Bookworm Transcripts

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This episode of Bookworm is sponsored by Factor Meals, healthy eating made easy.

00:00:05

Get 50% off at factormeals.com/bookworm50 and use the code Bookworm50.

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All right, so we've got two follow-up action items here which are both mine from many weeks ago at this point.

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And I am sad to say I still haven't done these.

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The part that I love about this is that the moment that we decided to start carrying these forward in our outline so that we don't forget to carry them forward.

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Because historically we've just relied on the editing part and then we were here in the editing and then it gets carried forward.

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But then we had Toby start doing that for us and then that stopped happening.

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So then we started bolding them in our outline to make sure that we don't forget to carry them forward.

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And we did that change the week that this started which was now what?

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Four episodes ago? Three episodes ago?

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I don't know. As long as this section item has been on the list.

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It got me to do them. One of these, the list 10 things where I know I'm being successful when it got me to do it because I didn't want it to carry over.

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No, I will not let it carry over. And it got me to do it so it's a good thing we did that. But, dude that?

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Well, glad it's working for you. I still need to do these. I was putting the notes together for this episode because it's mine.

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And I wanted to delete these so bad.

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Just not done.

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Yeah, but since we said we're going to carry them over, I'm going to keep carrying them over until I actually get them done.

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So the two that I failed at are list my 10 things where I know I'm being successful when Joe did this last time.

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Go listen to that episode if you want to hear his and Michael Porter even did this in the faith based productivity community.

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So other people are completing my action items ahead of me.

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But I still think this is something that I should do and then teach my family to call each other up within the gap.

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I mean, this book is so, that was what, three or four ago? Yeah, that feels like that's, that was last winter at this point.

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But I don't have a good excuse. I know it's been busy since I went out on my own, but I can't use that forever.

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At some point, I just got to do it. So Obsidian University has wrapped up at this point.

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So I have a little bit of time back.

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The last live session as we record this was last Friday and it went really, really well.

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Everyone in it kind of sounded like they wanted to keep it going.

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So I guess I'll kind of morph this into an announcement. What I've done is I have continued the to keep Obsidian University open.

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And everybody who had bought it previously attended the cohort were going to continue to do these these Friday calls.

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And initially it was just going to be Q&A calls. But then I started talking to some people and asked them if they'd share different workflows and things.

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And yeah, so we got a couple of those lined up.

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Bodie's going to do his this week as we record the next week.

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I had some back and forth with someone named Danny Hatcher on Twitter who I'd never actually met.

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But they had a really cool canvas workflow for reading books of all things.

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So he's going to come talk about how he put that together.

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And yeah, if you want to join, I've kind of reworked the website a little bit and it's going to become a membership community essentially.

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So we'll continue to do the cohorts every so often.

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And sorry if you missed the first one because that was the great deal, you know, 250 bucks for lifetime access and you get all the cohorts.

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The membership now I have it as $150 a year.

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I want to continue to think about how I can make that more valuable. But at the moment, the value proposition there is that you get access to the recordings from the first cohort while I build out a curriculum inside of that.

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And then you also get access to the community, the templates that I shared in the calls and stuff like that.

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Like my daily notes template and stuff like stuff like that, my home note.

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You know, I kind of shared how I built that stuff and then provided that to the cohort. So that kind of stuff will be in there like my Bible vault thing, you know, all that kind of stuff.

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And then discount on future cohorts. But the lifetime deal is now gone.

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But if you want to join the community, you still can.

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So sitatuniversity.com.

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If you are interested in using Obsidian to boost your creativity and productivity workflows.

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Help me grow that thing. And then I will have some time to think about my action items again.

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[laughter]

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I will say like I wasn't able to catch almost any, I think I caught one of the live cohort sessions.

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And I've been working through all of the recordings. I think I only have one left to work through. Looking at the list here, I think it's just one.

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And I have completely changed a lot of things and how I use Obsidian. And there are a lot of things that I have done just logging things, journaling, gratitude, that type of thing on a daily basis that for whatever reason I've struggled with in the past.

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I don't know what it is about putting that in like a daily note in Obsidian. But something about that and the process to put it in there is super simple.

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And I don't think I would have found those workflows or had that ability had I not gone through some of your stuff with Obsidian University.

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So kudos to you on putting this together. I don't know how you come up with some of the stuff, Mike, but it's pretty slick.

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So I would absolutely endorse you for anyone who's interested in going through this. So it's well worth it. Easy.

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Well, thank you. I figured it out through trial and error essentially.

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In fact, there were many--

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That's how everybody does everything, right?

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Yeah, there were a few of the sessions where I felt like I really shouldn't be teaching this and this other person who is watching me present it should be teaching this instead.

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Like data view specifically was one of those where I know there were some people in there who were using data view like really heavily.

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But I guess the one superpower I have is that someone says, "How do I do something?" I will go figure it out.

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Yeah. And then try to break it down and communicate it simply so people can apply it.

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But there were lots of those moments in this cohort where someone asked a question. I was like, "You know what? I don't know."

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But I'll go find out a couple of days later when we have our next live session able to share it.

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But yeah, I kind of miss it actually now that it's--

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Because I've been doing three sessions a week for the last four weeks and now this week, as we record this on Thursday, we have a session tomorrow.

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But I feel like I'm missing all my peeps.

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[laughter]

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All my fellow obsidian nerds used to see it multiple times a week and now it's just going to be once a week.

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So I don't have another date for the next cohort.

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I have a couple different thoughts.

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I do want to repeat the big one that I did, but that's more of a soup to nuts, everything you need to know about obsidian for people who just come into it.

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But I also want to do other specialized cohorts on and go really deep on task management, for example.

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Because I did one session on that, but that's way too much to cram into 90 minutes effectively.

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But yeah, all those announcements are going to be obviously in the community.

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So if you're interested at all, come check it out.

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All right, I don't think I have any other talking points here in this follow-up section.

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Should we go into today's book?

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Yeah, because this will be different and very fun, I think.

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This could either be over in about 10 minutes or we're going to fight to keep it under two hours.

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What one of the two?

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If it lands around the hour and a half mark, I'm going to be shocked.

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So just because it's, yeah, like you're saying, it's either super short, super long.

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I don't expect us to very easily hit our normal target time.

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Yeah, so the reason for that is that today's book is excellent advice for living wisdom.

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I wish I'd known earlier by Kevin Kelly.

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And it's kind of a book of a bunch of short little anecdotes.

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Are you familiar with Kevin Kelly?

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Have you read anything else that he's written?

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I believe, yes.

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Oh, shoot.

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Which one is it, the inevitable?

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Yep, that was one, right?

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It was the one about all the tech stuff, because that's what I do.

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Yes.

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Yeah, I think the inevitable was the previous one.

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In fact, it says at the very bottom of the cover, New York Times bestselling author of

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The Inevitable.

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Yeah.

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That was definitely his.

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I want to say he's the person who came up with the original idea, but it was so long ago.

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Now I can't really figure out who originally to attribute this to, but the 1000 true fans idea.

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I think that came from Kevin Kelly back in the day.

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Which is basically if you want to go independent, what you really need is 1000 true fans and get them to pay you $5 a month and now you've got a decent income.

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And I've heard that probably hundreds of times in the last 10 years or so.

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But I think that's pretty good advice and that didn't show up here, but a lot of other advice that he has collected throughout the years did.

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The background for this book, by the way, is that his family had encouraged him on his 68th birthday to come up with 68 bits of wisdom that he could share.

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And so he did that and then he continued to write down advice every year.

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And now he's got about 450 of them.

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He said in the introduction.

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There's nothing in here I feel that is completely original.

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There are absolutely no sources. This is where I got this.

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And he encourages us to share these with someone younger, which I think is kind of a cool idea and pay it forward.

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Because the whole idea here is that this is all stuff that he wished he had known and he's sharing it with people in the hopes that they are going to apply some of this.

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However, it's almost like a Derek Sivers book where Derek Sivers tends to just share a bunch of these little essays in his books.

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And some of them are even contradictory.

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And you just take the ones that resonate with you.

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So that's kind of the approach with this. The advice is kind of all over the map.

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It's not broken down into sections or categories, which makes this a really hard book to do for Bookworld.

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Because where in the world are you going to put the chapters? I have no idea.

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What did you think about this book initially when you picked it up before we get into the specifics of some of the advice here?

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Whenever I saw the title "Excellent Advice for Living," I kind of thought I was going to get 12 to 18 chapters of "Here's an Idea.

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Here's why you should adopt this idea."

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That was the format I was expecting to get. This is basically a book of quotes.

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At one point, I think Becky saw me reading this and was like, "Oh, is that like the between section?" I don't remember what her comment was.

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I was like, "You know, it's basically quotes, like a whole book of quotes. That's what this is."

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Condensed down shortened versions of something that all need expansion.

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And this could easily fill many, many, many books if you were to expand each of these ideas.

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I was not prepared for that. At the same time, it makes it a very fast read.

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You can sit down and read this in one sitting if you wanted to.

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There's a lot here. Obviously, there's tons of good wisdom to learn from.

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But having read as much as we have for Bookworld, it's kind of a breath of fresh air, honestly.

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Just because it's different, just because it's odd in comparison to the many things that we cover.

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I appreciated it. But again, it's a little bit of a different format, obviously.

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Yeah, it is definitely a different format. I had the same thought as you that it is kind of a breath of fresh air.

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For me specifically, it was not a lot of time required to get through this one.

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Yeah. So that was kind of nice. I needed the respite.

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But yeah, normally when we read books for Bookworm, it's on a specific topic and the author is going deep.

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Basically saying, "Is everything you need to know about topic X?" And then we talk about topic X.

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And it's impossible to do that with this book. Because it is a lot of one liners.

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They're not all that short. There are some that are several sentences long,

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which made it a little bit difficult for me to take notes on this one because I basically was trying to capture the ones that stood out to me.

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And at first I was trying to do a word for word like quotes, essentially.

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But then as I went, I actually just started capturing the essence of the ideas that he was sharing.

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And yeah, it's a very colorful mind node because they're all like one level below the book cover in the middle.

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There's no grouping or organization to these.

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So as I was thinking through how in the world are we going to discuss this?

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Because I picked this book essentially because I had heard of Kevin Kelly and been around for a while,

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wanted to read something he had written. And this was the one that I had heard from multiple people like,

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"Hey, this book just came out and it's really good."

