Bookworm Transcripts

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I learned something last week, Mike.

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What's that?

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You really don't like Robert Percy.

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I think I'm coming around, actually.

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Are you?

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You didn't rate him very highly.

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Yeah.

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Well, I rated it higher than Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

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There is that there is that, but you.

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Yeah.

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I I will keep it in mind that if I run across more books by Robert Percy,

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I will absolutely pick them just to put you through that more and more

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because it just sounds fun to me.

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No, no, let's not do Lila, please.

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Oh, too fun, too fun.

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I've missed you, Mike.

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It's been too long.

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So welcome to special guest Joe Bieligan.

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I know, right?

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It feels weird, but I just appreciate everybody's patience

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in this whole process because work stuff got absolutely crazy

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and was not fun for a while.

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And Mike was like the golden boy here who was willing to take on book

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where I'm going and keep it going and took the reins and such.

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So kudos to Mike.

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And, but I'm very glad to be back at this point.

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So hopefully we don't have to do that again.

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Well, we are glad to have you.

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And I will just say a special thanks to David Sparks, Sean Blanc,

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and Mike Vardy, who helped me talk about books in your absence.

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Yeah, they did a great job.

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So glad to have them step in for a few episodes here to to fill in the gaps.

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Just for the record, like I've finished a couple of like, I read the

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e-myth revisited master of change.

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I'm almost done with on quality.

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I'm trying to make sure that there's not like episodes of book

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where I'm out there that I'm in the dark on.

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So there's that.

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Super fun.

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Cool.

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Well, when you're when you're done, you're going to have to pick a rating

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and you're going to have to go back and edit those WordPress pages.

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So that Joshua's site is is active or is that accurate?

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That way there's not like missing.

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I'll do that.

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I will certainly do that.

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I better write it down or I won't do that.

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It's your first action item.

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Welcome back to the show.

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How long we've been recording for two minutes and I've already got an action item

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from Mike.

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Huh, not much has changed.

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Apparently.

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Thanks, Mike.

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Oh, too fun, too fun.

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Well, obviously I don't have any follow up from last episode.

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Question is do you?

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I don't know about follow up from last episode, but I will share one thing here

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at the beginning, getting ready to kick off the second life theme cohort

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on November 13th.

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And this one is going to go for six weeks.

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So it's going to wrap up the week before Christmas.

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And you were a part of the first one.

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You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say that one went really, really well.

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I would 100% agree with that.

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If anybody is hesitating on that, like you need to join this.

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Like this was probably one of the best.

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I shouldn't say one of it.

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So far, I didn't say it's the best cohort I've been through.

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So wow, there's that.

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Awesome.

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I'm going to have to get that in a testimonial.

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There you go.

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You heard it live on the air.

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There you go.

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Cool.

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Well, thank you.

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Um, it's a lot of fun.

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I do it with my wife Rachel and we walk through the five steps of building a life

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theme.

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And then the last week is really the capstone.

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It's a big party, basically, where we share our life theme and we get feedback

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from everybody else in the group.

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It was an incredible experience last time and we're going to do it again.

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So as promised in the, in the first cohort, I am raising the price this time.

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It is going to be $197.

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I've did put a coupon together for the intentional family podcast.

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I'll do the same for bookworm.

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So if you use the code bookworm, you can get it for 50 bucks off.

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And, uh, yeah, it's, it's going to be a lot of fun.

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Um, I'm not sure if I should share this this widely, but I was working with, uh,

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business operations and strategy coach for several months and was talking to

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about this life theme cohort.

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And he said that I should be charging $1,000 for this thing.

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Okay.

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And, uh, it should be very exclusive small group people.

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Um, I think we'll probably work in that direction.

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So why do I share that?

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Because if you've been dragging your feet on this, but you think it sounds kind of cool.

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Uh, it's basically never going to be this cheap again.

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So I would encourage you to jump aboard this one.

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Um, we will be doing other cohorts.

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If the timing doesn't work or whatever, but, uh, you know, I'm just trying to be

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upfront because, uh, this is the kind of thing I would want to know if I was deciding

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whether or not to join a cohort.

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I'm not trying to create like false urgency with this.

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Just this is what it is.

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And, um, this is the one thing that, you know, if everything else fell apart and I

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had to go get a day job, I would continue to do this life theme cohort because this

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is just.

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This is my bread and butter.

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This is what really lights me up.

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So, um, this, this is something that Rachel and I want to continue to grow and evolve.

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Um, we got a few changes in store for the second one and it's going to be a ton of fun.

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You can find out all the details and sign up at faith based productivity.com/lifetheme.

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I will say like having been through this, I still to this day, like reference that

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life theme and the values and such that I put together as part of going through that.

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So the accountability of having Mike and Rachel walk you through the process of developing

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your own life theme and the homework that comes with that is like, like having the

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accountability of somebody is expecting you to put this together and you're going to talk

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about it on the next one.

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Like that is exactly what I needed to actually put this together.

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I could probably talk to Mike and get the information and just go do it on my own, but it's

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significantly different having the cohort there and other people expecting to have

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conversations about yours.

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So I just found that incredibly empowering.

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So if I can give you any more accolades, there you go, but I absolutely loved it.

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Still reference it to this day and it makes a big difference.

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So thanks for putting it together, Mike.

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Awesome.

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And if you're available, I would love to have you back for the second one.

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Yeah, I will try no promises, but I will try.

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All right.

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That's all I've got for follow up.

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Should we talk about today's book?

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Sure.

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All right, so today's book is officially my book, but I feel like it could be either of ours

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based on the conversations we had previously and I'm fighting a little bit of a cold.

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So I'll rely on you to help you carry this one.

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Certainly.

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But the book is clear thinking by Shane Parrish.

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And there is a blurb from from James Clear at the top of this one.

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At least on my copy, does yours have that?

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Yep, it does.

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Yeah.

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So and if you look at the blurbs on the back, these are some pretty big names.

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Shane Parrish is the person behind Farnham Street and also co-author of the great

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mental models, which we've read a couple volumes of those.

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We both liked those a lot.

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We both liked Shane's style a lot.

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And so I preordered this book.

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I don't know.

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Three, four months ago, probably when I first heard about it and it's out now.

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So timing just happened to be perfect for Joe coming back on the show.

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I floated this idea and sounded like you were pretty excited about this one.

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Yes.

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Absolutely.

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I saw this one hit the pre-order status and it's like, huh, that'd be a great book.

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We're in book.

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So I ordered it.

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And then whenever we were texting about what books should we do first and you pitch this one,

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I was like, well, it's like, it's sitting on my shelf.

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Like this is easy, easy, done.

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Awesome.

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So this is not the standard three part book.

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There is a preface and introduction.

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There are five parts and then a conclusion.

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I will ask you before we get into this part by part.

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We won't go chapter by chapter because the chapters are actually labeled kind of weird.

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Yeah, that's true.

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But, but what were you expecting when you cracked this one open?

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What was your first impressions as you approached this Mortimer Adler style?

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Mortimer Adler style.

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So what I did was what I normally do is flip through the whole thing and try to get a feel for how the book is laid out.

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And I noticed that he had like these sections and like you were talking about the chapters are labeled a little bit weird, but it's mostly because they're short and

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not real descriptive, at least not until later in the chapter list.

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But when I was first like flipping through it, my initial impressions were just that, okay, he's going to give me

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as Shane would do a model for how to make good decisions, which we've read.

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What was it thinking in bets?

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Andy Duke, like the whole or was there was a there's a decision making?

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Hmm.

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John of blank on it.

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I mean, there's lots of lots of books that use clear thinking in the title.

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Yes, we like clear thinking apparently.

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And so coming into this one, I knew like Shane is going to give us his take on how to put together thinking models and decision making models.

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And that's exactly what he gives us.

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I will say that even though that's what I expected and that's what he gave us, I can really appreciate it.

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That there's not like a bait and switch here because it seems like a lot of times there's a this is what I expected to get and they gave me something different.

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I thought I was going to get lemonade, but somehow this is orange juice like this is in the same vein, but different.

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And I didn't get that with this.

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So Shane did a very good job of letting the cover and all of the outlines and the bios and such point you to what the book itself is actually about.

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So I really appreciated that and that's not common.

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So it was grateful that Shane pulled that off.

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Yeah, to address the title thing, by the way, we've read the art of thinking clearly.

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And then we just read the one by the fighter pilot, the art of clear thinking, I think it was the title.

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Yes.

