We were talking about it.

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We kind of realized that productivity, creativity are like two sides of the same coin.

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And the creativity flywheel, Nathan Berry actually give a talk at Craft and Commerce about flywheels,

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which is really what got this going for me.

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And I realized that flywheels, once you get them going, each turn becomes easier and produces more output.

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So they're very efficient, but you need some effort to get them going.

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And kind of the productivity practices, that's kind of the wind in the sails.

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Right.

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So we're teaming up and we're going to present hopefully a killer workshop Thursday the 29th.

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There's two times and you can pick either one to sign up for, but they are separate registrations.

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So I'll put links to both of them in the show notes.

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One of them is going to be at 10 a.m. Central time.

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One of them is at 3 p.m. Central time.

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So if you are looking for some help dialing in your creative systems,

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illuminating the friction, finding the flow, trying to create on a regular schedule,

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whether that be full time or even just you want to make consistent progress on your creative side project.

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I'd love to have you join us.

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Cool.

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What's it called in creative?

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The creative momentum masterclass.

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It's trying to write it down.

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It's like, wait, creative what?

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Got it.

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I got it now.

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Yeah.

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So we'll talk about a bunch of the different things that can hinder that momentum, obviously.

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So one of them could be, I just don't know what to create stuff on.

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So how to never run out of ideas, right?

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That's the whole idea of the flywheel is an input.

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There's a process.

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There's an output.

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It is a creative system.

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Creativity is a formula, that kind of stuff.

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Right.

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And we're just going to try to eliminate as many roadblocks as we can for people so they can make their stuff.

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Obviously, ConvertKit's whole thing is they exist to help creators make a living online.

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But it's impossible to be in that place with all those other creators and not feel like creating is one of the most important things in the world.

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I kind of thought that prior anyways, but it just kind of galvanized that thought of my head recently.

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So I want to help people be more creative through the art of intentional productivity.

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Super cool.

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Vardy is a solid guy too.

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So we'll have Mike and Mike.

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Exactly.

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Mike squared.

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Mike's on.

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The minimum.

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Mike's, but not the Mike's on Mike's.

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I miss that show.

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I know me too.

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Totally miss.

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I wish it could have worked out long term for them.

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But yes.

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That's going back in time in the podcast world.

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All right.

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So should we go through our action items?

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Not from the previous book, but from the book before that I think.

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Two ago.

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So do you have any luck with these?

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You get two of them here.

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I failed miserably.

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I knew these were coming.

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I looked at these frequently.

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I just have not had time to really think about this.

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So I was in Boise.

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I came back and started sitting at university immediately after.

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And that's been going really well.

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But I have been putting a lot of extra effort into that.

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We're kind of talking about this before we hit record.

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Just I want to deliver an awesome experience.

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Right.

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So when I feel like this is the best way to teach something, I just do it.

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And so I have done these presentations before where I'll record little snippets of something

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happening and then break it up into these slides that I can trigger in keynote.

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So I can kind of control the pace, but it looks like I'm walking through a live video.

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But the audio and the video line up perfectly that way.

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Well, normally I do that for an hour long presentation.

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And I'll have a couple, ten second things that I chop up.

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I went through themes, customization and plugins last time.

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And I decided that the only way to effectively teach all 21 core plugins was to do this for each one.

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Of course you did.

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Yeah.

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So a little bit like drinking from the fire hose, I'm sure for some of the people that were there,

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but got some great feedback on it, obviously.

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And yeah, I want to make these long-term assets that are going to be helpful for people.

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And so that took a lot of time, a lot of effort.

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And I've been basically doing that for every single session.

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I'm also not at home today.

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People who are watching this video on when we record these live can see that I am up in Dark County visiting.

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My parents came up here for Father's Day and been hanging out with them a little bit.

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So those are my excuses, but I did not list the ten things for I know I'm being successful when,

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but if anything, that one actually I made less progress on because I came back from the Craft and Commerce Conference

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and I was like, "I'm doing too many things.

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I got to figure out what am I going to be known for?"

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And I don't know what I want to really be known for.

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There were a couple people who kind of spoke to this.

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One of them was Jay Klaus and he talked about the sawdust problem.

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And basically it's like there's this saying, "Sell the sawdust."

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Basically share the process when you make stuff, which is cool, but it should be in service of like a long-term asset.

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And he basically challenged everybody like, "What is your thing?"

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And I was like, "I don't know what my thing is. I've got multiple things."

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Yeah.

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So trying to figure that out.

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And then teaching my family to call each other out when we're in the gap.

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I've kind of pointed this out a couple times, but this wasn't the big formal, "Okay, let's have a meeting

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and establish this system and this routine."

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It hasn't caught on yet.

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So gap and gain has been something that has come up naturally in conversation probably four or five times since the last episode,

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though. So I've kind of exceeded it when I've had the opportunity, but we've got more work to do there.

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Yeah.

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How about you?

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That particular concept, like the gap and the gain, it shows up in many, many scenarios.

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And I don't think I expected it to.

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It seems like that concept is one that I end up talking about. Not necessarily using those terms, but it's one that's like,

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"Well, are you thinking about where you're coming from? Are you thinking about what you're missing?

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Which of those two are you considering right now?"

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And that conversation does seem to come up.

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I should actually probably mention that the whole idea there is like, don't go to the negative stuff, right?

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And I shared with you before we record. I had quite the travel experience on the way to Boise.

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And this did come to mind because there's another version of this that someone in my mastermind group had shared

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as this saying, "I don't mind what happens."

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And so that came into my mind over and over and over again when I was almost in Boise but couldn't land and got diverted to Salt Lake City

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and then finally landed in Provo and then went back to Salt Lake City and stayed there and waited for my crew to come before getting to Boise.

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Multiple times I found myself like, "I don't mind what happens."

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So I feel like I had a great opportunity to go into the gap and for the most part didn't.

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I mean, when I was on the same plane for eight hours and no one could get up and use the restroom, that was a little frustrating.

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It did help having that front of mind.

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Yeah, that concept has saved me a few times just because I could easily focus on all the things that didn't get done this week.

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Or like in this case, my two action items, I could focus on the reasons that I didn't do them.

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But instead of focusing on all the excuses as much as I want to give them, maybe I should just say that I got a lot done for our outdoor event that didn't happen.

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But really, I didn't get them done.

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So the two that I had on the list was the same one, list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when, but also to come up with my own filtering questions.

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Definitely looked at them more than a couple times and that's as far as it got.

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So complete failure.

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Leave them bolded.

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That way they show up next time.

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They're still on my reminders list too.

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So I keep getting hit with them daily.

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Hey, have you done this yet?

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Hey, have you done this yet?

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Hey, have you done this yet?

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The answer is no.

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Reminders, are you actually using Apple's reminders?

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Yeah.

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Have I said that on this show?

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Maybe I haven't said that on here.

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I don't know.

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But it just piqued my interest because iOS 17 and the Kanban boards that are being added to reminders.

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I saw that and I got a little inordinately excited over that.

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That could be, oh, this, this, this, this, this, all the little funny things that would be

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interesting to me.

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And then I have to step back and remember that a Kanban board for my reminders list is not

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the thing that will make me the most productive person in the world.

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It's true.

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That's not the thing.

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Just not the thing.

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Okay.

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There we go.

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I failed at my action items.

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I failed.

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Yes.

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We can be done.

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That is enough failure before we talk about greatness.

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All right.

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So today's book is Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman, subtitle, How the Best in the World

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Reverse Engineer Success.

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And this was a recommendation from the Bookworm Club from Ward.

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So thank you, Ward, for recommending this one.

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If you want to recommend books, you should do that.

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You should do it right now if you're listening live because I just realized I didn't pick

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mine for next time yet.

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Please go recommend books so we know what we're going to potentially pick from.

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Oh, I've got a bunch.

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I've got a bunch.

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But yeah, get those, get those votes in.

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I do look at that pretty, pretty often and see what, what is new in there.

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But this book is broken down into really two different parts.

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But there's four sections that we'll cover here.

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There's a short introduction.

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And then part one is the Art of Unlocking Hidden Patterns.

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Part two is the Vision Ability Gap.

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And then the last part is a brief conclusion.

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Now this book is about 200 pages, the hardcover version that I have.

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It looks much longer than that though because there are so many references.

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Really every productivity story you have ever heard is going to be referenced in this

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one, but it's going to be a sentence or two and the reference will be in the back.

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Which we'll talk more about style and rating later.

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But I actually think this is a pretty good approach.

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You can tell this is not something that was slapped together because Ron Friedman got inspired.

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This is the result of a lot of work and effort.

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And I think given the subject matter, it kind of has to be.

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If you're going to talk about how the best people in the world reverse engineer success,

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you got to do your homework.

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What was your first impression of this book?

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Your first impression, decoding greatness, just off of the title and subtitle, I was

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kind of thinking I was going to get a playbook of how to take people who have been hyper-successful

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and then replicate their process.

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Although I would say that that's probably the end result here, I don't think it's quite

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so cookie cutter.

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It's more of a, here's the process to figure out the process.

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It's almost a meta, one step removed scenario.

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In this particular case, I really appreciate.

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That's helpful to me to know, here are the steps you can work through to get to this.

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I'm going to teach you how to decode greatness, not these exact steps that you need to take

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in order to do that if you're with me.

