Bookworm Transcripts

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Welcome back, Corey.

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Thanks for having me.

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This is number three.

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I am now the official most

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recurred guest on bookworm.

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That's true.

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Although I think we're going to have to take that title from you because I don't

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think you're going to be a guest anymore.

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Uh, well, I'll take this opportunity to announce to the world that Corey is

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going to be the new bookworm co-host.

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Yeah.

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Been really happy with the conversations that we've had.

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And, uh, as I told Corey, I was really looking for somebody that we

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had, I had good chemistry with and we could develop that camaraderie that

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made a bookworm special over 186 episodes or 185, whatever with, uh, with

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Joe.

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And, uh, right from the beginning, you know, we started having some great

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conversations.

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So I'm excited to have you join the podcast officially, Corey, and excited

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about where bookworm is going to go next.

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Well, I was, I was excited when you asked and I was excited when I got even

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the opportunity to guest on it because, I mean, I listened to bookworm for a

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long time and I just wanted to, you know, just get, know you better and get to

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know Joe better.

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It's funny because we've talked, I've talked about this before, but you, you

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have these people in your ear, right?

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And you're listening to them and you feel like you have this relationship with

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them, but you don't really have a relationship with them.

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What you have is you have a tiny little speck into their, into their mind.

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And, uh, now I'm just grateful.

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I mean, this is, it's a ton of fun to, to read the books.

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It's a ton of fun to talk to, talk with you about them.

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And it's a ton of fun to, to learn, you know, about life and about, you know,

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learn together, I guess with, if you will, learning community as we'll get to later

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on in our book today.

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So thanks, Mike.

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The whole point of that is thanks for trusting me and thanks for having me.

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And I look forward to 1000 more episodes if you wanted to do that.

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Hey, I'll keep reading books as long as, as long as your game.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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Yeah.

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You kind of hit on something that's important and one of the reasons that I

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really like podcasting in particular and why I really love bookworm specifically

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is you, when you listen to a podcast, you,

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you feel like you have a seat at the table.

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And so for a long time, I was listening to podcasts by my internet heroes is the

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term that I used.

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And you do that long enough and you just keep growing.

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You keep developing your skills and eventually you get a chance to contribute.

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And so I feel kind of honored that I have people who look up to me and that,

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that sense.

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And so I love the bookworm podcast.

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I love the growth that comes from reading these books and if I can help

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facilitate that in anybody else's life, I'm going to do that as long as I possibly can.

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Well, and one of the things I want to say is, I mean, I don't want to put,

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put too much of a spotlight on you because I know your personality.

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I know your style, but it's, it's truly that situation where you listen to it and

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you think, how could I do that?

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Like, how could I get there?

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How could I do something similar to that?

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And you feel what times like it's daunting.

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It's like, oh, I can't, like there's no way I could do that.

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But like it's truly one of those start playing around with it, start networking

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with people, start talking with people.

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And it's funny how I didn't expect this conversation to happen, but how much

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this conversation ties into the book that we're going to read today is you do

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these little prototypes and you do these little like smaller experiments.

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And it's interesting the way things sometimes unfold, like not always, but the

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way things sometimes unfold.

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So yes, I would say to say that you are one of my podcasting heroes.

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That's, that's very true.

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Go, I mean, I listened to you on focus.

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I listened to you here.

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And it was like, oh, how could I do similar thing to what, what Mike does?

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And now you just invited me to do that long term on bookworm.

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So pretty, pretty jazzed about it.

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So thank you very much.

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Well, I, I've shared this.

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I think I actually shared this in the relay FM spotlight because I got to do

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that recently with Kathy Campbell that I mentioned, you know, the internet

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heroes thing.

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I remember specifically I was walking the streets of my neighborhood one night

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with my wife and just kind of like dreaming and was like, wouldn't it be

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awesome if someday I had a podcast on relay FM?

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You know, what if I could podcast with David Sparks?

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And then he was listening to bookworm and he started sending me these encouraging

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notes every once in a while via email.

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And that eventually led to me interviewing him for the productivity show back

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when I was doing that and the relationship was built from there.

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But I've had people who have done that for me.

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So I feel an obligation to pay that forward.

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And I try to do that to the best of my ability.

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Probably not as great as I could be, but I'm doing my best.

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Can I distract us for one more second because I have to get your opinion on this.

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So the hot news right now, right?

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And nobody's really talking about it from the productivity side.

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So who am I going to talk to?

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I'm going to talk to the faith based productivity guy.

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Right.

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Okay.

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So Apple Vision Pro, do you think it has any chance in the first couple months,

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in the first six months, year, whatever it is to be an actual legitimate

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productivity tool?

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And I biased, I biased my question in the way I asked it.

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I know I did.

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Well, it's hard to say with the definition without having a definition of a legitimate

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productivity tool, like what do you, because I think it will be a helpful

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productivity tool.

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Uh, just like it's helpful to have your home office to eliminate distractions,

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you strap that thing on your face.

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And if you can do your work at the same level as you normally would on a computer

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and a monitor, that could be a big focus on productivity, Boone, just by, you know,

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I have this thing that I'm looking at and nothing else.

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I think, uh, over the first several months, there's not going to be very many of them.

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I feel like the initial apps for them are going to be not great.

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If you're just using, uh, Apple's apps, then, which is totally a legitimate way

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to, to be productive, you know, calendar reminders, pages, things like that,

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then you could probably do quite a bit there.

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But I think the third party support is really where it's going to take off for

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people like me and just frankly, I have zero interest in that product.

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Okay.

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See, I'm different than that, but okay.

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Good.

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Uh, that's, that's basically it.

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Like I think it will actually be a big thing over time.

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$3,500 is way too much for anybody, but a raving early adopter to, uh, go by.

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Uh, but over time, I think the price is going to come down and it's going to,

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it's going to find its, its place.

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You know, the, the Apple watch didn't know what it was at first.

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Either remember the digital touch thing that was part of the, the three main

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features that nobody, I think ever used.

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Yep.

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I agree.

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So, but this, I think is going to be bigger, a lot bigger than the, uh, the Apple

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watch.

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Uh, I think it is going to revolutionize the, the VR headset game.

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It's going to cause things like, uh, the Oculus, uh, to, uh, improve dramatically.

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But I think it's going to be several years before this is, you know, part of the,

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the normal repertoire for knowledge workers or anything like that.

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Yeah.

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I, I agree.

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Um, you know, I mean, the, the $3,500 starting price tag is a, is a really big

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mountain decline because what I would love is I would love to have the book.

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In the space and then the mind map in the space and be able to like be doing

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that in a more native fashion.

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But when I think about the fact that I can do that with a computer right now,

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right?

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Like if I put the book on the, I mean, I don't, I don't read paper, right?

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So if I put the book on the left half of the screen, I put the mind up on the right

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half of the screen, I can do that right now.

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And I have a tool that costs way less and does way more.

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And it's like, it just isn't there yet, but I think there is an opportunity there.