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And so when I picked this one up, my first thought initially was,

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dude, here we go with the titles on clear thinking again.

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And I don't know if that's just like there's, you know, for a while, there was the Mark Manson book and then everybody started using the F bomb in the book titles.

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Is this like the next version of that?

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Everyone's got to come out with a book on clear thinking.

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But my next thought was, good job, Shane Parrish, just cut straight to the chase.

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Clear thinking.

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There's no art here.

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There's no, you know, just this is what it is.

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Let me, this is, this is the classic.

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I'm sorry.

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My title is so long.

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I didn't have time to make it shorter.

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He took the time to make it shorter.

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So good job.

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Yep.

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Which it actually is very appropriate for the, the topic and the approach that he takes here.

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I mean, it's basically how to make better decisions, which the other books we're talking about too, but this one feels fresh.

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It feels like I have not heard this before.

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I can't say that with the art of clear thinking a hundred percent.

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I think that's because, and I'm probably jumping to the end of the episode already, because this is what happens.

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But I think that's partially because when we've read these other books about clear thinking, they don't always describe what the problem is.

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And what clear thinking solves and what the process is to get to that.

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They simply jump to the end of here are the things that you do to think clearly.

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Without giving you like here are all the skills you need to develop here is why you need to develop them.

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But Shane lays all that out, which obviously we'll get to here.

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But I think that's partially why it felt so different.

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Sure.

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Well, let's jump into the, the preface first.

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I have this as a separate section, but I've only got a couple of things jotted down here.

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This part can go pretty quick, probably.

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There are two things he mentions that to get better results, we must create the space to reason in our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

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And then deliberately use that space to think clearly.

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And it typical Shane Parrish style, I feel like that's just very succinctly put and encapsulates the problem and the process perfectly.

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But the thing I really liked here is the tagline he wants for his life, which is mastering the best of what other people have already figured out.

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I like that phrase a lot.

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Yeah, it's a solid.

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I do like like in the preface, he does kind of tell some of the story behind how Farnham Street started.

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He basically was creating an anonymous website that he says here, he called it Farnham Street that was named in honor of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

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And like the whole goal was like to just catalog the learning that he was doing in the process of learning how to.

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How do I explain that?

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Basically, the mental models concept, he started to catalog those in his blog, but that was the origin story behind it.

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Yeah, I'd never heard the story behind Farnham Street.

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I thought that was interesting too, but yeah, there's there's not a ton in the preface, but that's because there is also an introduction.

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Yes.

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Let's let's jump to the introduction.

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In the introduction, he talks about how what happens in ordinary moments determines your future, but we don't think of ordinary moments as decisions that we have to make.

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And that's really powerful.

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It also kind of harkens to James Clear and atomic habits, but he's just kind of setting the table here and creating the.

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It I don't want to say urgency, but like you walk out of the introduction, feeling like the little things are in fact important.

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And then there's a phrase that I really like here that time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone who is poorly positioned.

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The way that you get yourself in a good position is you consistently make good choices and he talks later on about how good choices don't necessarily guarantee a good outcome.

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We have to separate those.

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We've talked about that before previously, but this does a really great job of setting the table for the rest of the book.

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There is a paragraph right in the middle of this introduction that I felt like summarized a lot of what he's getting ready to lay out for us in the in the first part.

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It's just a few sentences here.

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So in most ordinary moments, the situation thinks for us.

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We don't realize it at the time because these moments seem so insignificant.

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However, as days turn into weeks and weeks into months, the accumulation of these moments makes accomplishing our goals easier or harder.

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I feel like that is a good way to just say, you know, your habits and rituals, the thing you do every single day.

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We've talked about this ad nauseam, but because that is such a big deal, he then is going to take us through into part one here of like what are some of these

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enemies to clear thinking and why is it that these defaults, as he calls them, are a big deal.

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So it's these ordinary moments, the little things you do every single day, as we've talked about, like habits and rituals.

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It's a big deal.

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It really is.

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Maybe that's why we're so obsessed with them, Mike.

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Could be.

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Yeah, you mentioned part one, the enemies of clear thinking.

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Let's go there.

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And this is where we see the strange chapter structure.

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So part one is labeled and there's like a two page introduction to the part.

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And then all the chapters are like chapter one point one chapter one point two chapter one point three, which is a little bit weird.

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It's not that big a deal, but I feel like what that does is it weights all of these things the same, but the dot one dot two dot three.

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Because they're like point releases for chapters, it feels weird to me.

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So like one point one is thinking badly or not at all.

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This is really the chapter material.

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And then the rest of the chapters here are kind of like if you're doing an outline, these are sub bullets.

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Because in that first chapter, he talks about how the space between impulse and action, one of two things can happen.

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You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation.

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Or you can see control and execute a default behavior.

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And the rest of the chapters are breaking apart those different default behaviors.

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So it's almost like thinking badly or not thinking at all.

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That could have been the part one section.

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And then the chapters could have been the defaults underneath there.

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I don't know.

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It just feels a little bit disjointed, like formatted this way.

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And I'm not necessarily saying that my way is better, but it does kind of make me think that

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you know, he's a blogger, Farnham Street, right?

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So maybe all of this stuff was originally intended to be at least repurposed as blog posts.

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Maybe he was writing this in public and intending to publish all this stuff along the way.

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I don't know.

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That makes more sense for the way this book is structured, I feel.

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The problem with that layout, like what you're saying, I'm not saying you're wrong.

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Is that when you get to the other parts, it's not set up that way.

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It's different.

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So like each part has like this little story that comes into it, like a two page story that

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introduces the part.

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But then like you're saying, 1.1 feels like the introduction, if you will, of that part.

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But when you get to part two, there's not one.

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It just jumps right in.

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So it's true.

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It's also not consistent.

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So from a layout stance, it's a little odd.

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I'm with you.

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I feel like the point one, two, three, like one point, like we're

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going to talk about chapter 1.2 and then later on, we'll talk about chapter 2.3.

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Like for some reason that doesn't bother me.

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Uh, I don't really know why he did it that way.

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But it's, it is just different.

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I, I don't know.

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I, I don't know that I have a, I like that more.

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I like that less.

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If anything, he needs a 1.0 and then that's the introduction to the part and you could start with that.

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But it didn't really strike me as odd.

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I thought it was a little, uh, an attempt to be different.

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Likely for the sake of just being different, but I don't know that.

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Maybe there's more to it.

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Which that is fine.

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Like I applaud him for not just following the same format that we see in all the other productivity books.

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But the first chapter, well, it's not as clean in the other parts.

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He does frequently at the beginning of the first chapter in a section.

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Provide a list and then you know that the next.

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Four chapters are going to be the items that are in the list he just shared.

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Yes.

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So I don't know.

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I mean, it's a very minor detail.

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I mean, the content here is, is awesome.

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Um, going back to the first section, uh, the thinking badly or not, not thinking at all talks about the brain's default settings.

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And then there are four of those, the emotional default, the ego default, the social default.

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And the inertia default.

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And then the last chapter in the section, one point six is default to clarity.

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So he's basically framing it with one point one, explaining the defaults in one point two, three, one point five.

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And then one point six is basically charting the path forward and going into the, the next section.

00:20:45

Um, these defaults.

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I don't feel like there's a whole lot new with these defaults.

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So if there's one that you particularly want to talk about, that's cool.

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But the emotional, the emotion default is basically just giving into how you react.

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Uh, emotionally, the ego default.

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Um, that's basically we don't want to look like an idiot.

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The social default, we get rewards for going with the crowd.

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The inertia default is easier to keep things the way that they are.

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So recognizing those biases that can kick in at any moment.

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I feel like that's really what he's talking about here.

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And really awareness is step one to overcoming this at this point.

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Yeah, I don't have any of these specifically that I wanted to cover, just that, like, being aware that these defaults exist.

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But also, I just want to point out, like he had a way of explaining what these are and how they come about that.

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I felt like was new something about the way he was explaining these, like we've talked about default mode networks and how we just go to the easiest thing.

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And like one of the things I wrote down was the inertia default, like the word inertness just refers to laziness or idleness.

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Because we just, like it's, it's when you just don't want to exert energy to change things or to, you know, go against the grain, if you will.

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So that inertia default becomes a big deal.

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Well, as I was processing what he was, like how he explained these defaults.

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Again, the stories behind it and the, the explanation of those stories, like in one case he was talking about lemmings and how living, individual lemmings rarely make history.

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Lemings in collective will make history, but a specific lemmings wouldn't.