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Again, it's not like a one, two, three do this, you're done.

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Here's how you figure out what your steps are.

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I really like that.

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First impressions were that this is going to be an exact systems book, but I'm kind of

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glad that that's not what it is.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Let's get into the beginning part here, the introduction.

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The introduction is pretty short, but there's a couple things that I jotted down here, which

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kind of set the stage for the rest of the book and also kind of tangentially relate

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to what you were just mentioning about how it's not just a follow the system, you have

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to figure this out.

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The big idea, and it's even in the subtitle, is this concept of reverse engineering.

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Basically, it says that reverse engineering is important if you want to stay out of the

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curb and there's lots of examples of people who have reverse engineered different things,

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whether it's a product, a business, a writing style.

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He talks about how Malcolm Gladwell lands on his formula later on.

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There's lots of really cool examples of how to do this.

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I think that idea is really powerful.

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I like that idea.

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However, there's one other thing that he said in this introduction that didn't sit real

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great with me and I've been kind of chewing on ever since I got back from the Craft and

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Commerce conference.

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But ConvertKit's whole mission, and Nathan Barry talked about this, the reason they exist

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is to help creators earn a living.

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They sell t-shirts and things that say, "I am a creator on them."

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They've got the big coffee table type blogger books about highlighting different creators.

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I've just been in that world, but also I personally feel that there has never been a

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better time ever to make a living as a creator.

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The tools that we have, they make it easy for you to find your tribe and do your thing.

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I was kind of surprised at how niche some of the creators that were there were.

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There was one person I met who was a no-code developer so they make Squarespace sites,

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but they make them specifically for accounting firms.

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That's really, really niche, but you can do that kind of stuff.

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Thanks, Internet.

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But Ron Freeman says in the introduction that no matter what you do for a living, you have

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much more competition than in decades past.

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I understand the broader point that he's making with this because Internet has also allowed

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us to connect with people from all over the place.

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You could have been in your tiny little town and you were the best, fill in the blank in

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that town.

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That was everyone thought you were great, but you had no context, real context, because

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all you knew were the people who were in the same place as you.

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Now we're hyper aware of all the people who are doing the thing we want to do all over

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the place.

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I think that's sort of balanced out by the ability to niche down and become known for

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this specific thing.

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I feel like there's a balance here, which obviously, Ron Freeman's not speaking directly

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to kind of curious your thoughts on that.

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I took it somewhat differently in that, yes, there's maybe a disc, because if we back up,

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part of what you're getting at is that we oftentimes refer to competition doesn't matter,

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because it's not like if I win you lose scenario, competition is a good thing, in that it's

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not like a loss of money or anything, really, if I'm in the same space as you.

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If I were to go headlong into the obsidian space, that's a plus for both of us.

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I'm not doing that, by the way.

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Good.

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That's the thing that you and I, the scarcity mindset, that's one that I think you and I

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would reject, but I think what my impression of that particular comment here was just that

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people only have so much attention in time.

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Even in the creator space, you do kind of have competition in that, because if there

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are a hundred people that are in the obsidian space creating one hour courses, someone

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can't watch those all in one day.

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Yep.

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So, there is a little bit of a scarcity piece in that sense.

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So at some point, it does exist, and the competition for someone's attention definitely

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is there and can overtake and make it to where you do have to be better than somebody

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else in that sense.

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If, is that really true?

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If you're targeting one specific person, yes, there's strong competition there, but there's

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so many people in the world, like what you're talking about, the no code for financial world.

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Like that's very niche, and yet they're going to find the people who are willing to put that

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particular topic very high in their list of attention desires, I guess.

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So in that sense, there's not.

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So I think I get what you're saying, but I didn't really take it as what you're saying.

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Yeah, that makes sense.

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It does.

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That's fair, I think.

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Just the wording of it kind of hit me wrong.

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He's not explicitly talking about the scarcity mindset, but I guess the fact that he's saying

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you have much more competition than in decades past kind of forces my brain in that direction.

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And I'm totally applying this to my creator context, which is not what he's talking about

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at all.

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There are probably quite a few big business people who are going to read this book, and

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the market's only so big and they want the majority of the pie.

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So they do need to be the best if they're going to achieve their goals, which is one

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of the reasons I decided to become a creator.

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I don't like that.

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But maybe I'm not the exact person that this is for, or I'm just reading into it too much.

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It's a minor point.

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So we can move on and actually talk about part one next and part one is the art of unlocking

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hidden patterns.

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Now I think I would like to try to go through all of these individual chapters because there's

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not that many chapters in the book.

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I think there are seven.

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Seven, yeah.

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Yep.

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So in the first part, there's three.

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And then in the second part, there are four.

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The first chapter in the first part is the mastery detectives.

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And got lots of notes from this one.

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A lot of my notes for this book are kind of all over the place.

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So I'm just going to kind of pick a few things here.

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And yeah, if you got anything that you want to talk about specifically, we can definitely

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address those in these chapters too, because there really isn't an arc to my notes or the

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discussion that I really want to have about this.

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So I'll just jump in here.

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He mentions at the beginning of this chapter that there's two stories that we've been told.

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That greatness comes from talent and that greatness comes from practice.

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And he's basically saying that there are other methods or at least one other method,

00:24:43

reverse engineering that he mentioned in the introduction to get to that place where you

00:24:50

are doing something great.

00:24:52

And this is where he starts to talk about some of the people who have used this approach.

00:24:58

It was the introduction where he told the story about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

00:25:04

I forget if that was introduction or chapter one.

00:25:07

That was introduction.

00:25:08

Okay.

00:25:09

Yeah.

00:25:10

So Steve Jobs is berating Bill Gates because they just launched Windows and he's like,

00:25:13

you totally ripped off the Mac OS.

00:25:19

And Bill's like, well, you ripped it off from somebody else.

00:25:21

And that's kind of the whole premise here is that kind of everything is a remix.

00:25:28

And if you're so concerned about people not making anything that is even remotely like

00:25:33

your thing, like you're always going to be trying to defend that stuff.

00:25:38

But the other approach is to just try to continually ask where is the next innovation coming from

00:25:43

and reverse engineer the next great thing that you're making.

00:25:50

One of the things that really stood out to me from this section as it pertains to the

00:25:54

creative stuff that I'm doing is this story about Kurt Vonnegut and how the world's most

00:26:00

popular stories belong to six different trajectories.

00:26:05

Rags to riches, which is a rising emotional arc, riches to rags, the falling emotional

00:26:09

arc, man in a hole, fall followed by a rise, Icarus, a rise followed by a fall, Cinderella,

00:26:15

which is rise, fall, rise, and Oedipus, whose fall, rise, fall.

00:26:19

I probably said that last one wrong.

00:26:20

I don't know anything about Greek mythology.

00:26:22

Oedipus.

00:26:23

Oedipus.

00:26:24

Thank you for saving my bacon.

00:26:28

But if you think about that, how many books have been written, how many movies have been

00:26:33

recorded, like how many stories have been told that follow these six formulas.

00:26:39

And it sort of triggered in me.

00:26:42

I was watching, I was at the Entre Leadership Summit a while back and Donald Miller was presenting.

00:26:49

And he had just come out with the Story Brand framework and he was equating all of these

00:26:55

different stories, like the Story Brand framework to Star Wars.

00:27:00

Basically, his point was like, this is the story for these epic type of movies.

00:27:04

And this is the story that your brand needs to have.

00:27:07

And then he obviously applied all sorts of his marketing principles to that.

00:27:12

You're not the hero, you're just the guide, you're helping the customer do a specific

00:27:17

thing, they're encountering three different types of opposition, yada, yada, yada.

00:27:25

And I guess what it really kind of cemented in me was the belief that like, no matter

00:27:34

what I make, it is the result of the formula going back to steel like an artist.

00:27:42

So don't get hung up on like this incredible, unique creation.

00:27:49

It really is just some of all the parts, the formulas are borrowed, they're being reused

00:27:54

that doesn't degrade the value of the thing that you are making.

00:28:00

But why not just lean into that and glean as much as you can from that process?

00:28:07

Because that is the right path.

00:28:11

The story because it's surface level is that the greatness comes from talent and the greatness

00:28:16

comes from putting in the reps.

00:28:17

But as we learned from Peek by Anders Erickson, that's not necessarily the case, you got to

00:28:20

have the right kind of practice.

00:28:23

So dig a little bit deeper.

00:28:24

And when you do dig a little bit deeper, you realize that everybody's just putting in

00:28:26

the reps.

00:28:27

On just a couple pages after that whole section you're talking about, there's a line in here.

00:28:36

He's talking about Mrs. Fields' brand chocolate chip cookies, which everybody loves.

00:28:43

If you don't love them, something's wrong with you.

00:28:46

And the phrase that he has here is this page 11.

00:28:49

He says, "Observing the greats opens your mind to fresh possibilities."

00:28:55

And from that you can then start to find the patterns.

00:28:59

And there's a whole bunch more on that as we go through this book.

00:29:02

But like that particular phrase really struck me.

00:29:04

"Observing the greats opens your mind to fresh possibilities."

00:29:07

And that's something that I know that people do when they're in an apprenticeship.