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So cool.

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Thanks.

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I just wanted to hear your opinion on that.

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Well, actually I got one more thing to add here.

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You mentioned, you know, the, the book and the mind, mind node, uh, side by side,

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like that's kind of interesting, but, um, I actually just got a chance to speak

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with Marianne Wolf, the author of reader come home for the focus podcast.

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So by the time this one comes out, that one should be available.

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And I'll put a link to that one in the, uh, the show notes, but, um, Marianne

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Wolf is a, uh, she's done a whole bunch of research on like the science of reading

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and, and how digital devices change the way that we read and makes the case for

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reading the analog books.

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So two big things came from reading reader came home.

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One, David started reading analog books again, but the second thing and the bigger

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revelation for the bookworm audience is that I am now reading fiction.

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No, what, okay, did you start one?

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Like what are you reading right now?

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I did.

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Uh, I picked up.

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So when I read that book, she was talking about the benefits of reading fiction and

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the empathy that can be, uh, grown through, through that process.

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I was like, okay, this makes sense.

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I'm going to start doing this.

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And I had no idea where to start for fiction books.

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I'm not going to just like go to Amazon and look at the top lists.

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So I went and listened to the upgrades and Jason Snell had his list of books from

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there.

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And the one that struck me from there was the mountain in the sea by Ray

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Naylor.

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Okay.

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So I just started that one.

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I'm like a couple of chapters in and, uh, I guess it's, it's too early to say like,

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I am now a fiction reader, but I am currently reading fiction.

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So I'll see that sticks.

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Nice.

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So in the, in the community, in the faith-based productivity community, um,

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there was the post about somebody said, okay, nonfiction books, raise your floor,

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fiction books, raise your ceiling.

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And I don't know how I feel about that yet.

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Like I'm still processing through that.

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But what I'll tell you is that was a comment that made, that's made me think

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about it multiple times, right?

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I was like, huh, how do I feel about that?

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Like it, it hits that creativity aspect.

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It hits that imagination aspect.

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It hits those things that makes me think somewhat outside of the box.

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And then my, my nonfiction books bring my base level up to, you know,

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cognitive knowledge and connections and things.

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So I, I, I like that idea.

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I just have to think about it a little bit more, but okay.

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I'm glad I'm glad to see you're reading fiction now.

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Congratulations.

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Yeah.

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Uh, still primarily reading nonfiction, but fiction is fun.

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Turns out turns out now, maybe one of my action items, even though it has nothing

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to do with this book, we should be trying to read a book on paper.

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That absolutely it's going to see how I see how it's different in this experiment.

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Absolutely.

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All right.

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Let's do action items here.

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So I've got three.

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I'll go through mine quickly.

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So the ad side quest to my day, this has been successful, but the making it a formal

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process has been unsuccessful.

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I'm not documenting this in any way, but I'm giving myself permission to just noodle

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on things.

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And if something opens up a loop, like it's okay to disengage

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from this thing that I was going to do for a little bit to go do this other thing.

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Those are the side quests and I can still, because that time block my day, I can

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still come back and do the big stuff that really needs to get done.

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Um, one of these things was the, the whiteboarding session that I shared with

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you.

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I'll mention more about that in a little bit.

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So there's an open loop for real.

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Uh, the other thing I had from this was to update my wheel of life with the new

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categories from Ali's, uh, feel good productivity book.

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And that was on page two, forty seven.

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I did this.

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Uh, let me pull up what I did when I did this was I brought that stuff obviously

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into my personal retreat template inside of obsidian.

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Basically I didn't use his categories exactly.

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I modified them a little bit.

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And I, but I do now have nine different categories.

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Okay.

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So here, here's what I landed on spirit, mind and body.

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Those are the first three.

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And that's kind of a group and then friends, family and significant other.

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That's another group and then career slash work, mission and money or the,

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the last group.

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And then I modified the template.

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So I've got those nine different areas and give those areas a score, got the

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wheel of life, uh, graphic inside of the, the inside of the template using the

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polar area chart.

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Um, I will mention I've got a whole YouTube video on how I do my personal

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entry process in obsidian if people are interested in the specifics of that.

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Go check that out because, uh, we could spend a lot of time talking about that.

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And that's not the point of today's episode.

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Um, the last thing that I did was I updated my eulogy.

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I had to actually done this previously.

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So I went back, I looked at it.

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I changed a couple of things.

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Uh, want me to read it to you?

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I do.

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I do.

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Can I ask a question before we get to the eulogy?

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Yeah.

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Or can make, I guess it's a statement.

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I like the fact that you separated career work from money because I think

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that's an important one to separate because not everything we do for career

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and work is directly tied to the fact that we're going to receive some significant

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financial gain or that it even is part of our, our money.

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I like the fact that you separated those two in your wheel of life.

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So that's, that's interesting.

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And then yeah, let's hear the eulogy.

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All right.

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So this is going to be weird.

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Mike Schmitz reading his own eulogy, but do you want me to read it?

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Do you want to send it to me and I'll read it.

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Uh, no, that's okay.

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Um, I'll do it.

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Mike Schmitz was a loving husband to his wife Rachel and an ever present father

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to Toby Joshua, Jonathan Malekai and Adelaide.

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His family was his first ministry and he always made sure they were his top priority.

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He frequently said no to work in business opportunities to spend quality time

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and go on adventures with the people that he valued the most.

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Mike was also a committed member of his church.

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And when he wasn't spending time with his family, he could often be found serving

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there. He believed that God had blessed him richly and he gave generously of his

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time and treasure to those who had need.

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He invested heavily in others and did his best to help them reach their full potential.

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Mike's life was driven by a desire to be a good steward of what was entrusted to him by God.

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He desired to inspire, encourage and teach others to connect to their calling,

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discover their destiny, and live a life they were created for.

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Everything he did was filtered through his life theme and he helped others to accept

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responsibility, gain clarity and take action in living a purpose driven and meaningful life.

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He helped countless people find their why, multiply their time and talent and leave a

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bigger dent in the universe.

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He was an entrepreneur who loved building businesses and making art before he died.

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He wrote several New York Times best-selling books and gave away over $10 million.

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Obviously this is aspirational.

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He taught his kids to be lifelong learners and to discover their own creativity.

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They have all followed in his footsteps as creative entrepreneurs who live life on their own terms.

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That's awesome.

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Like I want to dissect it, but we don't have time.

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Like we're not allowed to take the time to dissect it, but I want to I want to dissect it.

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It's also intriguing to meet how close it ties into a topic we're going to talk about today in

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terms of the life view.

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Yep.

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You know, like that's that's awesome.

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So that was a big help for you as you thought about this book.

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I'm sure it was.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I like like that action item a lot.

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You had one action item.

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How'd you do?

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I did.

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So my action item was to practice the 10, 10, 10.

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So 10, 10, 10 from Ali Abdullah's book was, um, is this going to matter in the next 10 minutes?

