Bookworm Transcripts

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So this might be a first for bookworm, Mike, in that we're recording on a Saturday morning.

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Have we ever done that before?

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I don't know.

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I'm okay if we don't do it again.

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I'm not super thrilled that we're doing this, but with the 4th of July, as we're recording

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this, this is the weekend before the 4th of July, I'm wrapped up with all sorts of stuff

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Monday and Tuesday, Mike's out of town, the rest of the week, which means that we had

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set ourselves up to record yesterday, but some brilliant person doing road work up the

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street from me decided to cut the internet line, the main, going to our area, which means

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that I had no internet yesterday.

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So Mike and I were talking about, do we just do this over a phone call?

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I was like, well, then I was neck deep and all sorts of stuff turned to get church stuff

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done that didn't have internet.

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It was a mess, absolute mess.

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So here we are recording Saturday morning as a makeup for that.

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I'm grateful I have internet right now.

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Here's hoping it holds out.

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I haven't been here long enough to know if it's stable or not, but so far it seems fine.

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Don't plant those seeds in my head, Joe Bealeg.

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I hadn't even thought about that.

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The fact that the internet may disappear while we're recording.

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Yep, that would be unfun.

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So if that happens and you're watching the live stream, my apologies, Mike and I will

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have to jump on a phone call and finish this because there is no other time for us to do

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this.

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This is me knocking on wood right now.

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Yeah, I would, but this is plastic.

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So that doesn't work.

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So anyway, that's fun.

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Let's get past that topic because it's unfun.

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Let's do follow up.

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I guess I can go first here.

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I've got five.

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Two of these are carryovers, which were carryovers.

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And I did these, Mike.

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I did do these.

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So I do not have to carry these over again.

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The first of these was to list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when I'm going

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to read these off really fast because I feel like this is always fun to hear what other

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people come up with on these things.

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Yeah, that's good.

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I know I always like hearing what you've got on this, but these are not in any particular

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order because I haven't figured out how to order them, to be honest.

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Do I want the most important to least or vice versa?

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Anyway, so number one, my kids are not asking for my time.

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The thing behind that meaning like I'm giving them my time without them having to request

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it.

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Anyway, two, I can hear God's voice.

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I can look people in the eyes when having a conversation for there are no credible complaints

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about an event.

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Credible being the keyword on that.

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Going home is not stressful.

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People around me are learning what I'm learning.

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I can write something down once.

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I think it's done.

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That's a problem for me.

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I have thought it through ahead of time.

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My workplace is peaceful and I feel refreshed.

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There's a whole bunch of stuff around this that basically requires other things that

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I'm not talking about.

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Things like I have thought it through ahead of time.

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Well, it means I'm taking the time to think on my own and not having to come up with it

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on the fly.

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There's a whole bunch of stuff that comes behind me.

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Anyway, that was a fun exercise and one that gave me a lot of pause to try to think through

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what to come up with for that one.

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That is cool.

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I did not do that one.

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Okay.

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So when you leave that one bold, is that what we need to do?

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In our notes.

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You can.

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So Michael Porter did it.

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He posted in the faith-based productivity community his list.

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I have people who aren't even having this as an official action item beating me to the

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completion of this.

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I feel a little bit bad about that, but it's been a couple of weeks.

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Subsitting university is almost done.

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One more week to go.

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Well, I've got one other one here that's been a carryover, which was to come up with my

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own filtering questions.

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I did this one as well, Mike.

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And I came up with four questions that kind of correspond to the core values thing that

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I worked on through your life-themed cohort.

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These four questions, basically these are questions for, you know, should I be doing

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something or take something on, etc, etc.

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The first of these is, does this draw me closer to God?

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The second is, does this help me eliminate distractions?

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Does this create chaos or busyness?

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Does this help others?

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Again, there's a whole bunch of background that can go into those, but that's where I

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landed.

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Kind of an interesting thing to come up with those questions, but at the same time, I was

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like, I feel like there's stuff that could, I would need to say yes to that slips through

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those.

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So, I'm not sure they're 100%, but that's at least from my starting point for them.

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Interesting concept nonetheless.

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So those were the two that I had for carryovers.

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The three that I had for new from last time, two of which I did, one of which I decided

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this is a bad idea.

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The first one was to examine a church.

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Let me see if I can guess which one is a bad idea.

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Okay.

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All right, so we've got time blocking on here.

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Yes.

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I'm going to assume that's the one that you bailed on.

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No, actually it's not.

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All right, all right.

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Though I would have guessed the exact same thing being in your shoes.

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The first one was to examine the church tech space, basically the reverse engineering piece

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right?

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Yeah.

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Of looking at people who are working in that space.

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I had originally been working through writing blog posts for that space.

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And as I did the research on that, I realized that very few people are doing that.

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Now that either means that it's ripe for the picking or it means that it's really hard

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to do.

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And I think what I'm realizing is that's actually fairly hard to do because so many times it

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needs to have some form of a visual with it.

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And most people are doing video for that.

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So I got to rethink what I'm capable of doing in that time wise.

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So that's something I need to actually work through that with my wife a little bit.

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Time wise and such.

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So that's one of the three.

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The second one was to make a checklist for examining an idea.

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And I had started the process of when a new idea comes in, this is similar to like the

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filtering questions.

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What are the things I need to consider before saying yes to that idea?

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And one of the things that I was putting on that was, is this going to take more time

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than the value I will get out of it is worth?

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And whenever I wrote that down, I realized that the chances of me using a checklist for

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an idea like this is very slim.

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So the time spent making a checklist for the idea of making that checklist was not worth

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the time.

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So I was like, okay, well, this, the thing I'm doing right now is very meta.

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I didn't even make it past that.

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So I scratched it.

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Okay, we're not going to do this.

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And that was line number one.

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So maybe I did it.

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Maybe I didn't.

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I started to do it and decided it was a bad idea and didn't do it.

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So there you go.

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I don't know if I counts or not, but I'm not going to do it.

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Sure.

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So there's that.

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Take credit for it.

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Just say, sure.

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We'll put the check mark on it.

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Given that you're not going to argue me on it.

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Anyway, the last one planned my day each day, the time blocking piece.

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I did this every work day since we last recorded.

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And I have had mostly successful results.

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I had one day where it completely fell apart.

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That was partially because of an event that was needing someone to run it, but it wasn't

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put on the calendar.

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That's a problem.

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That seems to happen more often than it should.

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A big group of people shows up and says, hey, where's our sound guys?

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Didn't know you had an event.

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Did you tell us about it?

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Well, I...

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So that's a no.

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That means I wasn't planning to run this for you.

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Anyway, that day got all blown up.

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But most of the time I've had success with this.

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And as weird as this is, I've been doing that in reminders, just the standard Apple reminders.

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That sounds kind of strange when I say it out loud, but at the same time, it works really

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well for me.

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I don't know.

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That's a weird thing.

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This is a side note.

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That's a weird thing.

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I feel like I've been going back to more and more of the Apple built-in apps over time.

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I don't know why that is.

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I've been using just the calendar app.

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I've been using reminders.

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I don't use notes.

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So maybe it's just those two.

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But those are crucial.

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Anyway, I'm rambling about it.

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How about you, Mike?

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How about your follow-up?

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My follow-up.

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Well, I've mixed success.

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The carry-overs did not happen.

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Still need to make my list of things for I know I'm being successful when the immediate

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I know I'm being successful when I get a break.

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Fair enough.

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City University has been going great, but it is a ton of work.

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I should have never done multiple teaching sessions in the same week, given the fact

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I had to make them from scratch.

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One more week to go.

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When you said you were doing a couple of these things in conjunction with each other,

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I'm like, "Oh boy, that's not something I ever wanted to."

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Yeah, I mean, it's going really well.

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Once I have them, I have them.

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They're assets.

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I can break them apart, I can build out more permanent evergreen stuff inside of City University.

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That's kind of the plan.

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It's definitely a lot of work.

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I'm proud of what's coming out of it, but that has been taken up all my time.

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I did not teach my family to call each other out when in the gap.

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I did do the other two, though.

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Reverse engineers, some creators from Craft & Commerce.

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One of the creators that I walked away pretty impressed with what they had built was Jay

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Klaus.

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He is the creator science guy.

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I attended a newsletter workshop that he did, and it was really good and just really

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impressed with what he's built.

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He used to do the community for Pat Flynn with Smart Passive Income and then left to

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do his own thing.

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If there's one person you're going to learn about how to build a community from, it would

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be Jay Klaus.

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I have joined the starter of his community, the lab it's called.

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I don't have access to everything, but I do have access to some of his courses, the

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workshops, stuff like that.

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I'm starting to poke around in there and just seeing what sort of sequences he's created

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for.

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When you join his membership community, obviously you've got to look at the thought process

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behind the email sequences and things with the newsletter masterclass, the thing that

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he did.

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That has led me to working with Matt Ragland as an email coach.

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He has a service where they'll take your content and break it up and post it automatically

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for you as emails.

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That's not actually what I'm working with him on, but that's his big offer.

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I've just been a fan of Matt's for a really long time and really like his approach to

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things.

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He's been through my process already of leaving the day job and having a launch and figuring

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out what happens after that.

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I'm looking forward to learning from him.

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I remember a couple of years ago, seeing something he did with his newsletter list where it was

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kind of like a choose your own adventure style game in terms of productivity advice.

