Bookworm Transcripts

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I am alive and I

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Would say I'm doing well, but it's

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Okay, so since we talked

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What did we talk before we had our third kid? I don't remember Mike too many things have been going on lately. I

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Think that

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We talked

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But it was kind of impassing. I don't think we've recorded

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Anything maybe since you had your baby. Did we okay? Well?

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All right, so we have our third baby in the house now

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third kid little girl hazel hi hazel and

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She's been a really good kid so far. She's three weeks old now and

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I would say she's sleeping well at night. She gets up a couple times as long as everything at the evening witching hour goes well

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but

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It's one of those situations where it's actually harder with the other two kids. You know this you have multiple kids

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the other two are more difficult than the baby because

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they are trying to figure out why mom and dad are so focused on little one and

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It means you have to spend a lot more time being very intentional with your other two

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Yep, it's a domino effect

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Yeah, yeah, and I can't say that I was fully expecting the gravity of

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That's like I knew I knew it was gonna be a thing

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I you know everybody talks about you're not man-on-man. You're on zone defense now like everybody talks about that

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But and knowing that I don't have the full understanding of what that means

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I knew that but it's just completely different than anything. I was expecting just wait till your kids figure out that you're playing zone defense

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Oh, I'm sure I'm sure then I'm toast. Yep

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And they know all I got to do is I got to spread the zone

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All right, you go in the kitchen. I'm gonna go in the living room. Good luck mom and dad

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Exactly little conspirators. I tell you it's true and

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It it becomes a thing now where

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Our oldest is very particular about where she does certain things like she's okay hitting her sister

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I'm not okay with that obviously but

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She doesn't do it when we're anywhere near

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She makes sure that they're in a different room and then Rose or a second she'll come out crying of course

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It's like okay

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What happened and you have to try to coerce it out of them because you didn't actually see anything so you have a hard time

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Disciplining them not knowing what actually happened. Oh well the joys of parenting

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Exactly see now that you have more kids and there are adults

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They'll just wait for the moments where you've got your back turned and then those types of things happen more often

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So it's a lot more figuring out what actually happened and yet people think that us humans are naturally good creatures

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Right

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Why do we have to teach us teach ourselves to be good like okay if if we were naturally good people

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Then why are our kids like this?

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Okay, actually get into this argument a lot

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How's Mike doing? That's Joe. How's Mike?

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Doing good. We had a week off at a Airbnb last week. Oh, right?

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Well, I guess this will be released quite a bit after we record this but as we're recording this

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I took a week off after Christmas and my family and Rachel's whole extended family

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So she's got a couple brothers and sisters who have families. We all rented this Airbnb, which sleeps 20 people

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pretty comfortably actually really nice place

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the kids loved it because the

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Cabin in the basement guy had finished off like his man cave and he had a pinball machine and golden tea golf and big buck hunter

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Bubble hockey and they were their minds were blown that you could play all these video games without actually putting in any quarters

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Nice

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So yeah, it sounds like a blast it was uh it's good to get away

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And I basically didn't do anything that the whole week

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I felt kind of guilty about it when I got back, but I think it was definitely needed

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And that whole taking breaks thing

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We know it's a good thing, but we hate it. Yep

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So unproductive it feels like anyways, it's true true

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We're ready to jump in our into uh our follow-up here. Let's do it. All right, um

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I'll go first here. I think we've got roughly the same number here, but uh the one thing I had on my list from

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Last time is thinking out loud around my kids

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And at work about what can I do about this right now?

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So this goes back to the personal accountability piece and owning

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Owning the the situation it may not be my fault, but I'm gonna own the situation

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Uh, and that whole process of just thinking out loud. That's it's an interesting

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It's an interesting thing whenever something happens say I'm at the church working on an it thing

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Uh, we recently rolled out a new email structure and there's I think I have one decent sized issue other than that

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It's all fairly straightforward

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But in that particular situation that it looked kind of dire and it was

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Looking like it was going to be a nightmare

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And I'd simply stopped and asked out loud like okay. Well, this is a big problem

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But what can we do about it right now because it looks like it's gonna take a long time to fix it, but right now

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What's the solution?

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I simply said that out loud

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And the the couple folks that were there

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Immediately started helping on the brainstorming process on how to create like a workaround

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For this situation and it turned out to be a pretty easy thing that ended up being the solution itself

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So I was like, oh, that's interesting

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So I had a couple of other folks that were asking about it later because it made the rounds

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And uh, it actually had a bigger impact than I thought it would

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That people have started

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Even questioning well, you know, this may be a bad situation, but what is it we can fix right now?

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So it's had an interesting

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Uh trickle-down effect there. So I think that's something I want to continue to do because it's had a pretty big

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pretty big impact

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Cool

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The second one on this list notice my blaming tendencies. Yeah, this is one. I think I'm gonna have to just continue

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Continue following up on I don't know that we'll do it here for a while, but I

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I have realized that there are a lot of situations where

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Something probably is my fault, but I don't want it to be

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So I have a tendency to want to put it off on somebody else that happens way more than I thought it did

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and it's kind of humbling whenever you start trying to notice that and

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it becomes something that

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It forces you to realize how often you don't take responsibility for a situation. So it's

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humbling, like I said and something I should probably definitely keep up

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Last one on my list of voting my phone in the early morning

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Still still terrible at this

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Quite quite terrible at this. I think I succeeded one morning

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Since we last talked Mike once I have successfully pulled this off

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And I was stressed most of the morning. I did not like it

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We are

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So what what uh specifically

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Do you do on your phone in the early morning that you feel like you have to check

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certain things is there other

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Tools of the ways that maybe you could get that information

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Like for example one of the things that I use my phone for is checking the weather

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But I could also do that using like the Amazon echo that's in the kitchen

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I don't physically have to have my phone with me then and I can still get the information that I need

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Yeah, the things that I'm checking and

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It's for a little bit different reason than others. There's a couple forums that I check which sounds

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Silly to check for saying in the morning, but the reason I'm checking those is I have released some free plugins and a couple

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Yeah, it's mostly free code that others are using and I

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Want to know if something's wrong with them like that's part of it

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So I'm I'm trying to figure out if there's an issue with something I've done. That's the crux of most of my

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Issue with the morning because there's a couple email accounts. I'll check

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There are the like I said the forums and I check in on github

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For the coders and developers out there

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To see if there's any issues literal. That's a technical term issues that have come up on that repository that tell me there's something wrong with the code

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so it's mostly a

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A quick rundown of

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Are all the programs and all the scripts and such that I've written is everything still okay? Has anything broken and

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I understand there's

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Good reason not to check this first thing in the morning like take for example. I've got one for

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um

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One for omnifocus that updates when your next review is going to be it's a fairly popular one

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So it'll update your next review schedule for

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Projects in the in omnifocus and there was an issue with it whenever we rolled over to the new new year

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And I knew there might be an issue with it, but I ran across it first thing in the morning

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Now I still haven't fixed it as we record this but I'm aware of it and I'm still trying to figure out how to

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Solve that particular issue now see this is the negative side of it Mike because

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I found out about it early morning

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Not long after I got up and then the rest of the morning

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I was trying to figure out how to solve it even though I didn't have time to solve it

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So I completely understand why I should not do this and yet I continue to do it

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Uh, I don't I'm not sure what to tell you there. I would probably do the same thing if I was in your shoes

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Oh, thanks. That's helpful

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Yeah, fortunately

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I don't have to go online and check to make sure that the things that I've made haven't broken overnight

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But I can definitely see that being a

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An open loop that would cause a lot of stress. So I sympathize with you

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I think it's something I think there's something deeper that I need to solve here

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But I can't tell you what it is

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It has I think it has something more to do with trusting what I've done and being okay with some of it being broken

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Like I think there's something there, but I haven't figured it out

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And this is a long rant on, you know, why I can't stop checking my phone in the morning

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but it seems like there's something else involved that

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is caused

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Around this mindset of not being willing to let go of something I've released

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And constantly wanting to fix and adjust

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The moment something goes wrong. I think there's something involved there. I just need to let it go and stop

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All right, I'm gonna be done with my rant on my phone in the morning. All right, I'm gonna switch over let you go

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Yeah, so speaking of fixing things one of my follow-up

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I know I saw that

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Was no trying to fix anyone else and I feel like I've done a pretty good job with this

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I've caught myself a couple times just in my thought process not

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Actually gotten to the point where I followed through with action

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And blaming people for certain things, but I've caught it internally where

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Before I would default to something and say you need to do this

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Catching it and applying it to myself first and saying well, what can I do?

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You know kind of going back to your first follow-up item. What can I do about this right now?

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And there've been a couple things that I've been able to do and

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that has

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That has made things a lot smoother

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One of those things is the next follow-up item the reading the strengths finder with with Rachel

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I set her up with the account

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Center the login information and

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She was going to do it while we were on the family vacation

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That didn't actually happen and so when we followed up in the family meeting on sunday night

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I was faced with a decision

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To either say well, why didn't she do this or hurry up and do it?

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But before I even was able to say that

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It there was an opportunity that I noticed like what can I do about this right now?

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I can create the space for Rachel to take this for the next 30 minutes

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I can handle bedtime myself so that when she's done with this and I'm done

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With what we need to do getting the kids in bed, then we can talk about the results

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That's obviously a much better solution than me saying well, you had one thing you needed to do

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so

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That was that was really interesting and then also after we we took the actually she took this the strengths finder

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we shared the results with each other and

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we wrote down five things for each of us

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to apply based on the other person's results so the strengths finder the default results give you your top five strengths

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And so for example

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one of the

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Rachel's top strength was empathy and so I wrote down for my action item that based on the description there which is

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Surprisingly accurate if you've taken these types of assessments

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You read this and you get a really good idea you understand a little bit more about yourself

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And when you do it with your significant other you understand a little bit more about them

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So we read this description and she's like, yeah, that's that's exactly it

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and one of the things that it talked about in there was that

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because

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Her strength was empathy. She liked to contribute different viewpoints to decision-making processes

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But she didn't like to be the one to actually make the decisions

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I tend to be very black and white

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And if I could manage all of my life inside of omnifocus with every other person that I come in contact with I probably would

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But that's not the way that she's wired. So the takeaway there was that I need to lead the decision-making

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I can't just delegate stuff to her and be like, okay, you know, you decide on this thing

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Okay, I need to lead the decision-making but I also need to ask Rachel what she thinks more often

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Not in a frame of mind as like, well, what do you think we should do?