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And I do think it's good, but you have to have the right approach here.

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And so the right approach I think would not just be to read this on surface level, like jot a couple of these things down.

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Maybe there's some value to be gathered from that.

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But I do think that part of the way that books really stick is when you have some sort of conversation with somebody else about this.

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So I'm excited about going through this with you, but I have absolutely no idea what this is actually going to look like.

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So the high-fak finder in me is a little bit nervous as we embark on this journey.

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Well, the way that I went through this and took notes on it was to, and the way I take notes on a lot of books is I write down the page number,

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and then I write my view of the thing typically.

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Basically, I'm summarizing the idea or the point that was interesting to me.

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In this particular case, that doesn't really work real well because that's going to end up being significantly longer than the thing that he wrote.

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So then I'm writing a third of a book in the process of trying to take notes on this one.

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So what I did in this case is I wrote down the page number and then I just wrote literally a four or five word summary of what it is that he had.

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That way I can look through and let it jog my memory of what it was, at least the idea behind the phrasing that he had, and then I could go back to it.

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But like you were saying, there's 400 plus in here.

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I think I have maybe 20, 25 tops that I've written down here.

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And then I think we each picked 10 to cover.

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So we're going to, I think, theoretically try to wrap it far away through this.

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I do well with stuff like this.

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Mike gets really nervous because he doesn't know what's coming next, but I'm really fine.

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That is very true.

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All right.

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And the hard part here is that you get to go first.

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Yep, that is true.

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So I guess I'll kick it off here with one of the ones from the new, the beginning of the book.

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It's really about this idea of continuing to learn.

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There's this quote that he shares about how if you can't do something, it's embarrassing, but if you are learning to do something, it's admirable.

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And this is relevant to the discussion we had in the follow-up section about the Obsidian University stuff, because I definitely had the thought when I was teaching something and then I didn't have an answer.

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And I was like, oh no, everybody's looking to me as the guru, I'm the one teaching this session.

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They're going to think less of me because I don't have the answers.

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So that was the embarrassing part, right?

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But then I think I was pretty effective in being able to flip that.

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And I know it's fine if I don't know something.

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But in the moment, I still felt nervous about it. I should have all the answers.

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And this is a good reminder that the framing of this is also something I've heard before, but also a little bit unique.

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So I like the way that if you are learning to do something, it's admirable.

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I think the big takeaway was when I walked away from the session and was like, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out and get back to you.

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People actually respected that even more.

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And then kind of coupled with this, some kind of cheating and doing two here at the beginning, but I think they're sort of related.

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Enthusiasm is worth 25 IQ points.

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If there's one thing I can do, it is be excited about obsidian.

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Maybe that helped hide that a little bit. I don't know.

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I can't do this, but I'm super excited about it and I'm learning how to do it.

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You should trust me. People do.

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Well, that's not exactly what I said, but I feel like that's kind of what happens.

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Just by being excited about something. It's not like you're even saying, like, hey, check it out. I'm really smart, but people just, they do like that enthusiasm.

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They're drawn to it. And obviously, the takeaway there is be enthusiastic about whatever it is that you enjoy, whatever your...

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Passion about, you know, don't be ashamed about it. Try to downplay it, whatever. Just be a super fan.

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Yeah.

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I like this one. It's not that you can't do it. It's that you're learning to do it.

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And it occurred to me that there are many times when my kids will say, oh, I can't do that.

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Well, technically you are correct. You're not able to do that right now.

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But that's because you're still learning how to do it. I just can't make a basket of basketball.

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Well, that doesn't mean you should quit. It just means you're learning how to do it.

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But I feel like if you can convince a kid to make that mental shift, it could make a big difference for them.

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But I've not really thought about it that way. So I really like this one. I like a lot of these.

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Hopefully, I don't say that too much. I really like this one. I'm just going to put that on.

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I'm going to put it on a button over here and just hit it after every one of these.

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We are very sarcastic at our house. So when I hear that from my kids, I was like,

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well, the best thing to do when you can't do something is just give up.

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And they all know that I'm kidding. That is not the thing to do. And actually, they should stick with it.

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But if someone was just overhearing our conversations or just looked at a text transcript of a day in the life,

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that would be maybe appalled.

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What are you doing to your kids?

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Well, I've got another one here from page seven. I wrote page numbers down. Mike did not.

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He's leading me blind here. But page seven, this is a quick two-liner.

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Prototype your life. Try stuff instead of making grand plans.

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I wrote this down because I struggle with this. That might be a theme here today.

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I have a tendency to want to do a lot of planning and can get a lot of planning done.

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But the trick is that doing stuff informs those plans. And I regularly don't.

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So I need to be better about, and this actually comes up a lot.

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It's like doing small things, making small changes. I'm sure that'll come up a few times here.

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But just being willing to jump in and make those mistakes, learn how to do it.

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But don't spend so much time planning.

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Well, this is where I find myself. So I can tell you, I guess, like, there is benefit from doing this,

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but I will also say that it has been really stressful.

00:22:03

Yeah.

00:22:04

Because you couple this with another one that he said a little bit later,

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that when you have a large project, 90% done, finishing the final details will take another 90%.

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So combine Obsidian University as my big project.

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And that's just one puzzle piece into how does Mike feed his family equation?

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And I don't know the exact things to do.

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So I've had to embrace like a mindset of curiosity and experiment with things.

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And I feel like that has provided some clarity.

00:22:46

I'm actually working with Matt Ragland on like email newsletter strategy.

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I really appreciate his approach. I feel like he does it really well.

00:23:02

And I remember going to Craft & Commerce and obviously the big focus there is on like email marketing

00:23:08

and growing your newsletter. And then I attended J-Claus' newsletter masterclass.

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And I realized like, what even is my newsletter?

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It's like, I feel a little anecdote from my life, but who's signing up to read that?

00:23:22

A few people who know me, I guess, people from the podcast.

00:23:26

But Jay had talked about how your newsletter should really be like your primary product.

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So like people go to my website.

00:23:35

It should be really clear what they're going to get from the newsletter.

00:23:38

I don't think it's clear.

00:23:39

I don't even know that you're going to get it from the newsletter.

00:23:42

What do you even make clear?

00:23:44

Yeah. So that's a little bit of a roundabout way of saying like, I'm kind of in the middle of this.

00:23:49

I'm just trying stuff. And as I'm trying stuff, I'm getting clarity on like the newsletter is the thing.

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But if I were to sit down and play like, okay, this is what needs to happen.

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Like it would be irrelevant in a couple of hours because there would be new information.

00:24:03

And at some point you just got to focus on one thing, right?

00:24:07

But I feel like especially at the beginning of a new season, you know, you kind of do just have to try stuff.

00:24:16

That's where I'm at. I'm trying stuff.

00:24:19

Yeah, I, as far as like content stuff goes, like I'm still in the middle of things.

00:24:24

This is partly why I brought it up because I have a tendency to try to figure it all out and make grand plans without moving.

00:24:33

And I'll always find a reason to not move. So that's why I wrote it down. Like don't do that, Joe. Stop it.

00:24:40

Cool. Next one I wrote down.

00:24:44

And this was really for discussion because I feel like this is really good advice.

00:24:51

I don't think I do this.

00:24:54

But one thing he said was don't say anything about someone in an email.

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You wouldn't say to them directly. It will get back to them.

00:25:00

And when I read that, I was thinking about all of the lawsuit stuff because we follow Apple like Thursday emails that came out when Fortnite was suing them.

00:25:15

And Basecamp was upset. And like a lot of these corporate brew hahaz can be traced back to somebody sent an email they shouldn't have sent.

00:25:28

And every time I read one of those, I'm like, if you would have just said it in a Zoom call.

00:25:36

I mean, yeah, theoretically that could be recorded and transcribed. But like the lesson is like have these conversations face to face.

00:25:45

Don't send an email.

00:25:48

You can have those thoughts. You can talk about those things.

00:25:52

I mean, I just like one example was, I don't remember the specifics, but Phil Schiller was in an email talking about, you know, are we in a monopoly position and just asking that question.

00:26:05

Like there wasn't anything malicious even in the tone of the email.

00:26:10

But like they should be asking those questions.

00:26:13

But then that gets used as evidence of like, see, see, you were already aware of this. Like, that's no bueno.

00:26:21

Yes, the intent is lost in the words on the page.

00:26:24

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you're doing that, if you're having conversations about sensitive stuff, you email, knock it off.

00:26:32

Have those conversations in directly, synchronously, not asynchronously.

00:26:39

It's usually a lot better conversation too. And you can hash things out.

00:26:42

I think the problem gets to be, and the reason people do it is because it's easy and they're used to it.

00:26:46

People get so wrapped up in the email world that they just continue to send emails about these things when they should not do that.

00:26:55

Rather than try to hash out very sensitive topics in a very limited medium, get in person.

00:27:06

And you eliminate some record on some of this stuff too.

00:27:09

Sometimes if it, here's the thing that's like floating in the back of my head. If it's something that's so sensitive that you don't want a record of it, then should it be happening at all?

00:27:22

In that case, like, are we in a monopoly situation? Well, yes, of course they need to have that conversation.

00:27:28

But if there's a situation where you're talking about someone else, which was the intent of his thing here,

00:27:36

and you're now going to eliminate using email to have that conversation and instead do it in person,

00:27:44

I would argue you probably shouldn't be having that conversation at all, in most cases.

00:27:49

Well, let me push back on that. In most cases, maybe. Yeah.

00:27:53

This is not a hard and fast rule, obviously.

00:27:56

Yeah, so not everyone's dealing with large antitrust stuff, obviously.

00:28:00

Yes. But at the previous, previous job, there were a couple of occasions where it became evident,

00:28:07

we even talked about this in the last episode because one of the, one of the pieces of advice there was the minute that you have the thought that you should let someone go, that is the time to let them go.

00:28:18

Yes. Right.

00:28:19

So I was on a leadership team and there were a couple team members that did crazy things and had the conversation, you know, should we let this person go.

00:28:29

That conversation should never, ever, ever happen on Slack.

00:28:33

And in fact, our lawyer told us that at one point, he's like, if you're going to talk about this at all, which those conversations need to happen, we have to have consensus as a leadership team, this is the right move to make, right?