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You picked your path and all that kind of stuff.

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I'm like, "Oh, that's a really cool idea."

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The goal is to help me think through what am I going to do with email as the back end

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here.

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I feel like that's really the place to start for all my business stuff.

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I'm good at making stuff okay at launching things.

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Other than that, I don't have any sort of email systems in place to continuously deliver

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the message and value to people.

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That's my focus.

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I'm trying to reverse engineer the email systems at the moment, I guess.

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Progress is being made on that, money is being spent on that.

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Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have some results to share on that.

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Fair enough.

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Then redo timer.

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I kind of did this out of necessity.

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I wouldn't say it's done yet.

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There's still more work to do here, but kind of modifying the timers because I have gotten

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back into tracking my time.

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50 hours so far this week, probably another 10 today.

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That's a bittersweet completed action item.

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Maybe it was better when I didn't know.

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That's the one thing I do track is how much time am I spending at work?

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It's just a one timer on/off period.

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Start it when I come into work, shut it off when I leave so that I can make sure I'm not.

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My tendency is I will run 50-60 hours a week and not realize it and then wonder why I don't

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have time to do things around the house.

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I will get to that point.

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It's more of a stop loss to use a term from today's book.

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Oh, hey, real quick.

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One more thing I should have mentioned because you mentioned the life-themed thing and I

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jotted down a note.

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This is why we don't record a Saturday morning because my brain's not working yet.

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I've had quite a few people talk to me about the life-themed stuff.

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The people who went through it keep bringing it back up.

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I'm guessing that it was probably pretty good.

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One of the things that I'm going to do, I actually have all of these written already.

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I'm going to put together a five-day email course on developing a life-themed thing as

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kind of like a precursor to the next cohort.

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It basically is the five steps from that.

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I'm going to put some public accountability out there.

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By the time this goes live, I'm going to have that available.

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I'm going to put the link in the show notes for people who want to sign up for that because

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apparently I don't do anything unless I have a forcing function to do it.

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Nice.

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The thing I love about that cohort was the fact that there is an accountability that

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comes with it.

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Here's the thing I need you to do before we do the next session.

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It doesn't take long.

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I think in most cases I had maybe 10 minutes in it, which these are all things I probably

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could have done on my own but won't because I wasn't a part of a group and expected to

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talk about it later.

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I love that about it.

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It went really well.

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I'm a fan.

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It's informed a lot of decisions on my part.

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I look at that as a very big win on your part.

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Well done, Mike.

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Awesome.

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Thank you.

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You should leave me a testimonial.

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I should do that.

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Yeah, I could do that.

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Writing it down now.

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Cool.

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I'll send you the link.

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Perfect.

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Give you an action item before we even got to the book.

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I know.

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I know.

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This is not fair.

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This is how my life goes.

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Even in, what was it?

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I think it was the last cohort session.

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There was somebody on the, or no, I think it was one of the Obsidian University sessions.

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Somebody was trying to give me action.

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I'm just like, what is the deal here?

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Why do people always want to give me the action items?

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It's not fair.

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Sorry.

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[laughter]

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I just say no.

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It's okay.

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I'm good at quitting, apparently, which is today's book.

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Let's jump into that because that's awesome.

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"Quit" by Annie Duke.

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Tagline on this one is the power of knowing when to walk away.

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I can't help but hear the song in my head.

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This is one that I think I've seen recommended in a few different scenarios.

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Close friend of mine recommended it to me personally.

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Going through it, I have lots of thoughts.

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It's pretty much exactly what I was expecting, though, like the process of how to quit things

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and when to do so, which is exactly what I would expect from Annie Duke.

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We read her other book, "Thinking in Bets."

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I feel like that was kind of an interesting read as well.

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She's a pretty good writer, but yeah, what were your first thoughts on this one, Mike?

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Do you have any preconceived notions that were completely dashed?

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[laughter]

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No, this one was kind of what I expected, but it was also really good.

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I have thoughts on the prologue if you want to go there or introduction, I guess.

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Sure.

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We can do that.

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Just to set that up quick, the prologue basically is talking about quitting versus grit, quit

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versus grit.

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Should you quit things or are you quitting too soon?

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Should you really stick things out?

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To me, that's really what that whole section is about.

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Tells a story about Muhammad Ali when he probably should have quit but didn't.

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There's that.

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Anyway, what are your thoughts?

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Yeah, those stories, just as a side note, are some of the best storytelling that I can

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recall from a book?

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I think she's a better storyteller than Ryan Holiday.

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See, that's fascinating for you to bring up because I actually have, so right here by

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the prologue, I've got the story, this isn't my handwritten notes, but I've got Muhammad

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Ali just as a note.

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Then beside it, I said, she's telling this about as good as Ryan Holiday.

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That's what my note says here.

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So it's interesting, you say you think she might be even better.

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I will say, even the stories, they're not stories I've heard before.

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Yeah, awesome.

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Yeah, they're not stories that I've heard before.

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The stories are almost unnecessary, I would argue, because she's such a good writer with

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the rest of it.

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There's built-in story with her experience as a poker player, but she does a really good

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job weaving in these historical stories as well.

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That definitely makes the book better, I'm not saying she shouldn't have done it.

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The Muhammad Ali story at the very beginning, obviously very emotional because it's highlighting

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the fact that because he didn't quit, he had physical bodily harm happen to him.

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The underlying tone there is don't do that.

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Quit before it has permanent lasting negative effects on your life.

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And then gets into the concept of grit versus quit, which I thought was fascinating, and

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that's the perfect setup, like the perfect framing for this.

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Because grit is the thing that can make you stick with hard things that are worthwhile,

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but it can also make you stick with things that are no longer worthwhile.

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And she's saying you got to know success is really knowing what are the right things

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to stick to and then what are the right things to walk away from.

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Success is picking the right thing to stick to and quitting all the rest of them.

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And that's kind of challenging.

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Not like that is hard, although it is hard, but it's kind of confrontational.

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It forces you to wrestle with some things because I think the default and kind of her

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point in the prologue is that society exalts grit as a virtue.

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And it is in certain sense, if you pick the right thing to stick with, like grit is the

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thing that can help you be successful with it.

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But that's one thing.

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And then there are how many other things that you're trying to do at the same time.

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And we just apply this concept of grit to all the other things that we really shouldn't

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be doing.

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And she talks about the framing of this is kind of weird, I thought, but the scales

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are gaffed towards grit instead of quit.

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I never used that term gaffed before, but basically what that means is like the thumb

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is on the scale, right?

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If you've got grit and quit on these scales, there is more weight placed on grit.

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And I never really thought about it that way, but it's totally true.

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And it's a great setup for the rest of the book.

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I know in the tech space, people talk about, you know, move fast and kill your darlings

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and drop features that are not helpful, minimum viable product, like all of that stuff is

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dependent on quitting things very quickly.

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And that's something that I think is not normal.

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And even in that tech space, I don't see that as something that is done on a large scale.

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Like they'll do it when it comes to the product, but when it comes to the business, they don't

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necessarily do that.

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Like they'll have entire departments that they'll keep around because of historical

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reasons when they really shouldn't do that.

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And there's a whole bunch of stuff around that.

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But I think you're absolutely right.

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And the way that she pitches this is that we tend to exalt those who will persevere through

00:22:56

the depths of pain and suffering, or when it's really should have been dropped already.

00:23:03

So I get that that's a thing that we tend to do.

00:23:06

But when you look at a lot of very successful people, they've quit early on a lot of things.

00:23:14

I don't think this story was in here, but the Michael Jordan scenario where you quit,

00:23:23

then came back and quit.

00:23:27

You don't want that.

00:23:29

It damages a reputation in the process.

00:23:32

And learning when to persevere through something versus when to drop something, that's the

00:23:38

key.

00:23:39

And that's exactly what she's going to take us through throughout this book.

00:23:43

Yep.

00:23:44

Which will bring us to section one.

00:23:47

Now I have this.

00:23:49

There's, oh gosh, how many were there?

00:23:51

There's 11 chapters in this book.

00:23:54

No conclusion, which is interesting.

00:23:56

We'll get to that.

00:23:58

But there's four sections here.

00:24:00

So she's not exactly going to follow the trend of three parts.

00:24:04

But I feel like this would make more sense to talk about these in the section form instead

00:24:08

of by chapter number one, because 11 chapters would take a long time to get through.

00:24:13

And also so much of like chapter one, two and three, which are all part of section one,

00:24:17

I felt like kind of blended together.

00:24:20

So to me, it makes more sense to talk about it that way.

00:24:22

So section one, the case for quitting.

00:24:25

This is basically laying the ground for work for why you should quit.

00:24:29

The three chapters in here, the opposite of a great virtue is a great virtue, which

00:24:33

is the quit versus grit concept.

00:24:37

Sitting on time usually feels like quitting too early, that the adage of if you're in

00:24:43

management when you need to fire somebody as soon as it crosses your mind that maybe

00:24:47

you should fire somebody, that adage in management, that's this concept.

00:24:52

Should I stay or should I go?

00:24:55

This is basically loss aversion, if you will.

00:25:00

So like it's the scenario of when should you stick with something or when should you let

00:25:04

it go.

00:25:05

Still talking about that quit versus grit concept.