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Is it going to matter in the next 10, I think weeks?

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And is it going to matter in the next 10 years?

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And I've practiced that once or twice throughout, uh, throughout some important

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decisions that have come up.

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And what I'll tell you is that it's a good frame.

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So I liked the frame that it gave me because there were certain things where I

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legitimately said, Nope, for me, this is not going to matter in the next 10 weeks.

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And it's not even going to matter.

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You know, it's not going to matter in the next 10 years.

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It's not going to matter in the next 10 weeks, but for the next 10 minutes, I

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should care about this.

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And it, and it on some level, there was one particular thing that was annoying

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and kind of frustrating that it helped me release.

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And it said, okay, this will matter for the next 10 minutes.

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It might matter for the next 10 days.

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And then it's gone.

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Like people are going to forget about it because, because they're going to move on.

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And I'm going to forget about it because I'm going to move on and it allowed me

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to not stew on that kind of negative thing and process it.

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I'm trying to use it a little bit more as I think about some future projects and

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some future work and kind of how those, those things work.

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Will it matter in the next 10, you know, 10 minutes, 10 weeks,

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but minutes, days, weeks, years, however you want to couch the 10.

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I don't really care about that.

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So kind of give you an example of one that I'm thinking through it with right now.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. So not a little bit of a humble brag, but not intentionally.

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I just need to give you the context.

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So I got a grant, which is unique for CCU.

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So we're not, we're a teaching focus institution.

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So faculty members don't get a lot of individual grants.

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So I got a grant and the grant is to study how STEM practitioners think about

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their worship and whether they connect the two.

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Right.

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So if I'm an engineer, a computer scientist, a technologist, is that a form of worship?

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And what I'm trying to think about as I work through that project is will,

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will this matter in the next, you know, 10 minutes?

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Will this matter in the next 10 years?

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Will this matter in the next 10 days, months, whatever it might be?

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And, and how do I make that study something?

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And how do I make the deliverables out of that study?

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Something that will matter in the next 10 years that will matter in the next 100 years.

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And it actually has a significant impact on the field or has a significant impact

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on the people's lives.

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And I've never thought about it that way before.

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Like most of the time, the way I've always thought about doing research before,

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like before I came to CCU was, okay, like good grant funding.

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And can I get a publication out of this?

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And then does it add to the field?

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Right?

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Like those are the three, but it was never deep enough to where it actually

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really had any like teeth to it, if you will.

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And this, I think, gives me a good frame for, no, I want this to mean something.

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Like if I'm going to take a bunch of my time and work on this, I want this to actually mean something.

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So it's been, it's been valuable in the couple instances that I've used it so far.

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Very cool.

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Can't wait to see what comes out of that grant.

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I'm excited about it too.

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It's a crazy amount of work, but I'm excited about it too.

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All right.

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Ready to talk about today's book.

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I am.

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I'm excited about today's book.

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All right.

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So today's book was mentioned in the previous one.

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And then you had some experience with at least elements of this book, but the book is

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Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

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Bill Burnett, if I'm remembering correctly, was the guy who designed the Apple

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Mouse back in the day.

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So they're both designers and they teach a Stanford class on this concept about applying

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design principles to your life and life planning, I guess, would be the category here.

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The subtitle is how to build a well-lived, joyful life.

00:18:52

And so this is kind of kind of my jam right in my wheelhouse.

00:18:57

And when you when I discovered that Bill Burnett was an ex-Apple designer, I mean, now

00:19:03

you're checking all the boxes.

00:19:04

Yeah, exactly.

00:19:05

I want to drive home one point.

00:19:08

So design principles, their specific bread and butter is design thinking, right?

00:19:12

Which design thinking is a whole process of its own.

00:19:14

If you don't know anything about design thinking, I mean, you can read a lot on design thinking.

00:19:19

It has a lot to do with human centered design and Stanford, the D school at Stanford has

00:19:23

basically brought this field into not only fruition, but like they've they've made it a

00:19:29

very important field in the world of design in general.

00:19:32

Yes, that's a good point.

00:19:35

So this is kind of an oddball when you're thinking about design, the application of this

00:19:42

to lifestyle design, but that's the probably the most interesting application of it for me.

00:19:48

Not too long ago, Jonah read Bill by Tony Fadel.

00:19:52

And that was interesting too, about designing products specifically.

00:19:56

But this is kind of a condensation of the course that they teach.

00:20:03

There's a workbook that goes with it that I bought, but I did not go through

00:20:07

everything in that workbook.

00:20:08

The book itself has an introduction, 11 chapters and a conclusion.

00:20:15

There are no parts.

00:20:16

There's lots of visuals, so it's a pretty easy, fast read, unless you are going to go

00:20:23

through and do all of the exercises that they tell you to do, because there's a lot

00:20:27

of reflection that needs to happen in order for that stuff to be successful.

00:20:32

So I didn't do that.

00:20:33

I will admit that right now.

00:20:35

I didn't I didn't either.

00:20:36

And I agree with you completely.

00:20:38

Like the read was very, very easy.

00:20:39

It was written on a very tangible level, easy to easy to grasp.

00:20:44

But I mean, if you actually go and do these things, you can tell that they do

00:20:47

this over a, you know, multiple week period, you know, in either a trimester or

00:20:53

a semester or something along those lines.

00:20:55

And then they took that idea and they put it into a book.

00:20:57

A couple of notes I want to I want to bring out here as we enter the book.

00:21:00

It was the copyright, the latest copyright of this book is 2016.

00:21:04

There's actually another edition or sorry, a refined edition of this called

00:21:09

Design Your New Work Life.

00:21:11

And I actually think the title of Design Your New Work Life, which is from 2021,

00:21:15

makes a lot of sense.

00:21:17

And I understand why they did that.

00:21:18

So I'm glad we read Design Your Life because it's the like, it's the one

00:21:25

that launched this whole movement and it launched this whole way of thinking

00:21:28

about life design and applying design, thinking to your life.

00:21:30

And that's the one I wanted to start with.

00:21:31

So I'm glad we started with this one.

00:21:33

But I think and I would suspect that if we looked at Design Your New Work Life,

00:21:37

we'd understand why they made the changes that they did and we'll talk

00:21:41

about that more as we roll through.

00:21:43

Cool.

00:21:45

You know, that kind of opens up another point I want to ask you about.

00:21:49

I recently listened to the Kehl Nuportz got a great podcast called The Deep Life

00:21:53

and he interviewed Ali Abdahl.

00:21:56

And I had no idea that Ali Abdahl and Kehl Nuport were buddies.

00:22:00

They seem, you know, just based on the surface, we feel good productivity.

00:22:05

And again, we talked through that whole book and it's there's a lot of meat there.

00:22:08

But on the surface, anyways, it kind of seems contradictory to Kehl's

00:22:14

reeling against the passion mindset.

00:22:16

So it was kind of weird to hear them both on the same podcast.