00:29:12

If you find somebody who's really good at their craft, you want to follow them and watch

00:29:17

their process.

00:29:18

Not necessarily their end product, but how do they get there?

00:29:22

And that's very common in the world of an apprentice.

00:29:26

But that whole thing doesn't exist near as much.

00:29:31

I've been hearing about it having a resurgence here lately.

00:29:35

But in recent years, somebody taking on an apprenticeship really hasn't happened.

00:29:43

But you don't have to go through a formal apprenticeship to do that.

00:29:46

That's kind of what I got from this is just there are enough resources out there that

00:29:52

if you wanted to understand how does Elon Musk do what he does with Tesla?

00:29:58

How does he do what he does with SpaceX?

00:30:00

There's enough information out there.

00:30:02

Without ever having met him, you could figure out a lot of his process and then start the

00:30:07

process of replicating that.

00:30:10

You might need a lot of money to replicate Elon Musk.

00:30:15

That's beside the point.

00:30:16

But you get my point here is like, this is something that we can watch what other people

00:30:21

are doing who are successful in an arena, who are accomplishing a thing similar to what

00:30:25

we want to do and then start the process of breaking down what they're doing.

00:30:29

That's essentially what a lot of this book is about.

00:30:31

But I just love the way that he's got this phrase here at the beginning to set us up

00:30:36

for the process of understanding what that process looks like.

00:30:40

One of the examples he talks about in this first chapter is the process of de-formulation,

00:30:46

which is when you reverse engineer medicines into the individual chemical components.

00:30:51

I had never heard that term before, but when he explained it, I was like, "Oh, yeah,

00:30:56

obviously, that must be a thing that happens."

00:30:59

But he was basically saying, "This is a lot more approachable than you think.

00:31:02

This is not millions of dollars to do this.

00:31:04

You can send it away for like $2,000 and they'll give you an exact list of all the ingredients."

00:31:09

Yes.

00:31:10

I was like, "Oh, wow.

00:31:12

So even someone like me could do something like this."

00:31:15

And that's the big takeaway, I think, is anybody can do this.

00:31:19

You just have to have the right mindset.

00:31:23

I have an action item from this first chapter because I met some really cool people at Craft

00:31:32

and Commerce and some people who are doing some pretty awesome things.

00:31:37

And I want to obviously grow my newsletter, my communities.

00:31:44

I saw Seheel Bloom speak and that guy is doing some cool stuff.

00:31:52

He's invested in all these cool companies.

00:31:55

Primarily, he's a creator trying to grow his email list.

00:31:58

That's how he's gotten big.

00:32:02

He reinvests everything that he makes from his newsletter back into the newsletter so

00:32:08

it grows faster.

00:32:10

He's doing a book deal.

00:32:11

One of the companies that he's invested in is this company called Wanda.

00:32:14

Have you ever heard of this?

00:32:16

No, Wanda.com.

00:32:17

It's basically these really nice smart houses that are different places in the US.

00:32:26

Kind of like personal retreat style houses, but a lot of them are bigger so they're kind

00:32:30

of for groups.

00:32:32

Anyways, wouldn't it be cool to be able to invest in that kind of stuff and just have

00:32:40

a bigger impact?

00:32:44

I get all excited.

00:32:46

Not that I'm comparing myself necessarily to Seheel Bloom, but you get around people

00:32:50

like that who are doing the thing.

00:32:52

You can't help but feel energized to like, "Hey, I really got to get serious about this

00:32:57

and who knows what I'm capable of.

00:32:59

Maybe I could do something awesome too."

00:33:02

I've got a list of a couple people who are doing cool communities and I just really like

00:33:08

what they're doing with their newsletter regardless of the size.

00:33:11

Because I kind of have in my head, I want to get my newsletter to, right now it's about

00:33:16

2000 subscribers.

00:33:18

I want to get it to 10,000 because I feel like at 10,000 that's really when things start

00:33:23

to change and you have more options.

00:33:24

You can sell ads in your newsletter if you want to.

00:33:28

At 10,000, if I've just continued to sell my products, maybe that's enough and that is

00:33:35

able to provide the full-time living alone as an independent creator.

00:33:42

But obviously if I'm going to grow my list to that size, it's not just get people on

00:33:46

the list.

00:33:47

I have to deliver consistent value.

00:33:49

Very aware of my open rates being very high, my click-through rates being very high, my

00:33:54

list even though it's small is pretty great.

00:33:57

That's a result of serving people well for many years.

00:34:03

Not necessarily the newsletter.

00:34:04

I've shared, I've struggled to send that consistently.

00:34:08

I don't want to neglect that anymore.

00:34:09

And then the faith-based productivity community, I want to grow that.

00:34:12

So I have a couple people who are really killing it in specific areas.

00:34:16

And I want to kind of reverse engineer what they're doing.

00:34:21

I've joined some newsletters, I've joined some workshops, joined some communities just

00:34:26

because I want to poke around in there and be like, "How are they doing this?"

00:34:30

Because I don't really know.

00:34:31

But they seem to have it figured out.

00:34:33

So let's see what they're doing.

00:34:35

Figure out my version of that.

00:34:37

I like it.

00:34:39

Yeah, I actually have an action of this very similar to that.

00:34:42

I've got three of them here.

00:34:45

And I want to take, and I'm putting a time on this because we're talking about Joe's

00:34:51

brain.

00:34:53

And I'm going to give myself one week because I've been writing for the blog and I'm working

00:34:59

my way towards making the newsletter that I have a little more, not a little more, but

00:35:05

start writing for it again.

00:35:09

But I want to make sure that in the space I'm talking about, because I'm kind of making

00:35:14

a content topic change for me because I've done so much of the productivity stuff in

00:35:21

the past.

00:35:22

And a lot of what I've been writing about lately is handling tech at church.

00:35:26

It's been a big thing and how do you run events well?

00:35:30

And I've kind of been making that shift.

00:35:32

But I know how people do things in the productivity space in those arenas.

00:35:38

I don't really know how people do it in the church tech arenas.

00:35:43

And I kind of want to see if I can take some of what I've learned elsewhere and mash that

00:35:47

up.

00:35:48

But I also don't know what works in those zones.

00:35:51

So I'm giving myself one week to kind of examine what other people are doing in that space.

00:35:58

But that was the one I had from this section here.

00:36:01

Cool.

00:36:02

Should go on to the next section?

00:36:04

Sure.

00:36:05

Or a chapter, I should say.

00:36:08

So chapter two is algorithmic thinking.

00:36:13

And don't have quite as many notes from this section.

00:36:16

It talks about pattern recognition engines have four components, data collection, finding

00:36:20

important variations, detecting similarities and generating predictions.

00:36:25

Basically, the point here is to find the patterns because the best ideas don't come from the

00:36:31

hours of isolated practice.

00:36:34

And patterns are more easily found in quantity.

00:36:40

There's one specific thing I wanted to talk about in this chapter.

00:36:46

Okay.

00:36:47

So this is books versus audiobooks.

00:36:53

So he actually has a pretty brilliant strategy, I think, here to spot differences.

00:37:00

He says, "Take a single work and consume it multiple ways."

00:37:06

So you mentioned like we read physical books for the most part.

00:37:14

I don't know that I've ever done an audiobook for Bookworm.

00:37:18

Maybe the art of asking back in the day.

00:37:20

I couldn't remember.

00:37:22

I do vaguely remember there was one that you said you gave up and listened to it.

00:37:28

Probably the art of asking.

00:37:29

While you were running maybe?

00:37:30

Yeah.

00:37:31

Yeah, probably the art of asking.

00:37:32

Does it sound right?

00:37:33

Because I'm remembering now that she had like songs in between the chapters.

00:37:38

So I'm remembering as I'm talking.

00:37:42

But yeah, the general principle for me is that you get out of a book what you put into it.

00:37:50

And I'm actually thankful that we have to muscle through and finish books that don't

00:37:54

necessarily resonate with us because the other one picked it.

00:37:57

I've learned a lot and there are some books that I probably would have given up on like

00:38:01

how to read a book that have taught me some very important lessons that have kind of stuck

00:38:08

with me because I stuck with the book back in the day.

00:38:14

I know that's not generally the advice.

00:38:17

There's lots of books out there and if something's not resonating then go ahead and find something

00:38:23

else.

00:38:24

I think our audience is probably generally going to lean towards audiobooks because podcasts

00:38:31

are audio format.

00:38:34

So there's that.

00:38:37

But I do like the idea of supplementing a book with an audiobook.

00:38:42

I've actually done that but I've never articulated it.

00:38:47

I didn't codify it.

00:38:48

I just kind of realized that I don't always want to listen to podcasts and there are some

00:38:55

things that I want to listen to or revisit the material over and over again.

00:39:02

So having an audiobook is a great way to do that.

00:39:05

Like one example is Jim Rohn, the art of exceptional living.

00:39:11

I have read that read quote unquote listened to that book probably a hundred times because

00:39:18

Jim Rohn is great and there's just like these little principles.

00:39:21

Jim Rohn is the personal development guy who mentored Anthony Robbins back in the day.

00:39:31

He ran his merch table but I feel like Jim Rohn is the perfect balance of there's no

00:39:41

hype there.

00:39:43

It just feels very approachable.