00:25:09

This whole case for quitting, like she's got a lot of stories here where it really left

00:25:15

me thinking, huh, maybe I should quit things faster and move on to other things, but at

00:25:21

the same time, but I have so much invested in XYZ, which is unfortunate because she'll

00:25:26

talk about that a little bit later.

00:25:28

But yeah, anyway, the case for quitting, we should quit things more often.

00:25:34

We should.

00:25:36

This section was kind of validation for me.

00:25:42

I wondered.

00:25:43

It made my job.

00:25:45

I thought about you a lot while reading this, to be honest, like, okay, with you quitting

00:25:48

your job, was this validation or did it make you think you quit too early?

00:25:55

That was my main question, or maybe it made you think you quit too late.

00:25:59

Well, you're going to have hindsight right now.

00:26:03

So makes it easier.

00:26:05

So I feel like this would have been helpful to read earlier before I actually read this.

00:26:14

I didn't have the thought, should I not have left?

00:26:20

Because this just in starting your own company is hard.

00:26:26

What?

00:26:27

That's not a.

00:26:28

Interesting.

00:26:29

That's not a surprise.

00:26:32

But I had a few things that I thought were going to materialize for some consulting stuff

00:26:38

that did not materialize.

00:26:40

And so it's been a little bit of a scramble.

00:26:44

The Obsidian University launch went great.

00:26:47

But that really needed to happen.

00:26:51

And so I'm head down working on that.

00:26:54

And as soon as that gets done, it's like, well, what's the next thing that doesn't appear

00:26:59

to be any relief and insight?

00:27:03

Now that's a fairly negative view.

00:27:05

And that's not the picture I'm trying to paint here.

00:27:07

I know it's going to take time to build these business systems.

00:27:10

But part of me, I guess, was second guessing the way that it went down.

00:27:14

Internally, when I made the decision, it was essentially because I was working with a friend

00:27:19

of mine.

00:27:20

And I didn't feel right about not being all in with that thing.

00:27:25

I think she probably would have advised me, Andy Duke, to build the thing on the side

00:27:32

for like six months, kind of just show up, do the bare minimum, and then make the leap.

00:27:40

But I couldn't-- I just-- I couldn't do that.

00:27:46

So I left, have all this work to do.

00:27:50

And I did have the thought that maybe I made the wrong decision here.

00:27:58

But then when she's talking about some of the specific problems that were happening,

00:28:03

like you brought up the right time to fire someone as the first time it crosses your

00:28:07

mind, like that specifically, I remember dealing with that in the day job.

00:28:14

And those types of discussions and the decisions that were made-- and not even really projecting

00:28:22

that that's the wrong decision because I was the new guy at the agency.

00:28:27

But I do remember feeling friction.

00:28:29

Like, why aren't we doing anything about this kind of stuff?

00:28:34

And that really grated on me.

00:28:36

So I do think ultimately, I did make the right decision that I'm doing the thing that if

00:28:41

I were to get to my deathbed and not have tried this, I will absolutely 100% regret it.

00:28:48

So at least I'll know now.

00:28:52

But yeah, so this at the beginning, she's essentially sharing all this stuff and it was

00:28:59

telling me that I probably did wait too long to make that decision.

00:29:05

I feel like the signs were there, but I had a sunk cost in my head that I had made this

00:29:16

decision.

00:29:17

I was embracing this new thing and this new role as an integrator.

00:29:21

I'm pretty good at this business operating system stuff.

00:29:24

I was really good at finding all of this supporting evidence for like why I should stick it out.

00:29:30

And I kept looking for things that were indications of maybe this will turn into the thing that

00:29:37

I thought it was going to be.

00:29:40

And eventually, I just had to tell myself, this is what it is.

00:29:46

It's not good or bad necessarily.

00:29:49

It's just not for me.

00:29:51

And that was a really tough decision to come to.

00:29:58

And I do feel after reading this first section though that it was, like I said, confirmation

00:30:04

that I did make the right choice even if it took me a little longer maybe than it should

00:30:09

have.

00:30:10

There's a story in here.

00:30:12

The chapter about quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early.

00:30:16

There's a story about Stuart Butterfield in here who developed a game, a video game people

00:30:23

probably remember it Glitch.

00:30:26

And it's an interesting story because in it, Glitch is growing but only because they're

00:30:33

spending so much money to acquire new customers for their subscription to the game.

00:30:41

And as a result of that, they sold off or they didn't sell it off but they quit making

00:30:49

the game early even though they were still growing at the time.

00:30:53

But Stuart realized that they were spending a lot of money to acquire new people and the

00:30:59

churn rate was really high.

00:31:01

And eventually they were going to run out of people to go through that could potentially

00:31:04

try the game and they were going to run out of people very quickly.

00:31:08

So he quit early, returned the money back to investors that hadn't been spent but saved

00:31:14

one feature from the game that people really loved which became a feature that eventually

00:31:19

became Flickr.

00:31:21

So if you know the photo sharing tool, that became Flickr.

00:31:26

And then they eventually developed, I think it was part of Flickr, was it part of the

00:31:31

Glitch system?

00:31:33

But he's the one that through that development team came up with Slack.

00:31:40

So Slack came out of all that.

00:31:42

Yeah, they went from Glitch to Flickr back to Glitch and then Slack.

00:31:48

Yep, so because of all of that, basically the moral of the story there is that Stuart

00:31:53

was able to look forward and look at things objectively instead of getting caught up in

00:31:59

the moment and realize when he needed to get out of something and tick the whole company

00:32:03

with him.

00:32:04

But because he was returning money to investors in the process and because he was able to

00:32:08

do that, everybody left in much better situations than they would have been had they just stuck

00:32:15

with it.

00:32:16

So quitting felt like they were quitting too early but it turned out it was exactly the

00:32:21

right timing.

00:32:23

But I feel like that's really hard to do.

00:32:26

Trying to see past where you're at right now and look at it holistically and be able to

00:32:33

see that you need to quit, I feel like that's not an easy thing and obviously she's going

00:32:39

to spell that out through the rest of this book through these stories.

00:32:41

The number of times that the ones that get me are these stories when it's like this person

00:32:46

was someone who studied loss aversion and because they studied all that, they still had

00:32:55

this scenario over in this other situation where they did the exact same thing that they

00:32:58

studied for their entire career.

00:33:01

So this is not a simple thing to just overlook.

00:33:04

Like there is no magic bullet here to just like, here's how you get yourself perspective

00:33:08

and make the right decisions.

00:33:09

Like, no, this is hard even if you know exactly what you're.

00:33:13

That was at least refreshing to me and made me feel better about myself.

00:33:16

I just need to say that.

00:33:18

Yeah, well that story, I love that story.

00:33:21

I had not heard that story before and I definitely related to that story because when I left my

00:33:31

position as the integrator, I think a lot of people there thought I was crazy because

00:33:38

the results looked good.

00:33:43

There was the growth and the profit which was the measuring stick for success in my position.

00:33:51

So like if you look at his mic doing a good job, the answer is yes, the company is doing

00:33:58

well.

00:33:59

Why would you leave at that point?

00:34:03

And I couldn't really articulate it other than I kind of want to do this other thing.

00:34:09

And we tend to rationalize away the clues that point us towards quitting is something

00:34:13

that she says in this second chapter.

00:34:16

People are excessively cautious with facing life changing decisions.

00:34:20

I feel that is me too.

00:34:22

So for a long time, I'm not a long time, but probably several months was questioning things

00:34:33

and that was kind of the, if I look back in retrospect, that is like the seeds of this

00:34:38

wrong fit sort of thing.

00:34:42

But I didn't have any solid numbers to latch onto.

00:34:47

So I had trouble making the decision.

00:34:49

All the numbers that I was looking at were you should just stick with the thing.

00:34:54

Yeah, this is a great section.

00:34:57

I mean, if this is where the book ended, I got my money.

00:35:00

I know, I know.

00:35:02

Actually, I don't say this very often.

00:35:05

I don't know that I've ever said this, but reading the prologue.

00:35:08

Like this is if I ever go to a bookstore, this is the type of thing that people do is

00:35:12

you read the prologue to read the introductions or at least skim those.

00:35:16

And then that is a really good way to figure out does the premise of this book fit what

00:35:21

you're looking for.

00:35:22

And that's something I do quite a bit.

00:35:24

If you read the prologue to this, I feel like you learn that like we talk about this like

00:35:29

if I get one tidbit out of this book, it was worth buying and reading that happened in

00:35:34

the prologue for me.

00:35:36

Yeah.

00:35:37

Yeah.

00:35:38

So I haven't even achieved the beginning of the book.

00:35:44

And yet I've already succeeded in the purpose of me picking up this book to begin with.

00:35:49

So that is something that I think tells maybe some of the density of this book too.

00:35:56

We've talked about that as well.

00:35:58

How much information is in this book for the number of words that you're going to read

00:36:01

in this book?

00:36:02

And it's there's a lot in this.

00:36:05

Like there is a lot to go through, which means we need to keep moving or we're not going

00:36:09

to get through this.

00:36:10

So section two in the losses is the name of this.

00:36:14

There's three chapters in this particular section escalating commitment sunk cost and

00:36:19

the fear of waste, monkeys and pedestals.

00:36:23

And let me kind of summarize these three here real quick.

00:36:26

So escalating commitment, the more you invest in something, the more you feel like you can't

00:36:29

leave it.

00:36:31

You think of the number of like, I always think of like government projects where they sunk

00:36:36

a billion dollars into it.

