Bookworm Transcripts

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Welcome back to Bookworm Corey Hickson.

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Thanks for having me back.

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It's good to be a recurring guest now.

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I guess it was what you could call me.

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The most frequent Bookworm guest.

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Actually, I think you're tied with Sean Bonke.

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He was on twice before.

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Only one more.

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That's true.

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Well, I enjoyed the last conversation we had about difficult conversations.

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You were gracious enough to come back and talk to me about today's book, which is Feel Good

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Productivity.

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But before we get there, we've got a format for this show.

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We normally go back and we check in on our action items.

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I'm curious, Corey, were you able to, I suppose you're still off from the day job.

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You probably haven't had to revisit this before your next scheduled difficult conversations.

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Have you had a difficult conversation in the last two weeks?

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I have not had a difficult conversation in the nature of this book.

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From a parenting standpoint, I've had a bunch of difficult conversations.

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From the nature of this book, I haven't had one that would directly apply.

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There will probably be one or two coming up here in the near future.

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I haven't followed up on this quite yet, but I can see it coming very quickly based on

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some things that are happening.

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When that happens, I will do my best to follow up in a way that doesn't reveal too many

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details of the difficult conversation.

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Fair enough.

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My mind was to share how I was feeling without judgment.

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I feel like I have done this, but there's probably more opportunities where I could have done

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this and I didn't do it.

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I do think, though, that the mindset shift has clicked for me, where whenever I'm feeling

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frustrated and I'm trying to communicate that to somebody else, I'm trying to share.

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I'm feeling this way because this thing happened and not saying, "Because you did this."

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Yeah.

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I think if that was the only thing that I got out of that last book that we read, it probably

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would have been a worthwhile read.

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Thanks for recommending that one, Corey.

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Of course.

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I have a question for you about that.

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When you think back now and you have your whole process, you have your mind-map process,

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then you sink that down into obsidian.

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When you think back on that book, if I quizzed you, and not in terms of asking questions,

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but I said, "Could you write a one page or how confident would you be on a one page

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that actually fairly decently captures that book?

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How confident would you be?"

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I would not be confident at all, but that's also part of my personality, I think.

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I tend to over-prepare for things.

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One of the lessons that I've had to learn, especially when I occasionally get asked to

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preach at my church, is not to prepare too much because I get so locked into the format.

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I'm sure there's a little bit of residual knowledge there where I know the things, but

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I have trouble recalling them in the moment.

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If you're going to put me on the spot right now, my heart rate is already picking up a

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little bit.

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If I were to sit down and have some time and actually work through it, I'm sure that

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stuff would bubble up.

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I buy the nature of the way that I take the notes on the book.

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That's why I do the crazy mind maps and all that kind of stuff.

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I know that that's craziness for a lot of people.

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It's definitely a bridge too far for most normal folks, but I believe it.

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It helps me in the moment piece together the things.

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That's the thing about this.

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There's different versions of knowledge.

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There's the knowledge that we can dig up from an archive somewhere when we need to find

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it, like a receipt or an account number or something like that.

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Then there's knowledge that we know, and then there's knowledge that gets applied.

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I feel like this is where in between levels two and three, if you just focus on the knowledge

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that you know that you can spit back in the facts, none of it really gets translated,

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which is why we did the action items for Bookworm way back in the days.

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We read all these books and these dots are connecting whether we realize it or not, whether

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we have the actual artifact in front of us of this connects to this connects to this.

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Your brain is naturally kind of doing that stuff.

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You maybe don't even realize how much of it is actually stuck until you try to put it

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into practice.

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Why I do the sketch noting for the sermon notes as well.

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If you were to ask me what were the exact scriptures that my pastor preached about last

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week, I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you the main theme and what stood out to me

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and what I applied from that because I took the time to synthesize the information into

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these pictures.

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The reason I asked the question is because I think about my action item.

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I'm going to have to go back and very much revisit my notes.

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Right now if you ask me to recap the key five points of difficult conversations, I might

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be able to get three of them, but it felt so jumbled.

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What I did to the listeners, and I told you this a little bit ago, I actually did the

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Mike Schmitt's mind mapping method for this book because I wanted to see if I thought

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there was a tangible output difference in the tangible output for it.

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Let me tell you, dear listener, it's an event.

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It's a thing.

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It's not this all like, "Oh, I'm going to create a mind map and everything's going to

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be super easy."

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My mind map, if I zoom out to where I can see the entire mind map, I can read nothing.

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I can barely even tell there's text there.

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But what I will say is I think that it helps me with what you're saying, that knowledge

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to application step, it helps me with that knowledge step a lot, that step to a lot.

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Hopefully that pans out to be true.

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Will I take the time every week?

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I don't know.

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It's going to depend, would it be worth me to take the time every week?

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Absolutely.

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Yes, it would absolutely be worth it for me to do that.

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That's why I asked the question.

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Thanks.

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Nice.

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I'd love to see your mind map if you were willing to share that at some point.

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Gladly.

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One other thing I'll share with us is the temptation can be when you start taking notes from books

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to capture too much or too little.

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If you are just adding down a few things that really stand out to you, you're not diving

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in and applying the Mortimer Adler how to read a book method where you're really, in my

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opinion, trying to grok the arguments that the author is making.

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So I feel like you got to do a little bit more, got to put a little bit more weight on the

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bar for that.

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But then also, once you start doing something like mind maps, specifically the temptation

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can be, "Well, I'm just going to recreate the structure of the book."

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Don't do that either.

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Yeah.

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Like, when I dumped all of my notes, so I use because the people who listen will probably

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be interested in this, I use a plugin to obsidian to where I highlight in a digital book and

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then it automatically draws all my highlights into obsidian directly into the file.

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And then I use that file to make the mind map.

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My, I have in the file that it downloaded was 10,737 words.

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That includes the location, location, location, location, but still that can't be that many

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words.

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That can't be that many words.

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But I thought that was a lot.

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I highlighted a lot more than I thought I was going to.

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So, all right.

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Well, the world needs more mind maps.

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So yeah, sorry, not sorry.

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All right.

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One other thing I'll mention here before we get into today's book, because this episode

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will be published very shortly, just a couple of days before the next obsidian university

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cohort kicks off.

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So I mentioned that last time, but this will be the third cohort.

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I'm actually thinking I'm going to rebrand this cohort specifically as practical PKM

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because I feel like there's a promise with PKM where you can just dump all those notes

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into obsidian.

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You have the 10,000 lines that that Corey was talking about.

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And then I'll just use the app or I'll use chat GPT and I will discover all these connections

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and it will create all these insights.

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And that's not actually true.

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I actually lean more in the line of not having like right information, but but doing the

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right things.

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So I really, really like the Cal Newport podcast.

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He's been talking about this deep life stack lately.

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And that really resonates with me.

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So I've got my own version of that.

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I called the PKM stack.

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I talked a little bit about that last time.

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You got information and then you've got the ideas.

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Those are things that you're going to do something with creatively.

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And then you've got the actions, which are the routines projects.

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And that's all directed by the philosophy.

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And then a reflection process helps you make sure that you don't go off the tracks.

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So it's going to be based on how to actually do that.

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And you don't necessarily have to even use obsidian in order to get something out of it

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I would argue because the first sessions on Mondays are going to be the conceptual PKM

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stuff.

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And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll see, you know, a lot of there's kind of been

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a sneak preview with some of the topics in there.

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So you can definitely apply the principles other apps.

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But then Wednesdays are going to be like the obsidian workflow days.

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And this is where it's going to be different from the last time around.

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I've actually been working on this like starter vault.

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I need a better name for this thing.

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But anyways, it's this this vault that you download and it's got all of the plug-in setup.

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It's got all the call outs.

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It's got all the settings dialed in.

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And it's even got all of the queries.

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So if you're going to start using it for habit tracking or journaling or even tasking

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project management, like all the lists in the dashboards are in there already for you.

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So you can just start putting in your your tasks and tracking your habits and doing the

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journaling.

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So it's easier to hit the ground running with this.

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And more information can be found at obsidianuniversity.com/cojordkicksoffJanuary22nd.

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And would love to have you join us.

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All right, let's talk about today's book.

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And today's book I picked because it was one that I knew was going to be popular in my

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circles because it's written by the what does it say on the cover?

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The world's most followed productivity expert, YouTuber Ali Abdahl.

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And I don't care for that that title there, but I do like Ali's material.

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I've been following his story for a long time and he was a doctor.

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He tells a lot of that story actually in the book, but started YouTube on the side and

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then that eventually became the the main thing.

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And he's put together the part time YouTuber Academy that I went through.

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And that's a really great was a cohort when I did it.

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I think it's now a course, but got a lot out of it.

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That's actually the reason that my YouTube channel is actually getting some traction is

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because I'm just applying all the things that Ali talked about there.

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So I like his style.

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I like his material.

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I've benefited from a lot of the stuff that he's done.

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So this book is called feel good productivity, how to do more of what matters to you.

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And I have to say that the title feel good productivity.

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I don't really like because it kind of frames it as well, just do what you want to do.

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It kind of reminds me of Cal Newport rails against the passion mindset.

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That's kind of what it triggers in me is like feel good productivity is the passion mindset,

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but I don't think that's necessarily a fair characterization.

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So we'll get into the specifics here.

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It's broken into three main parts with an introduction and then a last word.

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So introduction and then part one is energize.

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Part two is on block and part three is sustain.

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And then the last section, the last word, think like a productivity scientist.

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You kind of like the framing of that and I think it's a good way to include the book.

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Curious your first thoughts on feel good productivity, Corey, what did you think when you picked

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it up?

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So I didn't really have, I mean, I knew Ali Abdul.

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So I didn't really have like an opinion necessarily on what the book might be like.

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I agree with you.

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The title is I could give or take the title.

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But I can see the argument he's making and I understand where it came from.

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I know the work that he does on YouTube and then I knew of his transition from being a

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doctor to being a YouTuber and a content creator.

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I don't think I realized that there's a lot of other things.

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I had no idea that this book he says in the book that it was 10 years in the making.

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So could not be when I looked at the table of contents, it could not be more different

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than the last book we read, the difficult conversations book because it's three sections.

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Every section has three chapters.

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In every chapter, there are these, you know, few, these six things that we work on, right?

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And it's very much the like super clean, this is the formula and I'm going to plug into

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the formula.

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We'll talk later about how I think that might have been caused certain things to happen

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in the creation of the book.

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Did every, you know, did every section need six experiments?

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I don't know if they did, but that was my general first take on the book.

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Yeah, I think that's my general.

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Cool.

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Well, I'm not sure about the 10 years in the making.

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I get why he frames it that way.

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But I also know that the book project, at least, you know, from being a subscriber to Ollie's

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newsletter and watching some of his videos, I profess I don't watch all of his videos.

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I'm a weird YouTuber because I like make more YouTube videos than I actually watch.

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I'm telling myself that that's a good thing because then I'm less influenced by other people

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and I am less likely to fall into the comparison trap.

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If I see somebody else doing something really good, I tend to be like, "Oh, I can't do that."

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I walk away from it.

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So ignorance is bliss a little bit, I think, there for me.

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Well, and one of your mantras is consumed don't create, right?

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So that actually, or sorry, create don't consume.

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I mixed it up.

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Sorry.

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One of your mantras is create don't consume.

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I thought you were trolling me there for a second.

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No, I was not.

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I just mixed it up.

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My fault.

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Yeah, create not consume.

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But everything that you create is also downstream from what you consume, I believe.

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So I don't know.

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It's not that you don't consume, but you're curating what you consume.

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You're strategic about it.