00:39:46

If you listen to his voice too he's got this kind of twang which is I can see how people

00:39:53

would find it annoying but he'll be presenting in Alaska a rhetorical question.

00:39:58

He'll be like of course you know stuff like that.

00:40:02

I just I actually kind of like that.

00:40:04

I want to say that's that type of thing.

00:40:07

That's the character in somebody's voice that I absolutely love.

00:40:09

Yeah.

00:40:10

I know that it drives people bonkers but I absolutely love those.

00:40:14

You either love it or you hate it and there are definitely voices where like I can't listen

00:40:18

to this.

00:40:20

Like Tony Robbins actually on his money book is his audible version.

00:40:24

He did the first chapter just so he could have his voice there but his voice is kind of going

00:40:28

from all the crazy stuff that he does on stage.

00:40:31

So he had somebody else actually read the rest of the book.

00:40:35

But I like this idea of like okay so you've read the book you may as well listen to it

00:40:40

also to get something out of it.

00:40:42

There was another book I came across recently.

00:40:45

The person recommended okay so you bought this version get the audio version they made

00:40:50

the audio version as cheap as they could I think it was like 99 cents on audibles and

00:40:54

they recommended that you listen to it while you read it.

00:40:57

I think that's actually a pretty good approach too.

00:41:00

I think you would actually get more out of it if you saw it and listen to it at the same

00:41:04

time.

00:41:05

I don't think I'm definitely I don't think I'm going to do that on a regular basis.

00:41:09

But I do think this is a cool idea of like once you've once you've consumed a book and

00:41:15

go back and revisit it with an audio format kind of curious your thoughts on the mediums

00:41:24

and if this is an idea that you want to practice at all.

00:41:29

Yeah I haven't really considered like consuming the same thing multiple times in different

00:41:34

mediums until I read this.

00:41:38

I don't really know what my opinion on this is like usually I can tell you like oh yeah

00:41:42

this is exactly what I think and I can come up with that very quickly.

00:41:46

But I don't know that I have an opinion on this one just because I know like different

00:41:50

mediums strike me differently anyway if I'm sitting and reading it I'm much more likely

00:41:55

to recall it later when I want.

00:42:00

If I'm listening to it it's very easy for me to tune it out and not remember it as well.

00:42:07

But if I read it and listen to it at the same time or independently from each other I'm

00:42:13

not sure what the results of that would be.

00:42:17

So having no personal experience with that I don't know that I could say that this way

00:42:24

is better than that way or vice versa I just don't know I don't know what to do with that

00:42:29

one it's just interesting.

00:42:31

So I'm sure it works but I tend to listen to a lot of music and then at the same time

00:42:38

you know if I get to where I'm done with like whatever new playlist is that I'm working

00:42:42

through music wise I'll put on some podcasts and catch up as fast as I can but trying to

00:42:49

do the same thing in multiple mediums I don't know what to do with that one.

00:42:55

Yeah I listen to a lot of podcasts I don't listen to a whole lot of music and I have

00:43:03

my regular ones that I listen to they tend to be tech related I don't actually listen

00:43:08

to that many productivity podcasts and I think that kind of hits that something he mentions

00:43:14

later on in this book about avoiding influences.

00:43:21

He mentions some specific like musicians who don't listen to each other's music specifically

00:43:27

so that they're in the same genre so that they can't be influenced by the other person

00:43:33

I think it was like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen or something like that but I don't know

00:43:42

I don't think I've consciously decided like that's why I don't listen to the two productivity

00:43:48

podcasts.

00:43:50

I am kind of getting burnt out on the tech stuff a little bit.

00:43:56

I think I need to dial back some of the stuff that I listen to but I do like to listen to

00:44:01

things especially when I'm like in the car or at the gym and so I have been thinking about

00:44:09

audiobooks I do have an audible subscription and I've had it for years by the way tip for

00:44:16

audible if you weren't aware of this I think this is probably still the case.

00:44:20

They have the subscription options right and it's like you get a credit a month well for

00:44:25

some people like me can't actually go through a whole audiobook every month because it's

00:44:31

like the second or third thing that you're gonna listen to right so you have all these

00:44:36

credits that stack up but you can't have more than I think three credits in the bank so eventually

00:44:45

I decided I can't keep up with this I'm just gonna cancel and when you cancel they give

00:44:50

you an option to downgrade to a silver membership instead of the gold which is a credit every

00:44:56

two months for half the price.

00:45:02

So if you're interested in audible but you don't want to you can't keep up with it it's

00:45:09

a little more than you want to spend sign up cancel and then go with the silver plan.

00:45:16

Nice nice before we get too far I want to I want to come back to something you had just

00:45:19

said the burnout on the tech piece that's something that I think I've been through which

00:45:27

is why I've got a little bit of a content like shift a little bit but at the same time

00:45:33

it's occurred to me that that's pretty common look at a lot of like the productivity bloggers

00:45:39

and podcasters and such like they tend to last a certain number of years and then either

00:45:46

the person changes topics and generally stays with whatever that second topic is pretty

00:45:51

much indefinitely or they have a complete like almost idea ideological shift like they'll

00:46:00

go from doing the tech side of productivity to like the creative side of productivity

00:46:05

or trying to like find the why behind it like they make a shift.

00:46:10

Are you talking about me Joe?

00:46:13

I'll let you interpret this however you want to interpret it but it seems like kind of take

00:46:18

a hot take here on reverse engineering like it seems like that happens.

00:46:23

I don't really have any data to prove that but it seems like that's a thing that I've

00:46:27

noticed over time like people will do this for a period and then step away from it and

00:46:32

like I've done that you're kind of making that shift right now it seems like I know

00:46:37

Mike Vardy has kind of done that so people do this and it's not bad it's just just the

00:46:45

way it is like people have a change in direction over time but if you're going to reverse engineer

00:46:51

the path that's a path that seems to happen so if you're going to get into productivity

00:46:55

blogging just be prepared that three-ish years into it four years into it you're probably

00:47:02

going to want to change your topic just be aware of that.

00:47:05

Well let's go into the next chapter because I feel like that's starting to get at something

00:47:10

in here that is related that I wanted to talk about so chapter three is the Curse of Creativity

00:47:16

and the Curse of Creativity like that chapter title kind of tweaked me a little bit because

00:47:23

I think creativity is really important and I have thought for a long time that I was

00:47:30

not creative so that was a limiting belief that I had to come over and overcome and the

00:47:38

fact that I finally did it I feel like creativity is a good thing right so yeah exactly black

00:47:44

how could creativity be a curse I think what he's talking about here is that the more because

00:47:54

of the point he makes at the beginning is the more often a formula is used the more predictable

00:47:58

and less appealing it becomes so I mentioned even in this podcast that creativity is a formula

00:48:07

so when you start to figure out what your formula is it starts to lose some of the magic it

00:48:17

feels like that's not really all that great anymore this is just a thing that I do however

00:48:30

on the flip side of that novelty makes us uncomfortable so where's the balance here and

00:48:42

I think the thing that he lands on here is this optimal newness which is a derivative

00:48:50

with a twist right everything is a remix and that's important especially if you want

00:48:57

to spread new ideas because he mentions a study actually by Jennifer Mueller a USC psychologist

00:49:04

who said that the more novel and idea is the more likely it is to be rejected okay that's

00:49:09

interesting so I want to say something that is basically something that is easy to understand

00:49:15

or easy to accept but put my own little spin or or twist on it okay so I don't have to

00:49:20

have it all figured out I can just kind of share my thinking along the way because that's

00:49:26

how our brains connect dots anyways I feel like with how to read a book right it's a topical

00:49:32

reading it's one thing here one thing there and slowly your beliefs kind of change over

00:49:36

time it's not like oh my gosh I read this book and I was totally wrong and now I see clearly

00:49:40

and I go 180 degrees in the opposite direction I think that's kind of the picture that people

00:49:45

have when they find the right book right the one that's going to change their life but

00:49:50

that's not actually what happens there is an idea here that actually it's a heading and

00:49:57

there's really isn't anything else he says about this but it reminded me of something

00:50:02

I heard from Ann lore ness labs creativity happens when ideas have sex that's really

00:50:11

your job if you want to create is to collect ideas and then your brain is going to mash

00:50:16

them up mix them up connect them break them down put them back together in different ways

00:50:22

and then the output is the output you really can't judge the output it's the natural result

00:50:29

of the the system right so all you can really do is get better inputs if you want connect

00:50:34

other dots but your creativity is determined by what you pay attention to and that's something

00:50:38

that's the heel bloom talked about at aircraft and commerce he talked about his sika system

00:50:43

but the first see is consumed and he basically said that whatever you consume is or whatever

00:50:50

you create is downstream from what you consume so he's very careful about the things that

00:50:56

he consumes but he does consume for I think an hour or two hours at the very beginning

00:51:01

of his day but he's curated the sources you know so it's it's high quality stuff that

00:51:06

can allow him to to create the the type of stuff that he wants to create I I kind of found

00:51:15

myself in this section like torn and twisted a bunch of different directions because I

00:51:21

found myself like wait how can creativity be a curse oh that's a really good idea about

00:51:25

creativity Malcolm Gladwell does that okay that's really cool wait how is that a bad

00:51:30

thing like I found myself like on this roller coaster and I couldn't quite figure out if