00:36:38

And then it's not quite done.

00:36:40

So they sink another 500 million into it and then they sink another 500 million into it.

00:36:44

And then they can't let the two million two billion dollar project go because they've and

00:36:48

they don't want to show that they're misusing taxpayer dollars.

00:36:51

So then they sink another and then it just keeps going and does it ever end.

00:36:55

And then by the time it's all done, you realize that you never should have started it.

00:36:59

If you knew it was going to cost four billion dollars to build it, nobody would have approved

00:37:03

it.

00:37:04

And yet that's exactly what they've done.

00:37:05

Anyway, I mean four billion is cheap compared to the California bullet train that they talk

00:37:09

about.

00:37:10

Yes.

00:37:11

Yeah.

00:37:12

Yeah.

00:37:13

Chapter five sunk cost and the fear of waste.

00:37:17

This is something I know people really struggle with.

00:37:19

I know I have as well monkeys and pedestals.

00:37:23

This one's kind of interesting.

00:37:26

That comes from the term of, let's see if I can get this right.

00:37:30

So if you had a monkey, what was the thing?

00:37:34

If you had a monkey that could juggle, you're trying to train a monkey to juggle flaming

00:37:38

towards, right?

00:37:39

That's what it was.

00:37:40

While standing on a pedestal.

00:37:41

Yeah.

00:37:42

Yeah.

00:37:43

Juggle flaming torches while standing on a pedestal.

00:37:48

And the thing here is that there's two parts to that.

00:37:52

One is training the monkey to juggle flaming items while teaching him to juggle that.

00:38:00

And the other is building the pedestal.

00:38:02

Well, building the pedestal is easy.

00:38:05

But training the monkey is the hard part.

00:38:08

And the idea is that you need to start with training the monkey.

00:38:13

Don't start with building the pedestal because that's easy.

00:38:15

And once this was explained, it was like, holy buckets, I struggled with this on so many

00:38:21

fronts.

00:38:22

Like I will build the back end for things a hundred times before I build the front end

00:38:26

of things.

00:38:27

And building the back end is the easy part.

00:38:30

Building the front end is the hard part for the things I'm referring to.

00:38:35

And that means I'm building the pedestal with the preconceived notion that I'm making a

00:38:40

lot of progress on something when in reality, I'm not.

00:38:43

I'm not accomplishing the hard part of that.

00:38:47

So anyway, such a ridiculous picture, but it's so effective.

00:38:50

I will never forget that.

00:38:51

Like it's just embedded in my brain.

00:38:54

Anyway, these three chapters are fascinating.

00:38:59

I think this is probably one of my, this might be my favorite section in the book, partially

00:39:04

because of this, the escalating commitment piece is the one that I think really, really

00:39:08

struck me.

00:39:10

But again, the monkeys and pedestals thing was a visual.

00:39:14

That's amazing.

00:39:15

Yeah, there's a real effective breakdown here of the three different components with the

00:39:23

escalating commitment, which is restricted here.

00:39:25

It's to a losing strategy that causes us to double down on things.

00:39:29

And it doesn't just happen in high stakes scenarios.

00:39:32

That's the big takeaway for me from that section.

00:39:35

For example, when you start a bad movie, you feel like you need to finish it.

00:39:39

We're a bad book.

00:39:40

Yeah, I was going to say I'll apply that to books too, with the exception of the stuff

00:39:47

that we do for bookworm.

00:39:48

Obviously we have to follow through with it, but for the average person, don't continue

00:39:54

to read something if you're not getting anything out of it.

00:39:57

By the way, on that topic, this is a bit of a tangent, but I feel like this is important.

00:40:03

This is concept of speed reading, which I have trouble with just like actually, oh, I'm going

00:40:09

to click into speed reading and crank through books really fast.

00:40:12

I know that it's possible though.

00:40:13

I actually took a course on it a while back.

00:40:16

And the big takeaway from that course for me was not like you click over into speed reading,

00:40:21

but that you are using different speeds when you read.

00:40:25

You have a shifter and there are sections of books when you know you just got to go down

00:40:31

in the first gear and take your time with this because this feels important.

00:40:36

But there are other parts, especially in bad books, where it's like, let's just get through

00:40:40

this quickly and you're kind of skimming things.

00:40:43

And I feel like that is a totally valid approach.

00:40:47

So before you actually bail on a book, I would say don't feel like you really need to internalize

00:40:52

every word that's on every page.

00:40:55

Maybe move a little bit faster.

00:40:56

Maybe it picks up.

00:41:00

But the sunk cost in the fear of waste, this is the California bullet train story.

00:41:04

And I don't remember the exact numbers here.

00:41:07

But originally it was estimated to be done in 2020 and I think it was going to cost like

00:41:11

15 billion dollars.

00:41:13

But the hard part here was like they were going to have to go through some mountains

00:41:16

and some tricky terrains.

00:41:19

And they just kept upping the estimates like you were talking about, but it wasn't 2x.

00:41:24

It's now over 105 billion and they're projecting it'll be done by 2035.

00:41:30

And they've only built a couple small sections of the track which were pedestal building.

00:41:35

They were the easy parts.

00:41:37

Like there we started it, see, but they have no idea how they're going to actually tackle

00:41:42

the hard parts.

00:41:43

Yeah, they had the issuance of 9 billion dollars in bonds, but that wasn't the estimated

00:41:50

cost.

00:41:51

The estimated cost was 33 billion in total is what they had estimated at the very beginning.

00:41:57

Okay.

00:41:58

Yeah, so still significantly higher and they haven't even considered the monkey yet.

00:42:06

Yeah, the current estimate is 105 billion.

00:42:09

So yeah, that's the one I remember.

00:42:12

And then they also made the point that with some of those projects it's really hard to

00:42:16

quit because those are politically motivated.

00:42:20

And if you bail on a project like that, essentially what you're saying is this project was a

00:42:26

waste.

00:42:27

No one wants to waste taxpayer money.

00:42:30

So her point is like you keep doubling down on these things and the cost keeps going up

00:42:35

and most of them aren't going to see the light of day anyways.

00:42:37

So the real wasteful thing is to continue to do this, but that's not the way it comes

00:42:42

off.

00:42:43

That's not the optics of the situation.

00:42:45

So it's hard to do.

00:42:48

There's also a concept here in chapter five of the Katamari, which is this like thing that

00:42:54

keeps rolling over and every time it rolls over, it picks up everything that it touches

00:42:58

of video games getting bigger.

00:43:00

Yeah.

00:43:01

Yeah.

00:43:02

So it's easy to see.

00:43:04

I like that visual too, where it's easy to see how this thing can very quickly exponentially

00:43:11

explode sunk cost.

00:43:13

I like it.

00:43:14

Katamari, she talks about, but yeah, the monkey in the pedestal thing is the big takeaway

00:43:19

I think for me.

00:43:22

Because pedestal building, she says, gives you the illusion of progress.

00:43:28

Absolutely.

00:43:30

And that's something I've been thinking a lot about as I'm building out the business systems.

00:43:37

What of this is actually effective and what of it is just there I did something.

00:43:44

I've got a whole big list of things that I want to build and I'm forcing myself to tackle

00:43:52

the most important ones because you look at that list, it's easy to get overwhelmed and

00:43:57

well, I'll just pick one near the bottom so I can say I did something.

00:44:01

That's pedestal building.

00:44:04

That was kind of a moment of clarity that I had from my personal retreat.

00:44:08

By the way, I went on a personal retreat this week and I went to this thing called a get

00:44:14

a way house.

00:44:15

Have you heard of these?

00:44:17

I've heard of some things around this.

00:44:19

It's a place you can go to.

00:44:20

It's fairly small and it's all yours or whatever time period, right?

00:44:26

I'll share the link in the chat here, but it's like a tiny house on a campsite.

00:44:33

Michael Porter told me about these and they're awesome.

00:44:37

They're kind of positioned as a way for big city people to get out into nature.

00:44:44

Bit away, right?

00:44:46

The one from Milwaukee is actually nowhere near Milwaukee and is only 40 minutes from

00:44:50

my house.

00:44:53

I went to one this week and they're pretty cool.

00:44:59

A little bit of a tangent there, but that's kind of where I got this moment of clarity.

00:45:04

That's actually where I read the section about the monkeys and the pedestals and I was like,

00:45:09

"Oh, man.

00:45:10

I've been building pedestals.

00:45:12

I got to change the monkey."

00:45:14

Yeah, that one's going to stick with me because I've realized that I build a lot of pedestals

00:45:22

and I don't think I realized that that's what I was doing.

00:45:24

It's like, "Oh, well, this is something that has to get done.

00:45:26

I need to build the payment structure for this product that I'm in the middle of building."

00:45:30

Well, I go working on that and then I realize, "Wait, I'm not actually building the product.

00:45:34

I feel like I'm getting things done, but I'm not because I'm working on the administrative

00:45:39

side of it."

00:45:40

Exactly.

00:45:41

I'm actually working on the real thing.

00:45:46

Like I mentioned earlier, I got a tidbit from the prologue.

00:45:49

Obviously, there was a lot in section one about why I should quit and then it just keeps piling

00:45:55

on and it's like, "Hey, don't build pedestals.

00:45:58

Train monkeys."

00:46:00

The thing about this is all those other things that you're talking about, those have to get

00:46:04

done.