00:22:21

But one of the things that they kind of talked about was how influential

00:22:26

Tim Ferriss has been with the four hour work week in terms of lifestyle design.

00:22:32

And I remember reading that book and not really liking it.

00:22:35

But one of the points that Kehl made was, you know, a lot of the criticism of

00:22:39

Tim Ferriss has been unfair because people are attaching to the specifics

00:22:43

and they're missing the forest through the trees.

00:22:45

Really what he was talking about was this concept of lifestyle design before

00:22:48

anybody else.

00:22:49

How do you feel about that?

00:22:51

Do you agree?

00:22:52

Um, I don't know.

00:22:54

I don't know if I've been formed enough to know.

00:22:56

I mean, that would make sense to me.

00:22:57

Like, so he's thinking about what, how do I want to live?

00:23:02

What life do I want to have?

00:23:03

Well, I want to have a life that's bounded.

00:23:05

And, and I guess the best way I can, I can show that I, I guess I do agree

00:23:09

with this implicitly, um, is the fact that we homeschool, right?

00:23:14

And I know you homeschool as well.

00:23:15

We homeschool a large reason why is because it drops a lot of that fluff time

00:23:19

out of the work out of the school day and the students can be more focused.

00:23:23

So our kids can be more focused on that.

00:23:24

And when they're not doing school, they can be doing other, doing other

00:23:28

creative and, and productive learning activities, but they're just not,

00:23:32

quote unquote, school activities there, there are other things.

00:23:35

Um, and I think that's an intentional life design we have as parents towards

00:23:41

their, you know, towards their education.

00:23:43

I mean, it, it isn't as much, um, or it's not primarily the driver of we hate

00:23:48

public school and, you know, all that.

00:23:49

It's more a matter of what is, what would this look like if it was the ideal

00:23:53

schooling situation?

00:23:53

And I think Tim would be a similar way to think about that.

00:23:57

It's like, what would my ideal day be?

00:23:59

Like, what would my ideal work life be?

00:24:00

Well, my early audio work life would be four hours a week.

00:24:03

You know, that way I can do other things and still learn and still be productive

00:24:07

in other ways.

00:24:08

Yeah.

00:24:09

I guess I just never really realized, uh, how much alignment my perspective

00:24:16

and, uh, thought processes are with the core of Tim Ferriss's message, because

00:24:21

the way that it was packaged, I remember it really kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

00:24:24

Even the title, the four hour work week, uh, he talked a lot about delegating and,

00:24:30

you know, how he initially made his money was through like pharmaceuticals and just

00:24:34

like that this is not, it's fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul.

00:24:39

Yeah.

00:24:40

But, well, and I don't, I don't remember that one enough.

00:24:43

Was it, um, was it very marketing heavy?

00:24:47

Like, was it, um, in terms of that, that title was meant to be an attention grabber

00:24:53

and then the concepts were, were different.

00:24:55

I don't remember the details of that book.

00:24:56

To be honest, how I try to recall at this point, I'd probably do it in justice.

00:25:00

It meant it's going to be biased based on my, my feelings towards it.

00:25:04

So I do remember he started the book by talking about how when he gets introduced

00:25:08

to people at parties, he tells them he's a drug dealer.

00:25:10

So like that's just kind of Tim Ferriss's personality, I guess.

00:25:13

And his personality kind of rubs me the wrong way, but I got it.

00:25:17

We're hearing Kellen and Ali talk about it.

00:25:19

It's like, well, maybe actually, you know, I agree with a lot of what he said there, though.

00:25:24

That was kind of shocking to me, but yeah.

00:25:26

But yeah.

00:25:27

So I bring that up because you talked about how this book being written 2016, kind of the

00:25:32

beginning of this lifestyle design.

00:25:34

Um, I feel like it can be traced back a little bit further than that and probably

00:25:38

Tim Ferriss says an element of that.

00:25:39

Um, but I know you weren't saying that these guys invented it necessarily, but

00:25:43

that's kind of where I think it became popular, at least gained some credibility.

00:25:47

It was Olak Stanford's teaching a class on this now.

00:25:49

Yeah.

00:25:50

Yeah.

00:25:50

And, and it really, I mean, I see this all the time.

00:25:52

It really drives out of a need where, you know, they throw statistics out in the very

00:25:57

introduction of this book.

00:25:58

And I mean, if you interact with young folks in terms of they're trying to figure

00:26:04

out what to do with their life, I mean, it is, it is crazy to figure out what, like, what are

00:26:09

you interested in?

00:26:10

I don't know.

00:26:11

Well, what do you like?

00:26:12

I don't know.

00:26:13

What don't you like?

00:26:14

Uh, things.

00:26:15

And it's like, I mean, you get these like insanely vague answers.

00:26:18

So it makes total sense where, where these ideas came from.

00:26:21

And I'm sure people have been wrestling around with this stuff for a very, very, very long

00:26:24

time.

00:26:25

Uh, it's just not formalizing it.

00:26:27

Yeah.

00:26:27

You mentioned the introduction.

00:26:28

So let's just talk about some of those statistics.

00:26:30

Uh, one of them is that only 27% of us college grads end up in careers related to their

00:26:36

majors.

00:26:36

So why are we spending all that money to get the majors?

00:26:39

I don't know.

00:26:39

Let's not go there.

00:26:40

I, we could go there and we could go there all day long, but we shouldn't right now.

00:26:44

So let's, let's move forward.

00:26:46

In America, disclaimer, disclaimer, I teach at university.

00:26:48

Yeah, I know you do.

00:26:50

Uh, in America, two thirds of workers are unhappy with their jobs.

00:26:54

And then 15% actually hate their work.

00:26:58

And I feel like I've heard these statistics before, but they obviously drive home the

00:27:04

point at the beginning that this kind of, I would call it the default life where you

00:27:09

just do what people are telling you, you should do that.

00:27:13

Isn't going to end up where you think it's going to end up, you need to be more intentional.

00:27:19

In fact, in the university core, I'm talking about the, the PKM stack and there's the intentional

00:27:23

life where you just consume the information and then that determines the quality and the

00:27:28

quality of the ideas that you have and ultimately even the actions and tasks and projects that

00:27:31

you do.

00:27:32

And then I talk about the, the intentional life is you start with the philosophy at the

00:27:37

top and that works its way, way down and it acts as a filter and it even allows you to

00:27:41

curate, you know, what is the information that's going to be useful for me.

00:27:44

I mean, that's kind of what we've been doing a bookworm since the very beginning.

00:27:47

Like, let's just read more of these books and then you get done with a book and then you're

00:27:51

like, okay, so what open loops opened up and what questions do I have about something

00:27:55

else?

00:27:55

Then you go find something else that, that maybe is going to answer that question.

00:27:59

And really they're saying like that's the approach you want to take to designing your life.

00:28:04

And they kind of reframe, I like this, you know, where you reframe, what do you want to do

00:28:07

when you grow up that then becomes who or what do you want to grow into.