00:28:44

He's like, you have to do that face to face. Yes.

00:28:49

You cannot have a record of that. You will get sued.

00:28:52

Yes.

00:28:53

Yep.

00:28:54

It can all be misconstrued, even if it is constructive.

00:28:58

Exactly.

00:28:59

Yep.

00:29:00

One that I wrote down here to keep us going, so this is not a seven hour episode, is on page 16.

00:29:07

And I wrote this down mostly as a confirmation of something that I've been aware of for a while, and then I want to put together for my kids.

00:29:20

So here's what it says.

00:29:21

We lack rights of passage.

00:29:23

Create a memorable family ceremony when your child reaches legal adulthood between 18 and 21.

00:29:29

This moment will become a significant touchstone in their life.

00:29:33

This is something, you know, we have talked about this a little bit in the past.

00:29:36

Rights of passage is something that we just don't have a clean ceremony for in our culture and our society in the US.

00:29:47

It's something that I want my girls to have.

00:29:50

But I don't know what that is. I've often heard that 16 is the timing.

00:29:56

So I'm not sure that that age range is something that I would agree with.

00:30:00

Maybe it is.

00:30:01

But I want to at least have this conversation with my wife.

00:30:06

So I do have that as an action item to talk through what that could look like with Becky.

00:30:11

Because it's something that I want to have happen.

00:30:14

I want to make sure that they're able to receive that, even if I did not.

00:30:19

So I want them to feel that movement into adulthood, not just wonder.

00:30:25

Make it clear.

00:30:27

Yeah, we got to attend a ceremony for some friends of ours.

00:30:34

Their son turned 13 and they had a birthday party for him.

00:30:40

But it was not just like have a bunch of people over and have cake and party.

00:30:47

I mean, there was elements of that, but there was also a whole ceremony where the son was sitting on a chair in the front of a room.

00:30:56

And they had like a PA set up.

00:30:58

And there were maybe 30, 40 people in the room.

00:31:03

And his dad gets up and he's like looking at him.

00:31:07

So they're sitting facing each other in front of the people that are sitting there.

00:31:13

And he's basically like giving him life advice.

00:31:18

And then they had three or four other men that the son looked up to basketball coach and close personal friends, etc.

00:31:29

They got up and they all shared their advice.

00:31:33

And then at the end, they had a cross necklace thing that they gave him.

00:31:40

And it was like a big formal thing.

00:31:43

It wasn't long.

00:31:44

It took like 20 to 30 minutes probably.

00:31:47

But I thought it was really cool.

00:31:50

And I've been thinking about doing something like that with my sons too.

00:31:56

I actually have something in mind for like when Toby turned 16, which is coming up quick.

00:32:01

So got to find a lot of those details.

00:32:04

Yes.

00:32:05

Maybe this should have figured out for me.

00:32:07

No, I kind of know already what this is going to look like.

00:32:12

But I think this is really a really cool idea.

00:32:16

Haven't gone through it myself.

00:32:19

I thought it was awesome when I saw it for their 13 year old son.

00:32:22

But I also had the thought when I saw it that I don't want to do that with my sons when they're 13.

00:32:27

They got to be a little bit older.

00:32:29

I think it was appropriate for them.

00:32:32

I don't know.

00:32:33

You could tell like it meant a lot.

00:32:35

Like the kid actually got it.

00:32:37

So it wasn't just like, okay, we did this thing and now we can point back to it.

00:32:42

Like it was a really powerful moment.

00:32:45

But I also think it's one of those things you got to custom fit it for your situation.

00:32:53

And every person, every family is going to be a little bit different.

00:32:56

But I agree.

00:32:58

Everyone should have something here that they do with their kids.

00:33:03

Alright, next one is this is sort of a non-serious one.

00:33:14

I put this one on here because I was joking about this with my wife.

00:33:20

I was reading this book at the pool one night.

00:33:25

We were there, the kids were swimming.

00:33:29

I had told her about this book and opened to the one which said, don't ask anyone if they're pregnant.

00:33:38

Let them tell you.

00:33:40

So she kind of knew what it was.

00:33:42

Yeah, she kind of knew what the book was all about.

00:33:44

But then there was one in here that I read it and I just started laughing.

00:33:48

She's like, what's so funny?

00:33:51

And that was that if you have any doubt at all about being able to carry a load in one trip,

00:33:57

you're yourself a huge favor and make two trips.

00:34:02

Because Rachel totally does this.

00:34:06

And every single time I see her do it, I'm like, what are you doing?

00:34:12

That's the thing.

00:34:15

The importance of the advice in this is very wide ranging.

00:34:21

All the way down to what was the one I wrote, learn how to make a bowline knot.

00:34:26

Like that was it.

00:34:28

Learn how to make a bowline knot.

00:34:30

You'll never realize how often you're going to use that.

00:34:33

Like simple stuff is in here.

00:34:36

Measure twice, cut once.

00:34:38

Like that he puts in here.

00:34:40

So I love it.

00:34:42

I love that it's this really big wide ranging levels of advice.

00:34:48

Yep.

00:34:49

There's another random one, which is if you need rope, a ladder,

00:34:55

or an extension cord, always buy more than you think you need.

00:34:59

Yes, always buy it a lot longer than you think you're going to need and it will be the right length.

00:35:04

Yeah, so there's a good mix of like that.

00:35:07

Like insanely practical, you're only going to use this once or twice sort of a thing.

00:35:12

And also like the deep life stuff, which obviously that's what I tend to talk about more.

00:35:18

That's most of what we have down here.

00:35:23

Page 26, when I wrote down tend to the small things, more people are defeated by blisters than by mountains.

00:35:32

This is really interesting because I find that either it's myself or someone else,

00:35:39

it's usually the little things that make something stop more so than the great big boulders that are in their way.

00:35:49

So the fact that somebody doesn't have a long enough extension cord means that they don't put together an event for their kid because they can't get power out to a certain area.

00:36:01

Like what? That's a big deal. Take care of that.

00:36:05

Like that's why a longer extension cord looks something. I don't care.

00:36:08

But stuff along that line seems to happen quite a lot.

00:36:13

And that can get to be a little bit frustrating, but it's also eye-opening to realize that those small things are regularly the things that beat us down.

00:36:22

Do you have any as you were reading this because you picked this one, obviously resonated with you?

00:36:28

Was there any revelation of a small thing that's kept you from doing a big thing?

00:36:33

I don't know that I've been able to lock in on it because it's something that I know that tends to come up for me quite a bit.

00:36:44

It's like, okay, I want to... let's pick one I've kind of been working on.

00:36:49

I want to be able to do 30 push-ups in one round.

00:36:51

Sure, that's great.

00:36:53

But you don't get to where you could do 30 push-ups by running or doing push-ups once a week.

00:37:01

You're not going to get to that point, but it's the little stuff of making sure that I take the time to do push-ups in the morning before the rest of the day even starts to help build that practice.

00:37:12

That's the important part, but it hurts to do that.

00:37:16

And I don't want to do that.

00:37:18

But it's a very small minor thing.

00:37:21

It's not some great big, like my arms broken, thing that's stopping me from it. It's just I don't want to.

00:37:28

It's a very minor ordeal.

00:37:31

It's probably the cleanest response I can give you at the moment.

00:37:35

Well, the reason I ask is because when I read that, I had the thought that people are pretty good at recognizing there is something that is keeping them from following through and taking action.

00:37:50

But just myself, personally, the example that comes to mind is like practicing an instrument.

00:37:59

And the default can be, well, I just don't have the right amp or the right guitar or the right effects.

00:38:09

And I have spent thousands of dollars on that stuff.

00:38:13

It has not unlocked effortless practice for me.

00:38:17

You know what has helped? Having my guitar on the wall right there.

00:38:22

So when I get done with something like this, I can take it down and play for 10 minutes.

00:38:26

And that hook on the wall cost me 10 bucks as opposed to all the fancy gear.

00:38:34

Yeah, well, this is similar to people who want to get into say YouTube or podcasting.

00:38:41

And like, well, I don't have the money saved up to buy the microphone or the interface or the camera or the lights.

00:38:47

Like, I don't have that.

00:38:49

So I need to wait until I like grab your phone, turn on the camera, put it to video and hit the red button.

00:39:00

Like, that is way more adequate than it used to be.

00:39:04

So it's very, very good for starting out.

00:39:08

And then if you get traction with it, then you're better off.

00:39:11

So it's the little stuff.

00:39:14

Yes, it definitely gets in the way.

00:39:16

It's the little stuff that unlocks the manifestation of what you already have, I guess.

00:39:23

It's kind of what I'm after here. It's not something you don't possess yet.

00:39:27

It's usually just a small mindset thing, a little piece of friction that is keeping it stuck.

00:39:36

All right, next one I've got here is you don't need more time.

00:39:44

And this is from a section that talked about how you have all the time that you will ever get,

00:39:51

which was an interesting way of framing it.

00:39:54

Like, I've heard the advice before that we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

00:39:59

It's up to us how we use them.

00:40:02

But when you think about, obviously it's not infinite and it is a limited resource.

00:40:09

So just like that mindset is important because it's going to cause you to do something today rather than put it off until tomorrow.

00:40:21

It really is important for you. You should start. In fact, there's a thing later on.

00:40:25

I didn't write this one down, but like five years from now you'll wish you had started today.

00:40:32

But it's an interesting picture when you think about, from you really can't like go backwards.

00:40:39

All you can do is consider like where you are right now.

00:40:43

You have all the time you will ever get right now.

00:40:45

That can't be said for the amount of money that you have, right?

00:40:51

Any other resource you can go and you can get more of it some way, shape, or form.

00:40:59

But you can't do that with time.

00:41:02

So I don't know when I heard that it just kind of instantly disarmed the excuse of,

00:41:09

"Well, I need more time."

00:41:11

It's like, no, there will never be more time.

00:41:15

All the time that you will ever have has already been given to you.

00:41:20

And what you really need is more focus, which obviously I like that approach.

00:41:25

But really what he's saying is that you have the time that you need to do whatever it is that you want to do.

00:41:32

What you need to do is get rid of the things that are not important,

00:41:36

that are not moving the needle, that aren't hitting the mark.

00:41:39

And then you will be able to follow through on this thing that, you know,

00:41:43

borrowing from like the Eisenhower Matrix is important, but maybe not urgent.