00:46:05

Yes.

00:46:06

It's easy to justify, "Well, I got to do these things anyways.

00:46:10

I may as well do them now."

00:46:12

It gets back into the back in the day with OmniFocus 2, everyone had their custom perspectives

00:46:18

and low energy, all that kind of stuff.

00:46:22

My big takeaway from this is that's the wrong approach.

00:46:25

Not that you shouldn't use metadata and context and things like that, but anything that is

00:46:30

not training the monkey is building a pedestal.

00:46:34

There is one monkey to be trained at any given time.

00:46:37

Early on, I don't remember, I think it was before we started recording, but I was talking

00:46:42

about using Apple reminders and the built-in calendar app and stuff and instead of all

00:46:48

the fancy tools and stuff that can do a lot of things.

00:46:51

I think this is partly why because it's a lot easier to just do a list of projects,

00:46:58

say, in reminders.

00:47:00

I know that that breaks with GTD convention.

00:47:03

I'm not actually breaking it down to tasks.

00:47:05

It's projects.

00:47:06

That's fine.

00:47:07

I know from looking at that project, name what the next thing is.

00:47:12

Why would I take the time of building out the pedestal of detailing all those pieces out?

00:47:17

When I already know all of it, just from a glance, I might as well just look at that

00:47:21

and be able to intuitively know I've got a list of 12 projects here.

00:47:25

What needs to happen next?

00:47:26

I can make that judgment call instantly.

00:47:29

I don't need to spend the hour of building the pedestal with all the specific items in

00:47:35

there.

00:47:36

I think that's because when people start something new, pedestal building is easy and it is a

00:47:49

fast way to feel like you have progress.

00:47:52

It's not putting you in the difficult side of trying to do the monkey training and trying

00:47:56

to do the stuff that's actually going to propel it forward.

00:48:02

That's the hard stuff.

00:48:03

That's the stuff that we tend to wait on.

00:48:05

We'll figure that out.

00:48:06

We've got to have this structure that way.

00:48:08

When we have that built, it has something to stand on, but it's backwards.

00:48:18

One last note here before we go to section three.

00:48:21

Towards the end of that, monkeys and pedestals chapter, there's a comment.

00:48:27

It's kind of a short period actually where she talks about kill criteria.

00:48:33

I wrote down that that's similar to anti-goals.

00:48:36

Basically putting together the criteria.

00:48:38

When you're training your monkey, you need to have this criteria that at some point,

00:48:44

if something is not possible, if that monkey doesn't have the ability to even hold a torch,

00:48:51

then training it to juggle is not going to happen.

00:48:54

You need to kill that task, that project.

00:48:57

That concept of having the criteria that if this happens, this is when we stop working

00:49:02

towards this project goal.

00:49:05

That I think is super powerful.

00:49:07

I don't really know what that means for as far as day to day practice, but it's at least

00:49:12

a concept that I think could be very helpful.

00:49:15

When should this project be shot and puts a bed and not continue down the path that we're

00:49:21

going down?

00:49:22

Anyway, I thought that was super interesting.

00:49:26

Another way to describe that is kind of a pre-mortem.

00:49:29

She talks about.

00:49:31

Yeah, the best quitting criteria, she mentions, contain two things.

00:49:36

A state and a date.

00:49:39

I don't have an action item associated with that, but I totally could.

00:49:44

Yeah.

00:49:45

I feel like that's really good advice.

00:49:48

I don't have any killer criteria associated with the projects that I'm working on.

00:49:56

I don't necessarily want to with the things that I'm currently doing.

00:50:02

I keep bringing up with City University because that's the thing that I'm focused on, but

00:50:05

I kind of know what the path forward looks like for that.

00:50:09

I kind of know what that should ultimately look like.

00:50:15

The same thing with the life-themed cohort, stuff like that.

00:50:18

There are lots of other things that I've kind of dabbled with, a little bit here and

00:50:23

there, and I've kind of got some clarity at the moment on the path forward, but I can

00:50:30

totally see a scenario where future Mike is like, "Okay, I got to figure out the next

00:50:35

thing."

00:50:36

And being in that same place that I was even four or five weeks ago and having that approach

00:50:44

about a thing, I could totally see myself identifying some killer criteria as I'm figuring out,

00:50:49

"Okay, what am I going to do with this project?"

00:50:54

So I'll use it in the future, but not right now.

00:50:56

Yeah, there's a lot of things like that through this book.

00:50:59

I keep thinking like escalating commitment and monkeys and petasiles and should I stay

00:51:04

or should I go like as I read through these chapter titles and think through the concepts

00:51:08

behind them, I'm like, "I didn't write down any action items from this book, just a spoiler

00:51:14

alert."

00:51:15

I didn't either.

00:51:16

Interesting, because this is a lot of like, this is how you think.

00:51:20

It's not a here, go grab a piece of paper and do this thing.

00:51:25

It's not like your cohorts where like, "These are the things you need to do by this date.

00:51:30

Have this and share it there.

00:51:32

Okay, well I can do that.

00:51:34

This doesn't have anything like that."

00:51:35

So it means you're interpreting together and maybe that would happen in my case it didn't.

00:51:40

Let's go on to section three because this will be difficult to work through.

00:51:45

Any and other impediments, chapter seven, eight and nine here, you own what you've bought

00:51:51

and what you've thought endowment and status quo bias, chapter eight, the hardest thing

00:51:54

to quit is who you are, identity and dissonance, chapter nine, find someone who loves you but

00:51:59

doesn't care about feelings.

00:52:02

And these are kind of what you would expect.

00:52:09

Chapter seven, you own what you've bought, etc, etc.

00:52:13

Basically it's we prefer to stick with the status quo and we will have a tendency to

00:52:19

like what we currently have as opposed to getting rid of it.

00:52:23

There's a Dave Ramsey thing he tends to do is like, "Okay, if you have your house and

00:52:28

you have a, have purchased a second house, like people talk about buying a second house

00:52:32

and keeping their first house and just renting it out."

00:52:35

Well, if, that's a way of keeping your house because you already have it.

00:52:40

You have the status quo of, "I've owned this house and you're adding to that."

00:52:44

Well, his question is always, if you didn't own the house, would you take out the mortgage

00:52:50

and buy it so that you could rent it?

00:52:54

Most of the time the answer is no.

00:52:55

He's like, "Well, then why would you keep the house?"

00:52:58

That's, that's the concept here with this particular one.

00:53:03

The second one here, the hardest thing to quit is who you are.

00:53:06

There's a story in here about how a, what was it, Sears was a retail store and then they

00:53:15

got into financial stuff and then really what happened is the financial stuff that they had

00:53:21

bought when then later sold ended up being very successful and they probably should have

00:53:25

kept it and sold the retail side but because retail was who Sears was, it led them to bankruptcy

00:53:32

because they wouldn't let go of who they were and rebrand themselves.

00:53:36

So that is something that you need to be aware of.

00:53:39

You can get your head wrapped up in things too tight.

00:53:42

Find someone who loves you but doesn't care about feelings.

00:53:46

Really it's a way of trying to get outside opinions.

00:53:50

That's the way that I took that.

00:53:52

Finding people or organizations that are willing to give you a third party view on something

00:53:57

so that way you're not so wrapped up in your own thoughts and feelings about something.

00:54:03

So when you start to identify with a product or a company or like, "This is my baby.

00:54:08

I don't want to see it go."

00:54:09

That's when you're starting to have problems.

00:54:11

Don't do that, Mike.

00:54:12

So if you have your business, if it's our go South, you're willing to let it go.

00:54:17

That's the key here.

00:54:18

Yeah.

00:54:19

Let's go back to the Sears thing real quick because Sears wasn't just successful with

00:54:27

the financial stuff.

00:54:29

As Jose points out in the chat.

00:54:32

There's a whole bunch of companies that they owned that are still around that are very

00:54:36

successful.

00:54:37

Allstate, Discover, Coldwell Banker.

00:54:41

When they sold them off, there was a quote she used in the book that really hit hard.

00:54:50

Because it was in quotes and they sold off the successful financial stuff to get back

00:54:55

to our retailing roots.

00:55:01

I feel like I've heard that statement a bunch of times.

00:55:04

I probably even used that occasionally.

00:55:07

It's like, "Well, this is who we are.

00:55:09

Well, who you are is a failing business that caused them to be completely blind to the

00:55:15

success that they had.

00:55:17

Those are insanely successful companies.

00:55:20

And they're all still around.

00:55:22

They're all still around.

00:55:23

I forget, I think Discover was, or Allstate maybe, was the biggest one and it was worth

00:55:30

like $40 billion.

00:55:31

And I forget the exact numbers.

00:55:32

But that may be bigger than what Sears was.

00:55:36

And it's not the same because Sears has been around for a really long time and so $19,

00:55:40

$20 is obviously way different than $20, $20.

00:55:44

But just not recognizing the potential of what they had because they were so attached

00:55:50

to, "This is who we are."

00:55:54

And I get why that happens.

00:55:56

The term for that is cognitive dissonance when new information conflicts with our previously

00:56:02

held beliefs.

00:56:04

This is why I'm really grateful for having read books like "Leminal Thinking" because

00:56:11

I feel like that book specifically challenged me to look for the arguments and the ideas

00:56:20

that are contrary to what I hold to be true.