00:51:34

he was doing that intentionally probably doing that intentionally where it just seemed like

00:51:40

huh in one sense he's saying creativity can get to a point where it causes problems or

00:51:46

you get burnout on it or the idea is such a big idea that nobody will get behind it

00:51:52

because it's way before it's time and it's so far removed that people can't comprehend

00:51:57

it like I get that so then you got to find the people who are really big thinkers

00:52:04

or scale it back like that that's like the curse part of it right I don't really know

00:52:10

what to do with this but it's cool it's it's it's it's an interesting exploration I think

00:52:17

of the creativity piece because like you're saying having these different dots that you're

00:52:21

collecting and then putting them together and then letting those create new new ideas

00:52:27

that's like the magic right and trying to cultivate that to let those seeds grow that's

00:52:36

the job of creativity and then nurturing those until they come to harvest right if we follow

00:52:42

that whole analogy there that I can really resonate with I understand like there can be

00:52:50

some downsides to it I don't really reject that maybe you reject those downsides maybe

00:52:56

I'm just not looking at the downsides correctly I'm looking at the gap and not the game that's

00:53:00

the problem and I like it I like this idea of creativity but at the same time being aware

00:53:09

that you can take things too far in different arenas like that's one that I know I tend

00:53:14

to want to struggle with just because yeah I can take it too far I can and I'm saying

00:53:20

all this because I have the tendency to take an idea and then run with it way too soon and

00:53:25

then it becomes something it shouldn't be and it's morphed itself into something that

00:53:30

I shouldn't be getting into this is one of my action items here and it's kind of I brought

00:53:37

it up now it was technically it started for me in the last section the last section I

00:53:43

was working through a question he had like what makes this enticing and it was part of

00:53:50

the algorithmic approach so like I want to work on putting together a checklist of sorts

00:53:55

for examining an idea before deciding if it's one I should run with if that makes any sense

00:54:01

at all basically why is this idea of interest to me and does it actually apply to the goals

00:54:13

life themes core values that I have and does it help me get those like get towards those

00:54:21

so that's one of my action ends here so put together this checklist all right there are

00:54:26

definitely places where like you can be too creative he shared some examples this wasn't

00:54:31

one of the ones that he shared but the one that I thought of was the Newton that apple

00:54:36

made back in the day I know that there are people who absolutely love that thing yeah

00:54:44

and it was definitely ahead of its time it was the precursor to the iPad but when it came

00:54:54

out it was a complete flop and looking back at it it could do some pretty technologically

00:55:00

impressive things but no one connected with it when it initially existed and I think it

00:55:05

got killed when Steve Jobs came back and the same guy who announced the iPad years later

00:55:13

yes so right thing at the right time the other thing that really just to hit on this idea

00:55:20

again from this section is you need a formula that highlights your unique abilities so when

00:55:27

it comes to figuring out the formula for yourself you can't just pick and choose or

00:55:33

copy what other people have done you got to find one that really fits for for you it's

00:55:38

going to be it's going to be different and that term unique abilities obviously that's

00:55:43

from Dan Sullivan and the gap in the game right so that that's what I thought of when

00:55:50

I heard that and it's like oh okay so I'm going to reverse engineer how to make my thing

00:55:56

be a consistent full-time creator in a way that highlights the things that are uniquely

00:56:02

me and the things that I am best at the things that I'm good at or are known for thinking

00:56:08

about that probably there's sketch note elements to that which is not something I thought

00:56:13

I would ever be known for because still don't think I'm a very good artist but anyways let's

00:56:21

go on to the next section so part two is the vision ability gap and the first chapter in

00:56:30

this section is chapter four the scoreboard principle I like this one I'm a big fan of

00:56:38

scoreboards the biggest win I got from the digital marketing work that I had done the

00:56:46

whole last 18 months I feel was the creation of a scoreboard and getting people to look

00:56:52

at it consistently and starting to gain traction in using the metrics to make decisions didn't

00:57:00

make as much progress as I would have liked to but I found that process of creating it

00:57:04

and getting everybody to get an alignment with it that was really really valuable I

00:57:09

would love to do that for other people in some way shape or form but the the minute that

00:57:16

we introduce a metric he says we start optimizing for it so that's good right we can identify

00:57:23

the key metrics but that also is kind of a bad thing because one of the mistakes people

00:57:30

make is they collect a whole bunch of metrics all of these things are important no you can't

00:57:35

watch them all you got to pick a couple of them that you are going to optimize for when

00:57:39

you optimize for everything you haven't optimized for anything so metrics are incentives you

00:57:47

got to pick them carefully and the other piece to this that I like was the coaching clients

00:57:56

that around Friedman works with brings up time tracking again Joe he makes all of his

00:58:02

coaching clients track their time just so it brings awareness and together they can

00:58:08

review their findings when they meet together and I mean I knew this I've taught this but

00:58:15

he said it in a little bit different way it's like well yeah you don't really know how

00:58:19

you're spending your time and even these people who are running successful businesses because

00:58:24

I know like executive coaching is really expensive so I'm assuming that's what this

00:58:29

is and people who are are paying let's just say $10,000 a month I don't know if that's

00:58:36

the actual cost but I know like that's what some executive coaches cost it goes up from

00:58:40

there $10,000 a month and the first thing he's going to have him do is the same thing

00:58:45

I tell people to track your time and then let's talk about where it's going it's like

00:58:52

huh that's interesting but also you know obviously there's there's a little bit of

00:58:59

juice behind that now for me because it's like well I've kind of thought this to be true

00:59:03

but he's saying the same thing so yeah I guess there is something to this I'm not

00:59:10

real thrilled that you brought that up to be completely honest why do we need to track

00:59:16

your time Joe well I don't want to and the thing here is like I know I know that I have

00:59:27

a lot of dead space in my day like I'm I'm aware that there's a lot of time that I could

00:59:33

be using for other things I've kind of been working my way towards like trying to do things

00:59:39

slow and methodical instead of rapid fire which is my tendency because I know that the

00:59:45

rapid fireness tends to leave me with things that are a mess but if I were to do it slow

00:59:50

and methodical I'd be a little more put together a little more prepared for some things so I'm

00:59:57

trying to like make a little bit of that shift and I've been fairly successful with that over

01:00:00

the last probably two or three months at the same time trying to decide like where my day

01:00:08

is going to go ahead of time the time blocking side of it not necessarily the time tracking

01:00:12

side of it is one that I've been slowly working my way towards like I do it somewhat not very

01:00:19

well but I've gotten more and more to the point where I can do that just because the

01:00:26

the fires that I need to put out are not as frequent now we're recording this on a Wednesday

01:00:34

morning which is like two days before this releases which is not normal for us and that's

01:00:40

because we had power go out at our church and Mike had some stuff going on last week

01:00:44

and then we thought we were doing it here and that didn't work and then we do it there

01:00:47

it's like it'd be easier if we do it anyway it created a bit of a mess so like that was

01:00:51

because of a lot of that is because of fires that I'm taking care of it's like I can't

01:00:56

even turn on my interface to plug my microphone in so we obviously can't record this afternoon

01:01:03

like that that happens so I'm aware that thing that sort of thing occurs but at the same time

01:01:10

I know that I can make the plans and then I can adjust plans once they're once they're

01:01:15

created and I've not done a very good job of building those plans even if I'm going to

01:01:21

throw half of it out the window if learn that when I'm willing to put it together I still

01:01:27

get almost double the amount of things done in a day just by putting that plan together

01:01:33

so this is the last of the action items I have for the book is like okay I'm going to

01:01:37

try to at least plan this each day and because I've been doing it somewhat and had some success

01:01:48

with it so I want that to continue and I want to try to build on that maybe before we're

01:01:53

done with this I'll have another action item to add to the list but I'm at least going

01:01:57

to take that one on for time blocking but time tracking not doing that I get that I could

01:02:06

pay ten thousand dollars and somebody would do that the other piece of that is like if

01:02:10

I paid ten thousand dollars and someone told me I needed to do that absolutely I'm going

01:02:14

to do it because I'm missing something and he's got something he's going to tell me about

01:02:19

it probably the exact thing I would expect him to say but it's so important that someone

01:02:26

that I paid ten thousand dollars to is telling me to do it well then it's got a little more

01:02:29

weight behind it so I'm more likely to do it so I would do it if I'd paid that but I'm

01:02:34

not paying that yeah so I'm not gonna do it true maybe I should just start charging ten

01:02:41

thousand dollars to have people track their time you figure out how to do that and I will

01:02:47

jump on board alright well I am gonna revamp my time track I do check my time I use time

01:02:57

re although I noticed the last couple weeks with how nuts things have been and also the

01:03:04

structure of my time re because it's all all my timers are kind of set up for the day

01:03:10

job still and if there is any friction at all like I don't know which timer to put this

01:03:16

under then I just don't start one okay so it's fallen actually the last couple weeks

01:03:24

and this week as you mentioned recording this on a Wednesday I've been consistent in tracking

01:03:29

my time again but I want to by the end of this week so before next week actually tweak

01:03:36

all of my timers in time re because that's not something I ever want to stop and do when

01:03:41

I'm switching timers but if I took just 20 minutes I could dial it in and so I am committing

01:03:49

to to do that as an action item I wonder if that's what I've always struggled with is