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But all that to say, like, I feel, and maybe I'm misremembering the story, but it seems

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like Ali was approached about the book deal and then was like, "Hey, that sounds interesting.

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I'll do that."

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And that story that I recall, whether it's true or not, I don't think that happened 10

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years ago.

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But I also understand that the stuff that he has been learning and the things that have

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allowed him to do what he does first as a doctor and then now as a YouTuber.

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And it's even beyond a YouTuber.

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So when I say Ali Abdals a YouTuber, he's also like, he organizes and runs a small team.

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So I know how hard that is.

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YouTuber doesn't do it justice.

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There's a lot more opportunity to apply productivity principles than just sitting down

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and making stuff.

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So I feel like he's speaking from a place that he's had experience and he's had to

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learn and grow and understand the stuff by doing it.

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So those are typically the best kind of books in my opinion.

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And my take on the 10 years was it started when he started studying these things.

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I think he said he was a psychology minor or he got into psychology and learning about

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psychology.

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So that was my thing of when it started.

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And if you look at the numerous references he gives, I mean, there's just psychology

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researchers all the way through it.

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So it's behavioral psychologists and those type of things all the way through it.

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So that's very easy to see how he said it was 10 years ago and then the book project came.

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Yep.

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Cool.

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So let's jump in and talk through the introduction first.

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This is a fairly short section.

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It starts off by talking about this really stressful point in his doctor's career.

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And I think that's like very attention grabbing, very engaging.

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So that's a great way to start it.

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And I also really like in this section he frames the candle problem, which was something that

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was developed by Carl Dunker if I grab the notes correctly.

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And the problem goes like this.

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You have three objects, a candle, a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.

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How do you stick the candle to the corkboard on the wall so that when it's lit, the candle

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wax won't drip onto the table below.

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And all these points was that most people ignore the solution, which is that the thumbtack

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box itself is a candle holder.

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And I think that is a cool visual because I agree with him that when it comes to productivity,

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a lot of people try to solve the problem the wrong way.

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I think primarily they try to do it by getting more efficient and they try to just like cram

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more work in, which I don't know, maybe that's just part of everybody's productivity journey.

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I mean, that's how I kind of came into learning about productivity myself.

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I was working at the family business and I was trying to get a little bit more efficient

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so I could get out of there a little bit earlier.

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So I picked up getting things done by David Allen started my lists and the tickler file

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and all that kind of stuff and it provides some immediate relief.

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So I think that there's a lot of good that comes from that.

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But then that's not enough because what the next step is, is that you have more margin.

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Now you have more space that gets filled by something.

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So at some point you got to figure out what is important to you.

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It's why I like Kelney Porte's Deep Life Stack so much.

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Ali Abdahl is framing it here as feel good productivity and this is all based off of

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the research behind positive emotions and how those affect our cognitive processes.

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So if you really want to be productive, Ali's arguing, then you should figure out a way

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to do what you like.

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That's not exactly the right framing here.

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But the reason that feel good productivity works is that it boosts our energy, it reduces

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our stress and it also enriches our life.

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And he also says that success doesn't lead to feeling good, feeling good leads to success,

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which I think that I agree with.

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Can we talk about that more?

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Yes.

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Like the that quote because I wanted to talk about that quote.

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So success doesn't lead to feeling good, feeling good leads to success.

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And I don't like that statement.

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I think there's like way more nuance there.

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And I don't remember like how much he breaks it down in the introduction.

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But I agree that feeling good can lead to success, but I don't think that feeling good.

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Like, okay, so I wake up in the morning and I'm feeling great and everything's good.

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But at the same time, I'm completely shirking every responsibility that I have.

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And I'm okay with that.

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Like I kind of had a little bit of a joke back on that one.

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I get what he's going for in terms of the overarching nature of the book, right?

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Like, okay, if you're just going at this from a completely disciplined use time as effectively

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as we possibly can strategy, you're missing something.

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You're missing this big piece, right?

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There's this other piece of your wellbeing, your motivation, your things that he would

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call the feel good side of it.

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But at the same time, I don't think we can just say that, you know, that just because

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I feel good about about doing something that it's going to lead me to success, I may be

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feeling good about doing a bunch of activities that have nothing to do with something else

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in my world that I would say I want to be successful at.

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So if I want to be an author, right, like talking about books does not help me get to

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actually being an author of a book, even though I feel really good about talking about books.

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I just don't ever write words.

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And that's where I kind of had to have a rub with that statement.

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Yeah, I can understand that, but I, and I think I probably had the same initial reaction,

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but the more that I brewed on that, I think that he is right from a certain perspective.

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Because I think if you're going to try to do creative work specifically, which is what

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he does, you can't consistently do that if you've got nothing in the tank.

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Like you have to make sure that you are refilling.

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And so I don't think he's saying it in the sense of, well, you just wait until you feel

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good and then the success is automatically going to come or because they think about

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it like his whole prior to being a YouTuber, he was a doctor and he went through medical

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school and that's not an easy thing to do.

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And even the stories that he shares, those are some high pressure situations.

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So he's kind of done it the other way too.

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He's kind of brute forced it before.

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And he's basically saying, I recognize now that that's not the best approach.

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And I think typically when you have an experience like that and you realize that was the wrong

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approach, the pendulum tends to swing more the other way.

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I've seen that in my life too.

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I tend to do that.

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And I think if we get to the later chapters where talking about the alignment and making

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sure that you're working in the right areas and for the right things, this all becomes

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a lot more, it makes a lot more sense because if I'm aligned, I'm more likely to feel good.

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If I'm aligned with what I'm doing and I'm feeling good, then I'm more motivated to do

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those things.

00:22:32

So it could have been that just the fact that this statement coming at the very, very front

00:22:36

end of the book, if this would have come at the end of the book, I may not have felt

00:22:40

as strongly as I felt about it.

00:22:42

Sure.

00:22:43

That's a good point.

00:22:44

I get why he would put it at the beginning of the book though.

00:22:47

I mean, that's right on the cover, feel good productivity and also I don't know Ali personally,

00:22:51

but he seems to me like the kind of guy who's just like, yeah, I'm just going to say this.

00:22:56

Yeah.

00:22:57

Yeah, I agree.

00:22:58

So.

00:22:59

All right, we'll go into section one here and there's three chapters in each of these sections.

00:23:05

I think we'll try to go through all of the chapters, but really we're going to frame

00:23:10

the discussion through the different parts.

00:23:12

So part one is energized and then the three chapters here play power and people.

00:23:18

Let's start with play.

00:23:21

So the main point here is that if you really want to do something with excellence, you

00:23:30

kind of can't put all this pressure on it to be something.

00:23:35

You have to kind of hold it lightly and you have to kind of be curious.

00:23:40

And the point that he's making at the beginning, the instruction, I guess, is that life is

00:23:46

stressful so we should embrace play because it's going to make it more fun.

00:23:51

And he has a bunch of different ways to do that, which are all of these experiments.

00:23:56

I'm not really sure I like the framing of the experiments, but essentially each of these

00:24:01

experiments is like a principle.

00:24:04

And I get why he did it as an experiment.

00:24:05

I mean, he's a doctor and he's leaned into the whole scientific aspect of this.

00:24:12

So an experiment just kind of makes sense.

00:24:14

But the first experiment he talks about choosing your character.

00:24:18

So he's saying, and I just picked this one because he has eight different play personalities

00:24:23

here.

00:24:24

And there's the collector, the competitor, the explorer, the creator, the storyteller,

00:24:29

the joker, the director, or the kinesthet.

00:24:32

And I'm curious, Corey, is there one of those?

00:24:34

Has he read this that you identified with?

00:24:37

I was going to ask you the exact same question.

00:24:40

You beat me to it.

00:24:42

I would say no, there's not one of them.

00:24:46

But I think there's two of them that if you smush them together, that's where I sit.

00:24:52

So I think I sit more on the director and the kinesthet side of it.

00:24:57

So I just like figuring out how to lead things well and kind of making the ships run.

00:25:05

And then the industrial systems engineer in me says, okay, now, how do we make it run

00:25:10

better?

00:25:11

Right?

00:25:12

There's this thing or we're wasting this much time here.

00:25:14

We could be doing this in this different way.

00:25:16

And then when I sit down and think about, like, okay, I've got a pocket of an hour or

00:25:21

two hours or honestly, like one of the, one of the things I prioritize highly in my weekly

00:25:28

scheduling is, all right, where am I going to get out and actually get some exercise

00:25:31

in or be outside in nature or move because I feel significantly better in the day if

00:25:38

I've done something physical, like moved my body in any way.

00:25:42

So I think those are the two, the two areas where I resonate.

00:25:45

What about you?

00:25:46

Gotcha.

00:25:47

Well, you're maybe making me change my mind because I am the same way where I need to

00:25:52

get outside specifically.

00:25:54

That was a big takeaway for me during the COVID lockdowns.

00:25:57

I ran our bike every day from like March to October, which was not a small feat in Wisconsin.

00:26:04

But definitely it helped my emotional state for sure.

00:26:09

I think the two that kind of stand out to me are the creator and the director.

00:26:14

The creator more so for me, but I do like to plan and organize things as well.

00:26:19

So it's definitely the director piece.

00:26:21

If you wouldn't have said creator, I would have been very surprised, right?

00:26:24

Like, if I was looking down through these and I was like, I think Mike's going to say

00:26:28

creator, you know, I'd be surprised if he didn't.

00:26:30

Well, what's interesting about that though is like there was a period and I've talked

00:26:33

about this before, so I won't tell the whole story.

00:26:35

But I did say, you know, I guess I'm just not creative.

00:26:39

Like I struggled with that piece for a long time.

00:26:42

So I don't know.

00:26:44

I mean, out of those eight different personalities is basically taking the approach of like your

00:26:48

life as an RPG, which is kind of a cool framing, but I'm not sure it's quite that clean.

00:26:52

Like I personally believe that everyone is creative.

00:26:55

You just have to find the right way to express it.

00:26:59

But yeah, out of the options that he gave us.

00:27:02

Those are the ones that that stood out to me.

00:27:04

The other thing I liked from this section is the idea of side quests.

00:27:10

So I'm not sure, Corey, are you a gamer at all?

00:27:13

So I am not a gamer at all.

00:27:14

I've tried.

00:27:15

I want to be like, I think it would be a ton of fun to get immersed in these certain video

00:27:21

games where like, you know, like Zelda, right?

00:27:24

Like I hear about people playing Zelda and I think, man, that would be awesome.

00:27:27

And I get bored in like 15 minutes.

00:27:29

I'm like, yeah, this is fine, but I could be doing much other different things with my

00:27:34

life, such as like reading a book, right?

00:27:36

Like that's, you know, that's where my nature goes.

00:27:39

I do a bunch of side quests, but I'm not a gamer.

00:27:41

So go ahead.

00:27:42

Gotcha.

00:27:43

Well, Zelda is the one that came to mind for me because that is, I think the perfect application

00:27:50

of this principle, I would say I'm a casual gamer.

00:27:55

I have kids who are into gaming.

00:27:57

They are much more serious about it than I am, but I've, well, you've got to switch and

00:28:02

I've played through both Breath of the Wild and the New One, which is Tears of the Kingdom,

00:28:07

I believe.

00:28:09

And those games are crazy.

00:28:11

It's like a big open world and like, if you're really going to do everything in it, you could

00:28:15

spend hundreds of hours.

00:28:17

And that's kind of the beauty of it is, I mean, on one level, I'll think about that

00:28:22

in like 100 hours playing a video game, what a waste of time.

00:28:25

But also I understand the appeal of when you're in there, like the actual storyline, you could

00:28:31

crank through it pretty quickly.