00:56:25

And while some people may think that is threatening to convictions and beliefs, it's actually

00:56:32

had the opposite effect for me.

00:56:35

Like it's made my convictions and my beliefs stronger because I've considered more information

00:56:41

and that's still what I considered to be the right thing.

00:56:45

Now it's easy for people to look from the outside with their own biases and be like,

00:56:49

"Well, you're not seeing it right and you can't really judge that for somebody else.

00:56:55

You got to arrive at your own conclusions."

00:56:57

But I am thankful that we've been pushed in that direction to not just surround ourselves

00:57:04

with the people who think and talk exactly like we do and enforce that bubble of belief.

00:57:09

Because I feel like that bubble of belief is the thing that can amplify that cognitive

00:57:16

dissonance.

00:57:17

Like if you're in that bubble of belief and you get one thing that kind of floats in that's

00:57:21

contrary, you really have issues with that.

00:57:25

One thing, because everything in your world is perfectly organized and this one thing

00:57:28

doesn't fit.

00:57:30

It's uncomfortable and it's inconvenient.

00:57:32

What do you do with this?

00:57:34

But when you're constantly uncomfortable because of inconvenient information that you have

00:57:39

to figure out what to make sense of, like that's a skill and a practice.

00:57:44

And just like going to the gym, I believe that those muscles can get stronger and it's

00:57:48

less threatening every time that happens.

00:57:51

That's kind of the whole idea behind chapter nine, find someone who loves you but doesn't

00:57:56

care about her feelings.

00:57:57

She's basically telling us to get a quitting coach.

00:58:02

Somebody who can tell you when it's time to let things go.

00:58:07

I don't have an action item associated with this, but I like that idea of the quitting

00:58:11

coach.

00:58:12

I think the application of this for me is really just have people who are speaking in

00:58:19

your life who are going to tell you the truth and are going to help you see things right.

00:58:23

For me, that's mastermind group.

00:58:25

But I do think this is really important to have people in your life who can tell you

00:58:31

this sort of stuff.

00:58:33

But I'm not going to go hire somebody just to fill that role.

00:58:39

I feel like I kind of sort of have that filled already, but I feel like this is an obvious

00:58:44

action item if someone does not have this already.

00:58:48

Who in your life has permission and is able to speak truth so that you can see things

00:58:55

right and tell you when it's time to give up on this idea that you have regardless of

00:59:01

how much investment you've made into it or how attached you are to it.

00:59:06

Yeah, and that's really important.

00:59:10

I don't think that's easy to accomplish either.

00:59:14

Seeing the people who are able to give you that feedback in a way that doesn't completely

00:59:22

force you to reject them is important.

00:59:26

But at the same time, when you have a strong conviction and you're confronted with evidence

00:59:32

that that conviction is wrong, how you process that can, I don't want to say dictate, but

00:59:41

it can be a strong indicator of the character that you have and how deep down that hole

00:59:49

you may have been deep down the holes, probably the wrong phrase to use because if it's a

00:59:54

positive thing, then that's something you should hold on to.

00:59:58

The thing I instantly think about if you've ever looked up people doing flat earth experiments

01:00:05

online and the look on their face when they do the experiment and the experiment confirms

01:00:10

that the earth is round, I went through a phase where I thought these were hilarious.

01:00:17

The look on these people's faces when they confirm that the earth is round through their

01:00:24

experiment to prove that the earth is flat is priceless.

01:00:31

Usually there's a look of devastation because everything that they have been teaching and

01:00:36

preaching for the last however long in that particular person's case.

01:00:40

Those people, it's the years, they have just proven that that entire world of thinking

01:00:46

is wrong and they were certain that it was 100% true.

01:00:51

Now that's a weird example because I don't know how people get on board with that particular

01:00:56

theory, but that is what they do.

01:01:00

But that's a good way to see that when you have something that you've held on to very

01:01:04

deeply and you're confronted with the hard facts that what you have believed is wrong,

01:01:12

what do you do with it?

01:01:14

That's where your real values start to show.

01:01:19

All right, let's go on to section four here because this is fun.

01:01:23

Opportunity cost is section four.

01:01:24

This is the last section again, there's no conclusion.

01:01:26

So this is the wrap up of the book, chapters 10 and 11.

01:01:29

Chapter 10 is lessons from forced quitting, chapter 11 is the myopia of goals.

01:01:36

Chapter 10 basically when you're forced to quit something, it then forces you to explore

01:01:41

new things.

01:01:43

And when you start to explore those, you get to see new opportunities that you may want

01:01:49

to explore.

01:01:51

The key is to maybe learn how to explore those things before you're forced to quit.

01:01:56

And the story that is spelled out here that I thought was the most interesting, I think

01:02:01

it's closer to the end of the chapter was the pandemic, the COVID pandemic and how so

01:02:07

many people were forced to go work from home.

01:02:11

And then when they were asked to come back to the office, there was the great resignation

01:02:15

where people quit month after month and people were like, nope, done, not going back to the

01:02:21

office.

01:02:22

And the theory here is that it's possible that whenever people were forced to stay at home

01:02:28

and work, they started to realize what these new opportunities were for achieving an income.

01:02:36

So then they were able to explore those opportunities and pursue them in more depth.

01:02:40

Myopia of goals is also, I kind of wonder, I want your opinion on this chapter too.

01:02:49

The thought that when you have goals, it can give you something to drive towards, but it

01:02:54

can also be the exact thing that drives it to failure because you may not want to give

01:03:01

up on that goal, even though there's in some cases physical pain or hardship that's happening

01:03:07

as part of trying to achieve that goal.

01:03:10

The story there was, well, there's a handful of stories, but of people running a marathon

01:03:15

and they will run through pain to injury.

01:03:20

I think we know somebody who's done this.

01:03:22

Who does that?

01:03:23

For the sake of achieving a goal when they should have stopped to prevent the longer term

01:03:29

trauma from happening.

01:03:30

I mean, I don't know anybody who would have ever done that.

01:03:33

I don't think we know that at all.

01:03:37

Man, I mean, so the last chapter in this book being a chapter about the bad parts of goals,

01:03:48

I mean, yes, obviously I like that.

01:03:54

She starts that chapter with the stories about people who broke their legs because they were

01:04:00

committed to running these marathons and they did it even with a broken leg.

01:04:06

That sounds extreme, but like you've been alluding to, I have my own version of that.

01:04:12

I apologize to everybody who has heard this story before, but I will tell it again.

01:04:17

Can I apologize for bringing it up?

01:04:19

No, this is the place to tell it.

01:04:23

It's been a while.

01:04:24

We've got quite a few new listeners, but a long time ago I decided I was going to run

01:04:28

a half marathon as the ultimate test of Mind Over Matter because I grew up playing sports

01:04:34

and I would do anything that involved a ball, but hated running.

01:04:37

I thought that was stupid and pointless.

01:04:39

I got older, thought, I'll challenge myself if I can train myself to discipline myself,

01:04:46

to train for a half marathon and actually run it.

01:04:49

That would be a pretty impressive mental accomplishment.

01:04:52

I did that.

01:04:53

It took me a year and a half to train.

01:04:55

I over-trained.

01:04:56

I made a rookie mistake and just was running, wasn't cross-training.

01:05:02

The week before the race, my Patel attendant slipped off my kneecap on the side of my

01:05:06

leg.

01:05:08

Not a broken leg, very minor compared to the stories that she tells in here, but obviously

01:05:13

resonated with me because I went through a similar thing.

01:05:17

I was a week out from my race.

01:05:20

I'm going to run this anyways.

01:05:21

I've trained so hard.

01:05:22

I've had this goal.

01:05:25

I did it.

01:05:26

I finished the race.

01:05:27

I remember distinctly crossing the finish line because when you cross the finish line,

01:05:32

you go through this shoot.

01:05:33

They give you water, banana.

01:05:35

Usually, if somebody there is metals, they'll give you your metal.

01:05:39

By the time you're out of the shoot, there's people there who are watching you.

01:05:45

They usually have to finish the line, "Hey, great job."

01:05:47

I was there by myself.

01:05:50

I remember walking through that and just looking around, seeing other people who are celebrating

01:05:55

with their loved ones.

01:05:58

I'm like, "Now, what do I do?"

01:06:03

There was this vacuum because I was attached to this goal, trained a year and a half for

01:06:08

it.

01:06:09

Then literally, the moment I crossed the finish line, it's like, "Well, this sucks.

01:06:15

Now, what?"

01:06:18

The problem there being I had this goal and the obvious thing to do would be set another

01:06:25

goal, another race.

01:06:27

I couldn't do that.

01:06:28

I had physical therapy.

01:06:29

I had to do.

01:06:32

The lesson I learned, actually, atomic habits helped a ton with this, was to learn to love

01:06:39

the process and not be associated with the outcome.

01:06:44

I had to go through physical therapy for six weeks, and then I started running again.

01:06:51

I, up my distance too fast, had to deal with plantar fasciitis and had to take another

01:06:55

break.

01:06:56

I was really frustrating when I got to run again.

01:06:59

Finally, I forced myself to go slow and learned to just enjoy the process.

01:07:06

I wasn't concerned about the distance.

01:07:07

I wasn't concerned about the times.

01:07:09

It was just a meditative thing, now going for a run is just something I enjoy doing, and

01:07:14

that's usually when I get all my good ideas when I'm out on a run.