00:41:48

Right? That's where a lot of that stuff tends to fall, I feel.

00:41:53

This morning I was reading through this outline and reflecting on specifically the ones that you wrote down,

00:41:59

because I had already done that with the ones I had written.

00:42:03

And this one really stood out to me.

00:42:06

And as I was processing it, it occurred to me that like it seems like there's so much of our,

00:42:12

like the expectations that society puts on us and that our peers tend to put on us

00:42:17

as that you need to have all of the experiences.

00:42:19

Like you need to be able to go all the different places, you need to be able to be extremely fit,

00:42:23

do the four different businesses.

00:42:25

Like, and you hear the stories of people who do everything, quote unquote, everything.

00:42:32

And that is held up on a pedestal that we are to aspire towards.

00:42:38

If that's the case, then we are now comparing ourselves to somebody who runs a thousand miles an hour

00:42:46

and doesn't sleep and is able to pull that off.

00:42:51

And they're exchanging probably some long-term health and some things in order to be able to do that.

00:42:56

But we hold that up and then want to be healthy and not rushed and not busy at the same time.

00:43:03

And those are competing desires.

00:43:06

So that's, I think, this is borderline hot take.

00:43:11

I think some of that is why we tend to want more time.

00:43:15

And that's why we are regularly saying, well, I just don't have the time for that.

00:43:20

I don't, I don't, I need more time to get all the things done.

00:43:23

We tend to say that when the reality is like, well, your expectations of the things you need to accomplish

00:43:30

or you think you need to accomplish is actually way too high.

00:43:33

I need to back that off.

00:43:35

This is something I've been trying to work on for a few months now.

00:43:38

I was talking to a friend about this a little while back to.

00:43:41

I'm trying to get to where I have one big thing that I need to get done today.

00:43:46

And that's the thing I'm going to get done today. Everything else is gravy.

00:43:50

Like, if I get more than that accomplished, then it's just great.

00:43:54

But I'm not going to assume that.

00:43:57

Like, today it's getting bookworm recorded.

00:43:59

I've gotten a couple other things done before we started here.

00:44:02

Fairly minor, cleaning off some flash drives, building sermon slides for Sunday.

00:44:06

Like those don't have to happen today.

00:44:08

But I got them done because I had some time and was motivated to do it.

00:44:11

And I've got a few things I may do this afternoon, but it doesn't really matter because this is the big thing for today.

00:44:17

So it's not that we need more time. We just need lower expectations, I think of ourselves.

00:44:22

Lower expectations are more clarity on what's really important.

00:44:27

Yes, yes.

00:44:29

Now, if we continue some of that train of thought, let's go to page 58.

00:44:34

This one was a little bit convicting.

00:44:39

If it fails where you thought it would fail, that is not a failure.

00:44:43

I really didn't like that because there are regularly times when I'll put something together and it's like,

00:44:49

I'm pretty sure this is going to fail.

00:44:51

And then it fails.

00:44:54

I'm like, okay, now I got to try something else.

00:44:56

But it was like a hope.

00:44:58

Like, there's a chance that I thought it was going to work.

00:45:02

I was 99% certain it was going to fail.

00:45:05

But it's because I took a shortcut that I should not have taken.

00:45:09

Or I was just praying that it would somehow be different this time because I'm doing the same thing over and over again,

00:45:17

hoping it'll work.

00:45:19

Not that that's insane.

00:45:20

So this one was convicting to me.

00:45:22

The number of times I've plugged something in into another device that I know doesn't work and hoping it's going to work this time.

00:45:30

It's not a failure.

00:45:31

I knew it was coming.

00:45:33

It's a lack of insight on my part.

00:45:36

[laughter]

00:45:39

Yeah.

00:45:40

I feel like that example specifically kind of resonates with me.

00:45:46

We talked, maybe it was before we hit record about the studio display adventures I've been on recently.

00:45:54

And the dock because I had this setup which I knew was kind of held together with duct tape.

00:46:05

I had two monitors plugged into a dock and they all had USB C hubs in the back.

00:46:13

So there were four ports in the back of those which were packed.

00:46:16

And then the dock itself, every port was packed.

00:46:20

And frequently when I would plug that one cable into my computer because that's the dream, right?

00:46:25

The laptop with a single cable.

00:46:27

Yep.

00:46:28

Like, "Alright, this is awesome."

00:46:29

But frequently when I would plug it in, something wouldn't work because there's just too much I/O there.

00:46:36

It's turning too many things on one cable.

00:46:38

Oh, well, let me turn that.

00:46:40

Let me turn the audio interface off and on and that would fix it or unplug the camera and plug it back in.

00:46:45

But when that failed and I had to figure out something because I was giving the Obsidian University session that afternoon,

00:46:53

I bought the studio display, I simplified a lot of things on my setup.

00:46:59

My desk is a lot cleaner now.

00:47:01

And you were teasing me a little bit because I wasn't planning to spend the $600 on the studio display.

00:47:11

I didn't really want to spend that money right now.

00:47:14

But also, how much is it going to cost me to continue to when I plug this in and print that everything is going to work?

00:47:23

Yes.

00:47:24

And I realized it's valuable to just know that this is bulletproof.

00:47:31

And, yeah, I like my simplified setup.

00:47:35

The monitors have kind of worked the way down the chain.

00:47:38

One of them is being used upstairs with the Family Mac Mini.

00:47:41

One of them is in Door County, which I used when I did some sessions for them up there.

00:47:46

So, it's all good.

00:47:49

But, yeah, if it fails where you thought it was going to fail, I guess when I read that phrase, I was like,

00:47:58

"Well, I don't plug it in thinking that something's going to fail."

00:48:01

But that's just because I never sit and think about what I'm actually asking all this equipment to do.

00:48:06

And then, I thought about it, actually, I'm like, "This is a miracle that it never works."

00:48:10

Yes.

00:48:11

At one point, I have to deal with docs and stuff all the time, because everybody wants the one cable hook up when they sit down at their desk.

00:48:18

And I have to support people who want that.

00:48:21

And I had to do some research at one point, like, how much data does certain devices require of that doc?

00:48:31

And then, what cable are you using to plug it into the computer and put all those different devices together collectively?

00:48:38

And can the doc pass all of that back to the computer back and forth without getting over 75% capacity?

00:48:47

Because when you get above that, it starts to get to where you're clogging the line and it's not necessarily easy.

00:48:54

And things like audio interfaces and external cameras and stuff, those are eating a lot of bandwidth.

00:49:00

So, you're going to plug them into a doc and then plug your doc into the computer.

00:49:03

Unless you're using something like Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 4, it's not going to handle it very well.

00:49:09

And it's going to fail.

00:49:11

And yes, this is why, even in my case, the camera and stuff we're using now, that's a completely separate computer.

00:49:18

I use two computers to do this because it's too much.

00:49:22

And even my audio interface, it's a separate cable.

00:49:25

I run that separate because I don't trust it through the doc.

00:49:28

So, yes, I hear you.

00:49:32

It's completely off topic, but good topic.

00:49:36

Well, I guess it got me thinking like your approach to if it fails where you thought it would, it's not a failure.

00:49:47

Like you would have looked at that setup and been like, oh yeah, well, I think this is going to fail here.

00:49:54

But it challenged me to think a little bit more about how things work, I guess.

00:50:02

Because I realized that I don't really think things are going to fail most of the time.

00:50:07

But if I did stop and think about it, I would be able to see those things coming.

00:50:11

Right.

00:50:12

This is actually why people give me grief.

00:50:15

But like when I sit down, I've got a data cable plugged into my doc, which is plugged into the computer.

00:50:21

That's how that is my primary internet on my computer.

00:50:26

Because I build the Wi-Fi network here in our building.

00:50:31

But I don't trust wireless for mission critical anything.

00:50:35

Like when it comes to even sound stuff on the stage, I don't run wireless mics if I can get away with it.

00:50:42

Like everything is wired if it's possible, 100% of the time.

00:50:45

Especially if I'm playing music off of like a phone or a tablet or another computer.

00:50:49

Every time I'm in a hard wire it in any way I possibly can.

00:50:53

Because the wireless stuff, it will work 99% of the time.

00:50:59

But that 1% is going to be in the middle of a service when I have to have it happen.

00:51:06

That's when that 1% is going to strike and I do not want that to happen.

00:51:10

Right.

00:51:11

Basically I'm paranoid.

00:51:13

That's what we're learning today.

00:51:14

Joe is paranoid about technology.

00:51:17

Rightfully so I would argue.

00:51:21

Summer is here and that is one of the busiest times of the year for us as a family.

00:51:27

Seems like we always have something going on.

00:51:30

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00:51:37

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00:51:59

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00:52:01

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00:53:52

All right, next one I wrote down was pay attention to what you pay attention to.

00:54:00

And that sounds pretty simple maybe or straightforward.

00:54:08

But for me, the revelation came with coupling that idea with the one that you had brought up earlier

00:54:18

in the story of just the season I'm in with the business stuff and just trying stuff and not having it all planned out.

00:54:26

I realized that there are certain things that can come onto my radar because they're a shiny new object or

00:54:36

I hear about somebody doing something a certain way and I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool.

00:54:40

I'm going to sit down and figure out how to do that."

00:54:43

Like I've definitely done that in the past and that's the type of rabbit hole where I think it's going to take a couple of hours

00:54:49

and it's going to take a couple of weeks, right?

00:54:52

But this thing is so cool.

00:54:53

I want to make this happen.

00:54:54

I don't have the luxury for that right now.

00:54:58

I need to do the things that are going to hit the mark.

00:55:02

So it's a different form of awareness for me right now that it's kind of hard to put into words, but it feels different than anything that I've done previously.

00:55:17

There's a heightened importance and it just creates an additional BS filter where it's like, "No, no, no, don't go there."

00:55:28

But you couple that with this idea of pay attention to what you pay attention to.

00:55:33

So I'm trying to figure out what is the thing that drives this business of mine, which what even is that business?

00:55:41

I don't know.

00:55:42

It's a bunch of stuff that I make online.

00:55:43

What's the unifying thread there?

00:55:44

I don't know.

00:55:45

Right?

00:55:46

So I'm trying to figure out all this stuff.

00:55:48

And it became clear to me because I just kept asking like, "What's the most important thing right now?"