00:28:33

I don't know what the, maybe it's 15 hours or something like that.

00:28:38

But then there's always all of these additional side quests that you can do.

00:28:43

And I see my kids doing this and I recognize I do the same thing when I play, like I'll

00:28:47

go into a new town or whatever.

00:28:48

And the first thing I do is I just go talk to everybody, I find out what all the shops

00:28:52

are.

00:28:53

And I figure out what are the side quests that are available here.

00:28:58

And then with the second one specifically, like I put a bunch of time into it, but I'm

00:29:04

nowhere close to actually beating the game because the side quests are so fascinating

00:29:09

to me.

00:29:10

I'm going to collect all of the memories and then I'm going to visit all the Sky Islands,

00:29:13

you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:29:16

That's fun for me.

00:29:17

So I like this idea side quests.

00:29:20

I don't know that I have a specific way of how I'm going to apply this to my life, but

00:29:26

I did jot this down as an action item to start thinking about side quests for my date.

00:29:30

So the way I'm envisioning this, I've got my three to five tasks on my note card and

00:29:35

I'm working through, but if there's something that piques my interest throughout the day,

00:29:39

maybe I come across an article on a cool new obsidian plugin and I want to explore that

00:29:44

I will, as long as I'm able to continue to make progress on the things that are important,

00:29:50

I'll use some of that margin that's built into my time block plan to go explore the

00:29:55

side quests and I won't feel bad about it.

00:29:58

Yeah.

00:29:59

And I do this with like apps.

00:30:02

So I love finding apps and trying to do things in different ways through like iPhone apps

00:30:08

or Mac apps.

00:30:10

The other one would be teaching, right?

00:30:12

Like, oh, okay.

00:30:13

I've got this concept.

00:30:14

I've taught it this way for the last four times.

00:30:16

What if I taught it this way and we kind of do like a little mini side quest on, you know,

00:30:20

that's how I keep that process fun, at least for me.

00:30:23

I can't tell you that the students think it's fun, but that's how I at least keep it fun

00:30:27

for me is trying to do these little, what if we did it this way or what if we pushed

00:30:30

in in this button?

00:30:31

So yeah, I really like the side quest part of this because I think it's a good way to

00:30:37

keep things more creative and more fun through some work that you may not think is that fun.

00:30:45

Right.

00:30:46

Right.

00:30:47

All right.

00:30:48

Let's talk about chapter two power because there's one other thing I for sure want to

00:30:50

discuss in here and that is this idea of vicarious mastery.

00:31:00

So when he talks about power, I don't think he's talking about Robert Greene's 48 laws

00:31:05

of power.

00:31:06

He finds power as personal empowerment.

00:31:09

So I guess another term for that would be like self efficacy, maybe self determination,

00:31:16

which those are those are topics that I really like.

00:31:20

But he talked about the experiment number two, the social model method.

00:31:25

And he talked about vicarious mastery, which was coined by Albert Bandura and even talked

00:31:31

about Albert Bandura in the book.

00:31:35

However, I am not sure that the research here, I don't know, I've seen that exact research

00:31:47

used other places more effectively.

00:31:50

And so I've experienced with the family business, which is computer software primarily for special

00:31:57

education.

00:31:58

So like we have this whole line of software for video modeling for real low functioning

00:32:03

individuals, where they see somebody practicing a social skill, for example, and because they're

00:32:10

watching it, they can then generalize that and they can recreate it.

00:32:14

It's like the most effective way to teach these skills to individuals.

00:32:20

And that's all based on the research behind video modeling, which is where Albert Bandura

00:32:26

comes in, you know, where like if you see somebody do something, then you can, you can

00:32:30

do it.

00:32:31

And Ali's kind of talking about this from a different angle, I feel, but not really talking

00:32:37

about the video modeling piece.

00:32:39

And I feel like that's the thing that maybe could have gone a little bit deeper there.

00:32:44

Like he's not wrong in his framing of this, but it's also not the most powerful example

00:32:49

of it.

00:32:50

And that's just because of the experience that I have.

00:32:53

But let me just share like one specific study that stands out to me, which I think actually

00:32:58

fits better than the Albert Bandura research.

00:33:02

And that's this University of Chicago study where they had the basketball players.

00:33:07

Maybe you've heard this one before, where the one group practiced free throws for an

00:33:11

hour a day for 30 days and next group practiced or they didn't actually practice, but they

00:33:16

visualized.

00:33:17

So this, this concept here that there's picturing themselves, making the free throws and the

00:33:22

third group did nothing.

00:33:23

And then after 30 days, the group that did nothing, obviously they didn't improve the

00:33:27

group that shot the free throws, they improved a lot.

00:33:30

But the group that didn't actually touch a basketball, but visualize themselves making

00:33:34

the free throws, they improved by almost as much.

00:33:36

Yeah.

00:33:37

Right.

00:33:38

I don't have the study in front of me.

00:33:39

I don't have the exact numbers, but I've seen that, you know, hundreds, if not thousands

00:33:43

of times.

00:33:44

And that I feel is like more powerful for the argument that he's making here, which is,

00:33:50

you know, if you really want to be able to do something, then you can learn to do it other

00:33:54

ways, you could watch other people do something and then you can successfully recreate that

00:34:01

if you do it the right way.

00:34:03

Yeah.

00:34:04

So one, a couple, a couple of things.

00:34:07

I think Ali does a good job here at hitting the 30,000 foot view of psychology literature

00:34:15

around productivity, motivation, you know, those type of things in terms of the names

00:34:21

he's researched and the people and the studies, they're all what I would consider credible,

00:34:27

right?

00:34:28

Like when I was in my grad program, I mean, we read about a lot of the stuff we read.

00:34:31

I read a lot of these folks work for different reasons, educational, but for different reasons.

00:34:37

So there, you know, if there was a validity there, you know, from, okay, like I can trust

00:34:42

what he's telling me here.

00:34:44

I think where you're saying about the, is this the best example or, you know, I actually

00:34:49

kind of didn't, you know, resonate with that example as much.

00:34:52

I think this got lost between the experiments and then the justification for the experiment,

00:34:57

right?

00:34:58

Like I think more of the emphasis of this book was getting these six experiments done for

00:35:03

every chapter and I'm going to tie into what I, what I can tie into.

00:35:08

And I think that's just a natural byproduct of the way he, the way he structured the book.

00:35:12

I don't think it's bad.

00:35:13

I just think it's there, there are better examples.

00:35:17

And I think your, your example that you gave of the basketball study is a, is a more, it's

00:35:22

a more tangible or in a more higher takeaway, if you will.

00:35:26

I get where he's coming from though, because he's basically touching on a lot of different

00:35:31

principles and he really can't go super deep in any one of these if he's going to do six

00:35:35

experiments, a chapter across nine different chapters.

00:35:39

Yeah.

00:35:40

Yeah.

00:35:41

So, but there's some really good stuff in here.

00:35:42

I mean, he talks about the Shoshone approach, which is beginner's mind.

00:35:47

The protege effect where when you teach something to someone else, you learn it better yourself.

00:35:52

And then there's even something a little bit later here, which I thought was really profound.

00:35:57

When we can't take ownership of the situation, you can still take ownership of the process.

00:36:01

Like, yes, 100%.

00:36:03

We could have an hour long conversation on that specifically because that is the thing

00:36:08

that I feel a lot of people get stuck with.

00:36:11

And maybe it's a bit of a leap for people to get to that point from the introduction.

00:36:17

But I think that this is exactly what someone who picks up feel good productivity needs

00:36:22

is to recognize that the situation isn't necessarily just going to work itself out, but that's

00:36:28

okay.

00:36:29

You can take ownership of your situation and you can steer your own ship without somebody

00:36:35

giving you permission to do that.

00:36:37

It's not that explicit in this book, but the threat is there and I really like it.

00:36:41

Are you interested in talking about chapter three?

00:36:44

Because if not, I have a real quick hit on chapter three.

00:36:47

Yeah, let's talk real briefly chapter three.

00:36:51

So the thing that I just wanted to call out from this is...

00:36:56

So chapter three is called People.

00:36:58

And he talks about energy vampires at the beginning, people who suck the energy from

00:37:02

you.

00:37:03

I've heard this frame differently by Michael Hyatt and I think it might have actually

00:37:05

came from Dan Sullivan originally.

00:37:07

I'll see if I can dig up this blog post.

00:37:09

It's quite old now, but I remember reading a Michael Hyatt blog post about only higher

00:37:15

people that have the batteries included.

00:37:17

It was basically talking about people who have their own energy source and people who

00:37:20

just suck the life out of everybody in the room.

00:37:23

So that is getting into emotional intelligence, which I think is fascinating.

00:37:28

But the one thing I really wanted to call off...

00:37:31

Well, actually I'm wrong, two things.

00:37:33

One, I want to give a plug for in the faith-based productivity community and in the City University

00:37:38

community actually.

00:37:39

I've been doing these live co-working sessions, which are exactly like the writers' hours

00:37:44

that he's talking about.

00:37:45

And these work.

00:37:46

These are cool.

00:37:48

We show up, we turn our cameras on, we share our intentions and we work in silence for

00:37:51

an hour.

00:37:52

And then at the end, we share what we got done, which that's pretty cool.

00:37:55

And then the Benjamin Franklin thing, I wanted to talk about that too.

00:37:58

I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at.

00:38:01

Well, so let me hit on the one, the comrade idea.

00:38:06

This comrade mindset is one of them.

00:38:09

When I was in grad school, a lot of us successfully wrote our dissertations through this model.

00:38:16

We basically said, we looked every semester and said, "Where is the hole in your schedule

00:38:20

to where you can come in and we're just going to sit in a room together?"

00:38:23

And the first five minutes is chatting and like, "Hey, how are you doing?"

00:38:27

Whatever, you're getting your other stuff out and making all your kind of noise.

00:38:29

And then for the next two hours, three hours, whatever it ended up being, we're not going

00:38:34

to talk unless somebody has a very specific question that they need help with.

00:38:39

And we're just going to work and we're all going to do this together.

00:38:41

And there were probably six of us and man, is it effective?

00:38:45

So exactly what you're describing, it is a, that you do through the faith-based work

00:38:49

to the community.

00:38:51

It is super effective in terms of that.

00:38:53

So that was really the one I wanted to hit out of people.

00:38:55

I wanted to make sure we didn't move past it before I could talk about it.

00:38:59

Nice.

00:39:00

Yeah.

00:39:01

So that Comrade versus competitor mindset, I've heard it framed differently of like abundance

00:39:07

versus scarcity.

00:39:08

I think that's kind of tied to this too because if you have a scarcity mindset, then everything

00:39:13

is a threat.

00:39:15

Everyone is a competitor.

00:39:17

And if I win, you lose vice versa.

00:39:20

So I like the Comrade mindset.

00:39:23

But again, like there's a whole bunch more that goes into that abundance mindset that

00:39:28

doesn't have room to talk about here.

00:39:30

I do like this story about Benjamin Franklin though.

00:39:34

I liked it too.

00:39:35

So Benjamin Franklin in 1737, he's running for reelection in the Pennsylvania Assembly.

00:39:41

He's got a rival whose propaganda is the word that Ali used, but he was threatening Franklin's

00:39:46

reelection campaign.

00:39:47

So this was before he did all the stuff that he's known for.

00:39:51

He's worried that he's going to lose.

00:39:52

And there's this guy who just basically relentlessly criticizes everything that he does.

00:39:59

They have complete different perspectives and opinions on everything.

00:40:04

So Benjamin Franklin hears that this guy has a rare book.

00:40:08

And so he asks to borrow it.

00:40:12

And the guy gives it to him.