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But what do you think about this particular situation or this particular problem?

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And so we each have five of those things based off of our strengths and it was a really eye-opening experience to go through up to go through that

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Sounds like it's a

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very helpful thing to know she likes to contribute to a decision and then you like to make the decision

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because

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That I feel like just knowing that can make a like that can have a huge impact on a marriage for sure

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Yeah, exactly. I mean going back to one of the other books that we talked about on this podcast

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The willpower instinct like you every decision you make reduces the amount of willpower that you have available

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So I was approaching this as well. I'll handle these decisions you handle those decisions

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But that was actually creating more friction and it ended up costing more in terms of the time-attention focus energy that we had

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To devote to this whole decision-making process

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And so this is one of the adjustments that we've decided to make is yeah

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I'll lead the decision-making but I'm not going to do all the heavy lifting myself

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I'm going to involve Rachel in the process. She's going to provide input so I don't have to

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expend as much myself

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It's it's basically a different approach to the same type of problem

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The problem is I can't physically handle making all of these decisions myself

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We have to work as a team, but how we work as a team is influenced based on our strengths

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Nice. Nice. Well, it sounds like this has been a very helpful

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Thing if you hadn't put it off for so long, right? I know right?

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Should have done this a long time ago. What can I do about this right now?

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It's amazing how big that question can be

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Um, so last one on this follow-up list is 12 week year updates

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Um for me

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And the other thing I put this on here is because as we're recording this

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It's the first of the year

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And I know if I remember correctly mike you were talking about starting yours here at the beginning of the year

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And the way my timing worked out it meant that I finished up my first round

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A week ago, which means I had my week off last week and then this is the beginning of another 12 week year for me

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so

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Following up to that there's

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Two different sets of this that I'm doing one is for my personal and for my work

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Uh, the other is for the church because with the church and my role there

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It kind of needs its own

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Set up and needs to follow that as well. And since I started there about a month ago

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Uh, it works out really well to kind of get my feet wet and then I can kick off a 12 week year there and this kind of run

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I'm in parallel

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So for me, I've got my personal goal set

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kicking those off here soon and then I'm doing the same at the church

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But I don't have a whole lot to report on it other than that

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Um, well other than I've got a buddy of mine over here in the twin cities area

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Josh, I don't know

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I need to give him grief. I don't know if he has a website of any kind he should he's needs to change that

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Um, but he's uh, he's a good friend of mine

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But we're trying to do the whole accountability thing once a week on that which actually like starts this afternoon

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So that'll be kind of a fun

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Fun add to my 12 week year process

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But

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Are you am I right in thinking that you were planning to start this or are you going to do that?

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Yes, uh, and I

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Had intended to it was one of the things that I intended to do over the uh, the week that I was on vacation and

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Of course that well didn't it didn't actually happen

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Um, I did do it personally. I meant to involve Rachel in the process

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So I still need to do that at some point and do one for our family

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But I since this is the first time that we've ever done it. I just

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Downloaded an excel spreadsheet and

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Followed the template and kind of filled it out

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Based on my best guesses and now in the next family meeting

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My goal is to share that with Rachel and kind of get her feedback and tweak it based off of that

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But it's a really interesting process if you've never done it before the first time

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I don't know if you experienced this, but it was pretty difficult

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Yeah to actually sit down and articulate all that stuff you have

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You have these uh, these

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Ideas for this big project that you want to do and then uh to actually sit down and figure out the individual milestones that you can track on a weekly basis

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Is a lot harder than just saying yeah, I want to do this sometime

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I know it when I first put the first one together

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when I first put the first one together when I did the initial one I uh

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It took me quite a while to figure out what are those goals like?

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What are the areas that I want to do these goals for?

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And how do I break them out week by week and coming up with the goals is easy

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I thought anyway

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But whenever it came to okay, here's this week and then here's this week and then here's this week from start to end for each one of those goals

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That was not easy

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And even you know, I just redid it again

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And even the second time like coming up with the goals is fairly easy

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I think I came up with what I wanted my goals to be in 10 minutes

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And that was simple

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But it's taken me a good two or three days of thinking it through to figure out what those milestones need to be

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It's not simple. I understand like I haven't gone through it

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I know that it's powerful and it can be extremely helpful and I got a lot done the last three months and I had

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you know, probably in the last nine

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before that but

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It just leads you to knowing what's coming up next and that's what I want to pose at the church

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I'm kind of curious to see how they're going to react to it. I've got a meeting this afternoon to talk through that

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my

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the executive pastor that I report to

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He's never heard of this at that I'm aware of so I'm planning this will be fun

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I'm planning to go into a conversation about 2017 goals

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And just talk about them and then turn around and say so my goal is to get all those done in the next 12 weeks

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So

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I'm kind of curious to see how that pans out, but that should be a fun conversation

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Yeah, you have to let us let us know how that goes. I know it'll be inter entertaining. I'm sure

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Uh, so I'm going to backtrack a little bit here. So you reading strengths finder and then understanding

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Uh yourself and your wife and knowing how the two of you work together to make decisions

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I think that's a pretty good lead-in to

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Your choice for our book today because I think that

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What we're going to talk about the rest of this episode plays into that possibly perfectly

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Yeah, this is a an interesting book

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It's uh decisive by chip and dan heath and basically the gist of it is that it's a framework for making better decisions

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And I really don't have any rationale for picking this one other than I thought it looked really really interesting

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Well, I'm really glad you picked it because I really enjoyed this one

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Nice

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Yeah, it's uh, it's it's different and there's a ton of stories in here

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The way that they implemented the stories. I thought was was really great. It wasn't a bunch of random, you know, person's first name like we

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Read about the the uh, the powerful engagement

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Um, but it's it they were carefully selected stories that illustrated the principles that they were talking about in real life situations

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starting on

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page six

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Yes, and he made the the very simple

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demonstration here that if

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If you walk into a courtroom say you're on a trial and the prosecutor at the trial

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presents powerpoint slides

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And using those powerpoint slides he demonstrates why the defendant is guilty

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And then they're having to reach a decision based on that and that alone

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Like that would just be absurd like that makes zero sense whatsoever

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That's not the case at all that you have no pun intended there

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Uh, that's not how things work

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But the idea is that you have to have all of this information to help make that decision

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To draw it out and not be something. It's just here's what I think and then making a decision based on what you think and feel

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That is kind of the crux of the book that

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There's more to making big decisions and I say big decisions because there's a lot of little decisions

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You can kind of just run with it sounds like

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Uh, but

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If he used the courtroom analogy, there's no way that would ever fly like that would just be a terrible and an absurd

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Thing to do

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So he takes us through this process of how to make better decisions

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Yeah, and it's really interesting how he starts by

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Giving an example of a framework that a lot of people use and the story that he uses to illustrate this

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Shows that the guy ignored the

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Ignored this framework and it actually worked out better for him

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So he talks about Benjamin franklin's moral algebra

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Which is basically you make your list of pros and cons and then you strike out the equally weighted items until you identify

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Whether this decision has more pros or more cons

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And Benjamin franklin gave that advice to this guy who was

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Trying to decide if he was going to go

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Uh, take this position with like an aristocrat and in europe somewhere. I forget the guy's name

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I forget the exact situation, but according to the moral algebra this guy should not have taken the

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Position he ends up taking the position and it ends up being a great thing for him

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But also the way that he did it

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Is a little bit different too. Uh, one of the things that they talk a lot in this book about is that

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A lot of times we're tempted to think should I do this or should I do that and instead you should ask yourself

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Is there a way that I can do this and that and so that's kind of what this guy did is he spun it around a little bit

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And he tweaked the terms a little bit and it wasn't so so much a I have to choose this path or that path

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Sort of a decision. He was able to accomplish a lot of his goals and it ended up being a great decision for everybody that was involved

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And it seemed like in that scenario that

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There were there were a lot of really good decisions he could have made. That was the part that struck me about that

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There were a lot of

00:24:38

Options that he had

00:24:40

That were all good options and yet he somehow traversed all of this to create this awesome

00:24:45

Path using a bunch of them. So I thought it was interesting and I I'm with you. I can't recall his name

00:24:51

That's probably terrible Mike

00:24:53

It was an interesting story

00:24:56

of how he

00:24:58

Kind of and you don't really think of this as a good thing. He ignored Ben Franklin's advice

00:25:02

Yep, and still came out for the better

00:25:05

To me the idea of ignoring Ben Franklin

00:25:09

Makes zero sense whatsoever, but you know, hey, some people are probably smarter than Ben Franklin and that seems crazy

00:25:18

But it's easily possible

00:25:20

Well, I mean he's definitely a very smart guy

00:25:23

but the the real

00:25:26

Reason I think that it worked is that it

00:25:29

Ben Franklin didn't not have

00:25:32

all of the information to

00:25:35

accurately combat the

00:25:38

Villains of decision-making that he talks about on on page nine

00:25:42

Now you put these in the the show notes

00:25:45

But uh, this is one of the big things for me too is that there's a couple different things that can influence us

00:25:50

When we don't realize it and it can cause us to make poor decisions

00:25:55

So number one we kind of talked about already. That's the narrow framing where you're only looking at these two options

00:26:01

And the solution to that is to widen your options

00:26:06

Uh second one is the confirmation bias

00:26:09

This one I thought was really interesting because I could totally see how this plays out in the business world where you decide that

00:26:16

You're going to do this thing. You're going to take advantage of this opportunity

00:26:20

And then you find all these facts to help support it

00:26:23

I I think this comes up a lot and the part that struck me on this one is he had uh,

00:26:29

He mentioned that confirmation bias researchers

00:26:32

struggled to overcome confirmation bias

00:26:35

Okay, so that means i'm toast because

00:26:39

If the people who study this and know it inside out can't beat it

00:26:43

How on earth am I expected to beat it like this is not going to happen?