00:28:12

I've got this, this saying, I used to edit at the end of all my, my videos, keep going

00:28:19

and keep growing.

00:28:19

Yep.

00:28:20

So it's basically don't want to stop and you want to constantly be trying to better

00:28:26

yourself because when you better yourself, you're going to better your, your situation

00:28:30

kind of tie back to kale newports.

00:28:31

So good.

00:28:32

They can't ignore you.

00:28:33

You know, you just develop your skills to the point where eventually the marketplace

00:28:37

recognizes the value that you can bring and you can make more money and you can do the

00:28:41

things that you want to do.

00:28:42

But it's not just you got to find the right situation and someone's got to open a door

00:28:46

for you.

00:28:47

Let's take ownership over this and let's design this life that we want to live ourselves.

00:28:51

Yeah.

00:28:52

This, this whole section made me think about how different periods of time and different

00:28:58

areas have changed.

00:28:59

So if you think way back, you were born into what you were going to do.

00:29:03

So I'm born into a lifestyle.

00:29:05

This is what we do, right?

00:29:06

In our, in our lifestyle, this is what we do.

00:29:08

Then you get into a situation where, okay, maybe you're born into a family and this is

00:29:12

what our family does.

00:29:13

So what do I do?

00:29:14

I do exactly what the family does because, you know, that's how we transition through.

00:29:17

Then we get into a time period where it's like, well, I do what's in the region around me.

00:29:23

So if I live in, you know, Appalachia or Appalachia and like we're coal miners, what do we do?

00:29:27

We all coal mine, right?

00:29:28

Because that's the industry that's in our area and how this progression has come.

00:29:33

And we're now at the point where we're not like just going out and looking for the thing we want to do.

00:29:38

We're actually in an idea where we can actually figure out and design what we want to do.

00:29:42

So we can go purely from creativity to actually doing, doing a thing.

00:29:46

And I think that transition, the book made me think back on that transition about how, I mean,

00:29:52

honestly, how good we have it right now.

00:29:54

Like I'm not born into the fact that I'm going to shovel hay for the rest of my life or bale hay for the rest of my life.

00:30:00

And that's, that's pretty awesome to me.

00:30:02

Like I like that idea and I like where they, where they take us and where they kick us off from.

00:30:07

Yeah.

00:30:08

So should we jump into chapter one or anything else you want to talk about from the introduction?

00:30:12

So the only thing I want to bring in the introduction is they start this early.

00:30:16

And in my, I did a mind map again.

00:30:19

So you'll be proud of me.

00:30:19

Nice.

00:30:20

But I did it.

00:30:20

I did a mind node mind map again.

00:30:22

And one of the things that I thought was fun about the mind map and I probably wouldn't have done this if I hadn't done the mind map was they,

00:30:28

they introduced these dysfunctional beliefs.

00:30:30

And then as Mike said a little bit, a little bit ago, they reframe them.

00:30:33

So they say dysfunctional belief reframe, dysfunctional belief reframe.

00:30:36

And they do this throughout the book.

00:30:37

And the reason why I say the mind map was effective is because you could pull a section of the mind map out with that was just these dysfunctional beliefs and reframes and just these dysfunctional beliefs and reframes.

00:30:47

I mean, there's over, there's probably 15 of them.

00:30:49

There's probably 15 of these dysfunctional beliefs and then reframes.

00:30:52

And I think that was a really interesting way to drive home some of the main points that they wanted to make.

00:30:58

And I thought it was a very effective way to drive home some of the main points that they wanted to take.

00:31:01

That's really the only other thing I have for, I guess the only one other thing I just thought about it now, the, they have five designer mindsets.

00:31:08

So the designer mindsets they introduce here are curiosity bias to action reframing awareness and then radical collaboration.

00:31:15

And then the chapters in the book address those things.

00:31:18

So they give more practical ideas on curiosity.

00:31:20

They give more practical ideas on bias to action, more practical things on reframing.

00:31:24

So again, I think they, I think they do a fairly good job setting us up to where they're going to go in the book, moving forward.

00:31:31

Yeah.

00:31:32

And those, those mindsets that they talk about, those are like natural, but there's the outline for your sections, but they didn't do that.

00:31:41

Exactly.

00:31:42

Yeah, exactly.

00:31:43

All right.

00:31:44

So chapter one is to start where you are.

00:31:49

And I really like this, but the whole concept of, of starting where you are, you can't just say, well, I want to be in a different situation.

00:31:59

You have to prioritize progress, not perfection here.

00:32:05

And they talk about problem finding and problem solving.

00:32:08

That's ultimately what leads to a well designed life.

00:32:13

And then they talk about this concept of gravity problems. So the problems that you choose to focus on are important gravity problems are really big.

00:32:21

Like gravity is a problem, but you're not going to be able to solve that one.

00:32:25

So gravity problems are problems that can't be solved.

00:32:27

Gravity is always going to be there no matter how much you wish it wasn't.

00:32:30

So focus on the things where you can actually move the needle.

00:32:35

And I think that's interesting.

00:32:37

But then the rest of this, where they talk about the life design assessment and they've got the four different gauges of health, love, play and work, that part, I actually didn't like a whole lot.

00:32:48

I agree.

00:32:48

I agree.

00:32:49

Yeah, I just got done with my action item on the wheel of life and like there's nine of them there.

00:32:54

But I like the idea that's attached to these because they say basically you should take action on a gauge that's low.

00:33:02

And I have an example of this that I'm willing to share from a wheel of life exercise from actually before COVID where one of my lowest scores was social because I am actually I'm a podcaster and a creator and I'm always talking to a camera, but I'm not very extroverted in real life.

00:33:21

My idea of a good time is sitting at home on a Friday night next to the fireplace reading a book.

00:33:28

And my wife is the exact opposite. She gets energy from being around people.

00:33:33

So one of the things that we decided to do was kind of in conjunction with my low social wheel of life because I realized that people are important, even though that's not how my personality is naturally is naturally just go spend time with a bunch of people.

00:33:48

Had just read the already gathering by Priya Parker and we decided that we were going to start hosting these small group.

00:33:55

Kibbutz is what we called them based off of what near I'll talked about where they have a couple families come over and the kids would go into basement and they would see kind of intentional discussion points with the adults.

00:34:04

They'd share a meal, then they'd go to the living room and they'd talk about things.

00:34:08

So that's kind of what we decided to do.

00:34:11

And we set that up.

00:34:12

We bought new furniture for our living room so we could kind of facilitate these conversations.

00:34:17

And it was really successful, at least until COVID hit and we had to stop doing them.

00:34:23

But it was all spurred by recognizing that this area, you know, day to day, it doesn't really bother me.

00:34:29

Day to day, I just want to go chill.

00:34:32

But in the long run, recognize that I do need to be sewing into these relationships and establishing these friendships with other people.

00:34:41

That's important long term.

00:34:43

So creating a systemic way to actually move the needle on that gauge.