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So just going with the flow and following what everybody else is doing is not the way to make a big impact.

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That, that kind of struck our chord with me. So I wrote this as an action item.

00:22:53

Becky and I are going on a date night tonight.

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Though I should probably figure out where we're planning to catch up.

00:23:01

We haven't had a date, just the two of us in a while.

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And our kids are finally old enough to stay home on their own.

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So this should happen more often now.

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But the, the thing I need to talk through with her is like, what are some of the defaults?

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Like we've got a few areas in our marriage and in our family life that

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just aren't quite going the way we want them to.

00:23:21

And my question to her is about to be like, what are some of the default decisions that we have

00:23:27

happening every single day that we could change that would help us improve both?

00:23:34

Maybe it's one thing that changes both of those.

00:23:37

Maybe there are different things that need to happen in both cases.

00:23:39

I'm not certain, but regardless, I want to have this conversation about some of these default actual default actions and rituals that we have

00:23:48

going on to try to help us improve those.

00:23:50

Because it, like I was saying earlier, like those little things do make a big difference.

00:23:54

Nice.

00:23:55

I'm anxious to hear the results of that action.

00:23:59

I'm terrified to tell you the results of that action.

00:24:02

All right.

00:24:05

Anything else from part one, before we jump into part two?

00:24:08

No, let's go.

00:24:09

All right.

00:24:11

So part two is the one that I jotted the most down from.

00:24:17

That is building strength.

00:24:19

And this is really about what we're going to do to combat those defaults.

00:24:27

I guess that's kind of the last thing he mentions in chapter one is that, well, you can't eliminate your defaults.

00:24:33

You can reprogram them.

00:24:34

And it's important to do that because almost everyone is going to lose their battle with willpower at some point.

00:24:40

So creating an intentional environment where your desired behavior becomes the default behavior is the way out of this.

00:24:45

And again, very much like atomic habits by James Clear in that belief.

00:24:50

But part two, building strength, those where we talk about self accountability, self knowledge, self control, self confidence,

00:24:56

strength and action, setting the standards and then exemplars and practice.

00:25:00

So there's lots of stuff here.

00:25:04

And the first chapter, talk about self accountability first.

00:25:09

This.

00:25:11

Well, actually, before I talk about it.

00:25:14

Do you think, because you know me pretty well, what I'm going to say about this section?

00:25:22

I could probably make some guesses, but I feel like it's in a bunch of different realms, like talking about how you struggle to keep yourself on track and want to jump to new things.

00:25:35

Like that's a classic, right?

00:25:37

So I could see you going that route, but I don't know that I would lock you in on that.

00:25:42

Well, I feel like I use the term personal responsibility quite a bit.

00:25:45

And that's really what this is talking about.

00:25:47

And the very first thing he mentions, the very first thing I jotted down was that others might not expect more from you, but you can expect it from yourself.

00:25:54

And then he goes on to talk about how no one cares about your excuses, except you just because something happened that was outside of your control doesn't mean it's not your responsibility to deal with it the best that you can.

00:26:10

I mean, he's kind of brutal in the way he talks about this.

00:26:15

He is brutal.

00:26:15

Yeah, but I like it, to be honest.

00:26:18

Part of that is probably his personality.

00:26:20

I don't know him personally, but he does mention at the beginning, by the way, some personal stories.

00:26:27

And he says that he worked for an intelligence agency with a three letter acronym, but doesn't

00:26:34

tell us which one it is. Yeah, but he shares some stories there from his time there and, you know, high stakes, high pressure scenarios.

00:26:45

And there were some stories where he was talking to his higher ups and they were just, I don't know if he changed the story, like this is how he heard it or if this is actually what they said, but they were just like, Shane, nobody cares.

00:27:00

You got to do it.

00:27:01

You're letting the whole team down.

00:27:03

And talks kind of like how he struggled with some of that stuff at the beginning, but

00:27:06

the big takeaway, at least in this first section for me, was that you can't control everything, but you can control your response.

00:27:15

And your response is going to make things better or worse.

00:27:18

So that's one of my action items is to ask myself, will this make the future easier or harder?

00:27:24

And I am not going to.

00:27:28

This is kind of a conceptual action item, which is a part of the course for me.

00:27:34

But really what this is, is a thinking time question or a question, a clarifying question I have in my toolbox.

00:27:42

So I'm not looking to go apply this intentionally to different situations, but I feel like this is going to be useful when something pops up.

00:27:51

And I find myself in that reaction mode.

00:27:55

I'm slipping into the defaults. I'm hoping that this question will stick with me and trigger at that moment.

00:28:00

And I'll be able to recognize, hey, yeah, this thing that I was about to do because I'm emotional right now is actually going to make things worse.

00:28:09

So maybe not do that.

00:28:11

But I don't know that there's another way to apply that as an action item.

00:28:15

I mean, this is something that you just have to like, I feel get inside you and then hopefully it bubbles up when you need it.

00:28:21

But that's the intention with that one.

00:28:24

And I feel like that's the intention for a lot of these is to make you aware of the situation, help you understand what those questions are that you need to be asking of yourself.

00:28:35

And then the idea is that over time, because you become aware of those, if you continue to bring those top of mind, you will start to internalize them and then your decision making becomes easier over time.

00:28:46

It's not going to be an overnight.

00:28:47

This is going to change the way you think immediately.

00:28:49

This is a process of developing those habits.

00:28:54

The beginning of this chapter talks about like excuses, excuses, excuses.

00:28:58

And like the story you were telling about some a colleague being completely brutal with him, he was giving excuses about not getting to work on time.

00:29:05

And then he wasn't able to get the project completed in time.

00:29:07

So he was late.

00:29:08

And as a result of that, he had this whole list of excuses for why it wasn't done in time and he sent it to the colleague, but the colleague sent this other response back, but had a P.S.

00:29:18

at the bottom of it that I thought was hilarious.

00:29:20

Don't blame the bus for being late by a car.

00:29:23

Like it's brutal, right?

00:29:25

Like, yeah, you are the one saying it's somebody else's fault.

00:29:30

We all know people like this who regularly blame all the things like I had a flat tire.

00:29:37

I had, you know, my boss made me stay late to work.

00:29:40

My you name it.

00:29:42

Everybody has those excuses and it's somebody else's fault that I didn't get something done or something prevented me from making it to the engagement.

00:29:53

And it's easy to fall into that because we don't want to be the ones responsible for it.

00:29:59

We read the book margin, right?

00:30:01

And that particular book would tell us that if we had the margin, those types of extenuating circumstances are not a big deal.

00:30:13

If you have that margin built in.

00:30:16

And that ultimately means that the reason you were late in that particular case was because you waited until you took the last bus possible to get there.

00:30:26

But then the bus had a problem, which you didn't plan for.

00:30:29

And now you're late when really you should have just planned on something could go wrong.

00:30:34

So that's a tough thing to come to grips with.

00:30:38

I am terrible at this and am absolutely not good at it at all.

00:30:45

So I know it's something that I need to work on for sure.

00:30:47

I don't think I'm willing to take on the process of saying I'm going to ask myself this question all the time.

00:30:51

I think just being aware of it is helpful because like even some of the stories he has here.

00:30:57

Helps me to like see where that comes out.

00:31:00

Like no one cares.

00:31:02

It's your fault, not your fault, still your responsibility.

00:31:05

Like, yeah, I'm looking for outs in this process and he continues to like hit me where I'm thinking on the next thing.

00:31:13

It's like he's done this before.

00:31:14

And I don't like it.

00:31:16

I like it, but I don't like it.

00:31:17

I know what you mean.

00:31:21

The other section I really like.

00:31:23

Well, I like most of the sections here, but what I want to talk about is self-confidence

00:31:26

because I'm bad at it.

00:31:29

OK, self-confidence is trusting in your abilities and your value to others.

00:31:35

And he mentions in the section that it empowers resilience in the aftermath of negative feedback.

00:31:42

And that's the part that really I've been chewing on ever since I read it.

00:31:48

Because I remember getting negative feedback from the book when I wrote it.

00:31:57

And as a result, I feel I haven't written another book.

00:32:01

I jumped to the next project.

00:32:04

I'm like, oh, maybe people will like this one better.

00:32:06

And so now like mentioned the life theme cohort, sitting university.

00:32:11

It's only a matter of time until somebody goes through it and is like, yeah, this was garbage.

00:32:14

And they asked for their money back.

00:32:16

And that doesn't diminish the quality of the product, though.

00:32:21

And so I feel like I'm in a better spot, better prepared.