00:55:53

I'm trying to stay curious and figure out what I don't know.

00:55:57

The thing that became evident to me is like, "This is the thing that you really got to dial in."

00:56:02

Is the newsletter.

00:56:04

Like the email list.

00:56:06

I have 1,800 people on my email list, which is kind of remarkable because it doesn't have an identity.

00:56:12

And it's just been something that kind of existed on the side.

00:56:16

But I went to Craft & Commerce and I met a whole bunch of people who have like 30,000 people on their email list.

00:56:22

And honestly, like, my stuff is as good as theirs.

00:56:27

Like, there's no reason that that couldn't be me.

00:56:30

And not that email is the money button.

00:56:34

But there it there that absolutely is true.

00:56:37

In fact, I have been hypersensitive to this probably because of previous experience,

00:56:43

shall we say, without naming names.

00:56:46

Like, I even said in my last Obsidian University session on Friday, I'm like,

00:56:51

"I know I pitched the Life-themed cohort, then I pitched Obsidian University."

00:56:54

But people were asking like, "Well, what's next? How can we support you?"

00:56:57

And I was like, "I got some ideas, but I don't want to just like constantly pitch."

00:57:01

And people were like mad at me.

00:57:04

Half the people on the call were like visibly upset.

00:57:07

And one of them even wrote on a piece of paper and held up front of their camera like, "Mike, pitch me."

00:57:13

So like, obviously there's this balance between delivering value and asking someone to invest in the thing that you're making.

00:57:21

And email marketing makes that easy because it's not just spam a whole bunch of people.

00:57:27

It's like segmentation. And I know you're interested in this thing.

00:57:30

Here's something that is valuable for the thing that you are interested in.

00:57:34

I have all these ideas about how I can do that kind of stuff with Obsidian, with the book notes.

00:57:41

I mean, all this kind of stuff. But I have to create like the systems to kind of put people in the place where they get the thing that they're interested in.

00:57:48

The people who are reading books aren't necessarily interested in Obsidian.

00:57:52

Let them tell me that they're interested in Obsidian before I send them some Obsidian emails.

00:57:57

And I'm like, "All that kind of stuff."

00:58:00

So I'm focusing in on that and I'm realizing I'm paying a lot of attention to like how to set up newsletter stuff.

00:58:07

And then it kind of became clear like, "Well, I could like figure all this out for myself, but I've been bad at it up until this point."

00:58:16

So is there anybody out there who could help me quick start this?

00:58:19

That's how I got hooked up with Matt Ragland.

00:58:22

I've always liked his stuff.

00:58:24

I had an email newsletter back in the day. It was a productivity newsletter, but he broke it down to like four different buckets.

00:58:29

And basically it was like a choose your own adventure.

00:58:32

Yeah, of course.

00:58:33

Yeah, I remember this.

00:58:34

Yeah.

00:58:35

Yeah, like the dude's brilliant.

00:58:37

Why not just have him look at my stuff and be like, "Okay, so this is what I would do."

00:58:42

You know? And then get the bones of it.

00:58:44

And then from there, I like I can crank out the words and build the things.

00:58:49

That's my version of pay attention to what you pay attention to because the temptation for like the stuff that I've been doing is like just to make more stuff.

00:58:58

But I'm hyper aware right now that that is not going to solve this burnout problem that I like right there with.

00:59:07

If I just keep building stuff and keep launching stuff, like that is a vicious cycle.

00:59:12

Yes.

00:59:13

I can maybe keep that going for a little while, but that's not long term. It's got to be systematized.

00:59:19

Email is the thing that I think it's the most important business system for an independent creator.

00:59:25

And I suck at it. So that's what I'm paying attention to.

00:59:28

People talk about how they will the passive income thing, right?

00:59:34

I built this course for this product and people can buy it anytime.

00:59:39

But everybody I know that goes down the passive income route works at it full time because it always needs updated or there's always another one.

00:59:48

Or if you're not posting about it, then people assume it's dead and they don't buy it.

00:59:54

It's not a build it launch it. You're done.

00:59:59

That doesn't exist.

01:00:01

Even in the passive income world, it's all full time stuff.

01:00:05

Yep. That is true.

01:00:09

I got a short one here for you on page 91.

01:00:13

Five words, which are very, very true.

01:00:18

To be remarkable.

01:00:20

Read books.

01:00:21

Okay. We can in the episode right there.

01:00:27

I just had to write it down because even Kevin Kelly knows that great people read books.

01:00:34

Comes up a lot. So if you're not reading these and you're just listening to us, you failed.

01:00:41

Yeah. So why do you think that is though?

01:00:44

I mean, I wrote that one down to obviously to people who co-host a podcast on books.

01:00:51

They're going to gravitate towards this. But I think there's something he's communicating

01:00:59

here that is unsaid. He's not saying to be remarkable. Subscribe to Blinkist. He's not saying listen

01:01:08

to books. He's not saying read blog posts. He's not saying go through video courses.

01:01:14

And he's not saying listen to a podcast about books either.

01:01:18

He's not. Those are all maybe good things.

01:01:22

But I agree. If you want to be remarkable, there is something specifically about reading

01:01:29

books that is different. Why do you think that is?

01:01:34

I think if you, I'm going to speak from personal experience here because people have different

01:01:39

views on this. But if I were to listen to a book, I will tune it out and not have the memory

01:01:46

of it. If I were to watch something, I can have the same reaction. I can sometimes tune things

01:01:55

out and not pay attention to it or check my phone while something is playing or read something

01:02:00

else while it's playing. So like that tendency. But if I'm reading words on a page, if I tune

01:02:06

out, I have no idea where I'm at and I have to go back and start over. Because then I

01:02:11

haven't read it and I don't know what they're talking about. It doesn't just keep going.

01:02:15

I'm the one that makes it keep going. So I think you have that step one is like the attention

01:02:20

that's required of it. And two, with whether it's fiction or nonfiction, in my experience,

01:02:30

it doesn't matter. Mike, you might have a different opinion on this. There are probably many

01:02:35

people that could express your opinion on this. The thing about reading these books is that

01:02:41

it's going to take you down somebody else's path that is either going to challenge or

01:02:47

confirm your currently held beliefs. And that may be through them explaining a topic point

01:02:56

blank, which would be your nonfiction books, which is what we cover. In the realm of fiction,

01:03:01

you're diving into somebody else's brain and seeing how a character or characters interact

01:03:09

with each other. And then you can learn from that social relationship, even though it's

01:03:15

like an indirect like, Oh, whenever they talk to somebody rudely on the street, it led to

01:03:22

this interaction. Well, that's going to inform the way that you talk on the street, whether

01:03:27

you realize it or not. Yeah, I feel like I'm unqualified to weigh in on this because I

01:03:34

get teased all the time for not reading fiction books. This is why I said both. Yeah, I think

01:03:40

there is value in in that it's just not something I enjoy. I don't know what else to tell you.

01:03:49

But reading physical books, I think is if I were to summarize it more engaging, and that's

01:04:00

going to produce a lot of the stuff that you were talking about, like when you listen to

01:04:05

an audio format, it just keeps going, right? You don't stop and process because you don't

01:04:10

understand you just the audio keeps moving. And before long, your brain is attached to

01:04:15

the next new novel thing. So I feel like audiobooks can kind of feed the dopamine engine. And

01:04:23

that works against you thinking deeply and critically about things. If you got a physical

01:04:28

book, you got to struggle through it. So but I'm also biased on this. In fact, somebody

01:04:36

sent me an email with a summary because they had asked Google Bard. So that's kind of the

01:04:44

generative AI, you know, summarize the tweets of Mike Schmitz got back the number one key

01:04:49

takeaway. So apparently the thing that I talk about the most on Twitter, reading physical

01:04:54

books is more engaging than reading on a screen.

01:05:00

Surprise, surprise. So I think there's value in all those other mediums. But yeah, I think

01:05:09

there is there is something about wrestling through the physical books that mean that

01:05:15

word remarkable. We don't have any sort of context around that. What does he mean by

01:05:18

remarkable? I kind of think somebody who has an understanding at a deeper level and is

01:05:26

more engaging, like, that's a type of person that I would want to sit down and just talk

01:05:32

to are the people who actually like read books. I guess like, maybe this is bad. I'll say it

01:05:40

anyways.

01:05:41

I noticed when people find out I read a lot of books, the next follow up question is obviously

01:05:49

well, what books have you read recently? And most of the time they're reading fiction

01:05:53

and I'm reading business books and the conversation ends there were very different mindsets.

01:05:59

Yes. Or they ask who your favorite author is? And if you say something like James Clear

01:06:04

or Calamet Port, I'm like, oop.

01:06:06

Yep, exactly.

01:06:07

Really? Come on.

01:06:09

Occasionally it'll go, we've got a match there. So then we'll talk about a specific book.

01:06:16

And there is a very different level of conversation that happens between the person who has listened

01:06:24

to a book and the person who has actually read the book. And this is a generalization

01:06:28

I understand. I think you probably can get a lot from listening to a book, but the format

01:06:33

doesn't do you any favors. So that's a small anecdote, I guess, small sample size. But

01:06:42

almost every time that I've had a discussion about a book that somebody else has listened

01:06:48

to, I have left disappointed. And the people who have actually read it, like, bookworm obviously

01:06:55

anchors very heavily on the positive side for this, right? Because every two weeks we

01:07:00

have a meaningful conversation about a book that we have actually read. I always walk

01:07:06

out of those conversations feeling like, wow, I feel enriched. I feel like I understand

01:07:11

it better as opposed to like not being on the same wavelength.

01:07:17

There is a, and I'll let you go on to the next one after this, but there's also whenever

01:07:23

I listen to, because occasionally I'll listen to audio books. When I finish an audio book,

01:07:30

my usual reaction is, that was really cool. Which one do I want to listen to next? That's

01:07:37

the reaction. When I finish reading a physical book, I usually have to set it down and then

01:07:42

look up and just kind of process. And I don't think I could tell you why that is, but the

01:07:49

feeling I have when I finish a book for each of those mediums is very different.

01:07:55

You just got done at the mental gym. You don't want to keep working out. I guess, yeah. But

01:08:03

I can't, again, I can't tune out when I'm reading the book. It forces me to get through

01:08:09

every single word on the page. So I have to process it more fully that way.