00:34:47

Yeah, Mike, I agree with you completely.

00:34:50

Like I like the idea of the dashboard because I think it's a good way to see where you are in the areas.

00:34:55

What I didn't like was just the four because I thought there's an opportunity for you to do more there and there's an opportunity for you to do ones that are more relevant to your life.

00:35:06

Right.

00:35:06

So mine, I'll be very quick about this because there's a bigger point I want to make in this chapter.

00:35:10

But like mine is just general health.

00:35:14

So if I'm not moving and I don't even mean like hardcore exercising, if I'm not moving like outside doing something or if I'm not eating well, man, it impacts a lot of the rest of my life.

00:35:26

Right.

00:35:26

So if I can nail that that area on the dashboard, it seems like other things tend to go well as well or it's actually really in a reverse gauge.

00:35:36

When things aren't going well in other places, I notice it in those areas, right?

00:35:41

Like I stopped moving as much.

00:35:42

I stopped being outside as much.

00:35:43

And I stopped eating in an appropriate way.

00:35:46

But the point I wanted to get on this chapter is, man, the gravity problems, I thought was so such an interesting concept and such an interesting idea.

00:35:53

And this is an indication of where I think this book really adds value to me is there are these core ideas that they pitch out here and these core concepts that they pitch out here that I think are so valuable.

00:36:04

Gravity problems, I think, is one of them.

00:36:05

So what I loved here is they say in the book, the only response to a gravity problem is acceptance.

00:36:10

So like think about gravity.

00:36:12

Like the only thing we can do in the world with gravity is accept it and design around it.

00:36:17

Like we can't get rid of it.

00:36:19

We can't make it go away.

00:36:20

It's a law.

00:36:21

It's a fundamental thing.

00:36:22

It's always going to be there.

00:36:23

And I've started to think about like, OK, in my personal life, in my professional life, in all these areas of my life, what are the gravity problems?

00:36:31

What are the things that like they're going to be there and I need to accept that.

00:36:35

Right.

00:36:35

One of them being my kids are going to make noise.

00:36:38

Right.

00:36:39

Why?

00:36:40

Because they're kids and they're young and like they're just going to be loud and that's a gravity problem.

00:36:45

So what does that mean?

00:36:46

I have to design around the fact that they're making noise.

00:36:48

I can't really try to tell them stop making noise.

00:36:51

It's part of their nature.

00:36:52

They they have to make noise.

00:36:54

So I have to I have to design around that and I and I think that that idea really changed the way I think about a lot of things.

00:37:00

So I like that that idea a lot.

00:37:02

Yeah, that's interesting.

00:37:04

You're right.

00:37:05

I do think that that's a great example of a gravity problem.

00:37:10

But it's not an obvious gravity problem.

00:37:12

I don't think I fall into this category, but I could see an alternate scenario where

00:37:18

mom or dad is just saying like kids, you got to knock it off and be quiet.

00:37:22

And the fact that they're not like they believe they have the potential to be quiet and it's just like they're choosing not to.

00:37:28

You've basically taken the other approach is like, well, this is just, you know, kids are crazy.

00:37:33

So I can't really change that, but I could see another, another alternate universe where someone is trying to.

00:37:39

And they're just getting frustrated because you can probably influence a little bit, but not not a ton.

00:37:47

And so I think the takeaway is still this the same principle focus on the things where you can actually make a difference.

00:37:54

Yep.

00:37:55

I agree completely.

00:37:56

All right, building a compass is chapter two.

00:38:00

And I like this concept a lot.

00:38:04

This kind of ties into something that we did not tease out from the introduction, but they talk about how well designed life is one where who you are, what you believe and what you do all aligned.

00:38:16

And that's really important.

00:38:19

They talk about the two things that you need for your compass are a work for you and a life view.

00:38:23

Don't like that right there.

00:38:25

There's the work life balance myth in action.

00:38:30

Embedded there.

00:38:31

Yes.

00:38:31

Yes.

00:38:32

But I think I understand why they do that because most people are going to think in those two buckets.

00:38:37

So I think they would probably say because they're saying these things have to align.

00:38:42

That's the purpose of the compass.

00:38:43

You're bringing these things together.

00:38:45

But I think it's it's more helpful personally to just destroy that limiting belief that there are these lines between work and life, especially now where there are so many people working from home.

00:39:02

Those lines are blurred.

00:39:04

So you have to establish your own boundaries and the sooner that you understand that and take responsibility for that, you can exercise more influence in that the more you're going to be able to actually create an atmosphere in an environment where you can actually do what you need to do.

00:39:24

But the larger point here and the one that I really want to kind of talk about is the true North idea where you're going.

00:39:31

And this, I think is is genius.

00:39:34

I love the idea of the compass.

00:39:36

I actually have in one of my creativity talks, I talked about how you don't need a plan.

00:39:43

You need a direction.

00:39:44

And the visuals I use are the compass versus the blueprint.

00:39:48

If you're trying to build something, design something and you try to get all of the pieces identified and all of the tasks broken down and create that plan.

00:40:00

And this is when it's going to get done.

00:40:02

Humans are bad at that and it's going to take twice as long and it's going to cost twice as much and you're going to be frustrated the entire time.

00:40:10

So don't focus on all of the things that you need to do.

00:40:13

There's only two things you need to do what you're doing right now and then everything else.

00:40:17

So the compass can indicate this is the next step.

00:40:22

And when you get done with the one thing, then you can focus on what is the next thing instead of scanning the entire horizon.

00:40:30

Okay, I'm going to pick something now out of all of these available options.

00:40:33

That's the value of the compass.

00:40:34

It tells you which way the next step is supposed to go.

00:40:37

And I think that's a much better approach.

00:40:39

Yeah, I mean, I didn't feel as strongly about the life view work view thing.

00:40:45

I see what you're saying now, right?

00:40:46

That it separates those two bifurcates those two in a way that doesn't make sense.

00:40:51

Did you connect with the life view in terms of the life theme stuff that you do?

00:40:54

Like was that a connection you had there?

00:40:56

Or did you see those two things as being a little bit different?

00:41:00

Uh, kind of.

00:41:01

I mean, that's on the surface anyways with the label.

00:41:04

It makes a lot of sense.

00:41:05

Um, I think probably from a philosophical point of view, there's alignment there, but how they go about it is very different than what I do.

00:41:15

Uh, because they're just kind of like here's some blanks and fill in this stuff.

00:41:19

And, uh, like I already just got done with the cohort where we walk people through this process, which is what I used.

00:41:25

And I find that framework more helpful in ending up at something that is actually useful.

00:41:32

And I get it.

00:41:33

This is a book.

00:41:33

This is not the class.

00:41:35

So you sign up for the class or you go through one of the workshops because they actually have workshops where they'll walk people through this stuff.

00:41:41

I have a absolute confidence that the person who is facilitating that workshop is helping you along this path more than they're able to do in the 200 pages or so in this book.