00:32:24

I feel like I am moving in the right direction, at least.

00:32:29

But I do kind of ask myself that question all the time and need to develop that.

00:32:34

That confidence.

00:32:36

One of the things that he says in this section, which I think is.

00:32:40

Maybe something that a lot of bookworm listeners need to hear is on page 63, more

00:32:45

dreams die from a lack of confidence than a lack of competence.

00:32:49

And I feel like if you're listening to bookworm, that's probably true of you.

00:32:54

And I've definitely been in that place before.

00:32:56

Maybe you can relate, Joe, but I feel like this is pretty common for people, idea,

00:33:04

people, creatives or aspiring creatives.

00:33:09

You know, people who want to make something, you can be held back by a fear

00:33:16

of what other people are going to think about it and not even realize that I feel.

00:33:21

The sentence right after the one that you were talking about, more dreams

00:33:26

die from a lack of confidence and a lack of competence.

00:33:28

The sentence right after that is also telling.

00:33:30

But while confidence is often a byproduct of our accomplishments, it also

00:33:35

comes from how you talk to yourself.

00:33:38

Yep. And if I'm regularly saying that something wasn't as good as I thought

00:33:43

it should have been, then that's on me.

00:33:47

It's not again, somebody else.

00:33:50

So I have to be confident in the stuff that I'm doing, not just like I have to be

00:33:57

confident in the way that I speak to myself, not just in the accolades that

00:34:02

other people may put on what I did.

00:34:04

So it's, it's multifaceted.

00:34:06

It's not just this person recognized you.

00:34:10

It's also how you recognize yourself.

00:34:12

100%.

00:34:13

Um, the other ones that I like in this section are setting the standards,

00:34:19

the way to build strength is to raise the standards to which you hold yourself.

00:34:23

Again, harkening to personal responsibility.

00:34:26

But, um, he mentions that we unconsciously become what we're near.

00:34:31

So be careful who you surround yourself with.

00:34:33

That actually leads into the next chapter.

00:34:34

But before we get there, he says standards become habits, habits become outcomes.

00:34:39

So this I feel reinforces the idea of battling perfectionism.

00:34:44

Cause perfectionism will say don't release it.

00:34:46

Don't release it.

00:34:47

It's not quite right.

00:34:48

You can always improve it just a little bit.

00:34:49

Uh, I have published consistently to YouTube for about eight weeks in a row now.

00:34:54

And I feel like that's a great playground for this.

00:34:58

But what I have found is that it is the cadence that has allowed me to get

00:35:04

better at YouTube.

00:35:05

It's not the amount of time that I put into a single video.

00:35:10

So that's important.

00:35:12

But then the action item from this is actually one that I want to ask other people.

00:35:16

Um, so there's a question that he uses here.

00:35:19

And specifically I'm thinking I want to use this with my kids.

00:35:22

Although there's a lot of other places where this could be helpful.

00:35:25

Ask, is this the best you can do?

00:35:28

And the story that's attached to this is that he, uh, took over a department

00:35:33

and a lot of people didn't want to make mistakes.

00:35:36

Um, and so they were just like turning and stuff and be like, Hey, I want you to take

00:35:40

a look at this.

00:35:40

And he was overwhelmed with the amount of things that he had to review and,

00:35:43

and the amount of work that he had to do.

00:35:45

And that reminds me a lot of life at the, the agency, to be honest, but it was kind

00:35:52

of telling that he mentions that like people were afraid.

00:35:54

Um, they don't want to be held accountable for doing something wrong.

00:35:57

necessarily.

00:35:58

So they're, they're kicking the can.

00:35:59

They're, they're passing the buck.

00:36:01

So one of the things that he started asking was when someone handed him something,

00:36:04

he would say, is this the best that you can do?

00:36:06

And if the answer was no, then he wouldn't even look at it.

00:36:09

Uh, they had to go back and they had to make it the best thing that they could

00:36:16

make and that that point he would look at it.

00:36:18

And at that point, you know, you deal with it, but I feel like this is, uh, pretty

00:36:24

common where we just.

00:36:25

Do a shotty job and we just throw it out there and be like, well, there, I got it

00:36:30

done.

00:36:31

And, uh, specifically I want to ask this to my kids when I ask them to do stuff.

00:36:36

It's like, okay, I did this.

00:36:37

I'm, is this the best you can do?

00:36:39

Not like judgment.

00:36:43

Like you didn't do a good enough job.

00:36:45

I was going to say it sounds like the jerk dad.

00:36:47

Well, that's the thing.

00:36:49

That's what I think I like about it is it does come across like that at the

00:36:53

beginning.

00:36:53

But if you understand the heart behind it, you're trying to help people achieve

00:36:57

a level of excellence and I feel like as a parent, that's your job with your kids.

00:37:02

Yeah, that's fair.

00:37:02

So that's the perfect playground for this.

00:37:05

It's like, okay, dad, I did this.

00:37:06

Is this the, is it the best you can do?

00:37:09

And if they say yes, then, okay, well, I'll go look at it.

00:37:12

Cool.

00:37:12

Thanks for doing that.

00:37:13

But if no, I'm like, well, go try again.

00:37:16

No point in me wasting my time if you haven't taken the time yourself.

00:37:21

Uh, last thing that I jotted down here, another action item from this section.

00:37:26

So I have three action items, I think from this, the section here.

00:37:28

Um, but the last chapter is exemplars and practice.

00:37:31

And basically he says, if you don't curate the people in your life, the people

00:37:34

who end up surrounding you will be there by chance, not by choice.

00:37:37

And you need to choose the right exemplars or role models who raise your

00:37:40

standards.

00:37:41

And then he talks about having like a board of directors for a company.

00:37:45

And he talks about identifying people who are going to be fictional.

00:37:50

Board of directors for you personally.

00:37:54

I think that's a great idea.

00:37:57

I don't know.

00:37:57

This kind of reminded me of something we did in the past.

00:38:00

Maybe it was like a Napoleon Hill book or something, but I like this idea.

00:38:05

And I am totally going to make a note of with my personal board of directors.

00:38:09

And like just as an example, you know, maybe you are, I have a director of habits.

00:38:14

And that's James Clear.

00:38:15

Right.

00:38:16

It's people who you are going to look up to for a specific thing.

00:38:22

That's the key here.

00:38:23

You know, James Clear is great.

00:38:25

But I'm going to go to him for habits advice, not, I don't know, financial advice,

00:38:30

spiritual advice, like whatever, you have different people who feel different

00:38:33

roles based on like that's what they're good at.

00:38:35

That's the idea here.

00:38:37

And your exemplars don't need to be alive.

00:38:39

They could be people from the past.

00:38:41

And so I want to build that out in inside of an obsidian note.

00:38:45

Pretty cool.

00:38:47

I don't want to do this.

00:38:48

I don't know why I don't want to do this partially because it seems like it's

00:38:51

going to take a lot of time and I'm going to get angry if I don't reference them

00:38:54

whenever I do something wrong.

00:38:55

So there's a little bit of saving myself there, but who does the you for taking it

00:39:02

on?

00:39:02

And if anybody does that, I think it's a great idea.

00:39:04

I just don't think it's for me.

00:39:05

I have lots of action items in this book.

00:39:09

So maybe these are just pent up action items because I didn't have

00:39:13

someone to hold me accountable to them previously.

00:39:15

Maybe that's it.

00:39:17

Because I saw your list here before I started to fill mine in and thought, huh,

00:39:21

is he like making it for lost time?

00:39:23

I don't, I don't know what this is.

00:39:25

It could be.

00:39:26

All right.

00:39:28

Anything else before part three?

00:39:30

No, I'm good.

00:39:31

All right.

00:39:32

So part three is managing weakness.

00:39:36

And if I were to encapsulate this, um, this section in a couple of sentences,

00:39:46

it's basically putting safeguards in place to make sure that you don't slip

00:39:53

into those defaults.

00:39:56

Um, there's a chapter.

00:39:58

The first chapter is knowing your weaknesses.

00:40:00

Second chapter is protecting yourself with safeguards.

00:40:04

And then the third one is how to handle mistakes.

00:40:07

I mean, there's a bunch of stuff I jotted down in here, but I don't think

00:40:12

there's like a big thing that I specifically wanted to discuss.

00:40:17

Um, anything jump out to you from this section?

00:40:21

Not, not really.

00:40:22

This is just more about knowing where your failings are.