00:26:48

Right. Yep

00:26:50

And so the the solution to to that is to reality test your assumptions

00:26:55

Uh, the third villain of decision making is the short-term emotion

00:26:59

And this one again was really interesting because he's not saying in this book that you can't

00:27:04

You have to remove emotion from the equation

00:27:06

He talks a lot in the book about how emotion is actually a very important piece of decision making

00:27:12

But when you're making a decision

00:27:16

Instantly those short-term emotions can influence you to make bad decisions

00:27:20

So the solution to that is to attain the distance before deciding this

00:27:24

While heard the advice sleep on it before you send that email, you know

00:27:29

Uh, and then the the last one is overconfident

00:27:32

So once you've come to your decision, you're so sure if this is the right thing

00:27:36

And then the solution to that is prepared to be wrong and he wraps all of these making better decision

00:27:42

uh criteria

00:27:45

He he has a

00:27:46

What's it called an acronym? I believe for this called rap

00:27:49

So w widen your options r reality test your assumptions a attain distance before deciding for prepare to be wrong

00:27:56

And then uh at the end of the book he even gives some case studies on how you can apply this rap process

00:28:02

After the majority of the book is about the individual steps of the rap process

00:28:06

But at the very end of the book there's even some case studies where you can apply this to particular decisions

00:28:12

And uh, I think this is a really really solid framework

00:28:15

And if that's the only thing that you got out of reading this book it was definitely worth it

00:28:19

This is this is exactly why I told a couple people that I

00:28:23

Was uh having conversations with i've got i bring up books all the time with people anymore

00:28:28

It's probably really frustrating for others, but i'm

00:28:31

Yeah, anyway

00:28:33

I I talked to some folks who they're homeschooling their kids

00:28:38

and

00:28:40

They are trying to figure out how to help their oldest two sons one is a freshman

00:28:46

Uh, so he's a ninth grader and the other one's a an 11th grader and they're starting to have these conversations about you know

00:28:52

What do you want to do?

00:28:54

As a a career you want to go to college like they're trying to have all those conversations

00:28:57

I told them to read this book both of them and their kids

00:29:01

Because to me there's so many scenarios for especially students

00:29:07

I mean think about it you're getting ready to donate essentially four years of your time

00:29:11

If you say you're going to college if you're going to donate four years of your time without an income in most cases

00:29:16

With the assumption that you're going into a career that you are going to excel at

00:29:23

How do you actually know that's the right decision to make wouldn't you be better off taking a month and donating your time to the industry

00:29:31

Before you donate four years like simple things like that come out in this book

00:29:36

And it's one that would I hope would help a lot of students and a lot of parents help kids make those decisions

00:29:43

Yeah, and even if you are confident that you want to go into a particular field

00:29:48

Then typically it's how do I get into the best school and he talks in here about how the us news and world report rankings

00:29:54

That determine the the highest rated schools

00:29:58

They're actually based on things that don't matter things like faculty compensation and the percentage of graduates who actually donate back to the university

00:30:07

They actually did independent research and found that when it comes to income it really doesn't matter what school you go to

00:30:14

So I agree it would be much better to figure out what is that thing?

00:30:18

And maybe you do a small test before you actually dive in and decide that you want to devote

00:30:24

eight years of your life or more to becoming a doctor

00:30:27

Right and this comes from so this is a part of the R in rap

00:30:33

So I suppose rap WRAP. So the reality test your assumptions

00:30:37

That's essentially what i'm talking about there is you know do a test to find out if this is the real thing you want to do

00:30:43

This is so they brought up van hhelen and the M&M's again

00:30:46

Which I thought was kind of fun

00:30:48

But that story seems to come up quite a bit because it seems absurd it seems kind of diva ish

00:30:53

and

00:30:54

Yet it's brilliant and this is one where van hhelen had

00:30:59

He's doing the reality test in that case. He's making sure that everybody who's

00:31:03

Building the structures and taking care of all of his music equipment

00:31:07

That they're actually going to do what he can assume they need to do

00:31:11

So it's a reality test using something as simple as a brown M&M who'd have thought

00:31:16

Yeah, and if you haven't listened, I think it was probably the previous episode we talked about this

00:31:21

I think so. Yeah

00:31:22

But the gist of the story is that

00:31:25

Van hhelen when they would go on tour they would bring I think they said in this book eight semis worth a gear

00:31:31

Yeah, I think that's right

00:31:33

So they were really the first ones to do these really really technical productions when they would give a concert

00:31:39

And they knew that when they showed up to do the show they couldn't

00:31:44

Check everything every time so they used

00:31:48

They used a clause in the contract where it said that there was to be a bowl of M&M's

00:31:55

Backstage in the green room

00:31:57

And the brown M&M's were to be removed and if the if they went back there and they found brown M&M's in the bowl

00:32:02

They actually according to the contract had the right to cancel the show and not refund any of the money

00:32:07

And the reason for this was basically a tripwire

00:32:10

Which is another thing that he talks about in the book later on

00:32:13

Where they knew that if they had overlooked that detail

00:32:18

Then they probably overlooked a lot of other details when it came to setting up the eight semis worth of gear

00:32:24

And that was basically their cue to have to go and check

00:32:27

everything

00:32:29

Because they knew that if they weren't going to pay attention to this one thing

00:32:32

There were some other things that probably slipped through the cleric cracks too and at one point

00:32:36

I believe they found a pretty major

00:32:38

Thing wrong and it actually would have been life-threatening had they actually gone through with the show

00:32:43

It's quite the deal. I mean, it's not I mean it sounds ridiculous, but it's not just M&M's

00:32:50

I know it's more than an M&M

00:32:53

So I'm looking through our outline here, Mike and

00:32:55

I feel like we've kind of given a quick overview of the book

00:32:59

But I'm noticing that the remainder of the items that we have on this list are

00:33:04

A bunch of tactics

00:33:07

So, you know, we talk about rap, why in your options reality test your assumptions attain distance before deciding and prepare to be wrong

00:33:14

The remainder that we're going to talk about here are some of the

00:33:19

tactics and ways to help get the information and to make the decisions

00:33:23

I just want to clarify that because I feel like we've gone through a summary piece

00:33:28

And we may hit some of these rapid fire because there's a bunch here. Yep, and there's a lot of

00:33:34

Really interesting

00:33:37

And yet in some cases very small like just ask a single question and it can really open things up

00:33:41

There's some of these that are very simple some of them are more complicated some of them are expensive

00:33:48

That can help us make better decisions. Do you think it's fair if you're looking at the list that I'm looking at?

00:33:53

I can wish I could share this with the listener

00:33:56

Definitely, I completely agree

00:33:59

For example, the very first thing on here is the vanishing options test

00:34:03

And this applies to the first point of rap, which is widen your options

00:34:08

And this is really really simple

00:34:11

But it's something that a lot of people probably don't do

00:34:14

And I know that I've been guilty of this as well. The vanishing options test is basically if you can't do what you're considering right now

00:34:21

What other options are available to you?

00:34:23

So this is really handy when you're trying to decide

00:34:27

Whether to take another job for example or stay in your current job when you're looking at something like that where there's two options

00:34:34

Should I do this or should I not do this?

00:34:36

If neither of those options are available to you

00:34:39

What other options are out there?

00:34:41

So basically you you eliminate the ones that are available to you and then that helps you see

00:34:45

All the other options that are actually available to you. You just haven't noticed it because you're so focused on

00:34:51

This particular

00:34:54

This particular thing

00:34:55

It makes a lot of sense. I think if you come at it

00:34:57

From the standpoint of here's what I can do right now and what happens if all those go away

00:35:03

And

00:35:05

There are a lot of times I think whenever I look at like my business

00:35:08

And there are some potential business partnerships that can come up some new advent

00:35:13

Adventures, I suppose they could be adventures

00:35:16

business ventures

00:35:18

uh that are

00:35:19

possibilities for me

00:35:21

And

00:35:22

It seems like I'm dealing with those quite a bit and I can't they come up quite a bit sometime

00:35:27

Honestly, a lot of them come from you Mike

00:35:29

but

00:35:30

These things come up and I need to make a decision about them and in a lot of cases I try to make them very quickly

00:35:37

And if I were to in some of these cases just say all right if that's an option

00:35:43

But I need to do something. What would I do if those options weren't there?

00:35:48

I haven't tried this in any scenario. Have you tried this at all?

00:35:52

Uh

00:35:55

Not recently I don't think at least

00:35:58

Explicitly, but I I feel like I've kind of been

00:36:04

asking myself this question for a long time because

00:36:07

That was one of the tipping points when I was writing my book

00:36:11

uh, which is called dauchil hustle kind of gives you an idea of

00:36:15

the whole premise of the of the book

00:36:18

but uh

00:36:20

I basically got to the point where I realized that a lot of times

00:36:24

We were trying to decide between thing a or thing b and

00:36:29

We don't need to make that choice sometimes sometimes you can do both and it's just figuring out how to do it. Sometimes

00:36:35

It's neither

00:36:38

But the the default should not just be well. I have to pick one of these things

00:36:42

So I can look back at a couple different scenarios in my life and I can I can identify different situations where I've kind of applied that

00:36:50

But not the way that they articulated it in this book

00:36:56

So I should point out that this particular process falls under the the widening or options

00:37:01

Part of making better decisions. So there's a few of them here. We'll go through specifically on this

00:37:07

but

00:37:08

Another one of those ways to essentially get different ways, you know, open up the possibilities for a decision

00:37:14

Uh, it was simply asking what about both like in so many cases

00:37:18

We have decisions that come up that are you know, should I do this or not?

00:37:23

Well, sometimes you can ask well, what if you do both or in some cases like, okay, should I buy?