01:03:53

like those categories this is why I always fail to accomplish it because I know that if

01:04:00

I take the time to try to figure out what those need to be I end up with like way too

01:04:06

many and then it gets to be like too detailed and I'm always like wait should I be switching

01:04:12

should I keep going what is that but if I made it to vague like personal work and you

01:04:17

just have those two back and forth look that's unhelpful yeah exactly I try to do it for

01:04:22

like the different modes so that's that's the part I think that always gets me to where

01:04:29

is those where are those lines what's actually helpful I think it's important in terms of

01:04:36

collecting the metrics but then you have to pick the right metrics too so he mentions

01:04:42

Cal Newport's leading indicator of his key metric is the hours of unbroken concentration

01:04:50

deep work time basically that's a really good one so like I have a timer on my time

01:04:55

memory for thinking time and I try to get at least an hour of thinking time every day

01:05:02

and that's not necessarily I'm sitting and I'm just thinking about things that's the time

01:05:05

when I'll go for a run or something and I'll just let my brain kind of noodle on stuff

01:05:10

but I want to build in some of that margin to unpack things I've got ones for like webinar

01:05:15

prep and podcast recording editing post-production all that kind of stuff but I don't have one

01:05:21

for like working on the newsletter I don't have I've got one for Obsidian University

01:05:26

like I could break that down into different different components because then I can look

01:05:32

at the time that I spent on a particular tag last week the time I spent preparing for

01:05:37

a webinar versus presenting a webinar and when that number hits 10x you're done because

01:05:43

it's probably pretty close anyways let's go on to the next chapter here

01:05:51

so chapter five is how to take the risk out of risk taking and there's a couple kind

01:06:05

of tangential things I wanted to talk about in here one of the things that really kind

01:06:15

of stuck with me was that it's hard to learn at work because the work environment is typically

01:06:22

unforgiving and there is no room for failure I can definitely see how that is so even if

01:06:28

your organization professes to have an emphasis on continuous improvement and personal growth

01:06:35

and you want to as a leadership team invest in your people you got to be careful because

01:06:43

you got to recognize that if they're going to learn they're going to make mistakes things

01:06:48

are going to be inefficient when they make those mistakes but you just kind of have

01:06:54

to put up with that I can build that into my structure because I'm a one man show currently

01:07:00

I mean I've got a assist at the helps me with some of the sermon sketch notes stuffs and

01:07:04

like Rachel helps me with faith is productivity Toby helps with editing so not truly a one

01:07:09

man show but you get get what I mean I don't have employees that I am paying to do specific

01:07:15

jobs because the minute that you have that mindset everything is efficiency based how

01:07:20

can we do it as quickly as we can so the company can be more profitable whereas really like

01:07:26

instead of how do I get this done as quickly as I can now a question I want to be asking

01:07:29

is like how can I learn as much as I can especially where I'm at right now so one of the ways

01:07:35

that you can learn things is to make things without necessarily launching things you mentioned

01:07:44

that Zig Ziglar performed 3,000 times for free before he landed a paid gig but the one

01:07:49

that really kind of stood out to me was Liz Winestead who is the Daily Show co-creator

01:07:57

he tests material on Twitter and I like that idea it's actually validation for in my mind

01:08:06

stuff that I've learned from ship 30 for 30 where you're writing for the social platforms

01:08:12

and then from there you're trying to people like what you have they sign up for your newsletter

01:08:16

eventually they buy your thing but that's the reason I am still on Twitter it's Twitter

01:08:21

was never my community it wasn't the place that my friends hung out but it is a great

01:08:27

place a great audience the public square right where you can share stuff and you can

01:08:33

see what kind of pops off just a example of this before Obsidian University launched

01:08:40

I did a whole bunch of threads on like this is how I do Bible study in Obsidian so I do

01:08:44

book notes in Obsidian this is how I do personal retreats in Obsidian right and so and then

01:08:48

the last week I had like a thread of threads and so one of those threads was this is how

01:08:55

I set up Obsidian as my writing tool because I came from Ulysses and Ulysses had specific

01:09:02

features I was like wouldn't that be great if I could add those back in Obsidian well

01:09:05

third party community plugins you can do a lot of that stuff in terms of the number

01:09:11

of of likes and interactions with people the different threads that I created because

01:09:15

I got responses to all of them because they're all high quality threads they have images

01:09:19

that show like this is you know how I do it examples but the one that got literally

01:09:25

ten times more than any of the other ones was the writing one so that's kind of indicative

01:09:34

of this like make noise listen for signals what Ship30 talks about and that's got me

01:09:40

thinking like is that the thing that people are struggling with Obsidian for is like they

01:09:45

want to be able to create with it should I be pivoting Obsidian University into something

01:09:50

like creating an Obsidian something like that I mean that's where it seems like all the

01:09:56

yeah and obviously I've got to do more tests right and figure that out I'm not going to

01:09:59

just switch that that's kind of the whole point of this this chapter it's like I could

01:10:03

just say oh there's one data point I'm going to make this this this move but when you it

01:10:08

or when you have a whole bunch of small tests the small bets you know that you're you're

01:10:12

replacing you you do that enough and you can you can connect the dots and you can see what

01:10:19

audiences are really looking for and he mentions that we're in a golden age for feedback 100%

01:10:26

agree with that doesn't really really matter how big your audience is I mean I'm not Ali

01:10:30

Abdul I don't have millions of subscribers my newsletter I mentioned earlier 1800 people

01:10:38

basically he showed a screenshot of him posting his newsletter from an airplane and in the

01:10:45

screenshot you can see he's got like 346,000 people I mean this is not an apples to apples

01:10:52

comparison here right but it doesn't matter because I can use the same tool and I can get

01:10:58

the same feedback it's a smaller sample size but I've got my people it's it's kind of cool

01:11:05

that when you think about it like that's kind of amazing that I can do that yeah I've heard

01:11:11

you talk about this before with like posting things to Twitter or Mastodon as like a test

01:11:18

case because like the the amount of effort that goes into writing those is significantly

01:11:23

less than putting together an entire blog post and releasing it so yeah no I totally

01:11:31

am with you like it's it's a way of as the title says here how to take the risk out of

01:11:37

risk taking it's like well if you go through the process of basically testing all of these

01:11:45

ideas gathering feedback on those ideas and then using that to pick the ones based on

01:11:52

that feedback which ones have the most traction and build out on that idea like that's that's

01:12:00

like gold and in today's world of social media the ability to test ideas is crazy easy hundred

01:12:08

years ago that would have been significantly more difficult to just get around and figure

01:12:14

out what your feedback is this is almost instant you can find out within a day or just within

01:12:20

a few hours what that needs to be so like that in itself makes it well worth the time

01:12:27

so yes I'm with you on this I don't know what to do with it it's cool idea I just don't

01:12:31

know what to do with it yet well I'll tell you what to do with it take your church text

01:12:36

stuff and start writing about it on Twitter that's a good idea that's a good idea writing

01:12:40

notes putting it out on Twitter and all the places I send things Twitter made it really

01:12:46

hard for me to do that though their API stuff kind of wrecked all sorts of stuff for me

01:12:52

yeah so there are a couple of tools most of them have disappeared but the ones that I

01:12:59

would recommend type fully is probably the best UI and that is the cheapest one also

01:13:05

I think it's about a hundred bucks a year and that's the one the original one for making

01:13:10

threads and things like that and then there's a hype fury and tweet hunter or the other

01:13:14

two that allow you to cross post to LinkedIn and Instagram and other places those are the

01:13:21

only ones that are willing to pay that much money for the yeah yeah interestingly no I

01:13:26

don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole but as we record this there's a bruja

01:13:29

ha with reddit because they announced their API price same thing yeah same thing I'm I'm

01:13:35

concerned this is not a Twitter thing this is a trend for all of these large data sets

01:13:42

which are going to feed all these large language models feeling we're going to see more of

01:13:47

this stuff but yep so we go yes yes I'm with you on the small tidbits thing and you're

01:13:56

absolutely right like posting some small stuff around like here's how I'm running a virtual

01:14:01

sound check today do you even know what that is that's question number one yep exactly

01:14:11

the next chapter is practicing in three dimensions and this is kind of about visualization there

01:14:23

is a note I mentioned I had jotted down here about he mentions he says to pause and consider

01:14:28

your progress which is very much the gap versus the gain yep exactly but the big thing is

01:14:33

about visualization and kind of what that does to your your brain there was an interesting

01:14:39

story at the beginning about how what you do changes your brain and you talked about how

01:14:46

taxi drivers have this larger hippocampus so their brain is physically changing based

01:14:52

on their their occupation and he kind of refutes the the belief that well maybe the taxi drivers

01:14:57

because they have a large hippocampus and he basically no it becomes that way as you're

01:15:01

forced to remember all the streets and navigate through things consistently so that's that

01:15:11

plasticity of your your brain that's a concept that has always kind of fascinated me and

01:15:17

he doesn't go too deep into it here but but basically the takeaway is make sure that you're

01:15:22

intentionally doing things that are going to change you in in desired directions and

01:15:29

then when it comes to the visualization piece I mean he talks about directors and athletes

01:15:35

and coaches and how they rely on film to help them learn from the past and make crucial