00:40:27

Failings is too strong of a word, but where your weak points are using his

00:40:30

word and putting in the guard rails to use one of his words around those particular

00:40:38

weaknesses to help minimize the damage that they can do long term.

00:40:43

And there's a bunch of ways that you can do that.

00:40:49

Um, I think the other action that we've got, I think is from part four.

00:40:54

It, the, the action I'm talking about is like creating a list of personal rules

00:40:58

for automating decisions.

00:40:59

It can kind of play into this weakness thing, but I'm pretty sure it comes from

00:41:04

the next one, which is just like decisions.

00:41:05

But I think you're, you're right though, because I jotted that down as an action

00:41:09

item to create a list of personal rules for automating decisions.

00:41:12

But that was from chapter 3.2 on protecting yourself with safeguards.

00:41:16

Yep.

00:41:16

Got it.

00:41:17

So it is from that in my head, it was like floating the line between those two, but

00:41:21

yes, that, that concept, right?

00:41:22

Where if you have rules that you follow, then these weaknesses have less time for

00:41:29

them to show up.

00:41:29

I'm a yes person.

00:41:30

It's easy for me to say yes to something right away.

00:41:33

And Mike and I were talking about some things beforehand and there are things

00:41:36

that I was like, yes, let's do that.

00:41:37

But like we're hesitating because partially of this, like I need to hesitate

00:41:42

whenever there's something that I have that gut reaction to say yes to, because

00:41:46

then it ends up getting me into situations or making decisions that I'm going to

00:41:50

regret later.

00:41:51

So having that built in, let me hesitate on a yes.

00:41:55

I forget the person's name that said that whenever they're on a call and they're

00:41:59

asked to do something, they always say, let me get back to you with a decision

00:42:03

on that and rarely have to follow up because it either falls apart.

00:42:07

It doesn't get followed up on or it is a no and then nothing comes of it anyway.

00:42:14

So they don't even have to say yes.

00:42:16

And if they had said yes, it would have led to some problems.

00:42:18

So that concept is one that I think could have a lot of value.

00:42:23

I'm not real sure what areas need those types of rules for me personally, but I

00:42:29

know that there are some similar to one I'm referring to of saying, not saying yes

00:42:34

right away, but putting some distance between that yes and now.

00:42:37

And like that type of rules, the thing that I need to work on.

00:42:42

But in order to do that, I need to identify those weaknesses that need those rules.

00:42:46

So that's kind of like an inbound like an, uh, an implied action that comes with

00:42:51

that one is like, you have to know what you're automating for before you can create

00:42:56

that list.

00:42:56

So that's, that's the one that I wrote down from this section.

00:43:00

I thought it was maybe from the next one, but you're probably right.

00:43:03

Unless I jotted it down in the wrong spot, but yeah, the safeguards.

00:43:07

That's essentially what that is.

00:43:09

Um, so chapter one or the first part here, 3.1, knowing your weaknesses.

00:43:16

So he, he mentions that we need to, um, account for basically manage our blind spots.

00:43:25

And that sounds weird.

00:43:28

Like if it's a blind spot, I can't see it.

00:43:30

How am I going to manage it?

00:43:31

And basically he's throwing the responsibility thing back in our face, be like,

00:43:34

well, just cause you can't see it.

00:43:35

Doesn't mean it's not there.

00:43:36

It doesn't mean you can't do anything about it.

00:43:37

So do something about it.

00:43:40

Um, one of the things that he talks about as a way to manage this is like the checklist.

00:43:43

So there's lots of stuff in here that I feel like we've heard before.

00:43:47

Obviously the checklist he talks in chapter 3.1 about repeated good choices and make time.

00:43:53

Your friend repeated bad choices, make time your enemy.

00:43:55

He uses the quote from Jim Rohn that I love.

00:43:58

Success or failure is just a few good or bad choices repeated every day.

00:44:01

This is all good stuff, but none of it sounds, um, sounds

00:44:09

are like completely original at this point because of all the other books that we've read.

00:44:13

I did jot down the list of rules.

00:44:16

Uh, I feel like that was really good.

00:44:17

And really the framing of that was really powerful.

00:44:22

If you create these personal rules, then that makes it easy to, to change your defaults

00:44:29

and do them in a intentional specific direction.

00:44:33

And, uh, I feel like that's kind of what the life theme and the core values are for too.

00:44:37

It's like the clarification.

00:44:39

So that's for me that were my brain went with that, but I do want to

00:44:42

create my own personal code of like, this is what I do.

00:44:46

This is why I do it.

00:44:47

These are the rules of engagement, basically.

00:44:49

I really don't know that like creating those and writing those down in a note

00:44:54

is actually going to provide me any additional clarity because I have the life theme,

00:44:59

because I have the core values of already moving in this direction.

00:45:02

But if you don't have anything like this, I can totally see how that would

00:45:06

provide a lot of clarity from that.

00:45:09

And then the other thing I like is how he ended this section with the handling mistakes.

00:45:13

He says specifically that the biggest mistake isn't the initial mistake.

00:45:19

It's the attempt to cover it up and that mistakes turn into anchors if we don't accept them.

00:45:23

So again, taking responsibility.

00:45:25

Yeah, I messed up and this is what I'm going to do to try to fix it.

00:45:29

There's a lot here just like understanding weaknesses and then learning what to do about them.

00:45:35

Like that's ultimately the point here.

00:45:36

So yeah, it's good.

00:45:38

I think you've got a big ask in your list of action items that encompass this one.

00:45:44

Well, we'll get to style and rating, but this was a very engaging book for me.

00:45:58

I feel like I learned a lot.

00:45:59

Maybe it was the right thing at the right time.

00:46:01

Maybe I just, I don't know.

00:46:04

Really fascinated by the concept and the approach, but there was,

00:46:09

let's just say the mind node for this one is pretty big.

00:46:13

The next section is another big section of that mind node, by the way.

00:46:21

This is decisions, clear thinking and action.

00:46:23

And this is essentially following a process that he outlines at the beginning.

00:46:32

There's a visual.

00:46:34

For the decision making process, we define the problem, then we explore possible solutions,

00:46:40

then we evaluate the options, then we make the judgment and we execute the best option.

00:46:46

So that's basically what this whole section is about.

00:46:52

And then the chapters are kind of broken down into the different parts of that.

00:46:56

I don't know that I want to talk through the whole decision making process.

00:47:01

Because again, I feel like heard that part before, but there's some specific things in these

00:47:07

chapters that are kind of interesting to me.

00:47:10

I'll give you an opportunity to go first though, if you want.

00:47:16

What stood out to you from this section?

00:47:17

Yeah, the decision making process chart that he has in the intro to the part where he has

00:47:26

those five pieces, right?

00:47:28

The define, explore, evaluate, make the judgment and execute.

00:47:32

He has those five.

00:47:33

It struck me as strange that he has, like the way he has it drawn is he has defined

00:47:39

the problem, explore possible solutions and evaluate the options.

00:47:42

There are three boxes across the top with an arrow between them.

00:47:45

So there's two arrows between three boxes.

00:47:47

Make the judgment is like a big sun star looking thing in the middle.

00:47:52

And the box in the far right has an arrow that comes down and goes over to it.

00:47:56

And then execute is down below that star.

00:47:59

Well, that's fine.

00:48:01

I get why you're doing that because make the judgments the big deal, but it's just a linear

00:48:06

process.

00:48:06

You don't need to get all fancy with the different logo in the middle.

00:48:11

I don't know.

00:48:12

It was just weird to me.

00:48:13

Just make it a line.

00:48:15

It's a line.

00:48:15

It's a line.

00:48:17

That was my weird hang up on that totally minor, very just being a Joe.

00:48:26

And but anyway, the five steps, I guess my question to you is like, is there, are there any missing

00:48:32

in there or are there too many?

00:48:34

Oh, I get that if you're making a really big decision, like stepping things this in this

00:48:39

amount of detail, are we going to buy that house?

00:48:42

Sure.

00:48:42

Like that that type of thing, that type of decision is one that could benefit from this

00:48:49

level of detail when it comes to, should I turn up that guitar or turn down the drums?

00:48:56

In a mix on Sunday morning, I'm not going to go through this.

00:49:00

Like you're instantly making those like artistic judgment calls.

00:49:06

So that's a different game.

00:49:08

So the question I had was like, what scale needs this process?

00:49:13

He kind of answers that a little bit later with the, shoot, what was the, like the permanence

00:49:19

of the problem?

00:49:20

Like if it's a really important and one that you can't backtrack.