00:37:28

Uh

00:37:30

Well buying something's probably not good because then I'm buying multiple should I buy a macbook or an iPad both?

00:37:35

but

00:37:37

You know sometimes you have decisions that come up and rather than try to decide between them

00:37:42

You should ask the question of can I can I do both of those and?

00:37:47

Does that open up new possibilities for me in the future?

00:37:52

It I can tell you from personal experience that it definitely does when you take this approach if I would have stuck with

00:37:59

Choose this or that I never would have written the book

00:38:02

Which never would have led to the position with Asian efficiency?

00:38:05

Never would have gotten connected with you most likely

00:38:08

Lots of other things that I've been able to do lots of other opportunities that I've had

00:38:12

Don't happen if I have to make the choice between

00:38:15

staying in the family business where I'm making pretty good money and I have security

00:38:21

And deciding that I'm going to just burn that bridge and become a writer because I had never written anything before

00:38:27

So I mean that's that's just a really obvious example of you don't have to choose between one or the other

00:38:34

You can actually do both and I think that a lot of passion projects or side hustles or dreams that people have

00:38:39

They don't take action on them because they're waiting for the moment where it makes sense for them to chase that thing full time

00:38:45

But you you don't have to do that right away

00:38:49

You can just make a little bit of of movement in a particular direction

00:38:53

You can create a little bit of action and then that can actually snowball as long as you're consistent with it

00:38:59

So

00:39:00

What about both? I would argue that everybody should be looking for that option

00:39:04

Not necessarily as the default for every decision that you make if you do that

00:39:09

Obviously you're going to get over committed and you're going to burn out you need to maintain some sort of margin, but

00:39:14

How many of those things are in people's hearts? How many goals?

00:39:19

Do they have how many books, you know that people want to write or

00:39:23

Businesses that they want to start how many of those things don't happen because they're waiting for it to make sense to choose

00:39:30

That option as opposed to the thing that they're right now committed to

00:39:35

and one of the ways to

00:39:38

Think about this and to try to I guess avoid it is he

00:39:42

I keep saying he it's they so sorry guys, but

00:39:48

they talk about the

00:39:50

The alarm that should set off in your mind whenever you hear somebody say should I do this or that?

00:39:55

Or i'm trying to decide whether or not to do something

00:39:58

Uh, the example he brought up was i'm trying to decide whether or not to break up with my boyfriend

00:40:02

They talked about that and you know, they also come at should I buy this company or not?

00:40:08

well

00:40:09

You know that that's not necessarily the right way to come at it because it's limiting you down to essentially one option

00:40:16

You know do this or not like you're making one

00:40:19

Choice in that instead of coming at it and just saying there's this one option here

00:40:23

Try to figure out what the assumption is, you know the assumption is I need to decide between this about this particular scenario

00:40:31

And instead of trying to decide on that one scenario you're better off

00:40:35

Trying to figure out if there's a different way to come at it like the he talked about the example of buying

00:40:40

Was it Quaker was buying snapple?

00:40:44

I think that was the company layout there. Uh, they were simply trying to decide whether or not to buy it

00:40:49

Well, it would have been a better it ended up being a terrible thing

00:40:52

Uh it ended up being a scenario where they probably should have thought about it of is snapple a good choice

00:40:59

Or should we save that money and invest it in research or?

00:41:04

Should we look at buying a couple smaller companies that would potentially lead up to something like snapple?

00:41:10

Like they didn't ask any of those questions. It was simple simply a

00:41:14

Should we buy snapple or not and it stopped there? They didn't try to widen

00:41:18

Their choices they simply stuck to the one and got laser focused on it

00:41:22

Instead of trying to broaden the spotlight on what the options were in front of them

00:41:27

If you can kind of see that correlation there, but that that's what you're trying to do is if you see something that

00:41:33

Uh a question that someone's asking should I do this or not?

00:41:36

Well alarm bells should go off because that means you're thinking at a narrow frame of mind

00:41:42

Which is one of the villains of decision-making?

00:41:45

And it's really interesting

00:41:49

the story about frank and doreen because

00:41:51

being married

00:41:53

That's a your partner can be a very valuable resource when it comes to

00:41:58

widening

00:42:00

Your options and realizing all the options that are available to you basically in this particular story

00:42:05

Doreen was stressed out at work and she just felt like she couldn't handle everything

00:42:10

So she was approaching this problem from a particular mindset

00:42:13

Which is another thing that they bring up the prevention focus versus the promotion focus

00:42:17

So if you have a significant other

00:42:20

There's a very good chance that one of you's prevention focus one of you is promotion focus

00:42:27

Prevention focus basically orients you towards things that are negative you want to avoid negative situations

00:42:33

Promotion focus is oriented towards positive outcomes. Well, what wouldn't it be great if this actually happened?

00:42:39

And so in this particular story

00:42:41

Doreen's all stressed out. She's looking for ways to reduce stress

00:42:46

She's thinking about quitting her job because she just can't handle the stress in that particular environment

00:42:51

Frank is looking at it from the through the lens of how do you increase your happiness? So one of the solutions that

00:42:58

He mentions is maybe you stop and you work out on the way home

00:43:02

and I think a lot of solutions

00:43:05

to

00:43:07

Specific situations like that where you're really stressed out and you're thinking about, you know, I got to get out of out of this job

00:43:14

It's probably not

00:43:16

wise to just

00:43:19

Burn that burn that bridge so to speak or to just walk away from that particular situation

00:43:23

There's probably things that you can do in that particular situation to alleviate some stress in the corporate environment

00:43:29

For example, and there's some other things that you can do to increase your happiness

00:43:33

So in this particular story what I took away was that I might be looking at the solution to this

00:43:38

This is one thing my wife might be looking at at the solution to this is another thing

00:43:42

And really the ideal situation is both, you know, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that

00:43:47

It's not so cut and dry. Just we have to pick one or one of these or the other

00:43:51

I really like the story of frank and doreen. It is very

00:43:56

And this this correlates throughout the rest of the book, Mike

00:44:00

At least I thought you know a lot of these stories

00:44:02

He's got they've got tons of them in this book to explain and illustrate these decisions that are being made

00:44:08

And how they came about doing it

00:44:11

Like these stories are very relatable. They're ones that you can easily grasp and you can easily

00:44:18

Comprehend I guess and it's something that illustrates their point very clearly

00:44:23

This is one of the reasons I had a hard time putting this book down

00:44:26

Because it was very engaging and I kept wanting to know

00:44:29

The stories would last through four pages in some cases and I I would finish reading about the concept

00:44:35

And then I would read because I was curious I would read the first couple sentences of the story that was coming up

00:44:40

And then I was hooked and I was another four pages in before I'd put it down

00:44:43

But then I got curious as to how that led to the next option and how like the next strategy that they were going to talk about

00:44:49

Oh gosh this thing

00:44:52

All right, so here I am reading 3040 in one case 50 pages in a day because

00:44:56

I'm just curious about it

00:44:59

This is kind of led me from one to the next but that has a lot to do with the stories that are in it

00:45:02

And just wanting to know how they apply this specific strategies that they're talking about

00:45:08

Definitely and they do a really good job of making the stories

00:45:12

I think he used the term relatable. That's a really good term like when I read the story about doreen and frank

00:45:18

I was picturing mike and rachael

00:45:20

Like I really picture myself in those characters shoes and a lot of the stories

00:45:25

I like that even if they're about famous people even if you're not making a decision whether to spend two billion dollars to acquire a company

00:45:32

The the thought process that they go through and the way that they describe the characters

00:45:38

Makes them seem very real

00:45:40

And that the processes that they use

00:45:44

You can totally see how you can apply those to your own specific situation

00:45:47

So another couple things under widening your options here are like multi tracking for example

00:45:53

Which is the ability to consider more than one option at once

00:45:57

And then laddering up this one I thought was really interesting. It's looking at other domains for solutions to your problem

00:46:05

So when you are looking at a

00:46:08

So we're trying to figure out a solution to a particular problem first thing you'll probably do is

00:46:13

You'll base it off of your own experience

00:46:15

Have I gone through this type of thing before do I know how to solve this if you don't then you might look at other people who are in that particular

00:46:21

Situation the exact same situation that you are and how they handled it

00:46:25

But laddering up is really even looking outside that into different domains. So

00:46:30

maybe for example

00:46:33

I forget the exact example they used in the in the book, but they were talking about

00:46:38

Walmart and how they handled the the queue lines for the checkouts and how that was

00:46:43

More convenient in it or more efficient and it got people through the lines faster

00:46:47

You can use that same sort of principle in a lot of different domains

00:46:50

You could use it in the theme park when you're designing

00:46:53

the lines for the rides for example and

00:46:56

Just being able to recognize how people are applying these principles in different domains

00:47:01

Can really shut shed some light on some really valuable

00:47:06

Solutions some really valuable options if you if you know where to look

00:47:09

One of the stories that I because with this book and with the stories it

00:47:16

part of the reason it's so engaging is because

00:47:18

You can sometimes learn how to do some things even beyond making decisions even though it's about making decisions being decisive

00:47:25

You can still through these examples

00:47:29

Figure out new ways of doing certain things and the the one I want to call out here is lexicon the company

00:47:36

Who you know, they are genius at the multi tracking thing you're talking about running with multiple scenarios all at one time

00:47:42

in an effort to learn more about the situation and make an even better decision and lexicon

00:47:48

Uh, what the company does is they name products or companies like that's what they do is they name things

00:47:55

You know how hard is to name things like that is not a simple thing to do

00:47:58

And if you work online at all you're naming things like constantly it seems like

00:48:03

You know, you clear down to writing article names like it just yeah, yeah

00:48:07

So I I thought it was interesting that they spell out their process for how they come up with names

00:48:13

Which is multi tracking to a t essentially what they do is they let some of their employees use the product itself

00:48:20

Say they're trying to name. I think the example they gave was naming one of colgate's

00:48:25

Toothbrushes it could be like it was a travel toothbrush

00:48:28

They were trying to get it named so they let some of their employees

00:48:33

use the product

00:48:35

Then a few of them came up with the concepts based on that experience like it's easy. It's