01:08:14

Yep. Okay. We can talk about these five words he wrote in this book for a long time.

01:08:19

Well, one last thing on this. I mentioned the mental gym. I feel like people who read an

01:08:25

audible and think that they have actually gleaned everything that they can from the

01:08:29

book. You haven't. It's kind of like going to the gym and not doing the exercises the

01:08:36

right way. I've used the analogy of doing bench press, but not putting any weight on

01:08:40

the bar. Because the bar is just going to keep going. It's going to be easy. Highlighted

01:08:45

by the fact that you just mentioned when you're done, you're looking for the next thing.

01:08:48

You just want to keep going. It shouldn't be that easy. If it's that easy, you're not

01:08:53

getting maximum value from it. And then the other thing that I will share, because I do

01:08:58

listen to, I've got an audible subscription. I listen to audible books. I will typically

01:09:02

listen to audible books when it's something that I want to go back and revisit. So books

01:09:05

that I've read previously and I want to listen to again. Or something like the Jim Rohn book,

01:09:13

The Art of Exceptional Living. I'll listen to that in the car. Like every time we've

01:09:16

got a long car trip. Just because I really like listening to him say it. Like there is

01:09:22

something about a book being read by the author that you hear it a little bit different. Because

01:09:29

you're hearing at how they envision that their emphasis is on the words that they think is

01:09:34

important. And one tip I will give people if you really want to get the most out of a

01:09:38

book, get the physical book, get the audible book and listen to it while you read it. Have

01:09:47

you ever done that? I have not done this, but it is similar to it's similar to opening

01:09:53

your Bible and listening to the pastor read the passage. Yeah, I suppose. To me, it's very

01:09:58

similar to that. It's not as long, obviously. But there's something about the depth of knowledge

01:10:05

you get out of it from that process. Like you understand it a lot more fully. I don't

01:10:09

know why. There's some neuroscience going on there that I can't explain it.

01:10:15

Right. Okay, enough about books. Let's go to the next one is Aim for the Unexpected.

01:10:25

And again, this ends up, a lot of the things that I jotted down, I realize are just things

01:10:31

that are resonating with me in my current season of life. But he says, rather than steering

01:10:34

your life to avoid the unexpected aim directly for it, this isn't exactly what he was talking

01:10:42

about. But I feel like this is the path that I've kind of taken recently, like going out

01:10:48

on your own is always going to be scary. The fact that people ask me like, so what's it

01:10:53

feel like? It's both exciting and terrifying. And I realized for a long time I have played

01:11:01

it safe. And I've been digging in deeper with that idea like, well, what does it mean to

01:11:09

play it safe? And basically, it was I knew what to expect. I don't know what to expect

01:11:18

right now. And so that's kind of the thing that resonated with me when I read that.

01:11:23

But then also, there's a lot of positive that has come from this decision that I've made

01:11:32

already in the six or so weeks since I've done it. And we've heard this advice multiple

01:11:38

times in the lot of the books that we've read. So kind of embracing that discomfort is kind

01:11:45

of my interpretation of this, like look for the things that make you uncomfortable and

01:11:49

go do those things. Because the reason that you feel uncomfortable about that is because

01:11:54

you don't know what's going to happen.

01:11:57

I am going to butcher this quote. But in one of my previous boss's office, she had a plaque

01:12:07

on the wall that said something to the effect that do something scary every day or do something

01:12:15

uncomfortable every day or something along those lines. And like, okay, if you're willing

01:12:20

to do that, that's when you're making progress. That's what keeps you moving forward and

01:12:26

keeps you growing and keep you learning to go back to your first one. So yeah, it's scary.

01:12:33

And you're probably going to be bad at things at the beginning. You will be bad at things

01:12:36

at the beginning. But that's okay. It's okay to do the unexpected. You'll be okay, Mike.

01:12:42

Thanks. Especially if more people sign up for obsidian university. So it's an university

01:12:47

like that. Pitch me, Mike. Pitch me. There you go. Page 117. There's no such thing as being

01:12:57

on time. Either you are late or you are early. Your choice. This one, I bring up because it

01:13:07

bugs me when people say that, oh, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:13:13

I'm late. Well, then you didn't plan on the buffer it would require to be on time or early.

01:13:21

Hmm. Like that's where my brain goes. Like the people who are perpetually late, well,

01:13:25

you're making the choice to do that. And I see this tension even in our own house. Like,

01:13:31

I'm somebody that would rather get to church say 10 minutes early, just so I don't have

01:13:36

to, I don't want to hustle. I want to drive leisurely to the church on Sunday morning.

01:13:42

But not everyone in my family will do that. They realize that it's a 10, 12 minute drive. So leaving

01:13:48

the house 15 minutes before the service starts is perfectly fine. Well, that means that

01:13:54

you've now not accounted for the time it takes to get into the vehicle, get into a parking lot,

01:13:59

get out of the vehicle, get into the building. You're now two or three minutes late.

01:14:05

But we tend to only account for the drive time. So I see the tension even in my own household.

01:14:09

So it drives me nuts. Because I'm the one that wants to be there early. But it is interesting to

01:14:15

me that he calls it out in that if you think you're going to be on time and you want to get there

01:14:22

on time, but you're late, it's a choice that you've made. You've simply not accounted for

01:14:27

the buffer it requires to get that done. Like if I don't drive to the cities very often,

01:14:34

the twin cities, but whenever I do and I have to park somewhere, I always account for like 15 to

01:14:38

20 minutes for that. Because it's not going to happen fast. Like trying to find parking is a pain.

01:14:45

So I'm aware of that. But if I'm taking somebody with me, they will regularly like,

01:14:51

well, it takes 45 minutes to get there. It's like, yeah, which is why we're going to leave

01:14:55

an hour and 10 minutes before it starts. That's what we're doing. We're going to be there that

01:15:00

early in the number of times that I force it and then we show up or write as it's starting.

01:15:04

I'm glad I pushed on that. So anyway, this just drives me nuts. It's a pet peeve of mine. So I

01:15:11

brought it up. Our church is 15 miles away. And we have driven separately for about 10 years.

01:15:24

Yep. For that very reason. I understand. Totally understand. Yep. It's always the people who are

01:15:32

closer who are later. You ever realize that? Totally. If you live three miles away, they're

01:15:38

always 10 minutes late. I don't know why that is, but it just seems to be the case. But if somebody

01:15:44

is coming to an event and they're four hours away, they'll be there 30 minutes or. It's weird.

01:15:51

Yep. Next one I wrote down. I have it in the notes as. Love your spouse. The thing he says is the

01:16:00

very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse. And this I wrote down because

01:16:05

this is actually, I think, really brilliant advice. But there's a whole lot of context. Like,

01:16:10

I've heard versions of this before that obviously he doesn't get into the rationale behind this.

01:16:17

But the men's ministry curriculum that we go through at our church is by a guy named Ed Cole.

01:16:24

And he wrote a whole bunch of books, which are, have workbooks that go along with them. And

01:16:31

he's kind of the guy who initiated a lot of like the men's ministry movement, at least in the

01:16:38

the US. I've been to like this conference that they do in Dallas every year where they have

01:16:45

people from all over the world who have been impacted by this curriculum. They come and they talk about

01:16:50

they've got their ministries that they're involved with. And it's always inspiring because they're

01:16:58

like world changer type people. But he said in that curriculum, and this really hit with me

01:17:05

when I heard it the first time, and I've read this stuff probably dozens of times at this point.

01:17:11

So every time I read it, it speaks to me that the best thing that a father can do for their

01:17:17

children is to love their mother. And I was thinking like, why is that? And I think part of it is that

01:17:29

when you show to your kids that you and your spouse are a team, that they can't divide you,

01:17:41

right? Because that's what kids will try to do. They'll ask, ask dad, you know, can I do this and

01:17:48

say no. And then they go ask mom, can I do this? Sure. Like I did that when I was a kid. But my

01:17:56

kids have tried that. And they know at this point that it's not going to work because the first thing

01:18:01

I will say or the first thing Rachel will say is well, what did what did dad say or what did mom say?

01:18:05

Like we're a united front. And even if I disagree with something or Rachel disagrees with something,

01:18:11

if the other one has said it, like we'll back the other one. And we if a decision has been made,

01:18:17

it stands. Another thing that we do is like everyone's in a while in front of everybody be like,

01:18:23

hey, just so you know, mom's my favorite or just, you know, dad's my favorite. Like making it clear

01:18:30

that we are together, you know, we were together before you will be together after you. And

01:18:37

that maybe sounds a little bit harsh. But the effect of that, I think, is that there is a piece

01:18:47

that comes to the kids when there is an order established like that. He's not saying this in this

01:18:54

book, but this is kind of my personal opinion and just what I've seen in our home. Like when you

01:19:02

follow the the when when you follow the the structure, and I realize not everybody has,

01:19:10

you know, this ideal structure and you got to make do with with what you got sometimes.

01:19:14

If you keep the main thing, the main thing, which for me is my relationship with my my spouse, that is

01:19:23

the primary relationship I am concerned about. The kids are secondary, they're not far behind,

01:19:30

but they know the the hierarchy. What that does is it just makes everything in our home much easier,

01:19:41

much simpler. There's just like way less friction with things. Because we we don't like explicitly

01:19:53

say it all the time. We're not like driving the point home, but just every once in a while,

01:19:59

small ways reinforcing like, hey, this is the the pecking order, essentially. That has produced a

01:20:07

a lot of stability, I feel. There's also something to be said about the lack of concern or worry

01:20:21

about whether or not mom or dad are going to stay together. If you're truly and authentically

01:20:26

loving your spouse as this calls for, your kids do not have that worry. I remember at one point,

01:20:34

one of our girls had asked, like, well, are you guys gonna ever gonna get divorced? Like that that

01:20:40

question came up. It's like into us. The answer is no, that's not even an option. It's not even a

01:20:45

word that's allowed to be put on the table. So for us, absolutely 100%, there's absolutely nothing

01:20:53

that will ever lead to that. That's a decision we've made. And if we make that known to our

01:20:58

kids, well, then they don't ever have to worry about mom and dad splitting up. And if they don't

01:21:05

have that worry, that that does give them that stability as well. But this all starts with truly

01:21:11

loving each other. So if I focus on loving Becky well, you don't even get to where those are

01:21:19

conversations and love is a choice. Exactly. And it's a commitment to it's not a feeling,

01:21:27

at least that's our perspective on it. And so when you say you're not going to get divorced,

01:21:31

that's not looking into the future and saying there is an impossible set of circumstances

01:21:37

where that whatever happened. But it's basically saying we are committed to doing everything in

01:21:42

our power to not move in that direction. And that's when it happens is when you start considering it,

01:21:46

right? So we're not going to provide the opportunity there. What does that require? It means that when

01:21:51

we have a disagreement or somebody gets offended about something, we invest the extra time and the

01:21:56

emotional energy to work through it because of the commitment that we've both made. It's not a

01:22:03

disposable thing in our mind. Completely agree. Let's keep moving because it doesn't take a while.