00:40:14

So then when he returns it, he puts a kind note in the book and basically like they never

00:40:18

talk about it again after that.

00:40:19

But after that, they became good friends despite their opposing views.

00:40:24

And this is the Benjamin Franklin effect.

00:40:26

He calls it, "When someone asks us for help, we think better of them.

00:40:29

I think this is kind of cool."

00:40:31

This ties into me to make somebody the expert.

00:40:36

So okay, you're in this situation and there's maybe this hostile relationship or just not

00:40:42

a wonderful one.

00:40:43

If I walk in and I ask them, I'm like, "Can you help me with this?

00:40:47

You are clearly expert in this thing.

00:40:49

Can you help me fix this thing?

00:40:51

Or can you help me think through this problem?"

00:40:54

And you just see everything kind of melt away.

00:40:57

And they're like, "Oh, okay."

00:41:00

And it's got to tie into value.

00:41:02

It's got to tie into identity.

00:41:03

It's got to tie into a bunch of these other core fundamental concepts.

00:41:08

But I like this example a lot.

00:41:10

And I think Ali does this a good amount where he'll like, how do you say it?

00:41:16

So the Ben Franklin effect.

00:41:18

Trying to think of another one.

00:41:19

Well, there's the write-off effect, but I have thoughts about that when we get there.

00:41:23

Yes.

00:41:24

But he's got a ton of these effects and these little like quippy things in order to remember

00:41:30

the concepts and the principles of the book, which I appreciate.

00:41:33

I actually like that a lot.

00:41:35

Yeah.

00:41:36

Yeah.

00:41:37

Actually, it's a write-off principle.

00:41:38

But again, put a pin in that for now.

00:41:40

Okay.

00:41:41

If you're ready to move on, chapter four is in the next section.

00:41:44

So section two, unblock, chapter four is seek clarity.

00:41:50

And I don't know, I didn't really like this chapter.

00:41:56

I like the message.

00:41:58

I like the what he's trying to drive home here.

00:42:00

But again, like the format, he's not diving super deep into any one of these things.

00:42:04

And these are all the things that I'm probably the most interested in.

00:42:08

So like the whole idea of seeking clarity, that's why I do the personal retreats.

00:42:14

And it kind of bugs me sometimes when I, I don't know, maybe it shouldn't.

00:42:19

But like just the other day, someone was talking about the 12 week year and like, hey, it is,

00:42:24

what do people think about this book?

00:42:27

And I see the comments, people are leaving behind it.

00:42:31

And it's always like, oh, this book is amazing.

00:42:33

It's going to change your life or, you know, not it's just a bunch of snake oil.

00:42:38

And it's not like it works, but the clarity is the most important thing.

00:42:45

Yeah.

00:42:46

Yeah.

00:42:47

So I'm going to get the clarity doing tactical experiments.

00:42:52

Like this is something that's like, you really got to sink your teeth into this before you

00:42:56

really get it, I think.

00:42:57

But what did you think of the nice?

00:43:00

So the nice goals as opposed to smart goals, right?

00:43:02

Smart goals has been around for a million years.

00:43:04

Yeah.

00:43:05

What do you think of the nice goals and the framing of the nice goals?

00:43:07

Well, I like it better than smart goals.

00:43:09

I'll tell you that.

00:43:10

Okay.

00:43:11

So nice is near term, input based, controllable and energizing.

00:43:16

Yep.

00:43:17

And I think those are better.

00:43:18

Like if you're going to pick a framework to set goals, use these.

00:43:24

However, I still don't think that goals themselves are the answer.

00:43:32

I'm trying to be nicer to goals for, for Bodie Quirk's sake.

00:43:36

He's always texting me.

00:43:38

He's like, hey, when are you going to be nice to goals again?

00:43:41

And the reason I don't like them is because I feel maybe it's just my personality.

00:43:45

I get so attached to the outcome.

00:43:48

When this is done, this thing is what is produced.

00:43:51

There's this result.

00:43:53

And that's dangerous for me because I will kill myself to achieve that goal.

00:44:00

But then the minute that you achieve that goal, the goal posts now move and you have

00:44:04

to set another one.

00:44:06

And very briefly, the genesis of this for me was training for and running my first half

00:44:12

marathon.

00:44:13

I trained, hurt my knee, crossed the finish line.

00:44:17

And then it's like, now what?

00:44:18

Like I remember crossing the finish line.

00:44:20

Yeah, I did it.

00:44:21

Oh, this sucks.

00:44:23

Yeah.

00:44:24

Yep.

00:44:25

So mine, I have a running or a fitness example as well.

00:44:29

So I set this goal when I turned 39 that by the time I was 40, I was going to XYZ, right?

00:44:35

And I called it 4, 4, 4, 4, right?

00:44:37

So 4,000 total miles, 400 of those have to be running by the time I'm 40.

00:44:43

And then I have to work on four things, right?

00:44:45

So they're either a vice or something that, you know, whatever it is.

00:44:49

So I have to work on these four things.

00:44:50

Well, I got to thinking about it and I'm doing this and I'm logging miles and everything's

00:44:55

okay.

00:44:56

The running was actually way easier than the total miles.

00:44:58

The total miles equated out to be like 12 miles a day, which is actually way harder to

00:45:04

do than I thought it was going to be.

00:45:06

And I didn't care how I got the miles walking around my actual runs, double counted if I

00:45:10

was riding the bike.

00:45:12

And then I got to the point and this gets back to Ali's main or his first point in this

00:45:16

is the why, the commander's intent.

00:45:18

Like what are you doing?

00:45:19

What's your purpose and why are you doing this thing?

00:45:21

And I got back to thinking of it and I was like, wait a minute, these 4,000 miles aren't

00:45:26

trying to achieve the goal or achieve the thing that I really want to do achieve.

00:45:30

Yeah, they're going to be fine and they're a good thing to do.

00:45:35

They're not a negative impact on me necessarily as long as I'm not hurting myself, but they're

00:45:39

not actually getting to, he says, ask yourself, what is the purpose behind this?

00:45:44

And then build your list from there or build your goals from there.

00:45:47

And I thought, no, the 4,000 is bad.

00:45:49

That's not actually part of what I want to do.

00:45:52

So I dropped that and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to do the 4,000 miles.

00:45:55

In a former life, I'd have been like, I'm a failure.

00:45:58

Like, oh man, I set this thing out and I didn't do it.

00:46:00

And then look at me, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:02

But because I made an active decision, I said, oh no, this goes against what I'm actually

00:46:08

trying to do.

00:46:09

It gave me the freedom to be like, okay, you can drop that first four and there's nothing

00:46:14

wrong with you.

00:46:16

Everything's okay.

00:46:17

You're still a good, you know what I mean?

00:46:19

You didn't fail miserably.

00:46:21

You made an active decision to do something different.

00:46:24

But I'm rounding this all out.

00:46:27

I like the nearer term way better goals as well as long as they're tied to your why.

00:46:34

And as long as those goals are tied to that why that you set out originally.

00:46:39

Yeah.

00:46:40

I mean, the best version in my opinion is who cares, how many miles you get in, but you

00:46:51

have embraced the identity of a runner.

00:46:53

And so you run regularly and you enjoy it, which that I think connects better to the

00:46:58

whole concept of feel good productivity than setting goals.

00:47:02

So I know Ali has read Tom McCabet's.

00:47:04

He mentions it in this book.

00:47:06

He's got a great book club video on it.

00:47:10

That whole identity based habits, like that was the thing that really clicked for me.

00:47:15

And when I had to do physical therapy and I had to reset my counters, essentially, it's

00:47:20

like, okay, well now had to learn to re-learn to run again, basically.

00:47:25

And I had to learn to love the process.

00:47:28

And that's the thing that that's the reason that I still do it is because I got to that

00:47:33

point.

00:47:34

So the routines and the things that are attached to your identity, I feel like are more important

00:47:39

than than goals, but nice is better than smart.

00:47:44

I liked out of this section as well out of chapter four.

00:47:46

I liked Goldwitzer's effects then why that trigger thing that leads to, you know, and

00:47:53

this is in, you know, he referenced other books.

00:47:55

I can't remember which habits book it was in.

00:47:57

Like there's the one where as I'm brushing my teeth, I do this other thing.

00:48:00

Yeah.

00:48:01

And like you, you, you attach those two together.

00:48:03

I like that as well.

00:48:04

Yeah.

00:48:05

And he talks about time blocking, which I'm a big fan of.

00:48:07

I think you are.

00:48:09

But I don't know that I really like the way that he framed it here.

00:48:14

Again, you know, it's probably, his way is probably better for most people who maybe

00:48:20

this is the first productivity book that they, they read.

00:48:24

I agree, he talks a level one time block the task that you've been avoiding.

00:48:27

And then he says time block most of your day and then time block your ideal week.

00:48:31

I think if I were to take a crack at this, I would, yeah, select a time for the test that

00:48:36

you've been avoiding.

00:48:37

That part's the same.

00:48:38

The reason you're procrastinating on it is because you haven't picked that, that spot,

00:48:41

but the minute that you carve out the time to do it, now you force to put your butt in

00:48:46

the seat and do the thing.

00:48:47

So you're more likely to follow through with it.

00:48:49

But I do think the next piece of it would be the time block your entire day.

00:48:52

I don't think time blocking most of your day works.

00:48:56

At least long term.

00:48:57

I think you need the consistency of giving every hour a job.

00:49:00

That's the whole point like that.

00:49:02

That's the budgeting principle.

00:49:03

If you really want time blocking to work for more than just the activation energy to do

00:49:07

this one thing, if you really want to be productive on a larger scale, then time blocking is the

00:49:13

way to do it because you provide the implementation intentions for all of the hours.

00:49:17

I do like the ideal week too.

00:49:19

I like that as the last piece.

00:49:20

But I think you got to be time blocking your whole day before you get there.

00:49:24

I think this ties into the idea he brings up in chapter, chapter seven, where he's talking

00:49:33

about breaks and scheduling breaks.

00:49:35

I think if you smush these two things together, where you're time blocking your entire day,

00:49:39

but you're intentionally time blocking fun, joy breaks into that day, now this comes together

00:49:46

as a lot cleaner of a picture in my mind.

00:49:50

As I'm time blocking in a way that leads to feel good productivity, if that all ties together.

00:49:57

Yep, I agree.

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00:51:46

All right, chapter five is Find Courage and the message of this one is basically like

00:51:53

it says on the tin.

00:51:55

So I really like this chapter.

00:51:59

I really like the exhortation, I guess, to do the thing.

00:52:04

He talks about how fear can cause us to or can keep us from being productive.

00:52:10

Everything to know our fears is the first step in overcoming them.

00:52:14

He's again got the different experiments.

00:52:17

But the one that I thought was most helpful from my experience, I don't think he addressed

00:52:24

directly here and that is the Tim Ferriss fear setting.

00:52:28

Are you familiar with this exercise?

00:52:30

Only because I've heard you talk about it.

00:52:32

Yeah.

00:52:33

So essentially with fear setting, you let your mind.

00:52:40

Your mind is scared of the unknown, essentially.

00:52:42

So if you're trying to figure out, do I quit my job and go do this thing or make some other

00:52:48

decision, but it seems like a big leap to get there.

00:52:52

Well, okay, so let's think worst case scenario, what might happen if I made this decision.

00:53:00

And you can paint in all the details of like, this is the worst case scenario.

00:53:04

When you get done, you're kind of like, oh, is that it?

00:53:08

Because then once you can see it, you can start to realize that there are ways that

00:53:12

we can mitigate against this and ways that we can avoid certain pieces of this from happening.