00:49:25

Yep.

00:49:25

Decision.

00:49:26

Yeah.

00:49:26

There's a,

00:49:27

decision that you can't backtrack.

00:49:27

There's a chart there about the, how reversible a decision is on the,

00:49:35

let's see, that would be the x-axis where if it's more reversible, it's on the left side

00:49:41

and on the right side, it's less reversible.

00:49:42

And then on the y-axis is the consequential.

00:49:46

Yeah.

00:49:46

So more consequential or less consequential.

00:49:48

And he has, he plots different decisions on this, this matrix, which I think this was really

00:49:53

helpful actually.

00:49:54

So there's like moving small furniture in the less consequential,

00:50:01

more reversible, and way on the other side, upper right corner, doing something that could

00:50:06

kill you more consequential, less reversible.

00:50:09

But there are things that are, you know, reversible, but not less reversible,

00:50:14

but less consequential.

00:50:16

Those would be in the lower right, like squashing a mosquito.

00:50:19

And so there's, there's kind of things all over here.

00:50:22

And I think it could be helpful in helping you figure out what it, what sort of,

00:50:27

what sort of decision am I actually making here?

00:50:31

I feel like that's the big takeaway from this, this section is putting the appropriate amount

00:50:39

of effort into each one of these steps.

00:50:41

So defining the problem probably is the one that I tend to gloss over and probably more,

00:50:49

a lot of other people, just because there's so much information, there's so many decisions

00:50:52

we could be making.

00:50:53

If you don't have crystal clarity on like, this is really important and I should be spending my,

00:50:58

my time trying to figure out what this is, it's easy to end up defining the wrong problem.

00:51:02

And then exploring the possible solutions, he had a thing here,

00:51:05

which hit home where he was talking about doing internet research for making a buying decision.

00:51:10

Totally guilty.

00:51:11

And he has, you know, different descriptions for like, what's the point where you're

00:51:19

you're spending too much time there, evaluating the options, making the judgment, like,

00:51:23

I don't know, I didn't really feel like there was a whole lot that was actionable from this

00:51:28

section, which is kind of strange because at each one of these, he's basically giving you a whole

00:51:33

bunch of principles.

00:51:34

There's the high five principle.

00:51:37

There's the high X principle.

00:51:38

There's second level thinking, the three plus principle.

00:51:41

There's the chart, the ASAP principle, the a lap principle, flow, no principle.

00:51:46

I mean, in a lot of this stuff, remember the mental models, the whole framing of that was

00:51:52

use these when they're helpful.

00:51:53

I feel like a lot of these principles are use these when they're helpful.

00:51:56

There's, you know, the chart at the top, but really a lot of the stuff that he's talking about

00:52:02

here is not these are all the steps to following the process.

00:52:06

Yeah.

00:52:08

And I think that's part of what I'm like working my way to here is like, when do you use these?

00:52:13

And that's what these principles are designed to help you make that judgment call about how to

00:52:20

make the judgment call.

00:52:21

So it's a little bit of an excessive, not excessive circular reasoning in some way,

00:52:28

but it needs to be, I think in this case.

00:52:30

So it's good.

00:52:31

There's just a lot there.

00:52:34

And it kind of made me wonder, like, okay, are there steps that are missing?

00:52:37

Probably not.

00:52:38

Like it made me think of like the habits thing of like what makes up a habit.

00:52:42

Yeah.

00:52:43

Q trigger response.

00:52:44

Like what are those those pieces that lead to that are all of the pieces here for this?

00:52:51

Or is there one that's unnecessary?

00:52:54

Like, for example, define the problem explore possible solutions, evaluate the options.

00:52:59

You could probably argue that evaluating them is the decision making.

00:53:04

So make the judgment is unnecessary, but that's the one that he has the biggest emphasis on.

00:53:11

And then execute at the end.

00:53:13

So you could make the argument that there's only four in that I'm just not sure that that's

00:53:17

a good idea, but I don't have a my own judgment call on what that should be.

00:53:23

Yeah, I don't know.

00:53:25

It's hard to apply specific pieces of this.

00:53:28

I think a lot of this again, going back to my initial action item,

00:53:31

it's just kind of like this is knowledge that hopefully bubbles up when you need it.

00:53:35

Like the stop, though, no principles.

00:53:37

The one that I was talking about earlier, stop gathering more information and execute your

00:53:40

decision when either you stop gathering useful information.

00:53:43

You first lose an opportunity or you come to know something that makes it evident

00:53:47

what option you should choose.

00:53:48

That's the one that applies to all the over researching I do when I'm trying to figure out what to buy.

00:53:55

But there's the as soon as possible print, the ASAP principle, the cost to undo a decision is

00:54:02

low, make it as soon as possible.

00:54:04

But if the cost to undo a decision is high, make it as late as possible.

00:54:07

That's the inverse, the A-lap principle.

00:54:10

So there's lots of stuff in here that I feel like is tactical and you can

00:54:13

implement it different ways.

00:54:14

I don't know.

00:54:17

The big action item I have from this is to start a decision journal where I write what I was thinking

00:54:22

because then you can go back and I intend to do this during my personal retreat process,

00:54:27

look at the decisions that I made over the last 90 days and what was I thinking.

00:54:31

And then as I'm looking at that and I'm kind of doing a retrospective,

00:54:33

what impact did that have?

00:54:39

I feel like that could be useful.

00:54:41

But I don't know.

00:54:43

One other thing that I did want to jot down here, that page 160.90 talks about removing what doesn't

00:54:50

serve our interest is what makes a map useful.

00:54:52

And that obviously harkens back to the map is not the territory from the great mental models.

00:54:55

So I thought that was really great.

00:54:58

But also like just in that whole section about evaluating the options and most information

00:55:05

being irrelevant, curate the good stuff and decide for yourself what are the points of interest

00:55:11

that you want to put on your own mental maps, decision making maps.

00:55:14

I mean, I know you don't like to turn map a content, but essentially that idea of a map is

00:55:18

really powerful and you can apply that in a lot of different ways.

00:55:21

And he's really talking about it as a framework for making better decisions at this point.

00:55:25

And I think that's kind of cool.

00:55:26

All right.

00:55:27

Anything else from part four?

00:55:28

I don't think so.

00:55:30

All right.

00:55:32

Well, let's go on to part five then, which is wanting what matters.

00:55:39

And this chapter starts with talking about Carl Pillomer and the 30 lessons for living.

00:55:49

Have you read that book?

00:55:52

Actually, I guess it doesn't start with that.

00:55:53

That's in chapter two, but that was a big emphasis in this section.

00:55:57

Are you familiar with that book?

00:56:00

I know I've talked about it a lot.

00:56:00

I'm familiar with it.

00:56:02

I have not read it.

00:56:03

So I know about it and some of the stories around it, but I've not personally gone through it.

00:56:08

Have you?

00:56:09

Okay.

00:56:09

Yeah.

00:56:11

I mean, this is one that I read for a gap book a long time ago, but I've gifted it a bunch

00:56:18

because it's really good.

00:56:19

And basically what Carl Pillomer did is he went to all these nursing homes and interviewed

00:56:25

like 10,000 people, people who were living their best life and like, what was the secret to

00:56:30

you living a good life?

00:56:31

And he condensed it down into 30 lessons for living.

00:56:35

So this whole section kind of reminded me a lot of that book.

00:56:39

He mentions it explicitly at the beginning here, but there are a lot of references to take

00:56:46

aways from that book throughout the rest of the section, I feel.

00:56:49

Also talks about Memento Mori, which by the way, I've got a whole YouTube video on that.

00:56:55

Did you see that one?

00:56:57

I saw that you had it, I started it and then somebody interrupted me and I forgot to go back

00:57:01

to it until you said that just now.

00:57:02

Well, basically it's a summary of the concept of Memento Mori.

00:57:10

And then what I have done is I have embedded a code snippet into my daily note, which takes

00:57:17

today's date and the average 80 year lifespan and says your life is X percent over.

00:57:25

Which some people maybe are freaked out about, but really it's an encouragement to make the most

00:57:31

of the time that you've got left.

00:57:33

So it doesn't get measured, doesn't get managed is essentially the principle here.

00:57:38

And by looking at it every day, it kind of lights a fire to, hey, you're not going to be

00:57:43

here forever.

00:57:43

So let's make today count.

00:57:45

It's kind of the idea there.

00:57:47

But he kind of talks about it in this section as don't put off the things that you really

00:57:55

want to do.