00:48:41

It's freshening. It's lightweight. It's

00:48:44

You know simple to use they would take some of those concepts and then let

00:48:49

A different group of people who had no idea who the company or product was they didn't have any idea what it was

00:48:55

They would take some of those concepts and then just try to come up with words or phrases that correlated with it

00:48:59

And they would do this over a period of time

00:49:03

And using that strategy of running with these multiple scenarios

00:49:06

They would have a group of people who were looking at all of the results that came in and then they would try to draw correlations between them

00:49:12

And sometimes they would go back to a different group and they would run with a different scenario and they would run all these different

00:49:17

Systems all at one time

00:49:20

Until they came up with something very simple and that made perfect sense and that they could all agree on

00:49:25

And and you know use the colgate example. That's how they came up with a name for the colgate wisp

00:49:30

Which I think is a fun name, but anyway, that's the process of lexicon and I bring that up because of two things one

00:49:36

It shows the example of a multi tracking the way to different why a way to widen your options even further

00:49:42

But also that gave me a lot of ideas on how I can name things for myself in the future

00:49:47

Like oh, these are some really good ways to name things

00:49:51

This would be awesome and it won't cost me millions of dollars to hire lexicon to do it

00:49:56

Yeah, they also named I believe the pentium line of processors for intel

00:50:00

Which was another thing where they went outside the domain and I forget exactly where they got that from

00:50:04

But they were looking at computer terms and nothing really fit

00:50:07

And then they ended up selecting pentium and their whole process for selecting these these names

00:50:13

It's pretty amazing because they're so good at it

00:50:17

They're so efficient at it and then the results that they deliver time after time after time

00:50:23

It's it's pretty crazy that you can develop a creative system

00:50:26

Like that that just continually produces those results just by learning a different way to think

00:50:32

I really liked it. It was a fun fun set of examples because he used lexicon quite a bit in that process because it sounded like they were perfect

00:50:41

At coming up with tons and tons of choices for themselves to pick from

00:50:45

So what we've been talking about here is the the first

00:50:49

Part of rap the wideener options. Let's step into the second one there the reality testing

00:50:56

uh, what's the actual their reality tester assumptions and he does this they do this by

00:51:03

You know the first one that we have down here is asking yourself the question

00:51:07

uh a question and say you have

00:51:10

Some different options on the table. You've got the options that you want to pick from

00:51:14

And then the next thing you would have to say is you know, what would have to be true

00:51:20

in order to

00:51:21

Pick between those and the story that they gave with this at least the one that I can recall because they had a few stories to correlate some of these

00:51:28

but

00:51:30

They shared the story about a I believe it was an oil company that had a plant

00:51:35

Mine, I guess in uh, Canada that was potentially going to be shut down because of a lot of different options

00:51:41

And they took the executive team. They took the management team

00:51:45

So the executive team making the big decision and then the management team at the plant

00:51:49

And the two of them tried to figure out do we shut this down or not?

00:51:53

And of course they're going to gridlock the executives want to shut it down

00:51:57

And the managers don't because it employed over a thousand people

00:52:00

So they don't want to shut it down the whole economy in the area would probably fail if it was shut down

00:52:05

And that's a tough decision to make. It's not something you want to just you know, willy nilly say here you go

00:52:12

Well, you don't want to do that

00:52:14

but whenever they ask the question what would have to be true for each one of these scenarios

00:52:20

to be

00:52:22

Like what would have to be true to make each one of those a good decision

00:52:25

And by going through the process of defining

00:52:29

In detail what would have to happen to make each one of those correct and then trying out the process

00:52:35

Of coming up with those particular solutions. They were able to decide. Yeah, this actually is a good decision to shut it down

00:52:42

Even the management team that didn't want to shut it down said yes, we need to shut this down

00:52:46

But they would have never been on board with that if they hadn't gone through the process of reality testing

00:52:52

The the scenarios that they had to pick from

00:52:54

Exactly and also the reason that they're good locked in the first place was that they had different

00:53:01

Points of view and those different points of view aren't

00:53:05

necessarily

00:53:07

Bad there's not there's not always one right one and one wrong one

00:53:11

But they talk in the book about how we get locked into our own

00:53:14

Inside view a lot of times and that's exactly what the managers did they had this inside view. We can't

00:53:20

Can't let these people go

00:53:22

But when they were able to get an outside view when they were able to reality test those assumptions

00:53:28

And they were able to project out well what happens?

00:53:31

You know what what has to be true in order for this to be the right choice

00:53:34

It was pretty obvious when they did that so

00:53:38

When it comes to decisions that we have to make we have to be good at getting an

00:53:42

Outside view and one example they gave of this which I thought was kind of interesting

00:53:47

was Yelp

00:53:49

So you go you're gonna go out to eat you're in a new town. You're gonna look at least if you're like me

00:53:55

High-fak finder on the Colby score

00:53:58

You're gonna you're gonna boot up Yelp and you're gonna see what are the places that have the highest reviews

00:54:04

And then you're gonna you're gonna base your decision on the outside view of the other people who have eaten there and

00:54:10

It's kind of silly when you think about it

00:54:13

Something like that like where you're gonna go eat

00:54:16

That's not really that big a decision

00:54:18

And we make those types of decisions the correct way a lot of times by getting those those outside views

00:54:24

And he even says in there that sometimes there's criteria there that you know

00:54:29

You're gonna override the outside view because you know you want Mexican food and there's

00:54:34

A couple people who didn't like they gave it bad reviews

00:54:37

But it was because it was too expensive and you're flush with cash you're good companies paying for it

00:54:42

You just want good Mexican food in that case you're gonna ignore the outside views

00:54:46

But for the most part we welcome the outside views when it comes to things like spending a couple bucks on a cup of coffee or buying an app on the app store

00:54:54

but when it comes to the really big decisions

00:54:58

We

00:55:00

Don't seek those outside views

00:55:03

And he has a process that he talks about in there where we need to learn to zoom out

00:55:07

To learn from the experience of others and then we need to zoom back in

00:55:11

To our inside view in order to add the color

00:55:14

That's where a lot of the stories come and you can see that that's how they did it in this book

00:55:18

They would zoom out to talk about the whole decision-making framework the rap process

00:55:22

And they zoom in and they'd add all these stories to add color and life to what they were actually

00:55:27

telling you

00:55:30

One of the other ways to do the reality testing piece is what they were

00:55:35

Terming ooching have you heard this term before?

00:55:38

I've not but I love this idea

00:55:41

I do I like it, but I'd never heard of ooching before

00:55:45

I think of myself as having grown up at least near the south and supposedly this is a southern

00:55:50

term of ooching

00:55:53

Essentially, you know, it kind of comes from scooching or you know

00:55:56

Dipping your toe in the water that scenario where you know, you're just going to ease into something a little bit

00:56:01

Now that's that's what he's getting at with

00:56:04

Oooching your way into something

00:56:06

Uh, essentially what it is is trying to find some way

00:56:09

however crude

00:56:12

to just test and see what the waters are like in a specific scenario and

00:56:17

They give a few examples. I can't recall any of them off the top my head at the moment Mike

00:56:22

but

00:56:23

effectively what you're doing is trying to take

00:56:26

Whatever your decision should be you think it might be and then find a way to

00:56:32

Try it out

00:56:35

Without going really big on it. I guess the example that I'm I would go back to is when I was talking about

00:56:40

the the donating of four years of your time to go learn about a specific

00:56:45

uh industry if like while you're in school

00:56:49

As opposed to taking a month to just donate your time to a specific business and learn about it and try it

00:56:55

Like that would be a way of ooching your way into something. Let's go try it for a month

00:56:59

it

00:57:00

It's a free month to the employer where i'm not going to make any money off of it

00:57:05

But it saves yourself for years of expensive school

00:57:10

To go into an industry that you may not be good at or hate

00:57:14

But it's a way to test the waters before you get to it

00:57:18

He also used the example of the hiring process and I believe that

00:57:24

Again, I said he I meant they uh one of them. I think it was that's a problem with co-authored books

00:57:30

Right

00:57:31

But they tell the story. I think it was dan who was involved in this hiring decision and they had this guy who

00:57:38

um was applying for a

00:57:40

a graphic

00:57:42

artist job, I believe

00:57:44

and did the interview and

00:57:46

Just absolutely did not like the guy

00:57:50

Didn't click with them at all and then they had as part of the interview process them submit samples of their work

00:57:56

and uh, they didn't attach the names to the

00:57:59

samples when they reviewed them and this guy

00:58:03

The he was uh the guy that the dan didn't like

00:58:07

Was the guy who performed the best by far everybody agreed that his work was the best

00:58:12

and so

00:58:13

they

00:58:14

Because they had they had had him do that small test

00:58:18

The definition of ooch that they use in the book is to construct small experiments to test one's hypothesis

00:58:23

So by having him do that small test of that sample of work

00:58:27

They decided to hire this guy and then actually after they hired him found out that he's actually a really really nice guy

00:58:33

And all of the reservations that dan had about this guy before they hired him were completely off base

00:58:38

And they basically just talk about how interviews are pointless and little work samples like that are are much better

00:58:46

One of the things that they wrote in there that I completely

00:58:48

Agree with it just completely resonated with me and is something that I need to figure out how to apply this more in my life

00:58:54

But they said why predict something we can test

00:58:57

Yes

00:59:00

Why take the chance that you're going to be completely wrong about something when you can validate it very very simply

00:59:04

Yes, yes. So I go back to uh

00:59:08

Oh, man mind blank uh cortex cgp gray

00:59:13

He was trying to hire someone to help do

00:59:15

the animations for his videos

00:59:17

And part of his process to hire somebody was to have them submit work samples. That was the primary interview

00:59:24

Process was to submit a sample of the work you can do

00:59:28

And stop there and if you're good at the work, why would I worry about some of the other stuff like yeah

00:59:33

He's picky about can you work with me or not?