00:53:19

And the minute that you start to like, codify it, it doesn't seem so scary anymore once

00:53:24

you understand what the dragons are.

00:53:27

So I feel like that was the most effective thing for me here out of this, this chapter,

00:53:33

but he didn't really talk about it.

00:53:35

He does share some other great strategies though.

00:53:37

So the emotion label, the affective emotion, putting your feelings into words, the identity

00:53:43

label, the 10, 10, 10 rule, which is basically, will this matter in 10 minutes, 10 weeks

00:53:48

or 10 years?

00:53:50

I like the talk or the mentioning of spotlighting.

00:53:54

I totally do this where you assume that everyone is paying attention to you.

00:53:59

But the one that is most interesting to me out of the ones that he covered here is the

00:54:04

Batman effect, which is basically adopting an alter ego.

00:54:09

I have heard some of these stories before about like Beyonce and Sasha Fierce and stuff

00:54:14

like that, but it never really clicked to me that like I could create an alter ego.

00:54:21

This does not resonate with me.

00:54:22

Like the idea of me like putting on my alter ego, like he talked about putting on his glasses

00:54:27

and when he puts on his glasses, even though he doesn't need him anymore because he had

00:54:30

a lysic that like he now is like he thinks about himself differently.

00:54:36

And the closest I can get to this is I dress up in a certain way and that changes like if

00:54:42

I'm wearing sweatpants, I'm much more like, you know, low key, relaxed, whatever.

00:54:46

If I could if I put on nicer clothes, then I'm more in a professional mindset.

00:54:52

But this didn't really resonate with me at all.

00:54:55

So it's funny to say it's funny to hear you say that like this one, this one connected

00:54:59

with you.

00:55:00

You're alter ego B like I want to know who is your person.

00:55:04

That's the thing.

00:55:05

I don't know that I like the full on alter ego, but you brought up the glasses thing and

00:55:10

that I think that there's something there.

00:55:12

I don't think those are the same thing by the way.

00:55:15

Okay.

00:55:16

But they are in the context of the of the book.

00:55:19

I feel like you can do things that is almost it's not environmental, but kind of.

00:55:27

Whereas an alter ego is something totally different.

00:55:30

I don't know.

00:55:31

Like I get it.

00:55:32

I wear glasses too and I feel different.

00:55:34

I'm in a different mode when I put my glasses on than what I'm not wearing them.

00:55:37

I came from basketball practice this morning.

00:55:39

I'm not wearing my glasses at basketball practice.

00:55:41

The minute that I put them on, it's like, okay, now it's time to get to work.

00:55:45

Intellectual mic is here.

00:55:46

I don't know, but it's hard to hard to describe, but I can sort of relate to that.

00:55:51

Or there's a certain sweatshirt that you put on.

00:55:58

With my YouTube videos, for example, I'm conscious of what my environment looks like.

00:56:03

And so I've got a couple specific T-shirts that I think look good on my background.

00:56:08

I got limited options in my basement office with no windows.

00:56:12

So I kind of built up a wardrobe with those.

00:56:15

And when I put one on at the beginning of the day, it's like, okay, it's video day.

00:56:19

It's video day.

00:56:20

It's a different energy to it.

00:56:23

So I think that that is powerful, but also I'm not ready to just name an alter ego and

00:56:30

embrace a new identity when it's time to do something either.

00:56:35

I think, you know, to move us back to one that you talked about before, the 10-10-10

00:56:40

role is what resonated with me out of this chapter.

00:56:43

Will it matter in 10 minutes?

00:56:44

Will it matter in 10 weeks?

00:56:45

Will it matter in 10 years?

00:56:47

And the reason why this one resonates with me is because I find more often than not,

00:56:53

like the 10 years one, you know, a lot of the stuff just won't matter in 10 years.

00:57:00

And we get so, so it's like, I smoosh this together with like spotlighting.

00:57:04

Like a lot of the stuff that I do isn't going to matter in 10 years, and that's okay.

00:57:08

Like that's completely fine.

00:57:10

It's not meant to matter in 10 years.

00:57:11

But in my brain, I want to do the kind of stuff that like 10, 50, 100 years from now,

00:57:17

people are like, yeah, do you remember when Corey did whatever it was?

00:57:20

And then I think back and I go, well, do I really want to do that stuff?

00:57:24

Like, I mean, because sometimes that's good.

00:57:26

And then sometimes that's bad.

00:57:27

And you know, you don't necessarily know how that's going to work.

00:57:31

But that was the one that said out to me is, if I had an action item, you know, out of

00:57:35

this book, I think that's going to be the one, like the top one, the key action item

00:57:40

is, all right, think about those things.

00:57:42

Will it matter in 10, will it matter in 10 weeks, will it matter in 10 years?

00:57:47

And how do you feel about that?

00:57:48

It isn't yes or no.

00:57:50

Like I don't think yes or no is the appropriate answer to that.

00:57:52

It's more a matter of how do you feel about that?

00:57:54

Like, are you okay with that?

00:57:55

Or is that not a good use of your time because it doesn't meet the priorities you want to?

00:58:00

But this ties back into your clarity thing.

00:58:02

If I don't have clarity about the things I want to matter in 10 minutes, 10 weeks or

00:58:07

10 years, that that exercise becomes a little bit more difficult or less, less interesting

00:58:13

or less relevant.

00:58:14

Yep, totally.

00:58:15

All right.

00:58:16

So chapter six is get started.

00:58:21

And again, the premise of this chapter is to, as it says on the tin, start doing the

00:58:29

thing.

00:58:30

Newton's first law applies to productivity as well as physics, takes more energy to get

00:58:34

started than to keep going.

00:58:36

I totally agree with all of this.

00:58:38

I remember one of the things that first clicked with me in terms of beating procrastination

00:58:44

was this concept called the five minute rule, which was I will just do this thing for five

00:58:49

minutes.

00:58:50

And then once you show up and you start doing the thing for five minutes, chances are that

00:58:54

you will follow through and finish it.

00:58:56

But you give yourself permission to disconnect and stop the thing if you really want to after

00:59:02

the five minutes.

00:59:04

So I don't have a whole lot of notes about this section, actually, because this has been

00:59:14

the thing maybe that I've grown the most in since I first started my productivity journey.

00:59:20

Like now if something needs to get done, I am going to find a way to get it done.

00:59:26

I'll use the tools that Ali's talking about here, you know, reduce the environmental friction.

00:59:31

I mean, we could spend hours talking just about how your environment affects your productivity.

00:59:35

But that's really something that people should be thinking about is why are you having this

00:59:41

feeling of procrastination?

00:59:42

Why are you resisting this thing every time you sit down to actually do it?

00:59:46

Maybe you can find a way to make it easier.

00:59:48

Maybe you can break it down and define the next step.

00:59:51

Maybe you can track your progress.

00:59:52

Maybe you can find an accountability buddy like he talks about.

00:59:57

But I do feel that this is a good way to end this section where really the only way to

01:00:03

get unblocked is to actually do the thing.

01:00:07

And whatever you got to do to figure out how to do that, like do it.

01:00:11

And I think this is a the law of inertia really resonated in terms of, oh yeah, I think it

01:00:18

resonated from a standpoint of, hey, this is a thing.

01:00:21

It's not just me, right?

01:00:22

Like there are more people than just me that say, like, I want to do this thing.

01:00:26

And then two weeks go by and three weeks go by and four weeks go by.

01:00:29

And I like what you're saying in terms of, okay, if you want to do a thing and then two,

01:00:34

three, four weeks go by and you're still not doing it, why?

01:00:36

Like let's analyze why that is the case.

01:00:39

That was the main takeaway from chapter six for me.

01:00:42

The experiment that resonated the most with me was probably either tracking your progress

01:00:49

or finding an accountability partner.

01:00:52

Accountability partners have been huge in my life in terms of I want to do a thing.

01:00:55

I know this is going to be challenging.

01:00:57

Is there is there a person who can come alongside and do this with?

01:01:01

I disagree with him on some level because he says a stranger with a similar goal.

01:01:07

I've never tried to do this with a stranger, but I've always done it with somebody who's

01:01:12

like in my, not necessarily the immediate circle, but at least like one circle out.

01:01:18

That way it doesn't feel so, you know, difficult to do the things he says where it's agree

01:01:24

on the culture, discuss the process in more detail.

01:01:26

So I think the accountability piece is fantastic.

01:01:30

And like I think that's a core piece to overcoming the inertia of falling back into your old

01:01:35

routines or just not doing it.

01:01:37

I'm just not as sold on like, well, finding a stranger, like finding some like random stranger

01:01:41

with the similar goal is like, well, how do I, how do I do the other things?

01:01:44

So yeah, I mean, I, I thought, I thought chapter six, I agree with you.

01:01:48

It was a good way to wrap up the, the, the section.

01:01:51

There is something about that though.

01:01:54

I don't know exactly how to define it, but if you have a stranger with a similar goal

01:02:01

and you get together and we're going to do this thing and I tell you that I'm going

01:02:05

to do this thing, like the connection that we have is around doing the thing.

01:02:12

I will feel like I have to do that thing because I don't want to let you down, even

01:02:18

though you're a complete stranger.

01:02:20

Whereas if you have somebody as close to you, you could be like, yeah, I'm going to do this

01:02:24

thing.

01:02:25

I think it's easier to just be like, oh yeah, well, it didn't happen.

01:02:28

And well, they understand they know everything else I got going on.

01:02:31

I don't know.

01:02:32

Like there's, there's a, it's almost like they'll forgive me, but the stranger might

01:02:37

not.

01:02:38

Yeah.

01:02:39

Yeah.

01:02:40

I wonder if there's a service where it's like an accountability buddy service where you

01:02:45

go on there and you put in, I'm looking for an accountability buddy in X and then like

01:02:49

somebody else comes in and they're like, I'm looking for that too.

01:02:52

And then you connect.

01:02:53

It's like a matchmaking accountability buddy service.

01:02:56

I'm sure there's something like that.

01:02:59

I'm listening to a focus mate, but that's more, that's not specifically in a shared,

01:03:07

shared area or anything.

01:03:08

It's just you are working with a stranger, but it's like the live co-working sessions

01:03:12

that I was describing before where you can just schedule those, those calls.

01:03:15

I think the best version of the positive peer pressure is probably a mastermind group where

01:03:20

it's very clear that we're here because we want to do this thing, but everybody is very

01:03:23

much invested in the outcomes.

01:03:27

So that investment means that you're not going to tolerate it when somebody's like,

01:03:32

yeah, sorry, I didn't do it.

01:03:33

Yeah.

01:03:34

Are you still part of one?

01:03:35

I couldn't.

01:03:36

Yeah.

01:03:37

You were at one point.

01:03:38

I remember you mentioned it.

01:03:39

Yeah.

01:03:40

And I don't know.

01:03:42

You got to find the right mix of people.

01:03:46

And you also need to make sure that, like I said, that there's that investment piece.

01:03:52

So I've been thinking through like, how could I maybe facilitate these in a better, more

01:03:58

meaningful fashion?

01:03:59

Did it a long time ago for the Focus Podcast, just connected people who had time blocks

01:04:04

available.

01:04:05

But I think most of those didn't really work out because the investment piece wasn't there.

01:04:09

People were just kicking the tires.

01:04:11

Well, maybe I'll be interested in this thing.

01:04:12

Now, you really got to commit to it because you got to develop those relationships to the

01:04:16

point where you feel like you can't let those other people down.

01:04:19

Yeah.

01:04:20

All right.

01:04:21

What do you think?

01:04:22

Moving to part three.

01:04:23

Yeah, let's do it.

01:04:24

All right.

01:04:25

So part three is labeled sustain and chapter seven is where we will start.