01:07:19

I'm not fast.

01:07:21

I'm not going to win.

01:07:23

The last time I ran a race in May, I did the same half marathon, came back.

01:07:28

Malcoma is like, "Did you win?"

01:07:30

I'm like, "No, I wasn't even in the top half."

01:07:33

There were a thousand people there.

01:07:35

Five hundred of them beat me.

01:07:37

I got passed by a 70-year-old grandma.

01:07:42

It's not about that anymore because it's not about the goal.

01:07:48

She articulates probably way better than I ever could, the problem with goals.

01:07:55

She says, "You either reach a finish line or you don't."

01:07:59

I would say it a little bit differently just because I'm a nerd, and I would say that goals

01:08:05

have a binary state.

01:08:09

It's an I or an O.

01:08:11

Pass fail.

01:08:13

Pass fail, exactly.

01:08:16

She mentions that these finish lines are often arbitrary.

01:08:21

We got to be careful when we set these goals.

01:08:24

Again, she's kind of alluding to the fact that goals can be good.

01:08:27

I agree with that.

01:08:28

They can create motivation.

01:08:30

But again, grit causes you to stick with things, but also the bad part is it causes you to stick

01:08:36

with things.

01:08:38

You constantly have to be asking yourself, "Is this the right thing to be sticking with?"

01:08:43

The personal retreat process that I do, basically the 12-week year stuff, helps a lot with this

01:08:49

because I don't go 18 months with a goal anymore.

01:08:55

I go three months.

01:08:57

Then I reevaluate, I do the wheel of life, I do the retrospective stuff, I ask myself,

01:09:02

"What should I start doing?

01:09:04

Stop doing?

01:09:05

Keep doing?"

01:09:06

I pick something different.

01:09:08

It's usually in a domain that is totally unrelated.

01:09:11

I don't get so fixated on, "This is the thing for so long."

01:09:15

I feel like the distance with the feedback loops is important here.

01:09:21

Really we just need to recognize that goals do cause this escalation of commitment.

01:09:27

But when we give up on a goal, we will feel like we have failed or we have wasted our

01:09:33

time and our effort.

01:09:34

But there's a very important point that she makes in this last chapter that waste is a

01:09:39

forward looking problem, not a backward looking problem.

01:09:44

When she framed it that way, that made a ton of sense to me because when you do feel

01:09:52

like you failed something, you feel like all of the effort that you put forth towards

01:09:58

that thing was wasted because you didn't get to that finish line.

01:10:03

But that is obviously not the approach of a true retrospective.

01:10:10

A true retrospective forces you to look backwards.

01:10:15

That's kind of an interesting challenge separating those two.

01:10:19

How do you look backwards and disconnect it from looking forwards at the same time?

01:10:26

It just kind of reiterated for me the value of the personal retreat process that I accidentally

01:10:31

landed on.

01:10:32

I've been doing this for a long time and I didn't realize the real value I was getting

01:10:35

from it when I first started doing it.

01:10:41

After reading this chapter, this is the way…

01:10:43

That makes sense, right?

01:10:45

At the end of every chapter she has a summary, it's basically all the big points from the

01:10:51

chapter.

01:10:52

In this particular one, it looks like it's a nine point list on this particular chapter

01:10:57

chapter 11, the Myopia of Goals.

01:11:01

It's almost like a checklist for why we've talked about goals being less than ideal.

01:11:08

We were talking about the escalate commitment when you should quit, their pass/fail in nature.

01:11:13

You shouldn't measure just when you hit the goal but also what you've learned along

01:11:16

the way.

01:11:17

You should set intermediate goals and set the kill criteria.

01:11:23

All of these things, they're inflexible in a flexible world.

01:11:26

These are all things she has in this.

01:11:27

I'm like, "Oh, well, check, check, check, check, check, check.

01:11:29

These are all the reasons we don't like goals."

01:11:33

It's a really good summary of that.

01:11:35

But again, she pitches it through the lens of stories and people who should have quit,

01:11:41

who didn't, and the results of that.

01:11:45

The part that's interesting to me is that she ends this chapter.

01:11:49

I feel like she spent a lot of time putting this book together.

01:11:52

I don't want to get into style on reading too much, but not yet anyway.

01:11:55

She uses this last chapter to wrap up the book anyway.

01:12:01

It's almost like it doesn't need a conclusion because the way that she ends of that chapter

01:12:05

is just with the statement, "Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot."

01:12:10

That's how they win.

01:12:11

Which is the summarization of both the chapter and the section, but also the book itself.

01:12:19

She did a really good job with that.

01:12:21

Anyway.

01:12:22

One other thing with that, by the way, is she mentions that we need to celebrate our

01:12:28

progress.

01:12:29

It's a minor point that she makes, but I feel like it's really important.

01:12:33

I feel like she actually could have gone deeper on that part of it.

01:12:36

Because when you are considering whether you should quit something and you're thinking

01:12:43

about all that time that you have wasted, what you are firmly looking at is the gap.

01:12:50

If you learn to celebrate your progress, you can look at the gain and you can glean

01:12:54

some positive from the experience.

01:12:57

Well, I didn't achieve the goal, but I learned how to do X.

01:13:03

I feel like that would make quitting a lot easier if you learn to recognize the gap in

01:13:09

the gain.

01:13:11

Well, should we do action items?

01:13:14

Let's do it.

01:13:15

I have none.

01:13:16

Okay?

01:13:17

Done.

01:13:18

How about you?

01:13:21

I don't have any official action items.

01:13:24

I feel like there will be lots of things in the future that will come from having read

01:13:31

this.

01:13:32

So I guess I share that because I don't think there are any action items right now, but there

01:13:38

will definitely be future action items associated with this.

01:13:41

It's not the typical approach that we take for Bookworm.

01:13:46

But I think it's not fair to the book itself just to say, "Nope, we have no action items

01:13:53

from this based on what we've done in the previous 173 episodes."

01:13:56

I feel like there is action that will be incentivized by reading it, just not immediately.

01:14:01

I just don't know what it is.

01:14:02

As I was thinking about, "What do I want to do as a result of having read this?"

01:14:08

It's more a "I want to consider things in a different light whenever I'm making decisions,"

01:14:14

or "Maybe I need to re-evaluate what I'm currently doing through this lens."

01:14:21

But I don't really have a...

01:14:22

I don't have anything more than that.

01:14:24

So there's not a physical thing for me to put down, which makes it a challenge.

01:14:30

Okay.

01:14:31

Well, let's move on to styling rating, because that's way more fun in this case.

01:14:35

Annie is an amazing storyteller.

01:14:38

We talk about people who are good at telling stories, but she is up there with the best

01:14:47

of them.

01:14:48

As we talked about earlier, she's probably in the same category as Brian Holiday, which

01:14:53

is an interesting thing to say.

01:14:59

This is one that I really enjoyed reading.

01:15:01

It's one that I oftentimes...

01:15:04

I will read the whole book, and then when I'm putting the outline, I will end up skimming

01:15:07

my way back through it just to find the points, both in my notes and in the book that I want

01:15:12

to talk about as part of the episode.

01:15:16

The trick is the stories are so gripping that I found myself accidentally rereading things.

01:15:20

The second time I was glancing through it, which is not something I do very often, but

01:15:25

it's just that gripping.

01:15:26

It's like, "Wait, that story.

01:15:28

There was a detail in that."

01:15:29

What was that?

01:15:30

Then I end up reading the three pages there.

01:15:32

It's like, "Oh, okay.

01:15:33

Well, there wasn't planning on spending 30 minutes doing this, but here we are."

01:15:39

It's an awesome read in that sense.

01:15:42

She has even between the sections, there's a story that transitions you from one section

01:15:48

to the next, which is also odd, but that's what makes me think she spent a lot of time

01:15:56

putting this together and one that makes me really appreciate the work that she's put

01:16:00

into this.

01:16:01

As far as eroding, to me, this is a fairly simple 5.0 to me.

01:16:06

I absolutely love this.

01:16:07

I feel like this could easily help you understand when you should keep doing something or when

01:16:12

you should let it go.

01:16:14

She absolutely nailed it, in my opinion.

01:16:17

I love the story.

01:16:18

I love the way she formatted it.

01:16:19

I love the topic.

01:16:21

I love the lessons that come out of it.

01:16:24

To me, I feel like you should pick this up.

01:16:26

I don't really know anybody that I wouldn't recommend this one to, just because everybody

01:16:32

is prone to loss aversion or sunk cost fallacy or the myopia of goals.

01:16:40

There's so many of these things that everybody deals with that I think you should pick this

01:16:44

up and read it.

01:16:46

No exceptions.

01:16:47

If you haven't done it already, you need to go buy it.

01:16:48

It's my opinion.

01:16:49

Also, use the link in the show notes because it's fairly a link.

01:16:52

It's a way to do it.

01:16:54

It's my thoughts.

01:16:55

It helps support the show.

01:16:58

Cool.

01:16:59

Well, I'll agree with everything you just said about everyone should read this.

01:17:06

I think it's a pretty eye-opening book.

01:17:08

I think it's even better than thinking in bets.

01:17:13

I'm struggling whether I want to rate it to 5.0.

01:17:20

I feel like the one nitpick I have with this is the sections feel a little bit disjointed.

01:17:28

The chapters are very well written, but the way that they're packaged with the exception

01:17:36

of section 1 feels a little bit weird.