00:41:52

Um, however, just given the content of the book, like that is missing.

00:41:56

Yeah, I would agree.

00:41:58

Um, I would agree.

00:41:59

I think the, the one of the takeaways for me out of this chapter was the idea of coherency and like the fact that if these two things aren't aligned, if these two things aren't connected to each other, then you're going to notice a dissonance in your life and you're going to feel this friction or, or feel something.

00:42:15

Um, I actually think it's very challenging to align these and align them in a way that that makes sense long term.

00:42:23

But I think that's part of their process as well as they're saying, you'll never have it perfect.

00:42:28

You're going to continue to have to work on this life view, work view, whatever other views you have and bring those two bring those things together in in coherency.

00:42:35

So overall wasn't, you know, um, I thought this, this set a good foundation in terms of setting up setting the stage for where we're going next.

00:42:45

Yeah, agreed.

00:42:45

And in fact, the next chapter is chapter three, wayfinding and the wayfinding title fits perfectly with what they're talking about with building a compass.

00:42:55

Wayfinding is the ancient art of figuring out where you are going when you don't actually know your destination.

00:43:01

Yep.

00:43:02

There's two tools for wayfinding that they talk about engagement and energy engagement is feeling excited, focused or having a good time.

00:43:09

Yeah.

00:43:10

I don't know if I like that definition, but having a good time piece at the end.

00:43:14

But again, that probably is just my, like off the cuff reaction.

00:43:19

Same kind of it's rooted in the same, uh, same reaction in the issue that I can't quite put my finger on when I when I pick up feel good productivity by Ali, uh, like just on the surface, I feel like, I don't want to, don't want to touch this because it's not always going to be fun.

00:43:35

It's, you know, kind of, I guess I'm, I'm so connected to, uh, what, what Cal talks about with, like the passion mindset and how dangerous that is.

00:43:44

That if there's even like a chance that that's going to be misinterpreted by somebody, I feel like this is dangerous.

00:43:49

Stay away.

00:43:49

Yeah.

00:43:51

Yeah.

00:43:51

But overall, I think, uh, I think it's, it's fine.

00:43:54

You do want to be engaged with things, uh, but they're not going to be the things that are always fun.

00:44:00

They're going to be the things honestly that are, are meaningful.

00:44:02

And if you connect that to your life theme is what I would call it, your personal mission statement.

00:44:07

And, uh, that, that creates the, the clarity to cut the things that don't, uh, don't hit the mark.

00:44:13

And then motivation to, to do the things that, that do.

00:44:17

Um, so that's kind of how I interpreted this section on way finding, I kind of filled in the, the blanks here.

00:44:22

But ultimately, uh, the engagement and the energy piece, this is something that we don't think a whole lot about, but this is really the thing that is going to allow us to do the things we want to do.

00:44:33

Or it's going to be holding us back.

00:44:35

You can have the time to do something.

00:44:37

You can have the thing on your calendar.

00:44:40

But if you don't have the energy or you just are like, what's the point?

00:44:44

You're not going to show up and do it.

00:44:46

Unless you maybe got some external accountability, something like that.

00:44:50

But it's the, the gray matter, our, our brain, and they actually talk about that.

00:44:54

Our brain accounts are 2% of our body mass, but it takes up 25% of our energy.

00:44:58

So that's the thing we got to be protecting.

00:45:01

Um, one of the exercises they gave was this good times journal.

00:45:06

And I don't think I'm actually going to keep this.

00:45:08

But I think this is a cool idea where you record when you're energized or when you're engaged.

00:45:13

I think I'll try to add elements of that to my daily journaling in obsidian, but I'm not creating separate categories for this.

00:45:22

I think this is just going to be under my journal entries, but it's going to be something that I'm going to try to pay attention to.

00:45:27

Yeah.

00:45:28

It's one of those, you know it, you know, when you see it or you know it when it happens and you, you make a note of that as you're going.

00:45:32

Um, I, I thought the direction aspect of this was good.

00:45:36

Um, I'm trying to figure out how to, how to summarize this or how to say this in a way that makes sense.

00:45:41

So help me out, Mike, if I, if I mess up.

00:45:43

So if you play video games in certain video games where you're navigating a world, there's like a fuzzy map in the bottom right hand corner.

00:45:51

And, and at times, you know, you have your fuzzy map and it'll tell you like what direction you need to head in.

00:45:56

And then you know, you have a goal, but you have no idea what's in between these two places, right?

00:46:00

Because the rest of the, the little cheat map, if you will, is a, is blacked out or grayed out or you can't see it.

00:46:06

And this is what came into my head when I was reading the section.

00:46:09

I was like, oh, it's like one of those things where it's like, it's telling me which direction I need to travel to achieve this goal that I want.

00:46:15

And I need to do that with my life too, as I need to say, okay, I need to travel in a certain direction.

00:46:20

Well, the way they present this is what direction do I need to travel in?

00:46:23

I need to travel in the direction of things that engage me, of things that give me energy.

00:46:27

And if I do that and I'm aligned with the overall goal or the compass is the way they describe it.

00:46:32

And that's, this is where I started to go, I don't know if I like compass.

00:46:36

Like, I don't know if compass sits with me correctly.

00:46:39

You know, something felt wrong about it.

00:46:42

I don't have a good example or a good, like alternative to it, but compass doesn't feel right to me.

00:46:47

Another aspect that stood out of this chapter to me was, you know, they make a quote that flow is play for grownups, right?

00:46:53

So this idea of, you know, flow where you're so engaged with that activity that you basically, like, go into a trans and you forget about the world.

00:47:01

And next thing you know, like, you know, three hours have passed and you have no idea what's happening.

00:47:05

Like, I really like that, that concept and using that to identify like, what are the areas where, man, I had no idea.

00:47:14

I liked this as much as I did, but like, I just lost three hours of my day because I was so focused and so engaged in that activity.

00:47:22

And then I think it's valuable to think about because they call this out in the book where that might be an activity that actually drains your energy.

00:47:28

So now we need to talk about whether or not that's a, that's an energy giving thing or that's a energy draining thing.

00:47:34

And if it's energy draining, it's not terrible.

00:47:36

It's just you can't have too many of those or else you get to the end of the day and you're completely, completely wiped in and you, they don't say it, but you end up leading the burnout.

00:47:43

So I liked the way all of this fit together.

00:47:47

I liked the good time journal, actually.

00:47:49

I'm a little bit more in terms of, I think that would be a good section of the notebook and just writing stuff down.

00:47:55

This is the activity.

00:47:56

This is why it engaged me.

00:47:57

This is why it gave me energy.

00:47:59

So those were the good parts of this chapter where the chapter started to get me and I started to notice this transition is things start to shift more towards work in this chapter.

00:48:10

So, you know, the books called design your life, but if you look at the dysfunctional belief, work is supposed to be enjoyable.