01:04:34

And this is conserve.

01:04:37

The big thing I wanted to chat about from here is burnout.

01:04:44

Probably because I'm closer to it than I care to admit.

01:04:49

But I also think he talks about different types of burnout.

01:04:51

There's overexertion burnout, there's depletion burnout, there's misalignment burnout.

01:04:57

And burnout, the actual definition that Ali shares is an occupational phenomenon characterized

01:05:02

by feelings of energy, to energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from

01:05:09

one's job or feelings of negatism or cynicism related to one's job and reduced professional

01:05:15

efficacy.

01:05:17

That's what.

01:05:18

Yeah.

01:05:19

I also liked the breakdown of burnout.

01:05:23

So I've heard of burnout and burnout, I feel like has talked a decent amount about.

01:05:27

But the three ways he broke it down, overexertion, depletion and misalignment, I thought were

01:05:34

really good at like thinking about, okay, it's not just that I'm burnout.

01:05:38

Like, is it, am I burnout for a reason?

01:05:39

Am I burnout?

01:05:40

Because there's too much work to do.

01:05:41

Okay.

01:05:42

Am I burnout?

01:05:43

That's overexertion.

01:05:44

Am I burnout because it's, I'm not resting correctly or I'm not resting well.

01:05:49

I think he had some interesting pieces here about how we don't rest well.

01:05:53

And we are inclined more and more to not rest well.

01:05:58

That's depletion burnout.

01:05:59

And then there's misalignment burnout and that's doing the wrong thing.

01:06:02

Like, do I not have the right clarity?

01:06:04

Do I not have the right way to think about the work that I do in terms of I'm doing a

01:06:09

lot of things.

01:06:10

It's just not things that I care about or not things that, as I think Ali would say,

01:06:14

not things that bring this feel good, this joy to, to my world.

01:06:19

And I, and I really liked that piece of, of chapter seven.

01:06:25

Yeah, let's double click on that for a second.

01:06:28

Cause you kind of framed it as bringing joy through the things that you're doing.

01:06:32

But I think that, that is the message on the tin.

01:06:37

But also I feel like this is something that is kind of within your control.

01:06:41

Like your perspective on your work can be the thing that changes.

01:06:43

The work doesn't have to, to change for your work to feel very different.

01:06:47

And it's not just work, but that's the, the easy one.

01:06:51

So when it comes to this whole conservation idea, I mean, the, the experiments that are

01:06:57

in here are all around kind of protecting margin and conserving maybe energy.

01:07:04

So maybe burnout doesn't even really belong in this section, at least how I think of burnout.

01:07:09

Maybe that really is more tied to the idea of recharging.

01:07:14

I don't know.

01:07:15

I mean, I, a case could be made for it here too.

01:07:16

If you don't have the resources you're going to feel burnt out.

01:07:21

But I think the thing that's going to determine over a length of time, whether you are going

01:07:25

to get to that point is going to be your ability to recharge.

01:07:30

So all of the experiments in here I like, you know, where you're scheduling your breaks,

01:07:36

you're adding friction to things that are distractions, you're learning to say no to

01:07:41

things.

01:07:42

I mean, these are not simple things, but they are very important.

01:07:45

One thing that did jump out to me though, was that breaks aren't a special treat.

01:07:48

They're an absolute necessity.

01:07:49

And you shared the story about he's in the, the ER and things are going sideways and he's

01:07:57

working really hard and his supervisor comes up and he's like, spend five hours.

01:08:01

You need to take a break.

01:08:02

And he's like, what?

01:08:03

No, this person needs this.

01:08:04

You know, he's like, no, Ali, no one's going to die if you go have lunch.

01:08:08

It's like, if you don't take a break, you'll make a mistake.

01:08:11

And then that's when we've got a problem.

01:08:14

So I've been thinking about that a lot.

01:08:16

This isn't necessarily an action item associated with this book, but I am committed to building

01:08:22

in the sabbaticals to my regular routine this year.

01:08:27

What do you think about building in sabbaticals in your day?

01:08:30

Like do you do this?

01:08:31

Do you have natural sections of break in your day or like when you do your time blocking?

01:08:38

So you, you know, you time block out every day.

01:08:40

Do you build in break there?

01:08:43

Um, not usually.

01:08:46

So the way that I time block, I use the biggest possible blocks that I can.

01:08:53

And then by doing that, I build in margin so I can either, if I'm like really being productive

01:09:02

at the beginning of the day, I'll make a bunch of progress.

01:09:04

And then at the end in the afternoon, you know, if I'm feeling down, then I'll just,

01:09:08

I'll take a break then go do something else.

01:09:11

So sometimes that happens, but otherwise it's just, I've got, you know, two hours to do

01:09:18

this thing.

01:09:19

It took me an hour and a half.

01:09:20

So instead of just immediately starting on the next thing, I'm going to just goof around

01:09:27

on my side quests for those other, other 30 minutes, because those are fun.

01:09:31

And those are actually ways that you can, you can recharge.

01:09:35

So I'm kind of getting into the next chapter.

01:09:37

Yeah, I think mine, mine with this is I value the front end of the day and the back end

01:09:44

of the day so strongly that like I want to, I want to try to figure out how to do that

01:09:51

middle chunk of the day where essentially I'm out of the house, right?

01:09:53

I'm at the university.

01:09:54

I'm doing that kind of work.

01:09:56

I want to make that as efficient as possible that way I can go home and see the boys and

01:10:01

spend time with the boys before they go to bed.

01:10:03

And then if I need to do more work, okay, I can re-engage in that either super early

01:10:07

in the morning or I can re-engage in that later at night.

01:10:12

So I don't schedule breaks into my typical working hours during the day either, just

01:10:18

because I'm trying to emphasize that first part of the day and the later part of the

01:10:22

day for the family.

01:10:24

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

01:10:27

Let's go to the next chapter because I want to continue that topic.

01:10:30

So one of the ways that I take a break is I simply just switch up the context with this

01:10:38

whole idea of recharging.

01:10:41

So there's a couple of things in here about bringing in nature, taking a walk.

01:10:45

For me, this is going for a run, getting outside.

01:10:49

So that's not a break.

01:10:51

That's physically difficult.

01:10:54

But I can tell you every time I go for a run in the middle of the work day, I come

01:11:00

back.

01:11:01

I'm more energized to engage with the creative work that I have to do.

01:11:06

The co-working space that I have, I picked that one because the, well, couple reasons.

01:11:14

First of all, I have this little cubicle which you saw when we recorded last time.

01:11:19

It's like a little glass cube.

01:11:23

It's like eight by 10 with a 12 foot ceiling and impossible to get all of the echoes out

01:11:28

of there.

01:11:29

But I only go there when I have to do a live session or something.

01:11:32

Most of the time I grab my computer and I go sit in the actual co-working space which

01:11:36

has these big, beautiful, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the river.

01:11:42

And the sun will rise and set and it'll come in through those windows and it's amazing.

01:11:48

It definitely helps my energy levels when I am over there working.

01:11:55

But the other reason is that there is a bathroom with a shower.

01:11:58

So I have my running stuff in my office and I'll hit a wall and be like, "Man, I just

01:12:04

don't feel like doing anything.

01:12:05

Let's go for a run."

01:12:07

And then come back, take a shower and every single time, it's like, "Okay, now I'm re-energized."

01:12:12

That's not the only thing you can do.

01:12:13

He talked about like, he's got his guitar.

01:12:17

Actually, it wasn't with this section but he put his guitar in the middle of the room

01:12:21

so that it was easier to pick up and just play every once in a while.

01:12:23

I've got a guitar hanging on the wall back here.

01:12:26

I've done that before where it's just like, "Okay, I just need a context switch.

01:12:29

I'm going to pick up an instrument and strum around on it a little bit."

01:12:33

And 10-15 minutes later, my energy levels are much higher.

01:12:37

See, and this is the point I wish you would have gone to here is if I'm working a physically

01:12:44

taxing job, where I'm building something, construction, whatever it is, my break can

01:12:50

very much look like reading a book, where I'm not actually taking a break to your point.

01:12:55

Like, you're going for a run.

01:12:56

That's not actually taking a break.

01:12:58

That's planned into your schedule.

01:13:00

But it's taking that cognitive break.

01:13:03

It's switching that context in a way that our brains think we are taking a break, or our

01:13:08

bodies feel like we are taking a break or we actually are in that context.

01:13:12

So I really like this conversation because it's like, "Yes, break doesn't mean what

01:13:18

he gets into later where I sit down and just aimlessly look at the ceiling for 40 minutes."

01:13:26

It might be that.

01:13:27

That'd be great.

01:13:28

I recently got into a non-sleep deep rest.

01:13:33

Have you ever heard of this?

01:13:35

No.

01:13:36

Okay, so non-sleep deep rest is you hit that lull at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon,

01:13:42

3 o'clock in the afternoon.

01:13:43

Well, you're not going to take a nap.

01:13:45

Most people are.

01:13:46

They're not going to take a nap.

01:13:48

But you can put on these playlists or there are apps for it where it almost walks you

01:13:53

through a guided meditation that puts you right on the border of taking a nap.

01:13:58

You're super-duper close if you do it well.

01:14:01

And man, you feel a ton better when you're done.

01:14:04

And some days you need that.

01:14:05

Some days I need that.

01:14:07

Other days I need to walk.

01:14:08

I just need to go out in nature.

01:14:10

I can't remember if it's in this section or not.

01:14:11

I think it was in this section where they talked about the fact that they showed the

01:14:17

pictures to people and the pictures impacted their level of productivity or their ability

01:14:23

to do a task and the green one or the pretty one versus the gray one.

01:14:27

And I got to thinking about that in terms of how much is the artificial ability to bring

01:14:32

nature in even if we can't get a window, we can put pictures of pretty things, pretty

01:14:37

natural things around us.

01:14:38

Man, what an impact that potentially has on our psychology and our ability to rest and

01:14:44

recharge.

01:14:45

I thought that was a really interesting takeaway.

01:14:47

Yeah, that's crazy to think about.

01:14:50

The other thing we should talk about in this section is the write-off principle because

01:14:54

that's where this is.

01:14:57

So do you remember the write-off principle?

01:14:59

Yeah, so the write-off principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission

01:15:04

to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.

01:15:08

So you sound like you're very passionate about this or at least you've wanted to talk about

01:15:12

this.

01:15:13

I'll tell you my take on it before you dive in.

01:15:16

I think this is valuable for me.

01:15:18

So not, I don't like it on the passive nature.

01:15:23

If I'm going into something and I'm planning to get something done that day and I don't

01:15:29

do that, that doesn't resonate as well with me or that doesn't feel as good to me.

01:15:35

If I plan in a day, like no, like I'm writing off this day, almost like taking a vacation

01:15:39

day, I like this principle a lot.

01:15:42

I can tell you, you know, from an education standpoint, the holiday break, that's a very

01:15:48

valuable write-off period of time where there has to be built into there some days where

01:15:53

I intentionally am not doing anything.

01:15:55

Like I'm not doing any admin work.

01:15:57

I'm not doing any kind of stuff to get ready for the next semester because if not, I'm

01:16:01

just completely wiped, right?

01:16:02

Like to the point of this chapter being recharge, I won't be able to recharge if I don't do

01:16:07

that.

01:16:08

So from that standpoint, I like it, but from a passive standpoint, I really get frustrated

01:16:13

with those days where it's like, oh, nothing's going my way.

01:16:16

I'm just writing it off.

01:16:17

I don't care.

01:16:18

I'm done with this day.

01:16:19

I don't like it from that perspective.

01:16:20

There you go.