00:59:35

You can figure some of that out, but the whole process was you know, let's do a preview

00:59:39

Let's do a sample of what this is going to look like and how it's going to work

00:59:42

Like that's awesome and so many times

00:59:44

We run across an interview process that seems to make zero sense whatsoever

00:59:49

And asking questions, you know, this goes back to the beginning

00:59:52

You know, you wouldn't just sit and talk about the work you do

00:59:55

You wouldn't talk about why you think the defendant in a case is guilty. You wouldn't just talk about it

01:00:01

You would show evidence you'd prove it you'd give a preview of all the

01:00:04

Specifics that show that in reality like that's what you want to do

01:00:09

You don't find a way to prove it like like you're saying why why

01:00:12

Just assume something why I think of talk about it when you could prove it

01:00:16

Why why go off of concepts when you can have facts like that makes zero sense whatsoever?

01:00:20

exactly

01:00:24

So the the next step

01:00:26

in rap so widen your options reality test your assumptions and then attain distance before

01:00:33

Deciding so sleep on it, you know, that's that's the real simple version is you know, take a night off

01:00:39

You know get a little bit of distance from it take some time

01:00:42

but one of the strategies that he gives they give

01:00:47

Page 160 if you're in the book is using the 10 10 10 time frames

01:00:53

the framework there and what that stands for is

01:00:56

10 minutes 10 months and 10 years

01:01:00

So a way to get distance on a decision is to ask yourself

01:01:06

How will I feel about this decision in 10 minutes?

01:01:09

Okay 10 minutes after I have decided to ask my boss for a raise

01:01:13

How am I gonna feel about it possibly nervous about how he's gonna do it

01:01:16

Potentially really excited that you finally did that

01:01:20

In 10 months, how are you gonna feel about that?

01:01:23

Well, if it went well, you're gonna be pretty excited about the raise that you got or potentially thinking about asking again

01:01:30

Or you may have turned out to be a very it may have turned out to be a very bad situation

01:01:36

You're not there anymore, but you might be at a better place overall

01:01:38

So there's a potential for quite a life-changing scenario, but in either case you're better off

01:01:44

Or you could look at it in 10 years in which case it's kind of a fun story

01:01:48

It probably was a keystone in your life

01:01:50

But it could still be a big part of that decision in 10 years out

01:01:55

So it's a way to using this 10 10 10 time frames

01:01:59

To just kind of force yourself into getting some distance from a decision and just kind of looking at it

01:02:06

From the futures standpoint. They explain that okay

01:02:09

Yeah, you did a great job

01:02:12

And this this example is really what I think is so brilliant about this book

01:02:17

This is something that everybody knows

01:02:20

We know that we should not make decisions in the heat of the moment

01:02:25

We know that we should sleep on things

01:02:27

We know that we need to attain distance before we make these really important decisions

01:02:31

but we don't do it anyways and

01:02:35

And what the the 10 10 10 rule does is it gives you the support structure

01:02:41

To fall back on

01:02:43

So instead of saying well, I know I need to

01:02:45

Think about this some more that's really vague. So

01:02:49

There is no next step there

01:02:52

When do you define that?

01:02:55

You've thought about this enough in order to make this decision

01:02:58

And this gives you three very simple questions where once you ask these the questions are the answers are very

01:03:05

Evident and then you've got enough of a of a framework there to actually make a pretty good decision

01:03:11

How will you feel about this? Like let's just say you're going to purchase something how you feel about this purchase in 10 minutes?

01:03:16

Okay, if it's an impulse buy you might still feel really good about it in 10 minutes

01:03:20

How will you feel about it in 10 months? You're probably getting sick of the thing in 10 years from now

01:03:25

This is a complete waste of money. This is a really simple decision now that I've answered those three questions

01:03:30

At least if you have the long term in mind, you know, if you're not just so focused on instant gratification

01:03:36

But I think deep down people know that they need to think about the future

01:03:40

They just need a little bit of help they need the training wheels to help keep them on the keep them upright keep them on the right track

01:03:46

And that's what the 10 10 10 rule does

01:03:48

I'm trying to find the

01:03:52

The stats because I wanted to say exactly what they were but I'm failing to find them at the moment

01:03:58

but he gets talking about the familiarity like being familiar with something specific and

01:04:05

It gosh, where is it?

01:04:08

It was interesting to me because

01:04:11

I'm going to get there Mike

01:04:13

what what he talked about in this particular scenario was

01:04:16

media and how they use researchers and how we have a tendency to

01:04:23

Think that we're good at predicting things and think that we're really we end up being over confident

01:04:28

with specific situations and it has a lot to do with just

01:04:34

We trust our own expertise and we think we're really good at predicting things and

01:04:40

They did some tests on experts quote unquote experts

01:04:45

primarily who were in the media and

01:04:48

Think of you know, we just went through the elections here in the us

01:04:53

and

01:04:55

a lot of passion a lot of emotions around that and

01:04:58

There are all kinds of experts that are offering

01:05:00

Advice and expertise on why they think things turned out the way they did

01:05:05

Why did the polls not figure this out and

01:05:09

Essentially what happened was a researcher tested these experts

01:05:15

and simply asked them to make predictions and

01:05:19

I think he collected what was it?

01:05:21

1000 plus no it was 80 some thousand

01:05:25

Predictions and then ran results on them to figure out in two years time where those predictions correct

01:05:31

and of

01:05:34

The experts who were in the media talking about their

01:05:36

Predictions it was like 70 to 80 percent wrong

01:05:41

Of the ones who were in the media they were like 60 percent wrong on average

01:05:45

But if they were in the media in some form it was closer to the 80 percent

01:05:50

which basically means

01:05:52

If you're paying attention to you know, the the news networks or anyone who's reporting any of this if you have an expert that comes on to offer a prediction

01:06:01

You're better off assuming the opposite of whatever it is that they predict

01:06:05

Okay, well, maybe we should get some distance from this

01:06:10

Let's get away from some of these decisions that are being made here and that are being posed on us because there's a good chance that they're wrong

01:06:18

And this is I only bring this up because it to me is something that

01:06:22

I'm pretty good about avoiding the news because I know that most of it is extremely biased and you can't trust most of it

01:06:28

That's my well, maybe that's just my opinion, but I don't care for it

01:06:33

But I try to get myself some distance from that because of two things one. I don't trust it

01:06:38

It's mostly negative so I just don't feel the need to have that

01:06:41

Cluttering my mind and two

01:06:44

If I'm gonna make a decision about what I want to do

01:06:47

For a business or what I'm going to do for my family or something. I don't want some of that

01:06:51

Affecting it some in this case. I'm trying to get some

01:06:54

Some space between me and that particular set of information because to me it's going to affect me negatively

01:07:00

As opposed to positively. Is this making any sense? I'm trying to show the correlation here, but it's

01:07:05

Somewhat vague in my mind even

01:07:08

Yeah, I mean this there was way too much to get everything that they they wrote in this book

01:07:12

but the

01:07:14

to give a little bit more context to the

01:07:16

The statistic that you were trying to find

01:07:18

They mentioned the big takeaway was that like a teenager who doesn't know anything about this particular domain

01:07:26

It has a better chance of being right

01:07:28

Yes

01:07:30

Which is kind of kind of shocking when you think about that

01:07:33

There's another humbling fact

01:07:35

Yeah

01:07:36

another thing that

01:07:38

That influences decisions and another reason why we need to attain distance is that we all have this

01:07:45

loss aversion

01:07:47

where we

01:07:48

View losses as being more painful than gains are pleasant so

01:07:52

we'll tend to

01:07:55

Default to the things that we've always done are the things that we already have

01:08:00

one example was they gave out

01:08:02

Coffee mugs I believe to 50 students who showed up for a lecture one day

01:08:07

And then they asked the the students who got the mugs what they would value them at or what they would sell it at basically

01:08:13

And it was like seven dollars something then they asked the students who didn't get a mug

01:08:16

What would you be willing to pay to get that mug and it was like two dollars

01:08:19

So there's obviously like a big difference there and the

01:08:23

Equation that they share is that loss aversion plus mere exposure the fact that we have this thing already

01:08:29

That combines to equal a status quo bias

01:08:34

Where we'll just keep doing the things that we've always done and not stop to think about whether this really is the right decision and

01:08:41

Attaining the distance

01:08:43

That helps us kind of balance these things a little bit better and overcome that that loss aversion

01:08:48

I think I run into this a lot with websites

01:08:52

Like people don't want to change a website because they're afraid

01:08:57

There's information on the website that they're going to lose and I recently did one for

01:09:02

a client where

01:09:05

They were making some executive decisions to

01:09:08

Cut information off of the existing website as we were rebuilding it

01:09:12

And knowing that there are a handful of people that use that information

01:09:17

but also knowing that

01:09:20

Having it on their clutters it significantly

01:09:22

So that by cutting it we make it cleaner and easier for the broader

01:09:27

User base even though there's going to be a little bit of a loss for a few

01:09:31

And depending on who you talk to that was either a very good thing to do or an absolutely terrible thing to do

01:09:39

And a lot of it came down to we have something in existence

01:09:43

We think it's working out well because we know how to use it and I'm going to lose my familiar

01:09:49

User like I'm going to lose my knowledge of how this works

01:09:54

So I don't want to change it

01:09:56

How many times do we hear people say that they just want to these is one thing to go back the way they've always been

01:10:01

Why why change like don't change it if it ain't broke like we see that a lot

01:10:07

I think this is why we're averse to losing something that we currently have

01:10:11

for the sake of the broader

01:10:14

Goal like instead of going for the bigger thing

01:10:16

We're stuck on this little thing that's going to keep us from getting to that

01:10:20

Yeah, and it kind of leads into the final point

01:10:23

Which is prepared to be wrong because part of overcoming the loss of version is being proactive and choosing which things you're going to intentionally lose

01:10:32

Like one of my takeaways

01:10:34

From this book was to create a stop doing list

01:10:36

As soon as you create that stop doing list and you take control of the process and you are intentionally letting things go

01:10:42

you've overcome the loss of version that

01:10:45

naturally happens

01:10:48

when

01:10:49

Somebody asks you hey, can you can you do this particular thing and you're already over committed

01:10:54

And instead of viewing it as how do I do this?