01:15:39

adjustments he really spends a lot of time talking about visualization but the one takeaway

01:15:45

from the visualization piece that I really wanted to think about was how visualization

01:15:51

is powerful when you visualize the process not just the outcome so it's not visualization

01:15:55

in terms of by the end of the season I'm gonna have a batting average of whatever or we're

01:16:01

gonna have won the championship like okay that's cool but that alone isn't enough to get you

01:16:09

to that point he talks about Michael Phelps and the the blind you know when his goggles

01:16:14

broken he had to race blind in the Beijing Olympics and talked about how his coach used

01:16:18

to make him do that he'd turn off the lights in the pool and make him swim blind you can

01:16:23

see where he was going so he knew exactly how far stuff was and he was rehearsing this in

01:16:28

his mind and so he kind of kind of knew what it was gonna feel like it didn't rattle him

01:16:33

when it happened like that's all really powerful but I like that emphasis on visualizing the

01:16:39

process so it's not just I've done the thing but I've shown up and I've put in the work

01:16:46

to make the thing I feel like that seems kind of obvious but the way he explains it I think

01:16:53

it's powerful because if you can picture yourself sitting in the chair and writing the words then

01:17:00

you're not jarred by that I don't want to say surprised because everyone who's a writer

01:17:06

knows that the words aren't gonna write themselves right you do have to sit down and type them

01:17:10

or write them by hand whatever your tool of choice is and but but there is something like

01:17:17

if you're not thinking about that process ahead of time the moment that you sit down

01:17:20

in the chair and you are faced with the blinking cursor it's like oh crap yeah I get it there's

01:17:29

there's a piece here in this towards the back of the chapter where he talks about like the

01:17:34

five ways that this visualization process makes you perform better one of these is that it

01:17:41

grows your confidence and like the story you just told with Michael Phelps when his goggles

01:17:48

broke it didn't rattle him because he was confident and knew he knows exactly how many

01:17:54

strokes he needs to take in order to reach the other end he knows exactly all the details

01:17:59

not a swimmer so I can't tell you how many kicks I don't know but these are the types

01:18:03

of things like he just knows these things because he's confident in the process he's

01:18:07

been there he knows what he's up against and visualization is a way of getting in the reps

01:18:16

and having yourself in the position where you've taken the time to visualize things like I think

01:18:22

of like the transitional gaps between things I'm in the sound booth waiting for an event

01:18:29

to start it's got two and a half minutes before the event's gonna start what am I gonna do

01:18:33

in those two and a half minutes my current nervous tick is to just double check all the

01:18:38

patching I've got on a sound board and make sure I've got all the stuff queued correctly

01:18:42

but at this point I've already run through those things three to five times so I really

01:18:46

don't need to do it again it's just a nervous thing that I tend to do I could easily sit

01:18:51

there and take that time and visualize the process of that service so that I'm better

01:18:58

able to run it without having to constantly reference my notes as we go through that and

01:19:02

then that would give me more confidence to do a better job when I'm running that event

01:19:07

like those are the things that my brain goes to because then whenever I've got the chance

01:19:11

to do that I know that the overall experience for everybody the quality level of that increases

01:19:16

significantly so being able to do that that visualization process before the service starts

01:19:21

like that's an awesome thing to do but I hadn't really thought about it the development of

01:19:26

confidence through that process could have a very big impact later on through through

01:19:33

your actions so yeah I really like this one the third dimension being in your brain I

01:19:39

like it yep yeah there's lots of advantages of it need to cause out help to identify the

01:19:44

obstacles gives you an emotional preview lets you front load the decisions in advance

01:19:49

shrinks the anxiety and grows the confidence to you were just talking about activates the

01:19:53

same neural pathways is actually doing the activity that one blew my mind yeah that one's

01:19:58

nuts to me really yep it shouldn't be possible alright let's go on to the last one here so

01:20:05

chapter seven is how to talk to experts and the big point that he makes in this chapter

01:20:13

is that experts rarely make great instructors which is kind of interesting but sort of makes

01:20:21

sense after he breaks it all down there's this thing that I've been familiar with but

01:20:26

he talks a little bit more about it than I have heard previously called the curse of

01:20:30

knowledge which is the that knowing something makes it impossible to imagine not knowing

01:20:37

it so once you know something once you develop the skill to a certain level you kind of forget

01:20:43

what it was like before you knew that before you had that skill so why is that a problem

01:20:52

because experts once you achieve that level of expert I'm projecting here but assuming

01:20:58

that I was an expert in anything there's a good chance that I will fall into the same

01:21:02

trap of vastly underestimating how long it takes to acquire that skill in fact he says

01:21:09

that experts leave out 70% of the steps that are required to succeed that's kind of crazy

01:21:18

to think about so he has a couple of tactics that you should use when you're talking to

01:21:25

experts to help highlight the things that you really need to know journey questions process

01:21:30

questions discovery questions where you're asking like well what did you do right that

01:21:37

would be a journey question what was that what was that like for you or how do you actually

01:21:41

walk through and do your work order of steps involved with that what did you learn from

01:21:47

from the experience all that that kind of stuff and I don't necessarily have an action

01:21:52

I'm associated with this but I did find this this part fascinating I have I've got an interesting

01:21:59

story about this because as somebody who is big into sound systems like massive sound

01:22:05

systems I know that there's always a thing I'm trying to do where I'm trying to figure

01:22:10

out how other people run sound for bands and because it's a very personal thing and there's

01:22:17

a plethora of ways that people can do this and I'm always curious how somebody like what

01:22:24

is their process for putting together a good mix for a band and good friend of mine who's

01:22:31

someone we use to put installations in our church he runs sound for A-list singers he's

01:22:39

turned down gigs to run sound for like carry under wooden team like he's he's really really

01:22:46

good anyway when I've been around him and I'm asking like how did you put together a certain

01:22:52

part of the vocal chain or some piece on the sound board right and he'll give me some kind

01:22:58

of like high level like here's how I run a compressor here's how I run an EQ it's like

01:23:03

that's fine but those are all like the standard beginner level things that people get into

01:23:09

like you've got like four or five layers of processing you're here you're doing here

01:23:13

why and he struggles to give any a clean answer like he knows what each step does and how it

01:23:20

makes it sound a certain way but he's can't really explain it to you now some of that is

01:23:26

just like trying to explain how something sounds is actually a very difficult thing to do and

01:23:31

so that that gets to be a little bit tricky so I get that but it's also I think a case

01:23:36

where he knows it so well and he knows what he's after so much that it's tough to verbalize

01:23:44

what that is and how to teach somebody else how to do that I wish you could but what I've

01:23:49

learned in the process like okay what does that specific compressor do to that specific

01:23:55

vocal like that type of question is what I have to ask because then it'll start to like

01:23:59

well it does this I'm not going to explain it to you because it won't make sense but

01:24:03

it does this and then that lets me do this later on oh well then that starts to break

01:24:07

apart that chain and then over years of me asking these questions of these people that's

01:24:13

how I get to where I'm at today but now I've learned that I have the same problem now because

01:24:20

I've now got a few people that have asked me like well how did you do this and I understand

01:24:27

why these guys have been so coy with me over it because like oh well it just does this this

01:24:32

and this and I found I give that answer once in a while partially because in order for

01:24:39

me to explain the six or seven different steps I've got going into that final product one

01:24:45

it's going to take a long time and two I don't know your background well enough to know what

01:24:52

level do I need to be speaking at so the tendency is to speak very very high level and then

01:24:57

if you keep prying then we start going deeper so like I have to start very high and assume

01:25:02

you don't even know what a compressor is and go from there because me explaining why I

01:25:08

have four levels of compression on a vocal is very difficult to understand so why would

01:25:14

I take the time to explain it to somebody who doesn't even know what a compressor is

01:25:19

so I get it when you have somebody who knows what they're doing like you have to be very

01:25:24

specific in the questions because they're probably not going to give you all the stuff

01:25:28

you need yep which is the just to that chapter I'm not quite sure how useful that is I guess

01:25:38

I don't talk to experts all that often yeah maybe that's the problem we need to talk to

01:25:42

experts more often Mike there we go by the way there's a cool service for that called clarity

01:25:49

dot FM have you I've heard all of that I couldn't tell you anything about it though yeah so you

01:25:55

pay per minute to book time with these people who really know their stuff regardless of what

01:26:00

it is I mean you could book time with mark you and if you really wanted to but there are

01:26:04

other people that I've talked to unlike how to set up a webinar effectively or build a

01:26:09

community and you come with your questions right and it's up to you to make good use

01:26:15

of the the time but you can get the answers to specific things if you know exactly what

01:26:23

you want to ask very quickly without having to try a million different things so it's

01:26:31

pretty cool I've used it in the past but has been probably a couple years at this point

01:26:34

all right let's talk about the conclusion this one should be pretty quick because it's

01:26:44

really a summary of the whole book and he talks about Vincent Van Gogh here and breaks

01:26:52

down ten different things in the conclusion now you're probably thinking ten different

01:26:56

things but there were seven different chapters yeah you're right that part was kind of weird

01:26:59

to me but there's basically ten takeaways he wants you to have from this book become

01:27:04

a collector spot the differences think in blueprints don't mimic evolve embrace the