00:57:56

And this is where this kind of ties into the 30 lessons for living.

00:57:59

Time is the ultimate currency of life.

00:58:02

You get to decide what's a priority for you.

00:58:04

And we regret the things that we don't do more than the things that we do.

00:58:08

So the question that he mentions from Steve Jobs, if today were the last day of my life,

00:58:14

what I want to do, what I am about to do.

00:58:16

And if you say no too many days in a row, then maybe you got to change your situation there.

00:58:24

I don't know. I really like this section.

00:58:26

I feel like this is a really cool way to kind of wrap up the book.

00:58:30

And really what he's talking about here is all the stuff that people typically think of

00:58:35

success.

00:58:35

You know, that probably doesn't matter.

00:58:37

Don't be a happy when people.

00:58:39

Those are people who are saying, you know, I'll be happy when I achieve this goal,

00:58:43

right, this outcome.

00:58:46

Those people never actually are happy.

00:58:50

And there's a Greek word he mentions here, "frenesis," which is a word for the wisdom of

00:58:57

knowing how to order your life and achieve the best results.

00:58:59

And I like that a lot.

00:59:02

When I read that, I was like, if I were to encapsulate what I want to do with the rest of my life,

00:59:09

it is to study and apply this "frenesis."

00:59:13

There was a point where he mentioned somebody that I want to say was in their

00:59:19

late 80s, was asked about some of their advice for younger people and said that they wished

00:59:26

they had worried less because more of my worries never came to fruition.

00:59:33

There's also, this is from chapter 5.4, "Life Lessons from Death."

00:59:38

He asked one of his friends the question, "If this were your final year of life,

00:59:43

would you be living the same way you are today?"

00:59:45

And he said, "No, I'd spend my savings, run up my credit cards, and start a drug habit."

00:59:50

So that's a lot of what people tend to think of whenever, like, if I'm going to die in a year,

00:59:57

I'm going to burn through money.

00:59:59

That's what a lot of people will say that they want to do.

01:00:03

That's not something you should start doing as a daily practice because every day it's your last.

01:00:09

Well, you're not going to burn through your savings and give everything away to charity right now,

01:00:14

if that's the case because you still have to pay your mortgage.

01:00:17

But that idea of letting regrets go, not worrying about things,

01:00:23

worry about the things you can control and not the ones you can't, taking responsibility for those.

01:00:29

All these things we have talked about, all of that starts to click together when you process the

01:00:35

end-of-life scenario for yourself.

01:00:38

And what do I want my kids to remember me for probably not the things I've been doing lately?

01:00:45

So how do I change that?

01:00:46

It comes back to the action item that I have for date night to night of evaluating those defaults.

01:00:53

And how do I change those so that my kids have a better view of dad in the long term?

01:01:00

So yes, it matters. It matters a lot.

01:01:03

Yeah, there's so much good stuff in this section. And like a lot of the book, there's

01:01:10

so many other places to go so much deeper with this. I feel like Shane does a really good job of

01:01:16

pulling it all together and teasing out the highlights. But because there was so much emphasis

01:01:22

on the 30 lessons for living at the beginning, and then he talks about the memento mori and the

01:01:28

life lessons from death, I kind of felt at this point he was probably doing this the whole book.

01:01:35

But at this point, it kind of became evident to me how much he was borrowing from other sources.

01:01:42

And this is like obvious. He mentioned this at the very beginning, mastering the best of what

01:01:48

other people have already figured out. He told us exactly the approach he was going to take.

01:01:52

But at this point, it was kind of like, so this maybe sounds a little bit, a little bit bad.

01:01:58

My thought when I read the part of the 30 lessons for living, and I realized how much he was leaning

01:02:03

on Carl Pillener's research is like, I could write a book like this.

01:02:07

It's true. I don't know.

01:02:13

Time and effort.

01:02:18

Yeah. He does do a great job of condensing it though. And this whole part five,

01:02:24

wanting what matters, it almost feels like this didn't really need to be here. But I'm really

01:02:30

glad that it is. It's almost like everything else is how to make good decisions. And then

01:02:39

he could have just left it after part four and been like, okay, now it's up to you to figure out

01:02:43

what really matters. But he adds a whole bunch of stuff here about like, you know, the material

01:02:48

stuff, the status, the wealth that you're probably chasing, that doesn't matter.

01:02:51

I appreciate that he did that.

01:02:53

I feel like it is almost needed though. I don't think you could leave this out.

01:02:58

I think it needs to be there just because you're walking through the process of

01:03:02

clear thinking, right? These are your defaults that are bad that lead us to

01:03:09

strained relationships in not good work scenarios, etc, etc.

01:03:17

How do you overcome that building up your building in some skills, like the self accountability and

01:03:24

such self control, self confidence, you build up those strengths and learn to make good decisions.

01:03:30

The question is, what decisions should you be making? Like that's the underlying missing question

01:03:37

that needs answered. And he answers that with part five, like, well, you could be making

01:03:42

decisions about how to get more money, but that's not what you should be making decisions about.

01:03:47

So he does at least point you in the right direction. He doesn't tell you what to make

01:03:52

decisions about, obviously. That's much too broad of a question to answer. But I think it is important

01:03:58

that he at least points us in the right vein, at least.

01:04:02

Well, he kind of does. I mean, he says no one wants to spend the last year of their life checking

01:04:09

email. You know, he, I guess my impression of this last part, you're right. Like, he does need to

01:04:17

provide some direction there, but this just feels way more opinionated than I would have anticipated

01:04:23

going into this book. I don't disagree with anything that he says in this section. This is

01:04:29

probably my favorite part of the book. But I feel like once you get to this part, if this is the first

01:04:38

book you're reading like this, you're new to bookworm, you're just starting to dip your toes into the

01:04:45

productivity books that we typically read. I feel like there's a good chance he's going to tick

01:04:51

some people off at this point, which I think is cool. Like kudos to you for making that stand.

01:04:58

Like people are either going to love Shane or they're going to hate Shane after this section.

01:05:02

Right. And that's good. It's okay to put a stake in the ground.

01:05:06

Yep, totally. All right. So let's go to the last part here. The conclusion

01:05:15

and this is the value of clear thinking. This is a phenomenal outro to this book.

01:05:23

Page 245, he says, "Good judgment is expensive, but poor judgment will cost you a fortune."

01:05:28

Really like, you maybe don't think you have the resources to think about this stuff, but you

01:05:35

can't afford not to think about this stuff. When you revert to defaults, you engage in a game that

01:05:40

you can't win. The key to getting what you want is to figure out how the world works and to align

01:05:46

yourself with it. I mean, lots of description here of systems and processes, and I think that's great.

01:05:55

That last part kind of strikes me, the key to getting what you want is to figure out the way

01:06:01

the world works and then align yourself with it. He talks kind of at length in this last part

01:06:07

about how a lot of people feel like, "Well, it's not fair," and things should change. He's

01:06:13

basically saying, "Things aren't going to change, so what are you going to do about it? Are you going

01:06:17

to just accept that this is the way that things work and then use that to your advantage and try

01:06:22

to create better outcomes because that's what you should do?" I totally agree with that.

01:06:26

Absolutely love the last line of the entire book. Good judgment can't be taught, but it can be learned.

01:06:35

I absolutely love that just because it's not something that he can put. He can put how to learn it in a

01:06:41

book, but he can't teach it to you because it's something you have to learn internally or pick up

01:06:47

by watching examples. You can have people tell you stories and you can have people show you,

01:06:53

but you're not actually going to fully learn and understand that until you

01:06:57

wrestle with it yourself. I love that. Good judgment can't be taught, but it can be learned.

01:07:05

Yeah, it's a great way to end it. Now you got to go put it into practice.

01:07:09

Speaking of which, that leads us to action items. What are we going to put into practice?

01:07:16

Well done.

01:07:17

Great segue right there, right? Nailed it.

01:07:20

You want to give us your 44 action items here?

01:07:25

Sure. It's only five, so I want to ask myself, "Will this make the future easier or harder?"

01:07:34

Hopefully this will trigger as a safeguard when I am slipping into default decision making.

01:07:42

I want to ask others specifically, "My kids, is this the best you can do?"

01:07:46

I want to see what sort of responses I get from that. I feel like at first you're right,

01:07:53

it's going to be like, "What do you mean?" And then when I explain it, I don't know.

01:07:58

I feel like this is a useful tool though for encouraging the focus on excellence.