01:16:21

Now what's your take?

01:16:22

Well, I like the principle itself.

01:16:25

My issue is with the spelling of this.

01:16:28

Ah, really it's a spelling issue.

01:16:32

Well so it's spelled R-E-I-T-O-F-F.

01:16:37

Why?

01:16:38

Do you know why?

01:16:41

I don't remember gathering that there was any reason why he wrote it that way.

01:16:46

He didn't actually say in the book, but where do you think that came from?

01:16:53

Oh my gosh.

01:16:54

Is that like some German philosopher who did one of these studies like all these other

01:17:00

ones that we've read about?

01:17:02

I have no idea.

01:17:03

I feel like I should know something that I don't know right now.

01:17:06

No, no.

01:17:07

If you had to guess, what would you think?

01:17:09

Where did that term write off come from?

01:17:12

I have no idea.

01:17:13

I mean, based on what you said, maybe a person who's studied this?

01:17:17

Yeah, that's the thing.

01:17:18

It's not.

01:17:20

It's literally just a different spelling of the word write off.

01:17:23

Okay.

01:17:24

All right.

01:17:25

And that bugged you.

01:17:27

It does bug me.

01:17:29

And this is completely unfair, I realize.

01:17:33

But I listened to Nick Milo's podcast where he interviewed Ollie.

01:17:40

And Ollie literally said like, yeah, I just wanted something that looked different.

01:17:45

So I changed it and then people were kind of running with it like, oh, is this some guys

01:17:49

German last name and he didn't feel the need to correct them, which I get, but also

01:17:57

like why?

01:17:58

Yeah, I had no idea.

01:17:59

I feel it's a little bit deceptive based on everything else and all the other research

01:18:04

that is in this book.

01:18:05

You see a name spelled like that and you're thinking, this is named after somebody, right?

01:18:11

But in the section, there's no description of the person because it's literally just

01:18:15

the story that he had with his flatmate where she's like, why don't you just write off the

01:18:19

whole day?

01:18:20

That's where the whole principle came from.

01:18:22

And so this, I feel like was a poor choice.

01:18:26

I can easily see that it's, he probably thinks of it as an Easter egg, right?

01:18:32

Yeah.

01:18:33

Yeah.

01:18:34

Which, you know, from one perspective, maybe an argument could be made.

01:18:36

I think at best it's not that it's not that funny.

01:18:43

It's not.

01:18:44

Yeah.

01:18:45

It's not that clever.

01:18:47

At worst, I feel like you're opening up yourself to people questioning the validity of a lot

01:18:54

of other stuff that you've just said.

01:18:56

So the interesting thing about this is I don't know what about this or about my way of thinking

01:19:00

or my personality is I saw it, I read it and I was like, I wonder why he spelled it that

01:19:04

way?

01:19:05

Yeah, whatever.

01:19:06

And I just kind of moved on.

01:19:07

Like I didn't really like sit on it.

01:19:09

I didn't think he didn't connect it to anybody like you're saying because I was like, was

01:19:12

I supposed to pick up on the fact that this is like ties to some researcher?

01:19:15

I did not pick that up if I was supposed to pick that up.

01:19:19

So okay, I can see where you're coming from.

01:19:22

Which again is not really that big a deal because most people will just take that approach.

01:19:28

Most people who read a lot are going to take that approach because if you're not going

01:19:33

to tell me like I don't have time to go dig through all of the things that you're citing

01:19:38

in the back of your book and figure this stuff out for myself.

01:19:41

So me personally I feel like as an author you have a responsibility to communicate things

01:19:48

as clearly and effectively as you can to your readers.

01:19:51

And I just don't think the weird spelling of write off is an alignment with that.

01:19:58

So, but I mean that has literally nothing to do with the content of the book itself.

01:20:03

I thought you had something fundamentally wrong and I was like, I want to hear this.

01:20:07

I'm excited to hear this.

01:20:08

No, okay.

01:20:09

Sorry, that's it.

01:20:10

All right, go to the last chapter.

01:20:13

Yes, sir.

01:20:14

All right, last chapter, chapter nine is a line and I like this one a lot.

01:20:22

I've got a couple different action items from this chapter specifically.

01:20:27

So the big idea here that I liked was the spectrum of the extrinsic versus intrinsic

01:20:34

motivation and how not all extrinsic motivation is bad.

01:20:39

If you go on one end you got extrinsic then you've got interjected and then identified

01:20:43

and then intrinsic.

01:20:44

The most effective one is actually that identified motivation.

01:20:47

It's almost intrinsic motivation.

01:20:49

You're basically taking external events and external circumstances and using them to create

01:20:54

the intrinsic motivation is kind of how I think about that.

01:20:58

And I think that's really powerful.

01:21:00

Alignment is the most powerful thing you can do if you really want to be more productive

01:21:04

going back to what you're talking about with like the personal retreat stuff.

01:21:07

That's the other thing that that gives you is it gives you alignment.

01:21:10

One of the things I do is I take my life theme.

01:21:13

I take my core values.

01:21:14

I look at those and I ask myself do these still resonate and then if they do then I'm

01:21:19

going to be using that as the baseline for everything else that happened throughout the

01:21:23

last 90 days was I living in alignment with these things.

01:21:27

And if not, you know, I've already decided the core values and the life theme aren't

01:21:31

changing.

01:21:32

So what I'm doing needs to change because if you're not in alignment it is going to

01:21:36

create friction it is going to feel like you're not not in the right place.

01:21:43

So there's lots of different things that you can use to kind of push things in the right

01:21:49

direction.

01:21:50

One that he talks about was the eulogy method where you write your eulogy.

01:21:53

I think I actually did this at one point as an action item in bookworm, but I actually

01:21:58

want to go back and I want to review it and update it.

01:22:02

So if I'm misremembering that and I haven't done it yet, I'm going to actually do it.

01:22:07

But otherwise I'm just going to touch it up and probably make a few edits to that.

01:22:14

There's also the Wheel of Life that's experiment number three.

01:22:18

And I like the categories that he had for his Wheel of Life.

01:22:22

He had nine different categories.

01:22:23

I've typically done eight, but they basically align with, well, I've got to look it up with

01:22:31

the specific areas, but there's there are groups of three.

01:22:34

So there's like three groups of three and each one of the areas are basically touching

01:22:38

on different aspects of who he is as a person.

01:22:42

So I want to actually take those categories.

01:22:44

I might matter if I'm a little bit, but I want to use those for my Wheel of Life that

01:22:49

I do in my next personal retreat.

01:22:52

And then there was this book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett that he talked about.

01:22:56

Bill Burnett is the guy who designed the Apple Mouse.

01:23:00

I thought this sounded fascinating.

01:23:02

So I've already ordered this book and want to go through it.

01:23:06

I liked a lot about this section in terms of it became more actionable, right?

01:23:13

You're seeing a common theme with me from the last book and from this book.

01:23:16

I liked the actionable sections in the last book.

01:23:18

I liked the actionable sections in this one.

01:23:20

I resonated the most with Wheel of Life.

01:23:24

That's like the one when we got out of this, I was like, I want to do that one.

01:23:27

I have never done that before and I want to do that one.

01:23:30

I've done Odyssey Plans.

01:23:31

I actually teach Odyssey Plans with my students and they work through Odyssey Plans at the

01:23:36

very beginning of their career in school and then at the very end of their career.

01:23:41

So those are very, very effective.

01:23:45

But as he puts that in the long term horizon section and I completely agree with him.

01:23:51

Those are long term planning things.

01:23:53

Those do not help you with the day to day activities and they don't even help you really

01:23:57

that much with the medium term horizon.

01:24:01

So when you're doing an Odyssey Plan, you really got to think about like, what's my long term

01:24:04

trajectory here and how do I plan on my long term trajectory?

01:24:10

I thought the short term section was lacking.

01:24:13

I wanted more from the short term section of, okay, how do we take these things that

01:24:20

we're trying to do long term and medium term and then turn them into daily actions?

01:24:24

It's not that the ones he provided to the two he provided are the three alignment quest

01:24:28

each morning choose three actions for the day to get you a step closer to where you

01:24:31

want to be.

01:24:32

And then the second one was alignment experiments, which is identify what you're feeling, come

01:24:36

up with a hypothesis and then execute and try to make change.

01:24:39

I just felt like that that section was lacking and I was left wanting more in that section

01:24:43

in terms of how do I tangible make that on the day to day.

01:24:48

Because the way I think about kind of this whole book and the way he frames this whole

01:24:53

book is where we're going to get to next is this productivity scientist, right?

01:24:56

Think like this productivity scientist.

01:24:58

And I went into the book and I kind of still go into the book thinking of it more not productivity

01:25:05

and the day to day operations of my life, but productivity more in the like, there's

01:25:10

this thing I want to achieve or there's this thing I want to do better at, I guess for lack

01:25:15

of a better way to say it, but it's a bigger issue.

01:25:19

And how do I take steps now to approach that forward?

01:25:23

And that's really kind of where I wanted this alignment thing to come out in that short term

01:25:28

section.

01:25:29

Gotcha.

01:25:30

Yeah, I like the alignment section and obviously you could go deeper with this.

01:25:36

We may have to, may have to dig deeper into the Odyssey plans now that I know that you

01:25:42

actually do these.

01:25:45

Yeah, maybe you can walk me through an Odyssey plan.

01:25:48

I don't know.

01:25:49

I'd be happy to.

01:25:52

So in my mind, kind of what I'm struggling with here is this alignment section feels

01:25:58

like the most important piece to me, but it's also at the end of the book.

01:26:02

On the one hand, I'm like, this should have came first because this is so fundamental

01:26:07

to everything else and kind of changes everything else.

01:26:10

But also I think that for most people who are coming to the topic of feel good productivity,

01:26:19

this is the right place for this at the end.

01:26:22

I really think the format that he's got here, where we went through, energize on block and

01:26:30

then once you can kind of like get a little bit of breathing room, that's the time when

01:26:36

you can figure out the long term stuff with with sustain.

01:26:40

So I think this is a really, really powerful way to end the book.

01:26:44

Well, it's not actually the end because there's still the last word, but basically the end.

01:26:49

Anything else you want to mention here before we go to the last word?

01:26:53

Not in the section we can go.

01:26:55

Okay.

01:26:56

So then the last word is literally just the section where he's encouraging us to think

01:27:02

like a productivity scientist.

01:27:04

Talks about how productivity isn't about discipline, it's about doing what makes you feel happier,

01:27:09

less stress and more organized.

01:27:11

And I think on the surface, people are going to either put too much stock in that or they're

01:27:17

going to write that off, right off because it's not that simple, but I think he's right.

01:27:26

When it comes to long term productivity, it's not about how much you can force yourself

01:27:34

to do things that you hate.

01:27:36

It's about the love of the things that you are doing, whether it's natural and it's just

01:27:41

something that's really fun or it's something that you've created enough meaning for the

01:27:47

thing that you just want to do it so badly.

01:27:51

And I also think that he talks about here how some experiments are going to work for

01:27:55

you.

01:27:56

Others won't.

01:27:57

The book is a toolkit, so figure out what works and discard everything else.

01:28:01

That is the perfect way to end this.

01:28:04

Now there are lots of these experiments, six per chapter, nine different chapters.

01:28:08

So you can't go into it thinking all of those experiments are going to be exactly what I

01:28:14

need and I'm just going to apply everything that he tells me to do and that's going to

01:28:18

fix whatever situation I find myself in.

01:28:22

This is a recipe book maybe.

01:28:30

So you have to kind of pick the things out of here and then the last thing he encourages

01:28:35

us to do is enjoy the process.

01:28:37

And I think that is really good advice and a great way to tie this one together.