01:22:09

Page 121, what you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days. I wrote

01:22:17

this down for myself because if I'm not feeling well or I'm unmotivated, I don't want to do a darn

01:22:22

thing. I don't want to open my computer to do anything. I just want to watch YouTube videos all

01:22:30

day long. And that's when I'm having a bad day. So the things that I do on those days are the ones

01:22:38

that will indicate where I'm going to like those are the ones that matter. If I'm able to push through

01:22:44

on those difficult days, then even the small things can get done and keep moving forward.

01:22:50

We haven't really touched on it, but he mentions in a few different ways that the little things

01:22:54

build up over time and equal big results. So he does call that out. And if you're able to keep

01:23:03

moving forward on those little things day after day, even when you don't feel like it,

01:23:09

that's when you're going to make true progress. So I wrote this down just because I need the reminder

01:23:14

and need the motivator. So thanks, Kevin Kelly.

01:23:17

Yeah, it reminded me of, I don't know if it was anatomic habits, but it's definitely something

01:23:21

James Clear has said about how the workouts on the days when you don't feel like the bad

01:23:26

workouts, those are the ones that are the most important. So do them, whether you want to or not.

01:23:33

Exactly. All right. Next one for me is to embrace this mindset of what is the worst that could happen.

01:23:46

He doesn't get into the details of this, but this is essentially like the fear setting stuff from

01:23:53

Tim Ferriss, which I'm not a fan of Tim Ferriss at all. But in my mind, there are two great things

01:24:02

he has contributed to the world. One is this concept of fear setting. The other one is the

01:24:07

video on how to do a proper kettlebell swing. Roughly the same value from both of those.

01:24:17

Yeah. Shout out to Josh for sharing that video with me initially.

01:24:21

But the concept of fear setting is basically we tend to be scared of things that we don't understand.

01:24:30

And so if you're scared of something that can keep you from doing something,

01:24:34

and so this process of fear setting is like the inverse of goal setting,

01:24:38

you let your mind wander and envision this worst case scenario. And what you discover through that

01:24:44

is that this worst case scenario, when you look at it after you're done, you realize it's really

01:24:49

not all that bad. I kind of went through this when I was considering making the decision to go

01:24:56

full-time independent because in my mind, it was like, well, what if it doesn't work out, right?

01:25:02

And then one day I kind of didn't mention I was doing this, but did this with Rachel.

01:25:08

And I said something along the lines of like, what's the worst that could happen? And she's like,

01:25:15

yeah, that's the spirit. And I was like, no, really, what is the worst that could happen?

01:25:19

You know, we just actually answer the question.

01:25:22

Yeah. Thought through it together and realized that like, I could get another job.

01:25:29

Is that the worst thing in the world? Well, then why not give this a shot?

01:25:35

So as long as you are not naming it, like that ambiguity, but like, well, what if it fails?

01:25:43

You'll feel all this tension and you'll feel all this stress about this made up monster, right?

01:25:50

But then the minute that you can actually see it for what it is, it's kind of like, oh, well,

01:25:54

that's not so bad. I mean, it's not a desirable outcome, but it's figure outable. If that were

01:26:00

to be the case, if no one signs up from sitting university, the podcast shut down tomorrow,

01:26:06

like no one takes out another ad, like, I can figure that out, right? And the process of your

01:26:12

setting is what gave me the confidence to be able to say that.

01:26:15

Yeah, this is a great question to ask, but it's an even better question to actually answer.

01:26:22

Yeah. It's generally posed as a rhetorical, but if you were to take it past rhetoric and

01:26:30

then start to actually put answers on a piece of paper about this question, it really disarmed

01:26:40

the whole situation. I've done it a couple times with some projects, like, what's the worst

01:26:44

that could happen if I were to move forward with this? It's a scary idea, but the worst that could

01:26:51

happen is I'm out a few bucks and some time. Well, it's probably worth it then.

01:26:59

So it's a great question to ask. All right. So if we go to page 147, this is probably one of

01:27:05

the longest ones in here, but I'm going to read this because it makes a way more sense the way he

01:27:10

wrote it than any way I'm going to explain it. Okay, this is explore or optimize. Do you optimize

01:27:16

what you know will sell or explore with something new? Do you order a restaurant dish? You are sure

01:27:23

is great, optimize, or do you try something new? Do you keep dating new folks, explore,

01:27:27

or try to commit to someone you met? The ideal balance for exploring new things versus optimizing

01:27:33

those already found is one third. Spend one third of your time on exploring and two thirds on

01:27:39

optimizing and deepening. As you mature, it is harder to devote time to exploring because it

01:27:43

seems unproductive, but aim for a third. Huh, interesting. I bring this up because as I age,

01:27:51

I don't want to do new things super often. And want to stick with the ways that I know

01:27:59

work well, even when it comes to tech, which is interesting considering how fast it moves

01:28:03

and it's always changing and that's part of the point, right? But as much as I love sticking

01:28:11

with the stability side, like I'm kind of reaching the point where I need to be reminded is like,

01:28:14

it's okay to explore things. Like, you know, when Becky and I go out for date nights and go to

01:28:19

a restaurant, we've got one or two that we love to go to all the time. But if we were to explore

01:28:24

new ones, we may find new ones that we absolutely love, but we wouldn't do that if we didn't

01:28:28

try new places. So I needed this reminder. It's okay to try new things. Just do it.

01:28:35

Agreed. Just try new things. Should we maybe just pick one more each?

01:28:42

Sure. I'm good with that.

01:28:44

Okay. Well, then I'm going to pick don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.

01:28:51

And this is essentially saying give other people the benefit of the doubt. But I think there's more

01:29:01

to this. Like, this is good advice in and of itself, but why do we do this? And what this is

01:29:09

saying is like, if someone were to do something, and I don't understand why they did it, they didn't

01:29:17

talk to me about it. They didn't offer an explanation. The tendency can be to think like,

01:29:23

well, they did it on purpose. And this is most prevalent, I think, in relationships with people

01:29:30

that you are close to. Specifically, you're significant other. I mean, because you live with

01:29:37

this person, for example, my wife, no one knows how to push my buttons more than she does, but she's

01:29:41

not doing it intentionally most of the time. Most of the time, it's just I have communicated,

01:29:46

I feel like 100 times, I prefer things a certain way. And so when that thing doesn't happen that

01:29:52

certain way, my initial thought is, well, she's doing this on purpose. She knows, obviously,

01:29:58

that I like it this this certain way. And she's choosing not to, right? No, she's not thinking

01:30:02

about it that way. She's not thinking about you that much, apparently.

01:30:05

Well, that's not exactly what I mean. I know. I know. I use that as the easy example,

01:30:12

because I'm assuming, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just a jerk, but I feel like other people can

01:30:19

relate to that example, right? Yeah. So you have somebody close to you, you feel like it's obvious

01:30:27

that this is the thing to do if someone really wants to be nice to you. And when they do something

01:30:33

that seems contradictory to that, obviously, it's because they are angry at you or they want to

01:30:39

tick you off. And that's not the case. It reminds me of another thing that I read in the Eglo curriculum

01:30:45

that we tend to judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions, right? I think

01:30:51

that's at the heart of this is like you just look at what somebody else did and you assume the malice,

01:30:58

you assume the ill intent, but to your joking point previously, no one's thinking about you that much.

01:31:05

They just messed up. It's not a big deal, right? So good reminder to think that,

01:31:13

think the best of people and if it's possible that they just made a mistake, assume that they just

01:31:20

made a mistake, but they're not trying to do this to get under your skin.

01:31:23

So the last one I want to pick here is page 196.

01:31:29

Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.

01:31:35

This one strikes home a lot because I feel like I need to one, I need to do this point blank

01:31:41

with my kids. So I have that as an action item as well. So I need to start trying to ask them

01:31:45

who they helped today. At the same time, this is very convicting to me because

01:31:53

I can process what it is I got better at today and have, you know, kind of notice,

01:32:00

what did I get better at today? Like usually it's some tech or sound or video, something

01:32:05

that's usually what the answer is. But the real question here is, who did I help in that process?

01:32:12

And like I need to ask that myself that question as well. If I'm going to be willing to or wanting

01:32:17

to ask my kids that and make them answer that question, I should be ready to answer that as well.

01:32:23

So I put this as part of like a daily questions thing like at the end of the day,

01:32:28

like who did you help today as a help for that? But yeah, I need to ask my kids that as well.

01:32:33

Awesome. Well, shall we go to four mentioned action items?

01:32:39

Sure. All right. So I've got a couple here, which really have nothing to do with what we talked about.

01:32:47

Of course. That's how this works. Yeah. So one of the things that he mentioned was asking what

01:32:55

I might be wrong about. There were a couple in here that were kind of on the list to talk about,

01:33:00

but they're sort of related like learning how to learn from those who you disagree with. That's

01:33:04

actually the first one I jotted down from the book and reminded me of the liminal thinking

01:33:10

episode, which I am insanely grateful for having read that book. I come back to that bubble of

01:33:16

belief all the time and just seeking out conversation and dialogue with people who

01:33:21

disagree with you and how important that is. But I want to ask myself where

01:33:32

might I be wrong about something? So that's essentially just ask that question. What might I be wrong

01:33:38

about? Hopefully I'll have a list. I'm not sure I want to share that list, but I am going to

01:33:43

commit to making the list and finishing the other two that are on the top there. I'll make Rachel

01:33:48

drive to Max stock. Then I can do them in the car. I don't know. There you go. We'll figure

01:33:52

something out, but I will get those done. I promise. I did that.