01:17:39

Section 1 seemed obvious in the losses.

01:17:41

Kind of makes sense too, but section 3 identity and other impediments, I feel like that kind

01:17:46

of fits with the losses section and then part 4 opportunity cost.

01:17:50

That is an idea that she brings up back in section 2.

01:17:54

No, sorry.

01:17:56

The sunk cost was the thing.

01:17:57

So opportunity cost is a little bit different there, but there's a lot of related things

01:18:03

I feel like that are kind of stacked on top of each other.

01:18:09

From a story perspective and from a progressing through the chapters perspective, it's really

01:18:14

well done because she'll reference other stories that she's shared as she goes.

01:18:22

Just looking at the mind map and the different colored nodes, I look at these sections and

01:18:29

it's not as clean as some of the other books that we've read.

01:18:33

This is a really minor nitpick, but since we're talking about style and rating, this is the

01:18:39

place to do it.

01:18:40

So the ending with the myopia of goals, that is absolutely the perfect place for that chapter.

01:18:46

I actually kind of like the fact that there is no conclusion.

01:18:49

I think probably you could make the argument that there should be because the result of

01:18:56

not having a conclusion is you've just presented all this information and now it's like, here

01:19:02

you go, just do something with it, which is a lot.

01:19:08

And I was able to do it.

01:19:12

As I mentioned, I feel like I kind of read this book a few weeks, a few months later

01:19:17

than I ideally would have, but it's still pretty clear for me.

01:19:25

There's some things I'm noodling on here.

01:19:27

I do think there is a missed opportunity though to, okay, so I've just taught you all this

01:19:32

about quitting now.

01:19:33

Here are the ways to implement this tomorrow without just quitting your job.

01:19:40

Like she talked about in chapter two.

01:19:44

And I feel like that's really the path forward for people with this is this is not something

01:19:48

that is the default culture kind of enforces grit over quit.

01:19:58

So it would have been nice to talk about practically.

01:20:01

Here's how you can start building your quit muscle.

01:20:06

Even in the chat, Martin mentioned quit social media, you could make a statement like that

01:20:12

as an example of something someone might want to quit.

01:20:16

And you could totally use the sunk cost, opportunity cost, like all the things that she's talked

01:20:21

about, like you could tie it into some of that stuff.

01:20:24

I feel like that's kind of missing.

01:20:27

It really doesn't detract from the value of the book, all that, that much.

01:20:32

I don't think I really enjoyed this one.

01:20:34

But I think I am going to rate it at 4.5.

01:20:38

I don't know.

01:20:40

Could I pick 4.75?

01:20:42

Maybe we should change to a 10 point scale.

01:20:43

No, people already wanted to not do the point five stuff.

01:20:47

So yeah, I know.

01:20:51

It is really, really good.

01:20:54

I'm not sure about a double five star book having no action items.

01:21:00

That's the other thing that is bouncing around in my brain.

01:21:04

But like I said, I feel like there will be, and the principles in here have kind of already

01:21:09

acted on.

01:21:11

So maybe it would have been five stars for me had I read it in January.

01:21:19

But I will again echo the fact that I think everyone should pick this one up.

01:21:24

Annie Duke is a phenomenal writer, phenomenal storyteller.

01:21:28

I don't remember the stories being that good in thinking and bets.

01:21:32

Maybe they were.

01:21:34

But I was a little bit surprised by the quality of the storytelling to tell you the truth.

01:21:41

But yeah, like I said, I think she's a better storyteller than Ryan Holiday.

01:21:46

So I love the chapter summaries as well, by the way.

01:21:49

There's like these bullet points of what she covered as like the main points in the chapters.

01:21:55

So it's got a great reference if you wanted to go back and kind of revisit after you've

01:22:02

got some distance from this one.

01:22:04

All right, let's put it on the shelf.

01:22:07

What's next, Mike?

01:22:09

Next is a Kevin Kelly book.

01:22:13

Excellent advice for living.

01:22:14

Have you looked at this one yet?

01:22:16

I have not.

01:22:19

My goal is to pick it up tonight when the kids go to bed.

01:22:23

Should I be afraid?

01:22:24

Okay.

01:22:25

No, we're going to have to get creative with the format for this one, I think.

01:22:31

Oh, okay.

01:22:32

Because it's a whole bunch of short little excerpts.

01:22:39

Kind of like what's that one we just read that you picked.

01:22:43

The things you can only see when you slow down, something like that.

01:22:47

It's basically like a whole bunch of those anecdotes, but it's Kevin Kelly.

01:22:51

So they're good.

01:22:53

I just opened to a random page yesterday.

01:22:57

And one of them was never ask a woman if she's pregnant, let her tell you.

01:23:04

So that's the kind of stuff.

01:23:05

There's no chapters.

01:23:06

We're just going to have to like wrap and fire like the things that kind of jumped out

01:23:10

to us and talk about anecdotes and stories that go along with that.

01:23:14

But I think this will be a fun one.

01:23:16

I know this is third hand.

01:23:18

I have a friend who has a friend who his way of greeting anyone he's anywhere remotely

01:23:26

close to who's female, he will ask them if they're pregnant.

01:23:29

But he asks everybody all the time, every time he sees them.

01:23:34

So that way it's an easy door for them to say yes, if that's true, I think.

01:23:39

It just seems like the sort of thing you should not do.

01:23:41

It just seems like a bad idea, but that's what he does.

01:23:44

Theoretically, I don't know.

01:23:45

I'm hearing that third hand, giving that to you third hand.

01:23:49

So excellent advice for living.

01:23:50

And then after that, I noticed Blake had recommended this and it was on my list of things to cover

01:23:56

here as well.

01:23:57

This just came out like a month and a half ago or so.

01:23:59

But the art of clear thinking, this is by Harsard Lee, a stealth fighter pilot's timeless

01:24:06

rules for making tough decisions.

01:24:09

And fascinated by this for a whole bunch of reasons, which I'll probably wait until the

01:24:12

episode to bring up.

01:24:15

But anyway, it sounds interesting.

01:24:16

So the art of clear thinking, not the art of thinking clear.

01:24:19

Correct.

01:24:20

Which is going to be very fun whenever people try to search for this in the bookworm archives.

01:24:26

Yes, you are 100% correct.

01:24:33

I already feel like this should have had a different title.

01:24:36

I know.

01:24:37

I know.

01:24:38

It's very well though, which is interesting to me.

01:24:41

Okay.

01:24:42

It's a bestseller as well.

01:24:43

But anyway, there's that.

01:24:45

Cool.

01:24:46

How about gap books, Mike?

01:24:48

I'm sure you have like four.

01:24:49

You haven't had anything going on in your life.

01:24:52

I've got a stack of gap books, but I haven't had a chance to read any of them.

01:24:58

So I'm not committing to one on air.

01:25:00

It's fair.

01:25:01

What about you?

01:25:02

I'm the same.

01:25:03

Yeah, I almost didn't get through this last one.

01:25:05

It's just because summer, summer happened.

01:25:09

Busy.

01:25:10

Busy stuff outside.

01:25:11

I want to go.

01:25:12

The thing is, I don't want to sit in the house and read.

01:25:13

I want to go outside and do stuff.

01:25:15

That's where I'm at right now.

01:25:16

So I go outside and do stuff.

01:25:18

That's what I'm doing.

01:25:20

That said, for those of you who have been amazing and joined us on a Saturday morning,

01:25:24

though it sounds like Martin put us up on the big screen in his house.

01:25:28

I don't know how we look in HD, but there you go.

01:25:32

But anyway, if you're joining us live or you want to join us live, that's always a fun

01:25:38

thing.

01:25:39

It's fun to see people in the chat always cool to see your comments and refer to those as

01:25:42

we go through the episode.

01:25:44

But there's also the Bookworm Club, which is on Circle, that you can find at club.bookworm.fm

01:25:52

where you can make recommendations so that I'm not picking things on the fly in the middle

01:25:56

of an episode while Mike's talking and makes life a little bit easier for us to choose books

01:26:01

that are of interest to all of you.

01:26:04

So if you want, go to the club.

01:26:06

You can make those recommendations there, but you can also support the show monetarily

01:26:11

and help us keep the lights on.

01:26:12

But you also get some cool perks like a bootleg episode, which I will post to the feed as

01:26:17

soon as we're done recording here.

01:26:19

It's unedited raw, all the pre and post talk and chatter, etc, etc.

01:26:23

Very fun.

01:26:24

No promises on quality.

01:26:26

There's that.

01:26:27

So it's a pro feed, which gets you the episode without all the ads and such in it.

01:26:31

So have some perks to it.

01:26:34

Also all of Mike's mine node files, all the fun stuff.

01:26:38

So if you want to do that, go to Bookworm.fm/membership and that will take you through all the right steps from there.

01:26:45

It's also, what is it?

01:26:47

It's Bookworm.fm/pro that'll also get you there.

01:26:49

I should probably start saying that because it's easier.

01:26:52

Bookworm.fm/pro.

01:26:53

There you go.

01:26:55

They all take you to the same place.

01:26:56

That's the way to do it.

01:26:57

So anyway, thanks to those of you who are pro members.

01:27:01

Alright, thanks everyone for joining us today.

01:27:04

If you are reading along, pick up excellent advice for living by Kevin Kelly.

01:27:09

And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.