01:27:08

visionability gap keep score selectively take the risk out of risk taking distrust comfort

01:27:13

harness the future in the past and ask wisely so it's a good encapsulation of the rest of

01:27:21

the book guess that's the job of a conclusion but I don't think there's anything new here

01:27:27

you got anything else you want to want to add to this no I don't think so I just know

01:27:32

that like having these ten things here is something that's it kind of gives you a a

01:27:39

quick and easy something to just write down and keep in front of you as a way to remember

01:27:43

the book but again it's a little weird to have ten instead of the seven so I tend to

01:27:49

write down like the table of contents whenever I've got the book in front of me and I use

01:27:54

that as a reference point to remember the book but having the ten here does make that

01:27:58

little odd but at the same time it's just a repeat and summarization of the book which

01:28:03

I guess is what you kind of want in a conclusion so here's that all right let's go to action

01:28:10

items I have two in addition to the ones I failed on earlier the ones that I got from

01:28:19

this book specifically are to a reverse engineer some of the creators I got inspired by from

01:28:27

the craft and commerce conference that is a mouthful craft and commerce conference

01:28:34

I can work it yet and then the second one is to reconfigure my time area and put in more

01:28:43

appropriate timers that's going to be not just adding the timers because primarily

01:28:49

I'm doing the work on my Mac so I am going to do it on the Mac version first but I also

01:28:56

have these widgets for time tracking I do I have on iOS so I will choose which ones go

01:29:02

there as well those are my two what about you I have the three the first of which is

01:29:11

to do some of the reverse engineering on the blogging newsletter church tech space the

01:29:17

second is to make this checklist for when I'm examining an idea like whether to take

01:29:23

on an idea and the third being the time blocking piece on a day basically plan my day each

01:29:30

day I don't know that it would be technically time blocking but like planning out what needs

01:29:36

to happen that day that seems to work pretty well for me but at least making that plan

01:29:40

is the big piece that I need to start with cool all right let's go to style and rating

01:29:49

I like the style of this book it was kind of terrible timing for me because crazy couple

01:29:57

of weeks and I feel like I was not able to give this book the time and attention it really

01:30:03

deserved because as I mentioned at the very beginning it is a very dense book it's very

01:30:09

well written it's very engaging there's lots of stories there's lots of details added to

01:30:12

stories that I've heard previously but there is a ton of research that has gone into it

01:30:17

and you can tell that by looking at the the resources at the that not the resources but

01:30:24

all of the links to all the studies and things that have gone into the arguments that he's

01:30:27

made and a lot of those research a lot of that research supports like a single statement

01:30:35

which we've read entire books on that specific thing but he just mentions it in passing and

01:30:40

then links to all of those those references so there's a ton of effort that went into

01:30:47

it and he does a really good job I feel like of condensing it down and packaging it well

01:30:52

I feel like this whole idea reverse engineering is really powerful and even though I've heard

01:30:57

of it before like he did a great job breaking it down and it's definitely something that

01:31:01

I've got a better understanding of and I've got action items to actually put it into to

01:31:05

practice so I feel like this is going to be one of those books that has going to be very

01:31:09

impactful over time that that's all the good about the book I guess you know there really

01:31:18

wasn't a whole lot that I didn't like about it other than it really didn't grab me completely

01:31:27

the way that some other books have I remember reading through the recommendation for this

01:31:33

book and it was basically this one is also really good but not quite at the same level

01:31:37

as the previous one that they compared it to and I think that was pretty accurate I don't

01:31:42

know if that just kind of like set the place forward in my mind but I think this is probably

01:31:47

a 4.5 book and that is just because I think for myself the ideas here are pretty powerful

01:31:56

but I got to obviously synthesize them and figure out how do I apply them to myself as

01:32:01

a individual creator as opposed to big business guy does kind of feel in certain places like

01:32:08

I'm not the correct audience for this one but I do think there are lots of takeaways

01:32:14

for this for me and because it's presented so well it's pretty easily generalizable

01:32:20

I feel like this is one that I probably wouldn't recommend to everybody but I would recommend

01:32:30

to everybody in the bookworm audience I feel like if you have any interest in personal growth

01:32:36

at all this is going to be one that you're going to want to have read but I recognize there are

01:32:42

a lot of people who just don't care about that I don't know why you're listening to this

01:32:46

that's the case maybe somebody shared bookworm with you I don't know but yeah I think this is

01:32:52

a really good book and I think you could get a lot out of it I think I would argue everybody

01:32:57

probably if you take a long-term approach you know you're trying to reach your full potential

01:33:04

then you should read this one you're going to have to wrestle with the ideas it's not a simple

01:33:09

formula it's not three simple life hacks are going to save you an hour a day every day for the rest

01:33:13

of your life you're going to have to figure out what to do with this yourself but that's what it

01:33:18

says on the tin he says that right at the beginning like there should be no surprises with this one

01:33:23

and I do think it is it is really good so I'll write it at 4.5 I think you nailed it like there's

01:33:30

a lot of great stories and a lot of value in this I think 4.5 is exactly where it needs to be so I'll

01:33:37

join you there I know that there is so much value here like again you're saying it's super dense

01:33:45

but I think that's a good thing I think that you know sometimes I want them to expand on things a

01:33:52

little bit but in this case like give me a one-liner and then give me an entire book I've got to read

01:33:56

to understand that one sentence like okay all right but that works really well for us because we

01:34:04

have read a lot on those things already so we've got a lot of background to lean on when we get to

01:34:10

that if this is your first episode of bookworm and you haven't followed through on reading a lot

01:34:15

of the books that we've covered this might be a bit of a challenge I think to fully grasp in detail

01:34:22

I think you'll definitely get some high-level stuff out of it so I think I would recommend it to a

01:34:28

lot of people but at the same time I think if you want to get the depth out of it you need to have a

01:34:33

lot of background already like this is this is probably geared more towards not maybe not necessarily

01:34:40

like our like for you and I'm like but for folks who have read some but not maybe quite as much as

01:34:49

we have that was kind of my impression is that maybe that's what you were getting at is like this

01:34:53

is maybe not directed at us like we're maybe not exactly the target audience because I feel like

01:34:59

if you've read maybe half the books we have that this would be like an awesome read and it's definitely

01:35:06

geared towards you when you've read about a lot of these concepts already like testing things ahead

01:35:13

of time and finding patterns in how people do things like those have those are all generally topics

01:35:19

we've covered before so it's not a hundred percent brand new but at the same time if you've read some

01:35:28

books you understand enough of those concepts that this could really put things together for you

01:35:33

so I could see where that would fit fairly well so I think you got it at the 4.5 that's where I'll

01:35:39

land and I'm glad I've read it it's it did a good job of putting together some topics that I

01:35:45

haven't really seen connected before so I like it in that sense cool so let's put decoding greatness

01:35:53

on the shelf what's next Joe quit by Annie Duke because we need to quit some things I'm sure

01:35:59

I don't know what those are hopefully it's not bookworm it's not bookworm and

01:36:05

take on the right things that's essentially what it's about we've read a book by Annie Duke

01:36:10

before thinking in bets and it was an interesting read and this is Annie's latest book which is

01:36:18

kind of going down that path as well so yeah I'm excited to go through this one it's uh

01:36:24

what I've started on it already has been really good so I'm excited to cover that one with you

01:36:28

and what do we have after that one Mike?

01:36:30

After that one I'm going to pick Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly

01:36:40

you familiar with Kevin Kelly? Yeah I am he did oh shoot it was the 12 something

01:36:48

I can't think of it maybe that's a different book no I think you're right I don't remember

01:36:52

the title but I was looking at some of the other ones that he had written he's a tech writer I think

01:36:57

he's the one who initially came up with the idea of like a thousand true fans okay maybe I'm

01:37:02

misattributing that but this is one that so I've been familiar vaguely with Kevin Kelly for a long

01:37:10

time there's a blurb in the Amazon listing here from south godon 100 years from now when so much

01:37:17

of the nonsense of our ages forgotten people will still remember Kevin Kelly and his wisdom

01:37:21

so that's a pretty ringing endorsement by one of my favorite authors of all time yeah so uh

01:37:27

I'm going to make us read a Kevin Kelly book okay this is the one that's making the rounds right

01:37:31

now and a couple people I respect have recommended this one to me so let's go through it cool

01:37:37

I'm excited about it and get book what do you got

01:37:43

gap book you're funny I had to ask at least yeah I know what about you I didn't this week

01:37:53

between planning for a big outdoor event and all the fires I've had to put out I didn't get to

01:37:58

one this time real so no yeah I don't have one sorry about that gang hopefully we'll have

01:38:05

gap books next time but thank you for listening thank you for hanging out with us until the end here

01:38:11

if you are watching this thank you for joining the live recordings if you have not joined a live

01:38:17

recording you should there is a list of all the live recordings in the bookworm club club.bookworm.fm

01:38:23

and if you want to support show directly you can send it to become a bookworm club premium member

01:38:28

five bucks a month 50 bucks a year gets you access to a couple of goodies including the mind map

01:38:35

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01:38:40

them posted shortly there's still hundreds of them to keep you busy so if you want to support

01:38:46

show it's a great way to do it club.bookworm.fm and if you want to be extra amazing pick up the

01:38:54

book quit by Annie Duke read it and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks