Bookworm Transcripts

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Joe, have you heard about Canvas Candy?

00:00:04

I know about Canvas.

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I don't know what Canvas Candy is.

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Wait, hold up.

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I saw you had an email newsletter thing come out that said something along the lines are

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going beyond Canvas or making Canvas better or had something to do with that.

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I've not read it.

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It's sitting in my inbox at the moment.

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I'm guessing that's what this is about.

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What is Canvas Candy?

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Yeah, that is exactly what this is about.

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Canvas Candy is an add-on for Obsidian that gives Canvas superpowers.

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Have you used diagramming apps like Miro or maybe Omnigraphill in the past?

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Yep, I have.

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So if you go from those to Obsidian Canvas, the thing that you'll most likely notice

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is that you don't have many options in terms of shapes or stencils or anything like that.

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Canvas Candy is pretty brilliant the way that it works.

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It's a CSS snippet that you install in your vault.

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Then it adds a whole bunch of classes that you can apply to the cards in Obsidian to

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make them different borders, different shapes, apply headers to cards, all that kind of stuff.

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It basically turns Obsidian Canvas into Miro Lite, which I think is pretty awesome.

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When I first started using Obsidian Canvas, I think I started that email newsletter with

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something along the lines of, when I first used Canvas, I didn't really get it.

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I was like, "What's the point?

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I'll just go use those diagramming apps."

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But there's something about having the ability to have the notes in your vault and the files

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that are in your vault be on the Canvas itself.

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I find myself doing more and more there, but getting frustrated with just the rounded rectangles

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and the limited color options and stuff like that.

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Canvas Candy allows you to do some pretty cool stuff.

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You can create Venn diagrams because you can make the color fills opaque and all that kind

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of stuff.

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It's pretty awesome.

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I've got a YouTube video that I'm working on.

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It'll be published before the episode goes live.

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It's not available yet, but I've got a bunch of different examples where I'm walking through

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that.

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If you use Obsidian Canvas at all, you definitely should check this out.

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It's a $20 add-on by Tools for Thought Hacker.

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I'll put the link in the show notes for people.

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If you buy it before the end of November, I think it's 25% off, so you can save buy

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bucks.

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I just love tools like this.

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This is what is awesome about Obsidian is that you can extend it and add new functionality

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to it without having to write a whole bunch of code.

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It's a little bit clunky because you do have to have the metadata in the cards and you

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have to apply the CSS classes.

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My way of working around that, which I stole from somebody in the Obsidian University community,

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was to create my own text expander snippets so you have the different categories.

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It's going to say, yeah.

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Exactly.

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You just select from the drop down, this is the one that I want here.

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But yeah, Canvas Candy is a pretty cool product.

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I think if you're an Obsidian user, you should probably go check it out.

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Sounds really cool.

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I know I've used the diagramming tools just to lay out process workflows more than anything.

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Whenever somebody asks me for a computer rebuild, what does that mean?

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What does that look like?

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What are the steps?

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No, I couldn't.

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In that particular case, I could just put an outline together, like a checklist of sorts.

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There are a couple points in that process where there's decision tree type.

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As soon as I get this, then you go this direction.

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Otherwise, you go that direction.

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In that particular scenario, it's if there is data on the computer that needs kept, there's

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a backup process.

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If not, just go at it.

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Sometimes it's helpful to have a diagram for that.

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I've not historically used Obsidian for that.

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I've always used pages as weird as it is to say that because it's stupid simple to just

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drop shapes and stuff in there.

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You can just put your headers, put your shapes in.

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That's historically what I've used.

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I am lame when it comes to all the graphing software that's out there.

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This sounds way better as far as visual and long-term usage goes versus just my simple

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pages docs.

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Yeah, you will love this thing.

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The thing that I think might be a stretch too far for some people is going to be the

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metadata and the CSS classes.

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Sure.

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But for you, it makes total sense.

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Anybody who's not afraid of plaintext, this is pretty cool.

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Yeah, definitely go check it out.

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But I don't have any other announcements or anything.

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We have a very limited follow-up here.

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I guess I can report on my action item that I failed to do, which was the right-appressed

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release from Sydney University.

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I'm keeping this on the list, though.

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I'm going to do this.

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Just the timing isn't right.

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I'm not doing a launch for Obsidian University.

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I'm in the middle of the life-theme cohort.

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My focus is on the faith-based productivity stuff currently.

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As I told you, I finished this book at 10.30 last night.

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We're recording this in the morning.

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I didn't get a chance to make the outline until about 20 minutes before we sat down

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to record.

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Just been a really busy couple of weeks for me.

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I'm coaching basketball.

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It turns out for my son's high school team too now, and that started this morning, which

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is awesome.

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You can have a life-theme stuff.

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I guess the one thing that I've discovered in the last couple of years is that coaching

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is my jam.

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I'm really good at it.

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Nice.

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I actually had a kid that I coached, middle school soccer.

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He played on the high school team.

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We went to Toby at a national tournament in Tennessee that we went to.

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I went up to him after the game because he got a chance to play as a freshman a little

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bit.

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I told him he did a great job.

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He's trying to encourage him.

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He's hard on himself.

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He's focused on the mistakes that he made, stuff like that.

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Out of the blue, he starts telling me, "Man, you're the best coach that I ever had.

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You taught me everything that I know."

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I'm like, "Thanks, Hayden.

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Didn't expect that."

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Since that, that's actually happened a couple times now in the last month or so.

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It's given me confidence.

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I just thought that I coached and I did it to fill a spot because no one else was doing

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it.

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I've got enough feedback now that I guess I'm pretty good at it.

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I don't mind.

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That's another thing to do, but it's definitely a thing that gives me life.

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If I were to summarize the Life Theme cohort in a nutshell for people who haven't signed

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up for it, it is find the things that bring you life and then do more of those.

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Something else is going to fill it in around it.

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You'll have the clarity to say that thing that I didn't get to.

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That's okay because it's not really hitting the mark.

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Coaching is one of those things that hits the mark, but it means that it's been a little

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bit hectic in Mike Land.

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So Mike's been busy.

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That's what I'm hearing.

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Mike's been busy.

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That's my really long excuse for not writing a press release, but I am going to do this

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in conjunction with the next Obsidian University launch.

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That will be, by the way.

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You heard it here first.

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It'll be mid-January.

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If you're not on the email list, you can go down the start of Alt and you'll find out

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about that kind of stuff.

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I've also got a Black Friday deal that I'm going to be doing.

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I don't know if people will hear this in time to take advantage of that, but I'm going

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to discount the Obsidian 101 course.

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People buy that because it's normally $97.

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I'm still going to give them the $97 coupon that they can apply towards the cohort when

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it opens.

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It's basically like getting a, I'm going to give it for, I'm thinking 40 bucks off.

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It'll be $57 instead of $97, but you pay $57, you get a coupon for $97 that you can

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apply it towards the next cohort.

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Plus you get Obsidian 101 right away.

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That's like a free $40.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So that's the idea.

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We'll see how that goes.

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I have been, people are already starting to load my inbox with all the Black Friday deals

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and stuff that are coming.

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It's like, "Good grief.

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There's so many emails in here."

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I will say, this time of year, it's one of my favorite filters in my email is to have

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a search for anything that has the word unsubscribe in it or a URL that has unsubscribe or opt

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out or there's like four or five different words that it searches for.

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If the email has any of those in it, it will show me a list of all of those.

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But my favorite is the inverse of that.

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So anything that doesn't have any of those.

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So then it takes me all the way down to just the stuff that somebody has sent directly

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to me and pulls all the cruft out.

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It's probably similar to what Sanebox does, but I built it and I know that it's just there

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and I didn't leave for it.

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So there's that.

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Nice job.

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Yes.

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Got to love Black Friday time.

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I hate Black Friday, but as a creator, you kind of have to do it now.

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Yeah, it's true.

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I suppose you don't have to.

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I know some people who don't, but...

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True.

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When you are trying to figure out how you're going to pay the bills.

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Yes.

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Black Friday is a sense of help.

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Yeah.

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Well, should we start talking about today's book then?

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Sure, because this has the potential to be a longer one.

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The hidden potential, you could say.

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But, um, chh.

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All right.

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So, yeah, today's book is Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.

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Adam Grant is a professor at Wharton and wrote, I think again, I think was the book that we

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covered previously, right?

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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And I really enjoyed that book.

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And when I saw he had a new one out, I had pre-ordered it and it just so happened that

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the timing of this being released fit in with me picking the next book.

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So that's honestly why I picked it.

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And it does not disappoint, I don't think.

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It is very Adam Grant.

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I feel like if you've read, think again, I don't know about his older books because

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I haven't read those like outliers.

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But it was kind of exactly what I expected, which was a very entertaining read.

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And it's broken down into a prologue.

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Part one is Skills of Character.

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Part two is Structures for Motivation.

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Part three is Systems of Opportunity and then the Epilogue, which is just a couple of pages,

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but there's actually quite a bit in there and a lot of personal story as he wraps this

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one up.

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It is literally like it says on the cover a book about reaching your potential.

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And I think that maybe is polarizing when people pick this one up.

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Some people, probably the majority of the people in the bookworm audience, that is going to

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be intriguing.

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And they're going to want to pick it up and read it because of that.

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But there is definitely a type of person who will look at this and say, nope, no thanks.

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Now this kind of lines up with the growth mindset stuff.

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And he does talk about that actually in this book.

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But I'm not going to draw those lines there and say, if you have a growth mindset, you're

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going to be interested in this book.

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But just recognize there's no trickery in this one.

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The subtitle is The Science of Achieving Great Things.

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And that is exactly what you get with this.

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First impressions as you picked up this one?

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My first impressions came from the backside of the cover, actually.

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I was, typically when you pick up a book like this, you have a bank of other authors who

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will do the praise section and the references for the book, piece, the testimonials.

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That's typically who you see on this list.

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And he does have a couple of authors here, but I was kind of struck by the names that

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are showing off this book.

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Let me know if you've heard of any of these.

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Serena Williams, Mark Cuban, Malcolm Gladwell, Yo-Yo Ma, and US Navy Admiral William H. McRavin.

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Those are some big names that are showing the praise for this book.

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And if you've got some people in that territory who are singing the song of this book, it kind

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of makes you wonder what's in it that's making them say that.

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So it's either what makes them say that is the first option there.

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The second option is he just has really well-known friends and is just using that to get his

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book to sell.

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So it kind of sits in one of those two territories.

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But honestly, it's probably a little bit of both that takes it there to be completely

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frank.

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And it made me stop and think through just that particular piece, like, "Okay, this is

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something I should probably pay attention to."

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Typically when I see this list and then it can be a very long list of testimonials, I'm

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not always going to read all of those because it's very easy to get to where they're saying

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the same thing over and over.

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But he has very few very well-known names sing out about this particular book.

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So my initial impression was just, "Okay, this is something I should probably pay attention

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to."

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All right.

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So I'm going to burst that bubble just a little bit, I feel, because...

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Okay, go for it.

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There's a conversation going on in the faith-based productivity community right now about this

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book called Arate.

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And I pre-ordered this one too.

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It came yesterday as we record this.

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It's something like 900 pages.

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So we're not reading that one for book work.

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I have to do a double episode skimp one at some point.

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I bought it because that term Arate, David uses that on focus all the time.

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And I like that term.

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He uses it to describe the ideal version of the roles in his life.

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And so when I saw the cover, I'm like, "I have to get this just to find out if it's worth

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recommending to him."

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But apparently, I did not realize this, but there's a company associated with it.

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And they have an app which is like hundreds of dollars a year for a subscription.

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And I haven't looked at the marketing pages, but some of the people in the FPP community

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were saying that the marketing is really aggressive and it just rubs them the wrong

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way.

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And then someone pointed them...

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This is in Arate.

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But somebody pointed out that Cal Newport wrote one of the blurbs.

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And I really like Cal Newport.

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And then I don't know...

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I don't have facts to support this, but someone had basically told me, and this makes a lot

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of sense, that those blurbs, people don't have the time to read all those manuscripts.

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And they get asked for so many of those blurbs.

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But literally, it's like a transactional sponsorship sort of thing.

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So yeah, they're putting their name on it and they're putting their stamp on it.

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I would think that the people that we really follow, the people that resonate with us,

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they're not going to treat that lightly.

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But it's also probably not that they read every single word in the book.

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And they are saying, "Yes, this is my personal endorsement.

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I would be doing this if they weren't paying me anything."

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Yeah.

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It's a business transaction.

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That completely shot my entire review of testimonials on books.

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Thanks, Mike.

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Sorry.

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Sorry.

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But I like the selection of these testimonials.

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I like the names.

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Yo-Yo Ma is an interesting one because I grew up playing classical violin.

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And so I'm very familiar with Yo-Yo Ma.

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And probably a lot of other people have heard the name but never heard the music.

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We've got a bunch of, when I was growing up, they were CDs by Yo-Yo Ma CDs.

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I'm used to listening to that kind of stuff.

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And I like the fact that he got testimonials from people across a bunch of different domains.

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Obviously, Serena Williams is another one that isn't in the standard productivity space.

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I think that's a good thing.

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The diversity in the recommendations, I think, is kind of cool.

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So I think that you're right that these recommendations are, these blurbs are actually more well-put together

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than a lot of the other ones, but also they're blurbs.

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And so recognize what's going on there.

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At least the one by Malcolm Gladwell starts off.

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I read Hidden Potential in One Sitting.

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Like that's how it starts.

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So I would be very hesitant to think for him to put that on there had it not actually happened.

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Sure, sure.

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It would seem odd to me just from his branding and such as well.

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That's the only one that actually says anything about how they read it.

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So it's very possible.

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The other four are definitely in that category.

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But I don't know.

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Yeah.

00:17:59

Well, let's jump in here to the prologue.

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And this is the very beginning of the book.

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I don't have a whole lot written down for this particular section.

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Kind of setting the stage for the rest of the book.

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And I think even though there's nine chapters here, we'll probably tackle it part by part

00:18:19

as opposed to chapter by chapter.

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But we'll basically just go in order here.

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Now the prologue, one of the things that kind of jumped out to me here is that he says,

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what one person can learn, anyone can learn if the conditions are right.

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And that is maybe if you feel like you have a growth mindset and feel like you have grown

00:18:43

a bit, your initial reaction to that may actually be a little bit negative.

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Like, oh, well, I thought I was doing the right thing and maybe I was special and he's

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basically like, nope, you just need the right conditions.

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But on the other side, if you haven't got a great start, that's really encouraging because

00:19:03

it means that you have the ability to set your own course, determine your own course

00:19:09

of action.

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And potential isn't where you start.

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It's really how far you're going to go.

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So really, the takeaway from this whole book is that we should be looking to maximize our

00:19:20

potential.

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Part of that is the conditions.

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So figuring out what is the ideal environment and the right ways for us to learn these things

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and grow and achieve that potential.

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But ultimately, what counts is not how hard you work, how much effort you put into it,

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but how much growth actually happens.

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And so that kind of blows up the whole 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, makes you a

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master sort of a thing.

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And the word deliberate there kind of is a misnomer because we've both read that book

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and we know that they have to practice in a specific way with the intention of growing.

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He talks about that in this book as well.

00:20:05

But most people, they focus on the number and so I'll just put in the reps and then the

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results are going to be there, not necessarily.

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You got to do it the right way, not just do the thing.

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And so that's kind of what he's saying here at the beginning before we get into the real

00:20:19

meat of the book.

00:20:20

Yeah, and he starts this off with a story about two schools competing against each other in

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a chess tournament.

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And one of those schools is known for teaching kids to play from kindergarten on and has

00:20:38

been winning the championship of the area.

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I don't remember the details on it right now, but the competing school that he's referring

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to in that situation is made up of kids who started learning chess in middle school.

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And by the end of the tournament, this big ordeal, the kids who started later, which isn't

00:20:59

like an underprivileged school as well.

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And it's filled with students who it's not following the stereotype of what kids would

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be, like what people normally thought of at the time as being star chess prodigies.

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And they were able to tie for first in the process and beat some very formidable opponents

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in the process.

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So like that's kind of his background.

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I was like, okay, you have this group who's been learning this from a very young age,

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but then at the same time you have this group that started later, learned very intentionally

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using a lot of the things that he talks about here in the book to then match their level

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in a much shorter amount of time.

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So I just think that's fascinating.

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On two fronts, one, the obvious, the underdog story that everybody loves.

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And two, I've just been playing a lot of chess lately.

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So it's been something that's been super interesting to me.

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So there's that.

00:21:55

If you want to play chess, chess.com, hunt me down.

00:21:58

I'll play you.

00:21:59

Toby's been into that lately.

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So hunt you down.

00:22:04

She tells Toby to send me a game and I'll let him destroy me.

00:22:09

All right.

00:22:10

Yeah, I forgot that the chess story was at the beginning of this book, to be honest.

00:22:16

I like that story.

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I didn't jot anything down in the outline.

00:22:18

Let's take aways from it partly because I feel like I've heard this story before, not

00:22:24

this exact one, but I actually played chess growing up.

00:22:29

And there was a group that was through the YMCA that we were a part of, but we would play

00:22:34

these tournaments.

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We'd go to different high schools and play.

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There was actually a kid who was a little bit younger than me who was a part of that

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group.

00:22:43

I was okay.

00:22:44

I was never all that great, but there was a kid in our group who started off.

00:22:49

Okay.

00:22:50

And then just it started to click and he ended up going and winning the national tournament

00:22:55

when he was 12 years old or something.

00:22:57

Yeah.

00:22:58

And there was a PBS documentary about him.

00:23:01

And I remember like my brother and I were extras in the spot that they did for him on

00:23:07

public television.

00:23:10

But there was a movie that I watched back in the day.

00:23:14

I'm looking up now.

00:23:15

It was made in 1987.

00:23:17

It says called the Mighty Ponds.

00:23:19

And it's basically that story.

00:23:21

It's a tagline here, a struggling bunch of misfits into national chess contenders.

00:23:28

And it's kind of the story that Adam's talking about.

00:23:31

It's the people who don't normally play the intellectual games and some of the specifics

00:23:36

with the team that was really bad.

00:23:38

It was a group of kids who were kind of, they didn't have the same opportunities.

00:23:44

Like one kid learned to play because he was at the park and the drug dealer who was there

00:23:50

taught him how to play.

00:23:52

Yeah.

00:23:53

Like not a great situation that these kids are coming from, but to Adam's point doesn't

00:23:57

matter how you start matters how you finish.

00:24:00

So it's kind of cool that that the Mighty Ponds movie looks like it's on Amazon Prime.

00:24:07

I may have to make my family watch that with me and I'll be all nostalgic and they'll just

00:24:10

be like, Dad, this is dumb.

00:24:13

You watch the Queen's Gambit?

00:24:15

No, I didn't watch that one either.

00:24:17

I remember hearing about it, but most of the movies about something that I care about,

00:24:22

I can't stand watching.

00:24:25

Like anytime that there is classical music in a big motion picture and someone's like

00:24:30

pretending to play the violin, it just drives me nuts.

00:24:34

Yeah.

00:24:35

They're holding it completely wrong.

00:24:37

Well, I know to give you some faith in the Queen's Gambit, I know that, so you know,

00:24:43

you probably know Magnus Carlson then, him and Hikaru Nakamura, so a couple of really

00:24:50

big names in the chess world.

00:24:52

Both said it was really well done and apparently they had a couple of, and I don't know who

00:24:58

they were off the hand, but had a couple of really well known world champions from the

00:25:02

past as advisors for like how to set up the game.

00:25:06

So the games themselves that are played in the TV series are actually really well done.

00:25:14

So there's like only one where there's like a real serious blunder in the game.

00:25:18

So yes.

00:25:19

All right.

00:25:20

So yeah, I think you'll be okay with it.

00:25:24

For the record, there is a second series they're working on which is Beth Harmon, the

00:25:28

main character in it playing against Bobby Fisher.

00:25:31

So there's that.

00:25:32

Mmm.

00:25:33

You may have to give that a shot.

00:25:34

By the way, recommendation for people who want to learn how to play chess better.

00:25:39

Best book I ever read.

00:25:40

I read lots of them is Bobby Fisher teaches chess.

00:25:44

It's designed where you have, it gets increasingly harder, but there's basically a board with

00:25:49

an exercise.

00:25:50

And then when you flip the page, it shows you the answer to the exercise.

00:25:56

And it's always like on the right side of the page.

00:25:59

So you read through it that way, then you flip the book over and you go back through

00:26:02

it.

00:26:03

Sure.

00:26:04

And it's a really good way to go beyond the basic or elementary chess strategy.

00:26:10

Sure.

00:26:11

All right.

00:26:12

Enough about chess.

00:26:13

Let's go on to the first part here.

00:26:16

Yeah.

00:26:17

I thought the prologue would be the short part.

00:26:18

I didn't know we were going to get sidetracked with a conversation about chess, but I like

00:26:23

it.

00:26:24

All right.

00:26:25

So part one is skills of character.

00:26:27

And there are three chapters here.

00:26:29

Chapter one, creatures of discomfort, chapter two, human sponges, chapter three, the imperfectionists.

00:26:36

And maybe we'll break this down chapter by chapter.

00:26:38

Maybe these will tie together.

00:26:39

I will say the way that it's written, he definitely approached it chapter by chapter.

00:26:45

He even talked about how one particular chapter, he really had trouble thinking of the way

00:26:52

that he was going to tackle writing the material.

00:26:57

And he does a good job with the flow inside the chapters.

00:27:00

He's a really good storyteller to your point.

00:27:03

He even shares a story in the prologue, but every single chapter has a very good story.

00:27:07

And then he talks about the principles and he kind of wraps it all up by introducing

00:27:12

the outcome of the story at the end and then kind of hammering home.

00:27:17

This is what happens when you apply this principle, but they are definitely self contained.

00:27:22

Now chapter one, creatures of discomfort.

00:27:26

This is essentially saying that we need to get outside of our comfort zones.

00:27:32

He says that the best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek and amplify discomfort.

00:27:37

And I like that he says that learning styles are a myth.

00:27:40

Now, the way that he approaches this, there's tons of research that goes into this, but

00:27:45

he doesn't recite the studies for you in the text.

00:27:50

He just basically says, there's hundreds of studies.

00:27:53

And if you want, you can go dig them up.

00:27:55

But essentially he's saying, I've done the research, so you don't have to.

00:28:00

And so what that leaves you with is this statement, learning styles are a myth that follow up

00:28:04

question to that.

00:28:05

If you are someone who believes in these learning styles is like, well, Mike, what do you mean?

00:28:10

Like show me some evidence.

00:28:11

And I really can't tell you because I didn't go back and read all the studies that Adam

00:28:15

Grant did.

00:28:17

But I think you can tease out the principles here.

00:28:21

Basically, it kind of makes sense to me anyways, if you think about it, because the way that

00:28:25

you like to learn is what makes you comfortable, but it isn't necessarily how you learn best.

00:28:32

I don't know if it's in this first chapter, but kind of at the heart of this whole idea

00:28:36

with the learning styles.

00:28:39

I talked about this actually in the first section of the Life in Co-ord.

00:28:43

It kind of came up that we want to do things that we've mastered.

00:28:50

That's when things feel comfortable.

00:28:52

However, the way to master something is to do the things that are uncomfortable.

00:28:58

So it's kind of this catch 22.

00:29:02

And ultimately we should be flipping our mindset on this.

00:29:06

And instead of just doing what's comfortable because that's what we've mastered, we should

00:29:09

be leaning into the discomfort.

00:29:13

And the other thing that I really liked from this chapter is that procrastination is not

00:29:18

a time management problem.

00:29:19

It's an emotion management problem.

00:29:22

I have probably heard different versions of that, but it never really clicked like that

00:29:28

for me.

00:29:29

So procrastination I think is probably the biggest thing that people deal with when it

00:29:36

comes to the time management.

00:29:39

And so I don't know, at least the people that I've worked with, that always is something

00:29:44

that people struggle with.

00:29:45

And I struggle with this myself sometimes.

00:29:48

And it leads to the symptom that everybody feels is like, "Well, I don't feel like I

00:29:54

have enough time for everything."

00:29:57

And it's easier, it reminds me of the saying that it's easier to act your way into a better

00:30:02

way of feeling than to feel your way into a better way of acting.

00:30:06

So I don't have an action I'm associated with this, but kind of the thing it leaves me with

00:30:12

is this incentive to just do the hard thing.

00:30:15

And as you do it, it's going to become easier.

00:30:18

Yeah, I like the beginning of this part because he has a, there's a chart there, but it's

00:30:26

not actually, it doesn't really need to be a chart.

00:30:28

But he's basically referring to how to get better at something.

00:30:32

And there's four different ways to do that.

00:30:35

One is to change your DNA.

00:30:38

Not exactly easy to do.

00:30:40

Two is to start before you can walk.

00:30:42

Three is to sharpen your mind and four is to strengthen your character.

00:30:45

And the graph simply shows that more than half of the benefit of these is attributed

00:30:53

to strengthening your character.

00:30:56

Which is where he leads into this discomfort piece and being willing to work through things

00:31:01

that you're not good at.

00:31:03

It is interesting to me that we're so afraid of making mistakes and going down that road

00:31:07

of discomfort and trying to figure out how to do something that it prevents us from getting

00:31:15

good at things and getting better.

00:31:18

It's so fascinating to me partially because I'm terrible at this.

00:31:22

I will absolutely avoid things because it's uncomfortable.

00:31:25

So I don't improve in certain areas when I could.

00:31:31

Even silly things, I think of myself as a decent sound person and running sound for

00:31:36

bands and large venues.

00:31:38

But I always feel like the imposter syndrome thing is there.

00:31:41

It just seems like I'm actually not that great.

00:31:45

And yet whenever there are events, for example, a friend of mine who runs a sound company is

00:31:52

hosting a sound console demonstration by Yamaha.

00:31:58

So it's basically showing off a new sound board is what it is.

00:32:02

And I got invited to go to this demonstration.

00:32:06

But I have a very strong hesitation to go because it means I'm going by myself to the

00:32:10

group of people I don't know.

00:32:11

I'm only going to know the guy in charge and he's not going to have time to talk to me.

00:32:14

And he's already told me that.

00:32:16

So I'm going to go and see nobody that I know.

00:32:20

But they're going to be talking about things that are probably over my head and things

00:32:23

I could pick up from.

00:32:25

So I'm absolutely going to go.

00:32:26

But it's extremely uncomfortable to me as an introvert to go do that.

00:32:30

Like I really have no emotional or motivational interest in going to this.

00:32:36

But it's probably the absolute best thing I could do because I know they're going to

00:32:39

be talking about things that I could learn from.

00:32:41

So yes, it's uncomfortable.

00:32:44

Should I do it 100%?

00:32:46

Am I going to do it 100%?

00:32:48

But I'm going to hesitate until I get there.

00:32:53

Well, you bring up the introvert part and I feel like that's kind of interesting.

00:32:59

But also is the perfect segue to the next chapter.

00:33:02

So let's go there if you're cool with that.

00:33:04

Because I feel like with introverts, you don't necessarily, you're kind of like the fly on

00:33:14

the wall.

00:33:15

I want to hear and understand what's going on.

00:33:18

So chapter two is human sponges.

00:33:20

And I feel like that idea of a sponge that totally fits with an introvert.

00:33:26

I think it's probably more natural for an introvert to be a sponge than for an extrovert

00:33:31

to be a sponge.

00:33:32

Now I could be wrong, but he talks about the later on in the book some of the ways that

00:33:40

the traditional work culture has been to promote the people who talk the most.

00:33:48

Those aren't really the good leaders.

00:33:51

And I feel like if you're an introvert though, you are just kind of naturally absorbing.

00:33:56

And that's what he's talking about with the sponges.

00:33:59

He talks about absorb it, absorptive capacity, the ability to recognize value, assimilate

00:34:04

and apply new information.

00:34:06

And if you're constantly doing something, I feel like that kind of works against what

00:34:14

he's talking about here with the human sponge effect.

00:34:18

Now in this section, he talks about kind of coaching and mentoring.

00:34:24

And the two different, the differences between being polite and being kind, which I think

00:34:28

is really important.

00:34:29

Polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today, but being kind is being

00:34:33

candid about how they can be better tomorrow.

00:34:36

Now obviously you have to balance those two.

00:34:39

And he shares a story about someone who sought feedback from one of her mentors.

00:34:44

And then when he gave her very direct feedback, she got a little bit emotional about it, but

00:34:49

she checked her emotions because she realized that this was good feedback that was worth

00:34:55

applying.

00:34:56

And that gets into the critics, cheerleaders and coaches part.

00:35:00

He's got lots of these little like, he's three different ways or two different, lots of like

00:35:06

those little lists that are built into these chapters, which I found very effective.

00:35:11

But a critic is someone who sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self.

00:35:15

A cheerleader is someone who sees your strengths and celebrates your best self.

00:35:19

And neither of those are ideal.

00:35:22

And I feel like those are the natural ones.

00:35:25

If you just go online, you will find the critics if you just go to your inner circle, your family,

00:35:32

your close friends, those will be your cheerleaders.

00:35:35

So you can't go to either of those two groups.

00:35:37

You really have to like develop a relationship and find a coach who is someone who sees your

00:35:42

potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.

00:35:47

So as I was reading this, obviously that's one of the things that kind of opened my eyes

00:35:52

to the coaching stuff that I talked a little bit in the follow-up section, why I think

00:35:58

I am decent at this, I'll say.

00:36:01

I don't think I'm really great because I don't have a ton of knowledge when it comes to these

00:36:06

things.

00:36:07

But I know enough to help middle schoolers and high schoolers understand the game basically.

00:36:12

So and I really like helping people get to a level that they couldn't get to on their

00:36:17

own.

00:36:18

So that's kind of the thing that makes that work for me.

00:36:21

So how do you find people like that?

00:36:23

How do you kind of test the waters and see who might actually be a good coach?

00:36:28

This is one of my two action items from the entire book.

00:36:32

Ask for advice not for feedback, which is what you can actually do better.

00:36:39

There's a subtle difference there, but as a content creator, this makes total sense to

00:36:44

me because I've done drafts of videos or articles and then I share it with somebody

00:36:50

and be like, "Hey, can you give me some feedback on this?"

00:36:54

That's the words you use.

00:36:57

And really what that means is that someone is going to read it through and probably they're

00:37:03

going to say, "Oh, I liked it."

00:37:04

It was really well written and one or two sentences about things that you did well or

00:37:09

now it really isn't working.

00:37:10

But there's nothing specific in terms of what I could do as the author or creator of this

00:37:16

thing to make it better.

00:37:19

And that is the advice piece.

00:37:21

So advice is not just what's your natural reaction to this, but it's more like, "What

00:37:26

would you change about this to make it better?"

00:37:29

Which I feel opens up the conversation to a lot of more potential help if you really

00:37:38

are trying to learn and grow through the process.

00:37:42

This topic of advice versus feedback is the biggest point I wrote down from this entire

00:37:46

part.

00:37:48

And I was trying to figure out why this struck me so much.

00:37:52

And this is not a new concept.

00:37:53

We've talked about this before.

00:37:55

So again, this is not new, but something about the way he posed it struck me a little

00:37:59

different.

00:38:00

But I started processing the word feedback.

00:38:03

When somebody asks you for feedback, it kind of has two connotations whether they're correct

00:38:08

or not is beside the point.

00:38:11

But when someone asks you for feedback, generally, at least my first response is something general,

00:38:17

not a specific thing about whatever I'm giving feedback on and positive.

00:38:22

Like, "Tell me what are the general things I did well?"

00:38:26

That seems to be the general idea when somebody asks for feedback.

00:38:30

But if you just use a different word, you can have the entire same sentence structure,

00:38:35

but use advice instead of feedback.

00:38:38

But when you do that, it kind of has this intentional interest in knowing what the specifics

00:38:46

were.

00:38:47

It's a general piece that comes with a connotation of feedback.

00:38:49

But it has this idea of specific and improvement.

00:38:55

It's not necessarily like, "Tell me what I did well."

00:38:58

It's like, "Okay, tell me the specific things that I could approve on."

00:39:02

And again, it's a simple one-word change.

00:39:04

I don't know why it's that big a deal, but it certainly is.

00:39:07

I guess words are important.

00:39:08

Who knew?

00:39:09

But the thing I love about that is it doesn't mean you have to change really anything about

00:39:15

your process.

00:39:16

Like, if you're going to ask for feedback, we'll just stop asking for feedback and ask

00:39:20

for advice.

00:39:21

Like, it's that simple.

00:39:23

Yeah, exactly.

00:39:25

That's actually a good spot to go into the next chapter.

00:39:28

So if you're cool with that, we'll jump there because in chapter three, the imperfectioness,

00:39:35

one of the things that I jotted down in my Mind Node file was when sharing a first draft,

00:39:41

don't ask for feedback.

00:39:42

But then there's a different strategy that you can use here.

00:39:44

Ask for a score.

00:39:46

And subtle difference there, but as it pertains to the imperfectioness, this is important

00:39:53

for battling perfectionism.

00:39:55

I think this is the chapter where he talks about his experience as a diver.

00:40:00

I had no idea that Adam Grant was a diver and was trying to make the US Olympic team

00:40:05

as a diver.

00:40:07

But his coach told him after he graduated as a senior in college that he had done the

00:40:15

most with the least amount of talent of anyone that he'd ever coached.

00:40:19

That was like his big takeaway.

00:40:21

It was like, I've succeeded then.

00:40:24

And he said that when diving, his tendency was to be a perfectionist.

00:40:31

And you really can't do that, especially when you're learning a new dive.

00:40:35

Like it's going to be horrible.

00:40:36

And you have to do it a bunch of times, but you have to continually push yourself to learn

00:40:41

new dives, otherwise you just get stuck in these, you know, the basic routines.

00:40:46

I've dealt with perfectionism myself.

00:40:48

So I feel like this chapter resonated a lot, but there's three things that he says perfectionists

00:40:54

tend to get wrong.

00:40:55

They obsess about details that don't matter.

00:40:57

They avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure.

00:41:00

And they berate themselves for making mistakes.

00:41:03

Is that apply to anyone else or just me?

00:41:07

That's just you, Mike.

00:41:08

But the approach of just do your best is the wrong cure for perfectionism.

00:41:13

And I never really thought about that before.

00:41:14

I probably even given that advice before the two key questions.

00:41:19

And I thought about making this an action item and building it into my daily questions,

00:41:23

but I don't think I want to formalize this process.

00:41:25

It's just something that I want to continue to kind of noodle on.

00:41:28

Did I make myself better today?

00:41:30

And did I make others better today?

00:41:31

I like those questions a lot.

00:41:35

And if you're just trying to get better and make others better, I feel like that is a

00:41:39

great prescription for keeping the perfectionist monster in its cage, let's say, because I don't

00:41:48

think you can never really eliminate it.

00:41:53

But what you want to do is not try to be perfect, just aim for a high target.

00:41:56

Try to be excellent in everything.

00:41:58

How do you do that?

00:41:59

Make yourself better.

00:42:00

Make other people better.

00:42:01

And success, he says on page 75, is not how close you come to perfection, but how much

00:42:06

you overcome along the way.

00:42:08

In other words, how much growth that happens.

00:42:11

The fear of mistakes is the piece here that I think is crucial.

00:42:15

At least personally, that's the one that will get me more than anything.

00:42:21

Just because I know like if I feel like I'm going to make a mistake, well, I didn't do

00:42:25

it right.

00:42:27

And what are people going to say about me?

00:42:28

Or what are people going to think?

00:42:31

Because I didn't do that well.

00:42:35

And I bring this up because it's something I've been trying to do for a long time.

00:42:40

So this is not like action item worthy because it's something that's already been in action

00:42:44

for a long time.

00:42:45

And it's just that I'm trying to make sure that I point out when I'm making mistakes,

00:42:50

when I'm around my kids, so that they can see that I'm okay making mistakes, calling

00:42:55

it out and then trying to figure out how to do it better the next time, because I want

00:42:59

them to pick that up.

00:43:01

And if dad's not willing to do that, why on earth would they be willing to do that?

00:43:06

It requires eating a little bit of humble pie more than I care.

00:43:11

But I'll eat the humble pie if it means that my kids are going to learn how to deal with

00:43:17

mistakes that they make because guess what?

00:43:20

We all make mistakes regularly, whether we admit it or not.

00:43:24

The main difference is how do you respond to that?

00:43:27

So that's the piece that I want to make sure that I'm enacting.

00:43:31

And that's just acknowledge when I'm making a mistake, be okay with that, learn to be

00:43:34

comfortable with that process to go back to a previous chapter, but also trying to help

00:43:40

my kids learn that as well.

00:43:42

Yeah, I like the example you shared of calling it out in front of your kids.

00:43:50

One of the more powerful things I think you can do as a parent is to gather your kids

00:43:56

together and in front of them, admit you were wrong and ask for forgiveness.

00:44:01

I hate that.

00:44:02

I hate that so much.

00:44:03

I do it and it's necessary.

00:44:05

I just hate doing it.

00:44:07

Yep.

00:44:08

Yep.

00:44:09

But it's also, I don't know, I mean, I do it too, but I remember the first time that

00:44:13

I did it, it doesn't feel natural.

00:44:15

I don't think that's the default for a lot of families, but that's the thing that builds

00:44:20

trust in your kids.

00:44:22

This is not the family parenting podcast.

00:44:25

I got a different one for that, but it's really, it's really important.

00:44:30

And I think at the root of that is kind of what you were alluding to there, the whole

00:44:37

chapter is the imperfectionist, right?

00:44:38

So as a parent, the default is to just, well, I know this stuff.

00:44:44

And you don't ever say it this way, but the message that gets communicated is that mom

00:44:49

and dad are perfect.

00:44:50

And that's not necessarily the case.

00:44:53

Well, it isn't the case.

00:44:54

And so let's be real here.

00:44:56

And what that does is it brings trust with everyone in the family because you're being

00:45:00

authentic and you're willing to hold yourself to the same standard that you're holding your

00:45:05

kids to.

00:45:07

So kudos to you for that.

00:45:09

All right.

00:45:10

Part two is structures for motivation.

00:45:15

And again, three chapters or three chapters in each one of these parts.

00:45:19

It is perfectly balanced.

00:45:22

Chapter four is transforming the daily grind.

00:45:24

And actually I should say before we get to the chapter four, each one of these parts

00:45:28

has a couple pages that goes along with it that does a good job of summarizing the part.

00:45:35

That completely breaks my mind node though.

00:45:37

So I don't take notes on sections.

00:45:41

You know, with pen and paper, you can just add a different section.

00:45:44

It's okay.

00:45:45

It's true.

00:45:46

It's true.

00:45:47

But most of the time, and with this one specifically because Adam Graham is a really good writer,

00:45:52

there's probably some stuff and even shares like snippets of stories that don't appear

00:45:55

in the chapters, but I'm not capturing all the stories anyways.

00:45:58

And the ones that he really spends a lot of time with, those are the ones that all,

00:46:03

all capture or the ones that really resonate because the goal here is to understand, going

00:46:07

back to how to read a book by Mortimer Adler.

00:46:09

There it is.

00:46:10

Ding the bell.

00:46:12

We want to understand what the author is saying and then decide what we're going to do with

00:46:16

it.

00:46:17

So I find those like little introductory sections for the parts, not as necessary as the chapters

00:46:23

themselves.

00:46:24

It's my rationale.

00:46:25

Anyway, it's chapter four transforming the daily grind.

00:46:28

This one's about habits.

00:46:29

Woo hoo.

00:46:30

Habits and routines really, there's definitely elements of James Clear's atomic habits here,

00:46:37

although I don't think he's really tackling it from the same direction.

00:46:41

But really what he's saying in this chapter is to learn to love the process and that the

00:46:47

best way to learn is to translate that daily grind into a source of daily joy.

00:46:52

And I have long shared this whenever I do like my webinars or create courses on habits,

00:46:59

stuff like that, that your preferences can change.

00:47:03

So when I first started going to the gym, I hated it.

00:47:06

No, it doesn't feel good to start working out, but then after you've done it enough,

00:47:11

after the workout, you feel good, you feel energized.

00:47:15

And so that feeling becomes the one that my mind attaches to.

00:47:19

And when I don't work out now, I feel off.

00:47:22

It feels a little bit uncomfortable because I haven't gotten to that end state.

00:47:30

And so I went from hating, working out, hating, running to loving, working out, loving, running.

00:47:36

But it wasn't a simple process.

00:47:38

It wasn't just telling my brain, okay, now you're going to like this thing.

00:47:42

But if you stick with it long enough, you can actually learn to love the process.

00:47:49

So here's a bunch of stuff in here that talks about the musicians in this part and how

00:47:54

leap musicians are rarely driven by obsessive compulsion.

00:47:58

And that kind of makes sense why Yo-Yo Ma is on the blurb there.

00:48:05

It makes an important distinction in this chapter about the difference between burnout

00:48:09

and bore out, which I think this is worth the price of the book alone, just understand

00:48:14

this.

00:48:15

Burnout is the emotional exhaustion that accumulates when you're overloaded.

00:48:18

The bore out is the emotional deadening you feel when you're understimulated.

00:48:22

So these are two ends of the spectrum, flows in the middle.

00:48:27

And I feel like the natural tendency for a lot of people is to at least my personality,

00:48:34

go real hard, burnout, and then go do nothing.

00:48:38

And so that's going to lead to the bore out.

00:48:39

And I feel like I've been in that place too.

00:48:41

And you get to that point and you're like, what the heck?

00:48:43

I thought this was going to make me feel better because I'm not burned out anymore.

00:48:48

But I feel like the real approach here, the aha moment for me from reading this chapter,

00:48:54

is you have to balance these two.

00:48:56

So rest in relaxation is in a waste of time.

00:48:59

It's an investment in the well-being.

00:49:01

You got to find the margin.

00:49:02

I'm just hitting all those books that we've read.

00:49:06

But you got to be careful not to go too far to one end or the other.

00:49:12

I think there is a, you know, in this particular section he's talking about this daily grind,

00:49:17

and there's a story about Steph Curry in here about a game that he plays with himself.

00:49:24

21, where he's trying to score 21 points in less than a minute.

00:49:30

But now for Steph Curry, that would just mean just hit seven threes and you're done.

00:49:35

And he could do that in probably 20 seconds.

00:49:37

But the kicker with that is that he has to run to mid court and back every time he makes a shot.

00:49:44

So it means that he has to hustle.

00:49:48

So it turns the process of practice into a game that wears him out, forces him to make

00:49:53

shots under stress and doesn't just let him take shots under easy situations.

00:49:59

And that's why he's become one of the many reasons why he's become such a great shooter.

00:50:04

So that process, that process of taking something that you're going to do as practice and turning

00:50:12

it into a game and to play.

00:50:14

It's something you're going to already do, but if you can make it into a game or, you know,

00:50:18

something you enjoy doing, that that certainly helps the process.

00:50:22

I don't really know how to apply this one personally.

00:50:26

You know, I think about things like running sound, like, how do I get better at that and

00:50:29

how do I turn that into a game?

00:50:31

I'm not really sure what that means.

00:50:33

So it's something that I want to explore.

00:50:35

I don't really have an action item around that.

00:50:37

It's just something to keep in mind, I think.

00:50:39

Just be aware of it.

00:50:40

But again, I haven't quite figured out what to do with it.

00:50:43

It sounds really cool, though.

00:50:46

Think the game is to get it as loud as you can until people complain.

00:50:51

I do that already.

00:50:53

That's simple.

00:50:54

I ran across this is so church services running sound, right?

00:50:58

I ran across a meme or it wasn't a meme.

00:51:00

It was an interview.

00:51:01

It was like a panel.

00:51:02

And the question was how loud is too loud on a Sunday morning?

00:51:08

And the guy, one of the first guys who's like, he like quick grabbed the microphone.

00:51:11

He's like, more subs, more salvations.

00:51:13

That was his immediate response.

00:51:16

I could get on board with that.

00:51:20

That's funny.

00:51:22

All right.

00:51:24

Next chapter five is getting unstuck.

00:51:29

And the story here is about a knuckleball pitcher named R.A.

00:51:36

Dickey.

00:51:37

This was a really fascinating story because R.A. Dickey was one of the big prospects and

00:51:45

everyone thought he was going to be amazing until someone noticed that his arm hung a

00:51:48

little bit weird and he was missing a ligament or a tendon or something.

00:51:53

So he was never going to be able to get all of the velocity that he needed to throw the

00:51:59

standard pitches.

00:52:01

And so he tried to figure out new ways of doing things and he came across this pitch called

00:52:08

knuckleball.

00:52:09

He's like, I'll try to do that.

00:52:10

But there was nobody out there who could teach him how to do it.

00:52:14

So he was trying to find as many coaches or guides as he could.

00:52:20

Ended up talking to Tim Wakefield, which was an opposing pitcher.

00:52:23

And he was the one other guy who actually knew how to throw the pitch at the time.

00:52:28

And he just kind of like went and gleaned whatever he could from whoever he could, whenever

00:52:34

he could.

00:52:36

And that is to illustrate the point that he's making here that sometimes you don't really

00:52:42

know what the next thing to do is.

00:52:45

And really what you need, he says to start moving, you don't need a map.

00:52:49

All you need is a compass.

00:52:51

And this is something I say all the time.

00:52:54

I actually have a slide that says that in the life theme cohort, you don't need a blueprint.

00:53:01

You need a compass.

00:53:03

And the tendency is, well, we got to have it all figured out and we have this big project

00:53:06

and we're just going to knock this out piece by piece.

00:53:08

But really, you just need to know what the next step is.

00:53:13

And when you're looking to figure out what the next step is, don't necessarily go to

00:53:18

the experts because in this chapter he talks about how if you are taking a new road, the

00:53:24

best experts often make the worst guides.

00:53:28

So you need someone who has that same mindset and is able to figure this out.

00:53:33

And likewise, if you're going to try to help somebody else out, you can't just like tell

00:53:36

them, well, this is exactly what you need to do.

00:53:38

They need to walk the path themselves.

00:53:40

So you have to, he used this illustration of dropping these pins for them to pick up and

00:53:45

put on their own map, which I thought was a very cool visual.

00:53:49

To go back to the story about all right, Dickie, you know, he had all the experts, like he

00:53:54

had all of the big name, like pitching coaches, but they couldn't help him learn to throw

00:54:02

the knuckleball because that was such an odd pitch that they didn't know how to do that.

00:54:08

You want to throw a fastball, you want to throw a curveball, you want to throw a slider?

00:54:11

Sure, they're all in.

00:54:12

Like they can show you how to do that.

00:54:15

And depending on your ability will dictate how well you can execute those pitches.

00:54:19

The knuckleball, that's not a normal pitch.

00:54:23

So your standard pitching professionals can't help you with that.

00:54:27

So you have to go outside the norm.

00:54:29

That's where like creating your own guidebook scenario comes in.

00:54:32

It's like, okay, well, if you're going to do something that's not normal, you got to

00:54:35

find the few people out there that have had some success and follow them.

00:54:41

Because like for example, RA, his pitching coach, it's like, well, if you're going to

00:54:45

throw the knuckleball, it's a slower pitch.

00:54:47

It's around 60 miles an hour.

00:54:48

Now, if you know baseball, fastballs are in the 90s.

00:54:52

These are fast pitches.

00:54:54

And the knuckleball is not because it's just harder to throw.

00:54:58

But he found out through talking to three or four different people, he was like, well,

00:55:03

you need to come down through the center of your body.

00:55:04

You need to throw your hips forward.

00:55:06

You need to all these things.

00:55:07

Well, he was incorporating all these different things that he learned from this person and

00:55:10

then this person put it all together.

00:55:12

And his knuckleball was around 80 miles an hour, not 60.

00:55:16

So it was just a lot faster than what people were expecting.

00:55:20

Now the thought, you know, having grown up playing little league, like the concept of

00:55:24

hitting a knuckleball moving at 80 miles an hour, like you've got to be kidding me.

00:55:28

Like, no, that's not happening.

00:55:30

Hitting a fastball at 80 miles an hour is hard enough.

00:55:32

Well, if you throw it right, that's the hard part.

00:55:36

The reason it was successful at 60 is it's such a break and you're, if you can get them

00:55:41

to think you're throwing a fastball and then throw a knuckleball at 60, you're behind.

00:55:45

And so the hitter's on there at their heels.

00:55:48

But if you mess up and your knuckleball isn't dancing at 80 miles an hour, there's enough

00:55:52

time in the big leagues for them to adjust and they just smoke it, which is why he has

00:55:57

the record for the most home runs given up or something like that.

00:56:01

But he didn't let it discourage him.

00:56:02

So yeah, I want to say it was six home runs in a game on one pitcher.

00:56:06

Like that's, that's a bad day.

00:56:08

Yep.

00:56:09

But you're going to have those bad days, especially if you're trying to learn something, something

00:56:14

new and it doesn't just all of a sudden click and then it's easy.

00:56:19

Talks in this chapter about how a sense of progress doesn't require those huge gains.

00:56:24

Fuel can come from the small wins and progress is really noticeable in a single snapshot

00:56:28

in time.

00:56:30

So that actually leads into the next chapter real well.

00:56:33

So let's go there next.

00:56:35

The sixth chapter is Defying Gravity.

00:56:39

And the reason that this ties in so well is that on page 147 he talks about how making

00:56:43

progress isn't always about moving forward.

00:56:47

Sometimes it's about bouncing back.

00:56:49

So yeah, you want to continue to make those small gains, but eventually you might hit

00:56:52

a wall and you got to try something completely different.

00:56:57

And yeah, that really, so that's the connection there.

00:57:01

But then the rest of the chapter is about teaching versus coaching, essentially.

00:57:07

He talks about the, he's got these two circles of Venn diagram about teaching versus coaching.

00:57:15

Teaching others builds our competence, but coaching others builds our confidence.

00:57:20

So and this kind of resonates because convert, you know, teach everything that you know.

00:57:25

And that's like great advice that I've heard and applied myself.

00:57:29

When you create something, you try to teach something.

00:57:30

You're not trying to teach everybody and show what a master you are, but you're just

00:57:34

going to try to find somebody who is on the same path as you, but not quite at the level

00:57:39

that you're at.

00:57:40

Like basically they say, right for you from two years ago, that sort of thing.

00:57:44

But the best way to learn something is to teach it.

00:57:47

So I think we should all be looking for ways to do this when you got kids.

00:57:51

It's easy as long as you take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you.

00:57:55

There's always opportunities to teach and to coach.

00:57:59

And then the other thing that kind of goes along with this is that it's more motivating

00:58:02

to be a giver than a receiver.

00:58:05

And that kind of reminded me of Arthur Brooks and the second mountain.

00:58:09

You just had a conversation with somebody about that the other day, that if your vision

00:58:13

doesn't include other people, then it's too small.

00:58:17

And then the other thing that I jotted down from this chapter, which is kind of an outlier,

00:58:22

but something I thought was interesting called the Golem effect, when others underestimate

00:58:27

us, it limits our effort and our growth.

00:58:30

I never really thought about that before.

00:58:33

And that's not really when I read that it wasn't about like where have others underestimated

00:58:38

me, but really it was just kind of an encouragement.

00:58:41

Don't underestimate other people.

00:58:43

Put them in positions where it is going to stretch them and maybe they are going to fail,

00:58:47

but that failure doesn't have to be fatal, doesn't have to be the destruction of the

00:58:52

dream.

00:58:53

It's a necessary part of the learning process.

00:58:56

So really just as I'm coaching and then even as a parent, don't underestimate your kids,

00:59:03

don't underestimate the players on the team.

00:59:07

Because I never really thought about it that way, but I don't want to be the person who

00:59:11

holds someone back from doing something great just because I don't see the potential in

00:59:16

them.

00:59:19

This is the chapter where Carol Dweck is brought up with the growth mindset.

00:59:23

I don't know if you have notes on this, but it's where he mentions that because they're

00:59:28

colleagues, if I remember it, no, no, they're not.

00:59:31

That was Angela Duckworth is a colleague of his.

00:59:35

Anyway, Carol Dweck, I guess according to him has recently demonstrated, to use his

00:59:40

words, has recently demonstrated that a growth mindset alone does little good without scaffolding

00:59:46

to support it.

00:59:47

I thought that was interesting that Carol Dweck, who's like the one who's, who everybody

00:59:53

mentions when it comes to growth mindset, of course, has some of the research to say

00:59:59

that, you know, if you have a growth mindset, that's great.

01:00:03

That doesn't naturally mean that you're going to become an expert in a field, become a professional,

01:00:11

become great.

01:00:13

It doesn't mean that.

01:00:14

You have to have the scaffolding, the support structures and the drive around that to take

01:00:20

advantage of it, to continue to push that and continue to learn, which once you say it

01:00:27

out loud, it's obvious.

01:00:31

To have a little bit of the science behind it to support that, I think is helpful.

01:00:35

I did think it was interesting that he at least called that out.

01:00:38

It was a very quick, like, two-sentence thing, but he at least did call it out.

01:00:42

Yeah.

01:00:45

I missed the, this was the part with the mindset stuff, but it totally makes sense.

01:00:53

I guess I didn't jot that down just because we have a whole other book on that particular

01:00:57

topic.

01:00:58

When you've done an entire episode on a book, you don't tend to write the little note down

01:01:02

about it.

01:01:03

That's a two-sentence thing.

01:01:04

Yes, I get it.

01:01:05

But the larger point there and the encouragement for people is that when you're reading these

01:01:09

books, take notes on the things that resonate.

01:01:12

Don't try to recapture the whole structure of the book and recreate everything that

01:01:16

the author has said.

01:01:17

I used to do that with my book notes when we started the podcast and it was really stressful.

01:01:23

Yes.

01:01:24

It's a lot about that anymore.

01:01:26

All right.

01:01:27

Let's go to part three.

01:01:30

And part three is titled System of Opportunity.

01:01:36

And chapter seven is Every Child Gets Ahead.

01:01:41

Now the story that is associated with this is Finland's rise in standardized test scores

01:01:50

compared to other countries and kind of how shocking that was because most of, most people

01:01:58

believe that it was going to be the Asian countries that did the best and the Scandinavian

01:02:04

countries typically didn't perform very well.

01:02:09

And all of a sudden, Finland is just shooting up the charts and people are like, "Well,

01:02:14

what's going on here?"

01:02:16

And essentially what it was was their commitment to invest in every child and they had this

01:02:21

saying which I really don't waste a brain.

01:02:24

And there's a lot of specifics about why it worked and why it didn't work and other countries

01:02:30

that try to copy it and why it stopped working.

01:02:33

Yada, yada, yada.

01:02:34

I don't have a whole lot of notes actually from this particular section because the one

01:02:39

thing that really stands out to me from this was the looping that they did where they have

01:02:45

the same teacher for multiple years in a row which led to higher math and reading skills

01:02:52

because the teachers that were in those looping classrooms could specialize in the student

01:02:56

not just in the subject.

01:02:59

It made me think like when they was talking about that, I was like, "Yeah, that makes a

01:03:03

lot of sense.

01:03:04

Why don't we do that in the US?"

01:03:06

Well we homeschool so we loop the whole way through but it made sense to me that that

01:03:13

would be a difficult thing to just completely change classrooms every single year and then

01:03:20

talks about how the high school students in the US have depression and anxiety rates which

01:03:24

are three to seven times above the national norms.

01:03:28

And yeah, it's a stressful environment.

01:03:32

So I don't know, I think there's not a whole lot of specific action to be taken from this

01:03:38

unless you're going to choose to homeschool and craft your own school, I guess.

01:03:44

Maybe you have some conversations with people at your PTA conferences and stuff like that

01:03:48

but I don't know, it kind of is what it is at this point.

01:03:52

So this chapter, I actually didn't like this one all that much.

01:03:55

It felt a little bit like that Ken Robinson book that we read and just sort of an indictment

01:04:03

about like who's everything that's wrong with the traditional school system which I'm

01:04:07

like, "Yeah, I guess I agree with that but it's not a fun section to read."

01:04:12

Yeah, the looping thing was fascinating and it makes sense.

01:04:19

If you're a homeschooler, this immediately resonates because in at least in our case,

01:04:25

I know that when you get to year two, you already know your students and what their

01:04:32

strengths and weaknesses are.

01:04:34

Like you already know that, you know their personality, you know what helps them learn

01:04:38

the best and you can then apply that into this new material.

01:04:42

So each year that goes on, you learn more about how they learn and you know where they're

01:04:45

progressing but you also know three years ago they struggled with this concept.

01:04:49

So now they're probably going to need this particular method because this particular

01:04:54

method worked when we had this issue three years ago.

01:04:58

You have some of that that can happen.

01:05:00

I don't know how you replicate that in a standard United States school system.

01:05:07

I just don't know how you, like you'd have to have ridiculous amounts of notes about

01:05:11

a student and the teachers would have to spend way more time than necessarily reading those

01:05:16

notes to get caught up at the beginning of the year.

01:05:19

So it just seems like that would be a huge undertaking to get that done instead of trying

01:05:24

to like cookie cutter everything.

01:05:26

So it's a fascinating concept.

01:05:28

Obviously it works seeing Finland's scores.

01:05:32

So it's worth exploring I think but that's coming from a homeschooler who will tell you

01:05:37

to homeschool.

01:05:38

Well, he even says that he talks about kind of how Finland got to that point and it was

01:05:44

a national undertaking like we're going to do this different.

01:05:49

So that sort of revolutionary change is not easy.

01:05:52

So it's kind of like, what do I do with this other than homeschool?

01:05:57

I don't know.

01:05:59

Yes.

01:06:00

All right, let's go to the next chapter which is mining for gold.

01:06:07

This one kind of talks about how the best teams aren't necessarily composed of the smartest

01:06:15

individuals and this kind of gets into teams in an organizational setting.

01:06:23

That's kind of the tone here.

01:06:26

And there's lots of things in here which made me think about my time at the marketing agency.

01:06:33

There's definitely some concepts here that people should look to apply in those particular

01:06:38

those types of settings.

01:06:40

So one of the things they talks about is that icebreakers and ropes courses can build

01:06:44

camaraderie but they don't develop the prosocial skills which I thought was interesting.

01:06:49

So basically they can develop a connection amongst the people on your team but you have

01:06:55

to teach them the prosocial skills in other ways.

01:07:02

And that's not necessarily easy.

01:07:06

He also kind of addresses the myths around brainstorming and collective intelligence

01:07:14

mentions that we actually generate ideas better when we do that individually.

01:07:19

The better use of collective intelligence is brain writing.

01:07:22

He calls it where you develop those best ideas together.

01:07:26

I've definitely seen that myself.

01:07:30

And then he introduces the term psychological safety which this was something that came

01:07:34

up quite a bit in the company that I was with which is the environment where people can

01:07:40

speak up.

01:07:42

So like this whole section is kind of like a mini HR manual.

01:07:50

However, just knowing about this stuff is totally different than actually being able

01:07:55

to apply it.

01:07:58

He talks about how it's easy for managers to find reasons to say no kind of based on

01:08:03

that ladder system.

01:08:05

And you can have managers, you can have leadership teams, you can have people in positions where

01:08:12

they're making these decisions and they understand the concept of psychological safety but that

01:08:18

doesn't necessarily mean that they can implement it.

01:08:22

So I don't know.

01:08:25

What this chapter did for me is kind of tee up all of the other business books that I've

01:08:31

read about building great teams and like the scaling ups and the pinnacle and all that

01:08:35

kind of stuff which that is the kind of stuff that I really enjoy doing.

01:08:41

So obviously this chapter didn't go deep enough for me.

01:08:45

But I did like what he had to say about some of this stuff in particular the babble effect.

01:08:50

So if there's one takeaway I think from this chapter for people who are trying to get more

01:08:54

out of their professional teams, it would be don't give into the babble effect which

01:08:58

is choosing the people who talk the most when picking leaders.

01:09:03

That requires a whole nother set of criteria in order to pick those people which was part

01:09:08

of my job when I was at the day job was setting up those systems and revamping the hiring

01:09:13

systems and things like that.

01:09:16

But this is the default like this is what will happen if you aren't careful and you

01:09:20

aren't working against this.

01:09:22

But you have to have a vision for what that alternate system is going to look like and

01:09:27

who you're trying to select for those different positions.

01:09:31

If you just go with the person who appears to be the best fit, you're going to have the

01:09:35

wrong people in the wrong spots.

01:09:38

I have some flashbacks of corporate brainstorming sessions.

01:09:43

Those are fun.

01:09:45

It's one of those where like I can come up with ideas quick but you won't when you get

01:09:51

immediate feedback that's negative towards those.

01:09:55

But you never know when one of those really bad ideas triggers a really good idea in somebody

01:10:00

else.

01:10:01

That's the problem with that scenario where you're just constantly giving all of that.

01:10:05

You can find some way to use like some of how he explains this where you can have your

01:10:11

idea generation process be independent of the entire group do it ahead of time and then

01:10:19

come together to discuss which ones people liked the most.

01:10:23

You're technically doing the same thing.

01:10:26

You're coming up with a whole bunch of ideas and then giving feedback on them.

01:10:29

But because it's put together in like a collaborative list, even you can even I've done this before.

01:10:37

I do it to where it's anonymous where you actually don't know who came up with the idea.

01:10:42

But it may trigger something in someone else.

01:10:44

I don't know how many times I can count many times where I've done this when somebody puts

01:10:50

something on the list and either it triggered something means like it was a terrible idea.

01:10:53

But at least got us to the right answer time it was done.

01:10:59

That's huge, but many, many, many places don't do it that way.

01:11:03

And it's kind of counter cultural in the corporate world for sure.

01:11:07

Probably even still today.

01:11:08

I don't really know.

01:11:09

I don't work in that world.

01:11:10

I don't want to work in that world.

01:11:11

But if you do, I'm guessing that you don't do it this way.

01:11:14

I just don't see that overtaking the general population anytime soon.

01:11:19

Yeah.

01:11:20

All right, chapter nine is diamonds in the rough.

01:11:26

And this is kind of the hiring chapter, I guess.

01:11:31

Yeah.

01:11:32

Many organizational processes neglect individuals, potentials.

01:11:36

And that is because of the processes that they use for hiring.

01:11:42

If you think about how most people hire, it's actually pretty stupid.

01:11:48

Now one of the things that I added into our hiring process, which I feel like made it

01:11:53

much more effective is we didn't just do a skills test, which he talks about work samples

01:11:59

and things like that.

01:12:00

Those are great.

01:12:01

I'm not negating the value of those, but I feel like the emotional intelligence aspect

01:12:06

or the soft skills aspect of this, which there's a whole interesting story behind that term

01:12:09

soft skills in here too.

01:12:11

I don't think it was in this chapter, but I think, but he does talk about how soft skills

01:12:16

were used to define the skills in the military that weren't the firing of the guns.

01:12:22

So those were the metal things, the metal objects, the hard skills, everything else that wasn't

01:12:27

that was considered soft skills.

01:12:30

I don't know if I believe that that's where that term actually came from, but it's a cool

01:12:35

story anyways.

01:12:37

Regardless, those are the things that really make the difference.

01:12:41

And so the family business, we've actually got assessment and skill building tools that

01:12:46

help people identify their soft skills and develop them.

01:12:51

And they can be developed.

01:12:53

It's not just your IQ, you're born with it, whatever.

01:12:58

These are things that can be developed just like he's talking about throughout this book.

01:13:03

So any hiring process that doesn't take into consideration, those types of skills, I feel

01:13:08

like is a flawed hiring process.

01:13:09

Now they're hard to measure, but it can be done.

01:13:13

And so a little disappointed that he didn't really talk about that part of the process.

01:13:18

He does share the story about the guy who eventually became an astronaut and how that

01:13:22

particular process wasn't the type of process that was going to highlight the skills that

01:13:29

were really going to make him a great astronaut.

01:13:33

But also I've seen that applied in other companies and organizations as well.

01:13:39

So we need to rethink this whole thing.

01:13:41

And kind of like chapter seven, I don't know that you're going to just walk in and be like,

01:13:44

hey people, here's the right way to do it.

01:13:46

And they're just going to fall in line.

01:13:48

It's not going to be that simple.

01:13:50

But step one is obviously recognizing the flaws with the current system.

01:13:54

One of the biggest flaws is the Peter principle, which is that people at work, Tinnigah, promoted

01:14:00

to a level of incompetence.

01:14:01

This makes total sense.

01:14:02

Like I've seen this all the time in the startup world specifically because you've got people

01:14:07

who are coders and developers and then they are good at their job.

01:14:10

So what happens?

01:14:11

They get promoted.

01:14:12

They're a manager now and they don't like managing people.

01:14:14

So I just want to go back to doing what I was doing.

01:14:18

But that's not just in Silicon Valley.

01:14:21

That is the default path.

01:14:23

So we should be looking for something a little bit different.

01:14:27

One of the things he kind of points out here is that when you are in the hiring process

01:14:32

or when you're hunting for people looking for their learning ability is a huge deal.

01:14:39

And he told the story, I think it was him that was in a job interview and he mentioned

01:14:44

something about magic.

01:14:45

And he ended up doing some card tricks for the hiring person.

01:14:49

The Harvard, yeah.

01:14:50

Is that Harvard?

01:14:51

Is that what it was?

01:14:52

Yeah, he was trying to get into Harvard and he didn't think he had a chance.

01:14:56

That's what it was.

01:14:57

So he was asked, like, how did you learn to do these tricks?

01:15:01

And he was like, well, I saw a magician do it and I try to figure out how he did it.

01:15:05

Kind of made it up my own way of doing it, read a little bit, found this, found that,

01:15:09

talked to this person and ended up doing this impromptu card trick performance for this

01:15:15

person.

01:15:17

And ended up getting in as a result of that because he realized this guy can learn.

01:15:23

He knows how to learn.

01:15:25

And that's a big deal.

01:15:27

Like, that's a very important aspect when it comes to finding people because of folks.

01:15:33

So like, that's just who I am.

01:15:34

Like, you're not going to change who I am.

01:15:35

Like, if somebody says that, you immediately know they're not someone who's willing to

01:15:40

learn and get better at something, they're just going to be stuck in their ways.

01:15:44

And in some ways, being stuck in your ways is okay, but there are many situations where

01:15:50

you're going to have to compromise flex and learn to improve.

01:15:55

And that's the component of finding someone that you're going to, I guess, put a lot more

01:16:00

emphasis on.

01:16:01

They may not necessarily have the skills right now.

01:16:04

Thus, the title of this diamond and the rough.

01:16:06

And so you're going to be trying to find somebody that can work their way into that

01:16:11

role.

01:16:12

Yeah, that actually sets up the epilogue perfectly.

01:16:15

So let's go there.

01:16:16

That may actually even be where that story comes from.

01:16:22

But it definitely is an extension of chapter nine because in the epilogue, that's really

01:16:29

where he's sharing a lot of his personal story.

01:16:33

And I remember that story about wanting to get into Harvard, he went to the interview,

01:16:38

he grabbed a box.

01:16:40

He says at the beginning of the story and stuck it in his pocket.

01:16:43

And then it's not until the end that he reveals what that box was.

01:16:47

It was the deck of cards and he was showing them some tricks.

01:16:50

But that interviewer also, like that interview was supposed to be an hour, he finds out afterwards

01:16:54

and it was three hours and he didn't really think anything of it.

01:16:58

That interviewer though, I was impressed with, and he kind of calls this out, but that is

01:17:04

really brilliant of that interviewer to not ask, how did you do that?

01:17:09

But how did you learn to do that?

01:17:12

That's the thing with interviews specifically is you can't just walk into it with a big list

01:17:19

of questions, you have to feel it out.

01:17:22

It has to be a live conversation.

01:17:24

You have to riff off of each other.

01:17:26

It's kind of like improv in a way.

01:17:28

And he talks about that actually at some point in this book too about comedians and

01:17:32

stuff like that.

01:17:34

So Adam Grant basically was not, he is the diamond in the rough.

01:17:40

He is the guy with the hidden potential, which is an epilogue, I feel like this is a really

01:17:44

effective way to wrap this all up because he's basically saying like, if I could do this,

01:17:48

you could do this because he not only gets into Harvard, then it's like he takes the

01:17:52

writing test and he fails it and they're like, well, you should take this remedial writing

01:17:55

class and he goes out and he asks advice from all these people, tracks down the guy who

01:18:02

interviewed him and he's like, why did you recommend that I get into Harvard?

01:18:07

And he's like, well, because I saw this in you and then he asks him, should I take this

01:18:11

class?

01:18:12

And he's like, well, it's up to you.

01:18:13

But if you take the big class, the hard one, you're going to have to learn to learn that's

01:18:19

going to benefit you in the long run, basically.

01:18:21

This is what I saw in you.

01:18:22

And so Adam Grant pieces this all together and he's like, yeah, it's going to be hard,

01:18:25

but I'll just do it.

01:18:26

He ends up getting the only A in the class.

01:18:29

And the rest, as they say, is history.

01:18:32

He does talk about how when he started to write a book, he wrote over 100,000 words,

01:18:37

got some feedback on it and basically it was boring.

01:18:40

So he threw it all out except for like four pages he said, and then wrote it all again.

01:18:45

And that's part of the process.

01:18:48

But the things that I jotted down from this last couple pages in the epilogue here that

01:18:53

really stood out to me are that people with bigger dreams go on to achieve greater things.

01:18:59

So it is important to think big and then you don't fail because of a lack of ability you

01:19:03

fail if you don't learn and grow.

01:19:05

And then he talks about the difference between imposter syndrome and growth mindset, which

01:19:09

this I feel is also very helpful.

01:19:14

Imposter syndrome is I don't know what I'm doing.

01:19:16

It's only matter of time until everyone finds out.

01:19:18

Growth mindset is I don't know what I'm doing yet.

01:19:20

It's only matter of time until I figure it out.

01:19:23

And he shares how imposter syndrome is actually a paradox.

01:19:27

Others believe in you, but you don't believe in yourself yet you believe yourself instead

01:19:31

of them.

01:19:33

And I was like, Adam Grant, you see me.

01:19:38

That whole imposter syndrome stuff, like he's got a, there's a little cartoon in the back

01:19:43

where someone says, nice job or well done.

01:19:46

I forget what the phrase is.

01:19:47

But he's like, you have to say that you're my family.

01:19:50

And then the next one is nice job.

01:19:51

It's like, well, you have to say that you're my friends.

01:19:55

Nice job.

01:19:56

Well, you have to say that you don't know me.

01:19:58

Like, okay.

01:19:59

Well, then at what point do you accept the compliment?

01:20:04

At what point do you actually know what you're doing?

01:20:06

That was kind of the core takeaway from the epilogue that has like, okay, everybody's

01:20:11

on a journey of trying to figure out what to do.

01:20:14

So where is that line that you're going to cross where you are someone who knows what

01:20:20

they're doing?

01:20:22

Like never.

01:20:23

So you need to come to grips with that and just know that there's always somebody better

01:20:28

than you, but there are also people who are not as far along as you.

01:20:34

So you need to be aware of both sides of that spectrum.

01:20:37

Yeah.

01:20:38

And then the big ending with this, I guess, is it feels like is page 233, there's a quote.

01:20:45

It feels like others are overestimating you, but it's more likely that you're underestimating

01:20:50

yourself guilty.

01:20:52

And then he says that success is more than reaching our goals.

01:20:55

It's living our values.

01:20:57

And that is essentially what Rachel and I are teaching in the lightning cohort.

01:21:02

So I love that part.

01:21:04

But I feel like just the way he wraps this all up is kind of perfect.

01:21:07

I don't think there's a better ending to a book that I have come across.

01:21:13

This one just was very, very well done.

01:21:17

He did nail it.

01:21:18

I will say that.

01:21:19

Yeah.

01:21:20

Very well done Adam Grant.

01:21:21

All right.

01:21:22

And then after this, there's like different action items that you can take, but I don't

01:21:28

think that's really worth going through.

01:21:32

But essentially he's got like all these lists for all the different chapters that go along

01:21:37

with this.

01:21:39

And I think it's a good reference, but you and I can come up with our own action items

01:21:44

and I think the book or audience is smart enough to do so also.

01:21:49

But I think it's a cool addition.

01:21:50

I wish more books would would do that.

01:21:54

All right.

01:21:55

I guess that's it then.

01:21:57

Should we go to action items?

01:21:59

We should.

01:22:00

All right.

01:22:02

So I've got the one that I mentioned previously, which is an aspirational one.

01:22:10

And that's just to ask for advice, not for feedback.

01:22:15

And I intend to do that tactically.

01:22:18

I'm not going to do that with every rush draft that I make.

01:22:21

But when I am sharing something that I am going to release with people who I trust, that

01:22:29

is going to be the approach that I take.

01:22:32

So I don't know if that's actually going to get done done before next time, but it's

01:22:36

going to be one of those things that kind of influences my perspective.

01:22:40

I do have another action item though, which doesn't come from any of the content in the

01:22:44

book itself, but he actually has a quiz that he mentions after the epilogue.

01:22:53

Did you see that in yours?

01:22:55

I did.

01:22:56

Which is why I wrote it down as well.

01:22:58

Was it in the acknowledgments?

01:23:00

Is that where it was?

01:23:01

Maybe, but there's a website, I think it's just anagram.com, but I don't remember what

01:23:07

exactly it was.

01:23:08

I am an enthusiast of assessments, shall we say.

01:23:15

So I know this is going to be more of a quiz, not an assessment, but I am interested to see

01:23:20

how he put this together.

01:23:21

And I am going to take that before next time.

01:23:23

Yeah, I'm going to find it.

01:23:26

It's in here somewhere.

01:23:27

Yes, that was the one action item I had as well.

01:23:29

I was running through the...

01:23:30

It was somewhere right after that.

01:23:33

Gosh, it's going to bug me, but you're right, it's towards the back.

01:23:36

Anyway, I want to do that as well, because I know that Adam, based on what I've seen

01:23:41

here, has done a lot of research, knows what he's doing with this.

01:23:44

So I want to go through that because I want to know.

01:23:46

I want to know the answers.

01:23:49

All right.

01:23:52

So style and rating.

01:23:54

My book.

01:23:55

So I'll go first.

01:23:57

I really enjoyed this book.

01:24:00

I think it is really well put together.

01:24:03

It definitely follows the three part structure that a lot of productivity and self-help and

01:24:10

business books tend to use.

01:24:13

However, I feel like this is maybe the best execution of it, or at least it's a very high-level

01:24:21

execution of that strategy.

01:24:24

The parts are very different.

01:24:26

They don't feel like one long narrative that could have just all been combined together.

01:24:32

It does kind of feel like three separate ideas.

01:24:36

And I like how balanced they are.

01:24:39

I like how each of them has the three different chapters, and the chapters tend to tie together.

01:24:45

But also the parts tend to kind of lead into one another.

01:24:49

So I think it's really well done.

01:24:51

And the style itself is very entertaining, I'll say, for this type of book.

01:24:57

It's kind of interesting that he talks about when he first started to write a book.

01:25:00

He got feedback that it was too academic.

01:25:03

And because I feel like he's a very, very good storyteller, he shares little snippets

01:25:10

and things here and there, which occasionally are funny.

01:25:14

And there's lots of really cool visuals.

01:25:16

I don't know if you follow Adam Grant at all on social media, but every once in a while,

01:25:21

I'll see those visuals appear via somebody else's Instagram feed.

01:25:26

I'm not really ever on Instagram, so I'm not seeking out more people to follow.

01:25:32

But I've definitely seen those visuals that he has every couple pages, which kind of just,

01:25:36

you mentioned the cartoon sort of a thing.

01:25:38

That's what they look like.

01:25:39

So they're kind of whimsical, they're kind of fun.

01:25:41

They keep it a little bit light, and they're a great addition to this book.

01:25:47

He also has some really cool charts and Venn diagrams and visual ways of explaining the

01:25:53

concepts, which I think are very effective.

01:25:57

What was a little bit surprising to me was the way that he condensed the research that

01:26:03

he did.

01:26:04

It almost feels a little bit like he's dumbing it down for us.

01:26:08

Like, oh, I read all these research reports.

01:26:11

And not only do you not have to, but here's really like the Cliff Notes version that you

01:26:16

need to know.

01:26:17

I'm not sure how I feel about that particular piece.

01:26:19

I don't think it necessarily detracts, but it is a little bit jarring because I kind

01:26:23

of expected he's a researcher.

01:26:25

He's going to share with us the research.

01:26:28

And he literally didn't do that at all.

01:26:29

He just shared the takeaways.

01:26:32

And then there's the bibliography, obviously, if you want to want to dig deeper.

01:26:37

I think that's probably the right approach.

01:26:40

But I do wish he would have gone into it a little bit more detailed in some of that stuff.

01:26:46

But it's made up for, in my opinion, by the fact that the storytelling is so well done.

01:26:54

If you're going to, there's really like two types of things that I'm really looking for

01:26:58

with these, these mind nodes in addition to like the single statements that jump out to

01:27:03

me.

01:27:04

It's the stories about events that I don't really, I haven't heard before, or the little

01:27:12

bits of research like the Roy Baumeister willpower study is the one that comes to mind because

01:27:17

that's the thing that kind of got me into the whole productivity world.

01:27:21

But like understanding that research and how willpower is limited, obviously, you got

01:27:27

to decide what you're going to do with that.

01:27:29

But I thought that was fascinating.

01:27:30

So I like that kind of stuff.

01:27:32

And that is, that's kind of missing from here.

01:27:35

However, the stories are, are great.

01:27:37

And he's a really good storyteller.

01:27:39

And it's not just, hey, I read this stuff about these people.

01:27:43

Like he went to Finland and talked to a bunch of people.

01:27:47

It feels like he's put a ton of work into this.

01:27:51

And this is sort of his life's work.

01:27:55

I don't know if that's fair because he's got several other books and, and the other

01:27:59

books are, are good too.

01:28:01

But this one is great.

01:28:03

And I'm going to write this five stars.

01:28:05

I think this is perfect for anybody who is in the bookworm audience.

01:28:10

You're going to get a lot out of this.

01:28:12

Even if you're new to bookworm, you're new to like the whole idea of the self-help nonfiction

01:28:17

personal development type books.

01:28:19

I mean, if you're going to pick a place to start, this is a great one.

01:28:22

I think it's kind of interesting.

01:28:23

I feel like I haven't really seen a whole lot of books on this topic of hidden potential

01:28:28

other than the Ra Ra, Tony Robbins, Unleash the, the giant within sort of a thing, which

01:28:34

to be fair, I haven't read, read those, those types of books because they just kind of

01:28:38

were off-putting to me.

01:28:39

But this one I really enjoyed.

01:28:41

So yeah, five stars and definitely go add this one to your bookshelf.

01:28:46

How many times in the process of recording did you say that's a great segue for going

01:28:52

into the next section?

01:28:54

How many times did that happen?

01:28:56

And that was not me.

01:28:58

I am not that good at putting together a structure for bookworm just to be clear.

01:29:03

But it's simply Adam Grant being that good of a person of putting the stories together

01:29:09

where they move on to the next section that well, he has this put together in a way like

01:29:14

he's written this in a form that is really high level, you know, to have three parts,

01:29:22

but then have three chapters in each one and then have each chapter flow into the next,

01:29:26

but each part flow into the next, start it and end it really, really well.

01:29:32

You don't run across books in the nonfiction world, in the business and self-help world,

01:29:38

especially that are this well organized from like a plot line, if you will.

01:29:45

In the fiction world, you run across it a lot because it is a storyline from start

01:29:49

to finish.

01:29:50

But I feel like Adam has taken that concept and put it into this book.

01:29:54

So he did an amazing job.

01:29:56

You can tell that he's been writing for a long time.

01:29:59

So it is absolutely something he's done to get better at.

01:30:02

So he's definitely eating his own dog food in this case and is learning how to be a

01:30:08

better writer as he's writing about learning.

01:30:11

So very meta.

01:30:13

This is probably one of my favorite books that we've covered.

01:30:17

So it's easy to say this is a five oh for me.

01:30:22

And I just love that he has put together so many of like our favorite topics, but in

01:30:28

a way that makes sense as far as like growing as a human being and becoming a better person.

01:30:34

He puts the whole concept together in a way that I don't think I could even have imagined

01:30:39

trying to come up with.

01:30:41

But we do so much of this productivity habits like making myself a better person.

01:30:46

But like we talk about that a lot on bookworm, but I don't think we've run across somebody

01:30:50

that's just taken that whole concept and packaged it like this.

01:30:54

So he did a very, very good job.

01:30:56

I don't need to keep gushing about it because you should go pick this up and read it for

01:30:59

sure.

01:31:00

But it is absolutely something that that I have loved reading.

01:31:04

And I think you were spot on and saying like this is a great place to start.

01:31:07

If you're getting into this realm of books, pick this one up, please do yourself a favor.

01:31:14

Adam Grant is a great one to start with.

01:31:16

All right.

01:31:17

Well, let's put hidden potential on the shelf.

01:31:20

What's next Joe up next is who not how this is by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

01:31:26

We've covered these authors before.

01:31:28

This was a recommendation on the club by Mark and Mark has like his own little book review

01:31:34

on it on the club.

01:31:36

So it's a little bit of a precursor to the show, I guess.

01:31:40

But anyway, I'm looking forward to it.

01:31:43

It'll be a good one.

01:31:44

Awesome.

01:31:45

I have not read this one, but I have read summaries of this when we were working with

01:31:49

the business coach.

01:31:51

This is one of those concepts that fits well with chapter eight in today's book.

01:31:59

And what's after that, Mike?

01:32:01

After that is a book that everyone in my circles is talking about called Same as Ever by Morgan

01:32:07

Housel.

01:32:08

Morgan Housel, I know him as the author of the psychology of money, but haven't actually

01:32:17

read that book.

01:32:19

And it sounds like there's also a blogger, but have never come across any literally anything

01:32:24

that Morgan Housel has written, at least that I know of.

01:32:27

However, I know several people who said that this book is amazing.

01:32:31

So it's out now.

01:32:33

Let's read that one.

01:32:35

Cool.

01:32:36

Any get books?

01:32:38

I have one I'm about done with called Live Not by Lies.

01:32:42

It's by Rod Dreher.

01:32:44

This is definitely in the Christian book world.

01:32:49

I was just going to leave it there.

01:32:51

I would say that's a very controversial book, depending on what side of the political spectrum

01:32:55

you sit on.

01:32:56

So I'll just leave that one there.

01:32:59

How about you?

01:33:00

That's fair.

01:33:01

I just ordered a book, but it has not come yet.

01:33:07

I mentioned Arthur Brooks in the second mountain earlier.

01:33:11

And Arthur Brooks has a new book out, which he co-wrote with Oprah Winfrey called Build

01:33:20

the Life You Want the Art and Science of Getting Happier.

01:33:25

And I really enjoyed the last Arthur Brooks book that we read.

01:33:28

So I have high expectations for this one.

01:33:31

I feel like this is one of those ones that could actually come back as a bookworm book

01:33:36

later, but we'll see.

01:33:39

All right.

01:33:40

I will wait with bated breath and find out.

01:33:44

Awesome.

01:33:46

Well, if you are an amazing person and you read along with us, you need to go pick up

01:33:51

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

01:33:54

And we will cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.