01:10:57

How do I squeeze this in? Well, I've got to let some things go

01:11:00

I don't want to let those things go because I've been doing them unfamiliar with them

01:11:03

You get into that loss of version mere exposure the status quo bias

01:11:08

If you intentionally create the margin if you intentionally create that stop doing list then

01:11:14

you can

01:11:16

You can acknowledge at the at the beginning of the process that there are some things that maybe I'm doing that are a little bit wrong

01:11:22

Maybe there are some adjustments that need to be made some tweaks that need to be made to my particular situation my particular

01:11:29

System and then when you do that it opens up the door to the things that are actually better the bigger opportunities

01:11:35

and part of the process of

01:11:39

Just being ready to be wrong is setting what they call trip wires. So when you're making a decision

01:11:46

Whether it's to do something or to not do something

01:11:49

You need to put things in place that trip you I use that kind of figuratively

01:11:57

They are set there to remind you or to indicate that you need to stop

01:12:01

and reconsider that decision

01:12:04

And there are a lot of instances where this happens, but in some cases it's like, okay, well, I need a new car

01:12:09

But now isn't the good time

01:12:11

But when I have say $6,000 in savings

01:12:17

That's when I'm going to reevaluate this and that trip is to say at that point my current assumptions and my current decision is no longer valid

01:12:27

And I need to reevaluate it at that point my current decision is wrong

01:12:30

And I need to think over it again and setting those trip wires can be

01:12:35

I guess freeing and

01:12:38

They can help you to loosen up to make a decision, but it makes a lot easier. I know we've done this in a few cases

01:12:45

I'm fairly recently none of which I am comfortable talking about here, but they're they're good

01:12:51

Good indicators to say if I'm going to do this for my business

01:12:55

That would be great, but after six months if I haven't received this amount of dollars then I'm going to stop doing this

01:13:03

And setting those trip wires can be

01:13:06

freeing to let you just run with the decision and know that when you get to a certain point or if something does or doesn't happen

01:13:12

You need to stop and think it over again

01:13:15

Yeah, it's it's designed to defeat the let's just see what happens mentality and it

01:13:22

refocuses you and it snaps you out of the autopilot that we can get stuck in and they have a really great story of a trip wire here with the

01:13:30

the offer that zappos has for their new recruits. Oh, yeah

01:13:33

Where basically they they hire people and very first thing they take them through the training process that then the training process they say

01:13:41

That if at any point you don't want to be here walk up to any manager and say I'd like to take the offer

01:13:49

And that is zappos will pay you a thousand dollars to leave

01:13:52

It's kind of bold, isn't it?

01:13:55

It's really bold, but it makes so much sense from a business perspective because zappos is

01:14:00

They built a reputation on phenomenal customer service and they told some pretty crazy stories about

01:14:06

Some of the customer service experiences in the book

01:14:10

But uh, the real thing here is that those customer service

01:14:14

Experiences where you blow people's minds

01:14:18

That doesn't happen if you have people there that don't really want to be there if they're just there to collect the paycheck

01:14:24

so

01:14:25

This is genius in my opinion because you're going to naturally weed out all of those people and how much money would those people if they

01:14:32

stayed on an extra six months an extra six years and didn't perform at the level where they were supposed to be

01:14:39

A lot of times you don't even notice that as a manager. You can't really track that sort of sort of thing

01:14:46

Very well, and so

01:14:48

What is that really costing the organization or the business to have those people there who aren't

01:14:54

Putting everything into what they're doing

01:14:57

One way that they talk about these trip wires was book ending

01:15:02

and

01:15:04

It's kind of a way of saying there's two trip wires involved with the decision one at the top and one at the bottom

01:15:10

And the example they give is that with

01:15:13

an investor and deciding which stocks to invest in and

01:15:16

He uses a specific example of red box and the parent company that was involved with that

01:15:22

and how

01:15:24

They were trying to make the decision as an investment group as to whether or not to put you know in this case millions of dollars into

01:15:31

the company and

01:15:34

What they realized was if a lot of very dire situations happened

01:15:38

The stock price would be about $20 a share

01:15:43

If absolutely everything worked out for them and you know, they had some home runs

01:15:47

It would be about $60 a share and mathematically if you get into stocks there are some ways that you can calculate that

01:15:52

Based on some assumptions

01:15:55

Knowing that information at the bottom you would have one book end at $20 a share at the other end

01:16:01

You'd be bookended at $60 a share and the current stock price for them was at 30

01:16:08

meaning you're at the lower end of that scale and

01:16:12

You know through watching the company and seeing how they were doing things

01:16:15

They realized that the company was doing things that the general public was not aware of and that most investors

01:16:21

were

01:16:23

Assuming was going to lead to a lot of trouble, which is why the stock seemed pretty low

01:16:27

and

01:16:28

They felt like as a group that the company would be able to overcome some of those hurdles

01:16:34

Knowing that they're at the towards the bottom of that scale of that range from 20 to 60 at the 30

01:16:41

They decided to watch it for about another month and a half to two months

01:16:44

Realized that it came down even further and ended up investing in them

01:16:48

Because they were I think they averaged somewhere around 24 to 25 dollars a share at millions of dollars into it

01:16:54

So you can imagine how many shares they bought there

01:16:57

Well, it turned out they were right things turned out for the better the stock started to come back because you know

01:17:04

They felt like the worst that could happen here as we lose five or six dollars per share

01:17:09

But they had the option to gain

01:17:11

You know 35 dollars a share

01:17:14

Well, it came back to at the end of it

01:17:17

I think it ended up around 48 is when they were starting to sell quite a bit because it was reaching the top of their scale

01:17:22

Knowing that we're getting close. There's more to lose here than there is to win

01:17:26

Okay, let's get out. Well, they got out and how many millions is that equal a lot?

01:17:31

So it turned out for the better for them, but essentially what that book ending process did for them

01:17:38

Was set trip wires on the top and bottom

01:17:40

That allowed them to know when they could potentially be wrong in their decision

01:17:44

You know when we hit close to one of these two ends, that's when we're going to have issues

01:17:48

Now like I don't really know how to

01:17:51

Correlate this to like my life and how to use this

01:17:55

But I think it's very interesting the the stocks thing because I I don't do single stocks, but it's something that I'm

01:18:02

I like paying attention to I don't know that I would ever spend the time doing it

01:18:07

Because there's guys like this who can figure this stuff out and do it way better than I can so I'm always going to lose

01:18:12

but

01:18:14

That's something that I'm always enjoying. I've always enjoyed watching it, but I don't know how to correlate it to what I do

01:18:20

Well, I don't think that the unless you're an investor that the stocks example really hits home

01:18:26

Unless you dig a little bit deeper and you understand the process that they use because there's two things

01:18:30

That they use to identify the bookends

01:18:34

That I think you can apply pretty generally and that's the pre-mortem and the pre-parade

01:18:39

so

01:18:40

We're probably all familiar with the post-mortem where

01:18:43

after

01:18:44

And it comes from the medical industry where you kind of look back at why this person died

01:18:49

But you could also apply it to a project what we're wrong with this project

01:18:52

Um, so that's the post-mortem and that happens

01:18:55

You know, that's that imagines the future death of a project and it asks what killed it basically

01:19:00

Pre-parade is similar to a pre-mortem, but it's assuming success instead of failure

01:19:07

So instead of looking back at the end of the project identifying what went right what went wrong

01:19:11

Assuming at the very beginning, what's the absolute best case scenario for this thing and what's the absolute worst case scenario?

01:19:18

For this thing. I think that you could use those to kind of frame the bookends whenever you're trying to

01:19:25

Make a decision and this again is a great example of how

01:19:30

In this book they explain things really really

01:19:33

Uh, I don't know what the term would be it's very easy to apply this type of stuff

01:19:37

Like i'm not an investor like you're like you were saying

01:19:39

I don't relate to the stocks example, but I can definitely see instances where I could apply the pre-parade and the pre-mortem

01:19:46

Into the decisions that i'm making when it comes

01:19:49

The time to decide whether i'm going to pursue this particular project

01:19:53

See that makes a lot of sense

01:19:55

Knowing you know if I pay attention to

01:19:58

Where the potential downfalls are that that could be a big thing. I get that

01:20:02

Um

01:20:04

So we've been at this for a while. I'm looking at

01:20:06

Action items here. So just to summarize quick

01:20:09

uh, the four villains

01:20:12

To decision making the things that trip us up narrow framing only looking at one or two options

01:20:17

Confirmation bias, you know looking for information that uh confirms what I already want to do

01:20:24

Short-term emotion trying to make decisions in the moment instead of trying to get some distance from it

01:20:28

And overconfidence placing too much weight on our own

01:20:32

mentality in our own facts

01:20:34

Uh, and the way that you overcome each of those

01:20:37

Is to one widen your options to reality test your assumptions three attain distance before deciding

01:20:44

And four prepare to be wrong using the acronym wrap. There you go. So all that said

01:20:51

Action items. What do you do about it, Mike?

01:20:55

Well, I

01:20:56

Let's start with you because you have one here that's just try to find two decisions to apply this to so have you put any thought into this so far

01:21:02

a little bit. Yeah, and

01:21:04

I haven't found exactly two that I want to

01:21:08

I don't know. Maybe there's one, but I have one in particular. So I've talked about discourse before

01:21:16

Uh, the forum software that I help

01:21:19

I contribute to as an open source project. I am in the process of potentially building a paid plugin for it

01:21:26

And I believe there's only one other paid plugin for it and this one would be a

01:21:33

direct competitor to that

01:21:36

I have a lot of reasons my own mentality and

01:21:39

Through confirmation from other people that I feel like this would be a very good decision

01:21:45

So what I'm currently doing so I guess I'm trying to decide on this that so I might apply this

01:21:50

Uh, is to ooch my way into it. I'm loving that term

01:21:54

I've been using it more and more and everybody kind of looks at me funny, but

01:21:58

I'm trying to figure out how to ooch my way into it and just try to do a like I'm uh,

01:22:03

What do we call MVP the minim minimally viable product? So do something very basic to get it out there and just try it

01:22:11

So I'm I'm trying that process with it. So I guess that might be one

01:22:15

Decision that I'm trying to apply this process to the other one is actually my other action item

01:22:21

So maybe I've got these two. I'm still trying to play around with some other decisions where this might

01:22:25

apply more directly, but

01:22:28

I'm in the process also of deciding whether or not to build a

01:22:32

What they call a CHMS you familiar with these mic?