01:33:57

All right. There was another one which I think I know the answer to this, but I want to take a

01:34:03

fresh look at it. Figure out when you are the most productive and protect that time.

01:34:07

Pretty sure it's the morning and pretty sure it's about 10 o'clock, but I want to

01:34:15

identify like my golden hour, essentially. This is a concept that comes back to, I think,

01:34:26

it was make time where we first talked about this. Chris Bailey talks about the biological

01:34:34

prime time. That's sort of the same idea. But I have the ability, I have a little bit more

01:34:39

flexibility with my schedule now, so I can really lean into this. And I need to just

01:34:46

put a little bit more emphasis on this and make sure that I'm hitting the mark with that.

01:34:50

Then the other thing he talked about was the idea of a Sabbath. And I think that obviously is a

01:34:58

really great idea. I have been putting in way too many hours. I need to have a Sabbath, but not

01:35:08

like a traditional Sabbath. I've created a Sabbath on Sundays, but that is also filled with church

01:35:17

stuff. So I need a little bit more margin in my schedule. And when I read that part about the

01:35:26

Sabbath, the thing that popped to my mind was the concept of the weekend Wednesdays from

01:35:33

CPG gray. Yes. And I think I might be able to pull that off. So I want to dig into that and see if

01:35:46

that is in fact possible. I guess I'll report back by next time if I've been able to make that work.

01:35:56

I think this is a victory even if it's just even half a day on Wednesday.

01:35:59

But I feel like that's the perfect spot because by Saturday, usually there's some stuff that's

01:36:05

running over or something else got added. And I need to figure it out because it's urgent and

01:36:12

important. There's been a lot of that stuff with the business lately. So may as well just

01:36:18

lean into that since it's happening anyways and figure out maybe another release valve in the

01:36:24

middle of the week. I feel like Wednesday might actually work. So we're going to give that a go.

01:36:28

Cool. Well, I've got two here. I've talked about both of them already, but

01:36:35

figuring out what a rite of passage for my girls would look like and rough timing age-wise.

01:36:41

And the other one was this one I just talked about was the who did you hope today as a daily

01:36:46

question for myself, but also for my kids and asking them. So those are the two I have.

01:36:51

Alrighty. So style and rating. My book will go first. This might be a little bit tricky because

01:37:01

this is not a style that really lends itself well to the bookworm format. Hopefully we've had

01:37:08

some interesting conversation with people I still listening, but who knows?

01:37:13

Now we'll see you next time. I recognize that for a lot of people they listen to bookworm as like

01:37:18

a filter before they actually read the books. So yeah, this is a very different style.

01:37:25

It is a bunch of little anecdotes, which makes it very easy to read. There's lots of stuff in

01:37:33

here that can trigger inspiration, curiosity. And I think perhaps this is a good one to trigger

01:37:46

like this is something I want to dig deeper in, although the way it's written doesn't really

01:37:51

frame it that way. Like you really have no idea what the context is for a lot of these things.

01:37:57

Some of them are obvious. Like, oh yeah, I want to figure out more about that. But a lot of them

01:38:02

are framed as like, I have gotten this wisdom and this is the important part that you need to know.

01:38:08

So I don't know. It is definitely a fun read. I think I would recommend this one for just about

01:38:18

anybody in the bookworm audience. It's the sum total of Kevin Kelly's life experience,

01:38:25

until the point that he wrote this. And I feel like Kevin Kelly is somebody that I would like

01:38:33

to learn from. So I guess the exception here would be if you are familiar with Kevin Kelly and

01:38:40

just completely rubs you the wrong way for whatever reason, then maybe don't pick this one up. But

01:38:46

I feel like there's a lot of little nuggets here and you will find something that is going to

01:38:55

get you thinking about something. I don't know how much staying power this has. Like,

01:39:04

I can't imagine ever going back and wanting to reread this one. But I am glad that I read it.

01:39:13

And I will agree with the people who recommended it to me that it is a good book. It's just not a

01:39:19

traditional book at all. So know what you're getting yourself into. And then also a lot of this stuff

01:39:27

we have talked about, heard about in different ways, shapes or forms, in just about every other

01:39:32

book that we've covered for bookworm. So there's not a lot of really impactful trigger points, I feel,

01:39:44

like, I don't know, maybe if you're coming to this at a different point than we are having

01:39:49

read 174 books before this. And even actually more before that in our reading journey, you know,

01:39:57

everything kind of comes back to how to read a book by Mortimer Adler, right? And the idea of

01:40:02

this in topical reading, I just can't disconnect from that as I'm reading this. There's all these

01:40:09

different things that I'm pointing out. Oh, you know, that idea comes from this other book, or I

01:40:13

heard about this from this other person in this this other book. I don't know. I guess what I'm

01:40:18

trying to say is I feel like there's a possibility. The experience that we had is not the experience

01:40:25

that others would have. But again, bookworm listeners kind of would default towards our end of the

01:40:34

spectrum, I feel. Can you imagine though, like, if you were a relative of Kevin Kelly's, and you

01:40:40

didn't read any of these books that we read, and you just show up at a 68th birthday party and you

01:40:45

receive something like this, can you envision how that might hit different? That would hit very

01:40:50

different. Exactly. You'd probably be like, wow, this guy is a genius. Correct. If you're not a

01:40:55

reader and you don't go through nonfiction and you were handed this, like, dude. Yeah.

01:41:01

Exactly. So I think it's like in the right scenario, this could be like really, really cool.

01:41:07

Maybe it's like a graduation gift to someone who's not going off to college or whatever,

01:41:12

and they haven't read a bunch of these books. This might be a great primer sort of a thing.

01:41:17

He challenges us at the beginning to give it to somebody younger than us. So that's kind of the

01:41:23

whole idea here. All that to say, where we're at having read this book, I don't think this is a

01:41:30

life-changing book, personally. I do think it's a fun read. I do think there's some good stuff in

01:41:36

here. I really enjoyed the conversation we had about this stuff. I'll give it 4.0 for stars.

01:41:42

And for the right person, I think you should definitely add this one to your library.

01:41:49

I don't think I would say that to someone who's in the same shoes as you or I,

01:41:55

or even somebody older. If you have read a lot of these books already, you've probably encountered

01:42:01

a lot of these ideas. So yeah, I would recommend people read it. But if you're trying to decide

01:42:08

between this and something else, I mean, it depends on the other book, I guess. But I would

01:42:14

probably recommend the other one. But yeah, it's kind of hard to put this one in a neat little box.

01:42:26

But I'm glad that I have it in my library. I can just foresee a scenario where people be like,

01:42:33

"Oh, yeah, I know all this stuff already." Right. Yeah, I think the style of this is very interesting.

01:42:39

And I kind of like it. It's kind of like reading a quote book from one person, because that's what

01:42:45

you're doing. And there are so many times that I would read one and I was like, "Wait a second."

01:42:51

And then I had to stop and think it through. It's like, that is partly why it took me a little bit

01:42:55

longer than one sitting to get through. I think it was like maybe three or four

01:42:58

to get through this. And it's because there are some that'll give you pause

01:43:06

and force you to slow down a little bit. So it's very well written. Each one of these,

01:43:11

he's obviously spent quite a bit of time wordsmithing them down so that they're very concise

01:43:17

and distilling them into the main part that you need to

01:43:23

gather from the idea and not expanding on it beyond necessity. So I really appreciate the time

01:43:31

that's very obviously been put into this. And Kevin Kelly is a smart dude. So you can definitely

01:43:37

learn from him. So there's a lot in here that you could learn from. I think you're spot on and

01:43:44

saying like, "We've covered pretty much all of this." There's some stuff about tech investing in

01:43:50

here as well that we just kind of skipped over. But there's that side of it. But that's okay.

01:43:58

Again, it's very wide ranging as far as the different ways of offering advice here.

01:44:04

I think 4.0 is exactly where it should sit. I absolutely do. It's a great book. I love reading

01:44:11

it. It has a lot of great advice in it, a lot of great quips here and there. So really appreciated

01:44:17

it. But I think 4.0 is the right spot for it. All right. Well, let's put excellent advice for

01:44:25

living on the shelf. What's next, Joe? Up next, we have the art of clear thinking,

01:44:32

not the art of clearly thinking. But this is by Harsard Lee. Tagline on this is a stealth fighter

01:44:42

pilot's timeless rules for making tough decisions. This was recommended by Blake in the chat,

01:44:49

who I know was a pilot. So it makes sense. I feel like I have never been directed wrong

01:44:55

from some of Blake's recommendations. And this one's rated pretty highly too. So

01:44:59

I'm excited to go through this one. I've started it already. So it'll be a good conversation,

01:45:05

obviously. And what do you have selected after that, Mike?

01:45:11

I am going to pick a recommendation from the Bookworm Club. And that is Life Worth Living,

01:45:19

a guide to what matters most by Mereislav Volf, Matthew Croceman, Ryan McAnally-Linds.

01:45:26

I have no idea what to expect from this because I have never heard of this book before. But looking

01:45:34

at the description for this, it looks right in my wheelhouse.

01:45:38

Nice. How about gap books? No, no gap books. Me either. I'm hoping to have a gap book by next

01:45:51

time. I feel like I've been saying that a lot. I should have given how quick this one was to read,

01:45:57

but I took the extra time and went outside. Oh, actually I do have a gap book that I read.

01:46:04

Which was? I read it for church. The Av God by John Bevere. Oh, I've heard of that one.

01:46:11

It's a good one. Cool, cool. If that's your thing.

01:46:14

All right. Well, thank you to everyone who has listened thus far. And thank you specifically to

01:46:25

the Bookworm Club Premium members who help us keep the lights on for five bucks a month, 50 bucks a

01:46:30

year. You can get our undying gratitude as well as all the mind maps from the books that we read.

01:46:38

So I've mentioned a couple times the mind map for this book. I take those in MindNote and then I

01:46:45

share those in the Bookworm Club so you can download either the PDF version or the MindNote

01:46:51

document itself if you want to take it and run with it from there. You also get access to the

01:46:59

the 4k wallpaper and some gap book episodes that Joe did back in the day. But yeah,

01:47:09

you can find out more at bookworm.fm/membership. Cool, cool. And if you are reading along with us,

01:47:18

pick up the art of clear thinking by Hasard Lee. We'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.