01:28:42

Yeah, I like the fact that he's consistent in his theme through it, that he has experiments,

01:28:52

and then he says think like a scientist and keep doing these things until you figure it

01:28:57

out.

01:28:58

I like that he's consistent in that theme.

01:29:01

I think that comes from kind of the way he did it and the way he started thinking about

01:29:05

productivity and then the way he got better at thinking about productivity and then the

01:29:08

way he formed a business out of thinking about productivity.

01:29:10

Like I like the way he buttons everything up from this.

01:29:16

I have a couple of questions about the whole book in general for you if you're okay with

01:29:20

taking those at this time.

01:29:22

Sure.

01:29:23

Okay.

01:29:24

So this book feels to me like a series of YouTube videos or a series of podcast episodes

01:29:34

that was smushed into a book format.

01:29:38

And I don't mean that in any kind of negative way.

01:29:40

But like I almost think about the structure of this as hey, you could easily do an episode

01:29:46

for every one of these experiments.

01:29:49

You could do an episode for the different subheadings he has within the chapters.

01:29:53

You could do an episode for the actual chapter itself and then you could do an episode for

01:29:56

the part like there is a whole series of content here.

01:30:00

I went and tried to do research.

01:30:01

So correct me if you did this and I'm wrong.

01:30:04

I don't think there's a course built out of this.

01:30:07

No.

01:30:08

But like I could very easily see a course coming out of this that is the hey, do you

01:30:14

like this or do you want to focus on this one aspect of this experiment come come do

01:30:18

this course, which is a very business like creator mindset to I'm going to take this

01:30:23

one thing and I'm going to turn it into 15 things and all of these are going to be revenue

01:30:27

drivers for me.

01:30:28

And I mean none of that in the negative sense.

01:30:30

I mean, that's what the book felt like to me as I got to the end.

01:30:35

Yeah, you know, I said there wasn't a course, but I'm thinking there may be now because

01:30:41

I think Ollie had a skill share course at one point.

01:30:48

I'm trying to look that up quick and see that follows this this format.

01:30:55

Can't tell just from the the webpage.

01:30:59

But you're right that there's definitely opportunity to go deeper on a lot of the stuff

01:31:05

that he he talks about here, which I don't think necessarily is a bad thing for the book,

01:31:11

but we should actually talk about action items before we get to style and writing.

01:31:15

Any other questions you had before we get there?

01:31:17

No, I think I might have had another one, but I forgot it too.

01:31:20

Okay.

01:31:21

Well, action items.

01:31:24

I have a couple.

01:31:26

So one thing I want to do is add the side quest to my day.

01:31:30

I don't know that I have a formal way to do this yet.

01:31:33

So I will try and I think I'm already realizing some of the benefit of this, but I'm going

01:31:39

to try to figure out is there a formal way that I want to to log these and maybe there

01:31:44

won't be.

01:31:45

I also want to write and review my or review my eulogy and then update my Wheel of Life

01:31:51

with the new categories, which are listed on page 247.

01:31:57

But the categories really are not the important thing.

01:32:00

It's really just picking the areas that resonate with you.

01:32:04

So I want to use those as inspiration, but then revisit my personal retreat template.

01:32:09

How about you?

01:32:10

You got any action items?

01:32:11

Yeah.

01:32:12

So as I mentioned before, the 10, 10, 10, I want to start putting that into practice,

01:32:18

but I want to start filtering the, not necessarily the activities I do day to day, but the bigger

01:32:24

projects I take on and even some of the side quests I take on and run those through the

01:32:30

well, it matter in 10 minutes.

01:32:31

Well, the matter in 10 weeks will matter in 10 years.

01:32:32

I really want to start running some of those, those things through that filter.

01:32:36

The second thing I want to do is I want to, it happened in the last section, the align

01:32:39

section, the 12-month celebration.

01:32:43

So it's this idea that you're going to, you're going to have a celebration with a friend 12

01:32:49

months from now.

01:32:50

And what do you want to be celebrating at that time?

01:32:53

And I want to, I want to develop what I think I would want to be celebrating and then what

01:32:58

is the first action step that gets me there.

01:33:01

And that's kind of his, you know, his experiment there.

01:33:04

So I think those two are good tangible ones for me to take away.

01:33:09

Cool.

01:33:09

All right.

01:33:10

Style and rating.

01:33:14

I have been dreading this section because honestly I don't know what to rate it.

01:33:21

I have made a resolution that I'm only going to use whole point ratings based on feedback

01:33:30

from David Sparks.

01:33:33

And this one is kind of like firmly between four and five stars for me.

01:33:38

What is the, I haven't heard this, his, his need, his desire to push you to whole numbers.

01:33:43

Why?

01:33:44

Why can't you have a middle number?

01:33:45

Well, I think there's, there's something to be said about the simpler ratings.

01:33:50

I'm thinking of like Cisco and Ebert where it literally just thumbs up or thumbs down.

01:33:54

So I think the point fives, it just makes the scale longer.

01:34:00

So I'm trying to, trying to condense that it also fits better with my, my notes and my

01:34:05

metadata and obsidian.

01:34:09

But there's a lot to, to like about this book.

01:34:13

And I think if I'm coming to productivity, this would be, to learn more, this would be

01:34:20

one of the first ones that I would probably pick up.

01:34:22

All right.

01:34:23

That, that's the question I was going to ask you.

01:34:25

I'm so glad you said that because I thought this seemed like a very good first book to

01:34:30

recommend to somebody thinking about productivity.

01:34:32

And you just said, so you just confirmed that.

01:34:34

Okay.

01:34:35

Uh, I think that Ali hits on a lot of the important ideas.

01:34:42

And he does so in a way that is more cohesive than just here's some tactics.

01:34:49

That's the problem with a lot of productivity advice is people are like, Oh, the Pomodoro

01:34:53

method, that's amazing.

01:34:55

It's one tactic that you can use with success in certain situations, but it's not going to

01:35:00

work all the time.

01:35:02

And every time you come across one of those tactics, you're like, Oh, this is the one.

01:35:05

You know, and then you're just kind of setting yourself up for failure.

01:35:08

So I think that he does a great job of laying this out.

01:35:13

I like the structure of the three parts, the energized unblock and then sustain because

01:35:21

you have to first get going.

01:35:23

That's the energized piece.

01:35:25

And then when things get hard, how do you make them flow again?

01:35:28

That's on block and then long term.

01:35:30

How do we make sure that we can continue to do this?

01:35:33

That's where sustain comes in.

01:35:34

I think he's, he's spot on with how he approaches this.

01:35:38

The stories that he shares are great.

01:35:40

He's a, he's a better storyteller than I, I expected to be honest.

01:35:46

So he's got his own personal stories, which those are honestly the ones that I like the

01:35:49

most, but he also adds some additional historical stories like the, the Benjamin Franklin story.

01:35:57

I'd never heard that before.

01:35:59

And that was a really cool story.

01:36:01

I like that one a lot.

01:36:03

I have some nitpicks with specific sections of the book, the write off principle, you know,

01:36:09

the weird naming.

01:36:10

I don't really like the experiments, but also as I was thinking through like, how else would

01:36:17

you frame those?

01:36:18

I think actually for what he's trying to do here, that's pretty effective, especially

01:36:22

when you take into consideration at the end, he's saying like, this is a toolkit.

01:36:26

You're going to run these experiments.

01:36:28

Some are going to work.

01:36:29

Some aren't, you know, that's, that's really effective.

01:36:33

So I don't know.

01:36:36

I think there's some really good stuff in here and obviously having read a bunch of other

01:36:39

books at this point could easily go deeper on a lot of this, this stuff.

01:36:46

But I think he did a, he did a pretty good job with this one.

01:36:51

I'm going to give it five stars.

01:36:53

I think for me where I am right now, it probably is a four star book, but I've read hundreds

01:37:01

of productivity books.

01:37:03

So if you are a bookworm listener who is interested in this topic and you have not read all of

01:37:11

those books, this would be the place to start.

01:37:15

Like I mentioned, now I guess the caveat here is that if you've been in the productivity

01:37:21

space for a while and a lot of the things that we talked about today, you recognize like

01:37:27

you've read books where we're talking about where those things come from, maybe there

01:37:31

isn't a whole lot that's new here for you.

01:37:35

However, I think just the way that he describes things and the stories that he tells and the

01:37:40

different perspectives that he shares, this is not regurgitated productivity advice.

01:37:46

It's a entertaining, engaging read.

01:37:50

So I would recommend that that people read this one.

01:37:53

Yeah.

01:37:54

So I'm in a similar boat.

01:37:57

I'll give you the rating first.

01:37:58

If I could give it four and a half, but if we're not going to do four.

01:38:02

I mean, you can if you want.

01:38:05

I lean much more towards five than I lean towards four on this.

01:38:11

I think the decision to make it as this productivity scientist idea, when that hit the experiments

01:38:17

were a natural byproduct of that.

01:38:20

So would I have captured the experiments that way?

01:38:24

Probably not, but had I made the decision to do it a productivity science book, yes,

01:38:28

I would have probably done it in a similar way.

01:38:31

What I like is it it points people using that phrase experiment, right?

01:38:35

It points people to try, like just give it a shot.

01:38:38

See what happens.

01:38:39

And this is where, you know, I came in with the question about, would this be a first?

01:38:43

Do you think this would be a good first productivity book for people?

01:38:46

Because that was my gut, my gut takeaway from this.

01:38:48

I've not read nearly as many productivity books as you have, but I've been in the space,

01:38:54

you know, like reading and researching and listening to people talk about this kind of

01:38:57

stuff.

01:38:58

So I wouldn't consider myself an absolute newbie to it, but I also wouldn't consider myself

01:39:02

as advanced as as you are having read as many books as you've read on productivity.

01:39:07

But my gut reaction was, man, this would be a really good book for somebody who's first

01:39:11

interested in, I want to improve.

01:39:14

I want to get better.

01:39:15

I want to be more productive.

01:39:17

I want to say what's an approach or what's something, some resource that's going to give

01:39:21

me a lot of different things to try, right?

01:39:23

And I can try this one.

01:39:24

I can try this one.

01:39:25

And it's a fairly small buy-in to try it.

01:39:28

Like you don't even have to read the whole book.

01:39:30

Just go to that experiment section and try, you know, try that experiment.

01:39:34

So I agree.

01:39:35

I think this is a five.

01:39:37

I think it was very accessible to read.

01:39:41

I think it was very well organized in terms of its structure and overall the qualms I

01:39:48

had with it were very, very small in terms of the importance and the nature of the style

01:39:54

of the book.

01:39:55

So yeah, I'd definitely give it a five.

01:39:57

Awesome.

01:39:58

So we got a golden book here from Ali Abdahl.

01:40:00

Yeah, thanks for recommended this one because it was, I didn't have an expectation going

01:40:06

in, but when I got done with it, I was like, oh, that was a great read.

01:40:09

Yeah.

01:40:10

I enjoyed this one a lot.

01:40:12

And it inspired me to pick up designing your life by Bill Burnett.

01:40:16

And I think I want to go through that one next time.

01:40:20

So you want to come back and walk me through an Odyssey plan?

01:40:23

Wait, I'm going to be the most recurring guest ever as of next episode?

01:40:30

Yes.

01:40:31

No, absolutely.

01:40:32

This is a ton of fun.

01:40:33

I'm learning a lot and I'm really enjoying the conversation.

01:40:36

So yeah, absolutely.

01:40:37

Awesome.

01:40:38

Cool.

01:40:39

Thanks everyone for listening.

01:40:41

If you are reading along with us, pick up Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett.

01:40:46

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