01:08:02

I want to also build my own personal board of directors. I want to create a list of the personal

01:08:08

rules that I use for automating decisions. And I want to start tracking my decisions in my digital

01:08:15

journal where I write what I was thinking when I make them. I feel like I've had several big

01:08:20

decisions that I've wrestled through recently. So I don't know if I'm going to continue to have

01:08:24

those, but that's kind of what I have in mind when I am thinking through the stuff and the kind

01:08:30

of things that I want to jot down. Just a couple of sentences. I decided to do this because

01:08:33

XYZ. And hopefully that provides value when I do my personal retreat stuff in the future.

01:08:39

Cool. I have two action items. One is a duplicate of what you have. Create a list of personal rules

01:08:48

for automating decisions. Fascinated to see what comes of that. And the other is to evaluate my

01:08:54

defaults. I've mentioned that a few times with Becky here tonight. On date nights, that'll be a

01:08:59

fun conversation for date night. Yeah, those are the two that I have.

01:09:03

Awesome. So style and rating. I will go first. I loved this book. This might be my favorite book

01:09:16

that we have covered. I don't know that that's the most influential book that will probably forever

01:09:23

go to man's search for meaning. But this book was phenomenal. It reminded me of when I read

01:09:32

atomic habits in terms of the amount of like, aha moments that I got from reading it. But also,

01:09:39

I enjoyed it way more. So this one is an easy five stars for me. I like everything about it,

01:09:47

except the way the chapters are named. Of course. But that's really a minor thing.

01:09:54

And it flows really, really well from section to section. Tons of research went into this you

01:10:01

can tell. And I find the footnotes that he has here incredibly useful and sometimes really funny.

01:10:09

Like there's a section in I think part five where he has a paragraph about finding meaning and

01:10:20

purpose in your life. I think it's from 5.4 lessons about death. And there's a footnote about

01:10:26

kudos to chat GPT for helping me reward this paragraph, which that one footnote, I mean,

01:10:35

think about what's being communicated with that one footnote. Number one, he's using chat GPT

01:10:41

to refine a paragraph, which is probably one of the more emotional paragraphs in the entire book.

01:10:46

And so like that's one of the ones that you would think, I'm definitely not going to do that. So

01:10:52

just he's showing that I'm a rule breaker. I'm going to touch all the taboo topics. He's also

01:10:59

by calling it out there, implicitly saying, I haven't used this anywhere else because

01:11:06

I'm referencing, I'm giving referential acknowledgement to chat GPT for helping me to write this.

01:11:12

I mean, a lot of the times he is calling out other books that he's read or conversations he's had

01:11:18

with people. And this is where I got this idea from. And so like that singular place at the end of the

01:11:26

book for that specific chapter, like I almost just busted out laughing right there when I saw that

01:11:32

footnote. I'm like, well done, sir, well done. And that hit me because I've had conversations with

01:11:39

Chris Bailey and other other creatives recently about like, what is the approach that we're going

01:11:43

to take in terms of chat GPT and AI tools and the creative process? Because some people are like,

01:11:49

Oh, well, no, I'm everything that I write is going to be what I write. And other people are like,

01:11:53

No, I'm going to use it to help me come up with stuff. And it feels like we're still kind of

01:11:56

figuring out where to draw those lines. And so like I didn't expect that near the end of the book.

01:12:02

This is a longer book in terms of like the number of pages, like it's 240 pages, but really easy read.

01:12:10

Everything that Shane writes is very succinct and not longer than it has to be. And I feel like

01:12:18

the way he tied things together in this book, he did it really, really well. This is easily the

01:12:23

best book that we've read on the topic of clear thinking. So if you're looking for one on that

01:12:30

topic, I mean, definitely pick this one up for any of the other ones that we've we've read so far.

01:12:35

This is the definitive work, in my opinion, on making better decisions. Really glad that it exists

01:12:43

would absolutely recommend it to just about anybody. And honestly, like, I want to read it again.

01:12:49

It's a solid. It is a solid. So you're giving it a 5.0. I will join you at 5.0. Just get that out

01:12:56

in the air right away. Because this is this is a solid book. Shane Parrish is tough to

01:13:01

tough to argue with. Obviously, we've got to feel like super minor details that we're talking about

01:13:07

as far as issues. But it's tough to even call them issues because they're so minor.

01:13:13

And like how you laid out a graph and the numbers you used on your chapters. Like if that's the

01:13:20

territory we're going to to find problems with a book, like it's a solid book. Like it's a really,

01:13:28

really well done read. And Shane does a great job. He's a great writer. You know, obviously,

01:13:34

we know that from reading his stuff in the past. And the way that he takes a story and then

01:13:39

tells us about it kind of beforehand and then tells us the story and then tells us about it

01:13:44

afterwards is so engaging that it was kind of tough for me to put this down. And I really,

01:13:51

really enjoyed this. So I'm glad we both quasi picked it together. And I'm glad to have gone

01:13:57

through it. I think I'm with you on this is the best clear thinking book we've picked up so far.

01:14:02

Pretty easy to make that recommendation. I also feel like if you're new to like the

01:14:06

nonfiction world and are trying to find a good book to get started with some of these topics,

01:14:10

this is probably a good one to start with. I would say that because it's covering a lot of topics

01:14:16

that we discuss at length on a specific book covering that entire topic. But you get like the

01:14:24

overview of the whole structure of so many things with this. So absolutely love this.

01:14:30

Glad you picked up my good job. Awesome. All right. It's but clear thinking on the shelf.

01:14:36

What's next Joe? Yeah. So the next one is build by Tony Fiddell. A subtitle on this,

01:14:44

an unorthodox guide to making things worth making. If you don't know Tony Fiddell, he is

01:14:50

the guy who led the teams that created the iPod, the iPhone, the Nest learning thermostat.

01:14:59

Anybody heard of these things before? He led the teams that created those. So I think he knows

01:15:07

some things about building stuff. So I'm fascinated to see some of his thoughts on this. This is very

01:15:12

highly rated on the Amazon's. So he's hitting my radar. So I figured what better book to pick than

01:15:19

one about making things on a return. So this will be a fun one. I'm looking forward to reading this.

01:15:27

However, this probably means that my gap book doesn't get read.

01:15:31

Because it's 416 pages. I have not picked this up. Like I don't have it in my hands. I did not know

01:15:37

that. I should really look at that print length thing on Amazon before I pick books.

01:15:43

It's OK. It's OK. This does look like a fun one. Why not? Pick a lot. All right. What we do

01:15:49

after that? After that, I have another book that I have pre-ordered many moons ago that is

01:15:55

actually coming out this Wednesday as we record. So I guess there's a possibility that I'll have to

01:16:01

change this if there's some last minute fire at the warehouse. But Adam Grant has a new book out

01:16:09

called Hidden Potential. And I really enjoyed the last Adam Grant book that we read. So I think

01:16:16

this is going to be a really fun one for for Bookworm. So Hidden Potential by Adam Grant,

01:16:22

we will cover After Build by Tony Fadal. Cool. All right. And then gap books. I do have a gap book

01:16:30

that I really want to read. So I'll probably start this one before build comes. I just ordered

01:16:36

build. So you'll be here there too. I have a book by Brennan Dunn, who is the guy behind.

01:16:48

What is that right message? And has a course Mastering ConvertKit. He's basically the email

01:16:55

guy, the personalized email guy. So I've actually learned a lot from Brennan Dunn about sending

01:17:01

better emails. But he has a book now called This Is Personal. And it's basically a book about

01:17:07

sending personalized emails. All right. Probably exciting to myself and like 12 other people on

01:17:13

the planet, but I'm excited about this. Pretty cool. I actually, so I put down a couple

01:17:21

gap books here. I'm almost done reading Tribe of Mentors. I was hitting that one up pretty hard

01:17:29

in the interim. But I also wrote a book called Brain Energy by Christopher Palmer, which is like

01:17:35

the neuroscience behind mitochondria and the energy in your brain that leads to mental health,

01:17:43

success, or disorders, and how many, many, many mental disorders are actually very,

01:17:49

very connected. It was fascinating, but very neurosciency. If you love science in the brain,

01:17:54

and like cutting edge theories behind all of that, this was a book for you.

01:18:02

Pushing all my buttons. I'm going to have to check that one out. Yep. There you go.

01:18:05

Thanks to all of you who have stuck around with Mike in the last three episodes. I'm glad to be

01:18:12

back. So I'm glad we're able to bring this all back. And if you are someone who reads along with us,

01:18:20

the book to pick up is billed by Tony Fadel. We will cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.