01:22:36

I'm not I was gonna ask you about that. Okay. It's what they call a church management system

01:22:41

So if you're familiar with a CMS content management system, this is kind of a playoff of that

01:22:46

effectively what it is

01:22:49

Is a way to manage all of the members of a congregation

01:22:52

Keep track of volunteers in a church

01:22:55

Uh to schedule them and typically they also come with

01:22:58

A check-in system for like a nursery. So there's a lot of safety and and legal things

01:23:04

You have to be careful with with something like a nursery or it's similar like a daycare

01:23:09

I guess it would be similar to that scenario if you're outside the church

01:23:12

That would be the the correlation that you'd make there

01:23:14

But what I have found with my with my role as a director of it at our church

01:23:18

I have learned that the one that we use

01:23:21

So our church is big enough that it's kind of hard to maintain all the volunteers primarily

01:23:26

uh, it it's

01:23:29

It's less than ideal

01:23:31

That would be what I'd say and

01:23:33

In

01:23:34

Something I'm trying to do for them is make a decision on whether or not the one that we currently have is one

01:23:38

We should stick with or should we go to something different?

01:23:41

So that's another decision. I'm trying to use some of this framework for

01:23:45

But in my quick research for it. I have realized that there really aren't any really solid good

01:23:53

modern choices for this

01:23:56

So I am considering building one

01:23:59

Which is no small decision for my company

01:24:03

and it would require a lot of

01:24:08

a lot of work and a lot of support and potentially people helping me get it done from a uh,

01:24:14

management and a

01:24:16

secretarial standpoint. So that's a pretty big

01:24:20

Choice that I'm needing to make the problem I have here is

01:24:24

That particular choice is a whether or not choice. So I need to

01:24:30

See, I don't know if you caught it until I said that but that's what it is and that's

01:24:37

I have a lot to work through with some of these things. So

01:24:39

What I'm planning to do is use this wrap process to help me through a few of these

01:24:46

I'll figure out a way to put this in for follow-up for the next time around

01:24:51

because some of this is very quickly moving for me. So

01:24:55

Some of it I'm trying to put off so I can get some more distance from it

01:24:59

and some of it I'm still trying to fact-find on it, but

01:25:04

There you go. So I'm trying to put this into effect immediately and have a bunch of big decisions

01:25:09

I'm oddly trying to solve right now. Good timing. Nice. My action items are more

01:25:16

of the small tactical items that they mentioned

01:25:19

Um, so number one I mentioned already create a stop doing list

01:25:24

Identify the things

01:25:27

That I do not want to be doing anymore

01:25:31

And the things that the season has passed for that particular thing

01:25:35

And I need to cut it loose so that I can have more margins so that when something else more valuable comes I can say yes to it

01:25:42

Uh second one is to try out the productive interruptions. So

01:25:46

The idea here is that you send yourself alerts

01:25:51

Uh, they recommend it on the hour and basically you just ask yourself

01:25:56

Whether you are focused on what you should be focusing on right now

01:26:00

I'd like to think that I would be pretty good with this

01:26:03

but I want to

01:26:06

Get some data. I want to test this

01:26:08

So

01:26:10

I'm I'm going to I'm going to try this out at least for a small period

01:26:14

It might drive me crazy after a little while, but I think at the beginning at least it will give me a real clear picture of whether I'm

01:26:20

Actually investing my time the way I think I'm investing my time just simply answering the question. What are you doing right now?

01:26:26

When that goes off every hour. I think might be enlightening

01:26:30

What is uh, also kind of scary. Yeah, what is your what's your tactical?

01:26:34

Process for that are you and use the app will watch to do this

01:26:38

We're tech nerds. We have to ask these questions. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure how I want to implement it yet

01:26:44

That's the the thing I will probably use the do app du e

01:26:48

and just have it go off every hour between

01:26:52

Working hours. So maybe eight to five or something like that

01:26:56

But I haven't really worked through 100% how I want to implement that yet because I don't want it to just be annoying

01:27:02

24 hours ding every hour go

01:27:05

Maybe not

01:27:08

What are you doing it 2 a.m. Sleeping go away

01:27:11

And then the third one that I've got here is to use the active listening technique

01:27:18

They talk about this. They don't call it active listening in the book

01:27:21

but basically restating what others say so that they're confident that you're listening to them

01:27:26

And the way that they frame this in the book is they talk about procedural justice versus distributive justice

01:27:33

Procedural justice is where we believe that the procedures that were used to make decisions were just

01:27:37

Distributive justice is where as whether we think the spoils of a decision were divvied up fairly

01:27:42

so he used an example they used an example of uh two different cases and one where

01:27:50

the defendant loses the case but they have confidence that the

01:27:56

The procedures were fair. They're actually happier with the outcome than the person who won the other case

01:28:01

But they didn't they're not confident that the procedures were fair

01:28:04

And so I think that this will just make everything a little bit smoother in interactions with other people

01:28:12

Especially when it comes to group decision-making if I can show that I am

01:28:20

actively listening and listen by restating what other people are saying to so that they can be confident

01:28:25

That I am hearing them correctly. I think regardless of the outcome that has a lot of positive benefits

01:28:32

So I want to start doing that more

01:28:34

Would you think of their writing style?

01:28:37

I really liked it. Uh, they jump around a lot in the chapters

01:28:43

But it's not as bad as some other books. I've read

01:28:45

like one that I can think of off the top of my head is the

01:28:49

The power of habit by Charles de Higg which is a great book

01:28:52

but

01:28:53

There's so many open loops throughout the individual chapters. We'll start one story and we'll switch to another story

01:28:59

He'll switch to another story and then

01:29:00

By the time he get to point number four, he's back at the original story

01:29:04

And it's just like from one cutscene to the next

01:29:06

This one I thought flowed really well. It was really easy to follow the writing style was really good

01:29:12

like I mentioned at the earlier the

01:29:15

The the stories and the characters were very relatable

01:29:18

I saw a lot of different ways to implement what I was what I was

01:29:23

uh, hearing or reading and so I really liked the author style and jumping into the the rating

01:29:29

I would give it a five stars

01:29:32

Nice. So I already mentioned I had a hard time putting this one down

01:29:36

and from a recommendation standpoint

01:29:40

I

01:29:42

Think this should be required reading for high school students. I do

01:29:45

This is something that would really help them with a lot of very big decisions

01:29:51

That they're trying to make at that point and put a framework in front of them on how to do that

01:29:54

And to do it the right way

01:29:56

It's one that was very easy to jump into and just keep going. So I I loved it

01:30:01

So I'm going to join you in the five star thing. So we've got a double up five here

01:30:05

and

01:30:06

This is one that I think

01:30:09

I can easily recommend to a very large group of people

01:30:13

with with zero hesitations. So

01:30:16

If you're in school in any capacity whether you're making a decision for college or what college you go to

01:30:22

Any of those scenarios. This is one I think you should read before you make that decision easy

01:30:28

Definitely

01:30:30

You tell us about the upcoming books. Yep. So the next one up

01:30:34

To transition here is uh my choice called the shallows by Nicholas Carr and the subtitle here is what the internet is doing to our brains

01:30:44

So we read brainchains. This is kind of uh, I'm gonna guess so I haven't read it yet

01:30:49

I'm gonna guess it's something somewhat similar, but I'm hoping for one that's easier to recommend

01:30:55

Right. I actually believe that cal Newport references this book in deep work

01:31:02

Yeah, I need to go figure out where I found this because I

01:31:06

See if I can find it here because I I think this is one that was recommended in

01:31:13

Um some other book that we

01:31:16

I don't I don't know. I gotta go try to find it

01:31:20

Mentioned and oh the productivity project. That's where we got it. Oh, he was talking about the impact

01:31:27

Familiar. Yeah, and he's like, okay. This came up somewhere. This was not the one that I just randomly

01:31:31

Found it was one that I saw recommended elsewhere. So

01:31:35

Yes, that would mean Chris Bailey as it fall here

01:31:38

The one after that is my pick and that is who moved my cheese by spencer johnson

01:31:46

I've heard about this book a lot

01:31:49

And I went and looked at the amazon reviews for it and they are very polarizing

01:31:57

Nice there are a lot of people who absolutely love this book and there are a lot of people who say this is absolute trash

01:32:02

But I can see why managers and CEOs love it. So I want to know what all the fuss is about

01:32:07

So that so yeah collecting information on things. Yeah, that's fun

01:32:13

Something is very polarizing. This will be a good good experience

01:32:18

So if you're listening to this and you have a book that you want to get put into our list

01:32:25

And you want to recommend it to us so you can do that out on bookworm.fm/recommend

01:32:29

Also out there you can get the current list of books that we have completed

01:32:34

Are planning to read or that have been recommended in the past

01:32:38

Uh at same place bookworm.fm/list

01:32:42

And if you want to help us get the word out about bookworm and help other people find the show

01:32:48

If you would take just a moment to go over to iTunes and leave a review that would really help us out

01:32:53

We read all of those reviews. So any positive or negative feedback

01:32:56

We would love to hear what you have to think

01:32:58

And if you're reading along jump into the shallows that's coming up uh right now and

01:33:04

It'll be an interesting experience. We'll figure out what the internet's doing to our brains and we'll go from there

01:33:09

But we'll jump into that one and we'll talk to you next time