00:48:16

Right. So if you look at different things that they, there's another section that I'm blanking on right now, but work is fun when you're actually learning, leaning into your strengths and deeply engaged in energize.

00:48:27

So here we immediately start to take a shift towards work, which we hadn't done up until now as much, if you will in the book.

00:48:35

And I thought, huh, that's, that's really interesting.

00:48:38

And this is why I said their new version of the book, they actually introduced work into the, into the title.

00:48:43

And I think that, that makes a lot of sense.

00:48:46

I did too. I saw that show up in my Amazon recommendations, but I didn't pick that one up yet.

00:48:52

Let me go back to the, the mini map that you were talking about because they say something specifically in this chapter of follow the energy.

00:49:02

And the framing with this is actually very similar to the framing that I use in the life theme cohort.

00:49:08

One of the first things I ask people to do week one is identify your moments of impact, I call them.

00:49:14

But basically what have you done that really made you come alive?

00:49:18

And I think that's actually really great advice.

00:49:21

And the visual I get for this, and I apologize, I know you mentioned Zelda last time, but not really played it.

00:49:27

But that's the perfect analogy of this because in Zelda, the, they have these shrines and you'll be like running through the map.

00:49:35

And all of a sudden you hear this boop, boop, boop, boop, which means that there's a shrine nearby.

00:49:40

Okay. Okay.

00:49:41

And then the minute that you hear that, you're like, Oh, I got to go find the shrine.

00:49:44

So then you start moving in the direction of the shrine and it gets faster.

00:49:49

Like as you get closer and then you make a wrong turn and it starts to get slower.

00:49:53

And you're like, Oh, it's kind of like if you're a kid, you know, I find hide something in the room, you get warmer, get warmer, or you're getting colder.

00:49:59

Yeah.

00:50:00

That is the same principle.

00:50:02

And I feel like energy is the perfect thing to use for that because you can feel it.

00:50:08

You know when you're energized, you know when you're not.

00:50:11

And sometimes you just got to have the discipline and do the hard thing and push through.

00:50:15

But ultimately long term, that's not going to be enough.

00:50:19

Now there are ways to create the energy.

00:50:21

You know, what you do doesn't even necessarily need to change.

00:50:23

It could just be your perspective and understanding and connecting to a reason for doing the things.

00:50:29

But I like that follow the energy idea and then actually gets into the next chapter.

00:50:34

Anything else you want to talk about from chapter three before we go there?

00:50:37

So I know you're developing this creator career and everything's going pretty well in there and all stuff.

00:50:43

But I just thought of the technology idea that is going to revolutionize you and I.

00:50:46

So we need to start a company that's an AI company and it's like the humane pin, right?

00:50:51

You clip it on there and as you walk around and engagement and energy is happening,

00:50:55

it starts beeping faster and faster and you're like, I need to follow that engagement.

00:50:59

I need to follow.

00:51:00

Think about it.

00:51:00

We'd be we'd be billionaires.

00:51:02

Mike, we'd be billionaires.

00:51:03

That might not be good.

00:51:04

You know, I could walk into a room and it might stop beeping altogether.

00:51:09

As you look at us as an indication.

00:51:11

Oh, man.

00:51:15

All right.

00:51:16

So chapter four is getting unstuck.

00:51:20

And the reason that this ties so nicely, I mean, there's a lot that we could talk about in this

00:51:25

chapter, but specifically they talk about creating three mind maps for engagement, energy, and flow.

00:51:32

And this is one of the action items I jotted down from this.

00:51:35

I actually want to do this.

00:51:36

Now they talk about mind mapping here a little bit and they say, you know,

00:51:39

start in the middle with one of these engagement, energy or flow, then go out of level, then go out

00:51:43

another level.

00:51:44

They do a really poor job of explaining mind mapping.

00:51:47

Yes.

00:51:48

But that is absolutely that is from the perspective of someone who actually like made a course on it

00:51:53

for this sweet setup back in the day.

00:51:55

So that's I have more experience with this concept than the average person.

00:52:01

I probably got over a thousand mind maps in mind node currently.

00:52:05

Like I really believe in the power of visual thinking and mind mapping specifically.

00:52:10

I think it's a really powerful tool for getting unstuck.

00:52:13

And that kind of ties into the whole design thinking process.

00:52:16

You know, there's more ideas you have more possibilities.

00:52:20

And one of the things that they said here, which I thought was pretty brilliant,

00:52:23

quantity has a quality all of its own.

00:52:25

When you have a bunch of options, then you can start to see which ones really are potentially good ones.

00:52:31

And never choose your first solution to any problem.

00:52:34

I mean, that's not necessarily an action item, but it's a great life rule.

00:52:37

Yeah, I work with my engineering students all the time on this, right?

00:52:41

Because they'll get so fixated on the first thing they think of.

00:52:44

And I'm like, no, create more ideas, create more ideas.

00:52:46

And they're like, but the one I have is awesome.

00:52:48

And I'm like, no, it's an idea.

00:52:51

We have no idea if it's awesome yet.

00:52:52

That's a whole other stage of the process.

00:52:53

So yes, I agree with you completely.

00:52:55

Yeah, you have no idea how good things are at the beginning.

00:52:57

In fact, in the City University cohort, I kind of talk about that with ideas specifically.

00:53:03

Like you don't know what they are when you capture them.

00:53:05

You got to give it some time.

00:53:07

You have to disconnect from it in the moment because the minute that you have an idea,

00:53:09

you think it's the best thing you ever thought of.

00:53:12

And then the next day you're like, oh, this is complete garbage.

00:53:14

And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

00:53:16

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:53:17

So then, you know, the very best of the things that you captured, those I bring into obsidian.

00:53:22

And then I have a whole separate process for developing those.

00:53:24

And I talk about that as like a greenhouse for your ideas because you plant these seeds

00:53:28

and then you let them develop, you provide the right conditions,

00:53:30

but you don't know what those seeds are when you plant them.

00:53:33

And that resonates with me because I do not have a green thumb.

00:53:36

I'm definitely not a master gardener.

00:53:38

Like you show me a seed.

00:53:38

I have no idea what it is.

00:53:39

Now other people, maybe that doesn't resonate so much because they understand the whole principle.

00:53:45

They're better farmers than I am.

00:53:47

But I think that that is true with ideas.

00:53:50

You can't judge it by its initial impressions.

00:53:54

You got to give it some time.

00:53:55

And then you start to see what you really got to work with.

00:53:58

Yeah, I like the idea section here because I agree, right, in terms of one of the enemies

00:54:06

of creativity is judgment and the fact that we get these ideas and we start to immediately

00:54:09

judge them.

00:54:10

It's like, hold off.

00:54:10

Just make the ideas first.

00:54:12

We'll have a whole section where we judge them later.

00:54:14

You know, like, and I think that's a good philosophy to live by.

00:54:17

What I thought was strange here is so they introduce ideas and they don't say the word

00:54:23

brainstorming here.

00:54:24

At least I don't remember them saying the word brainstorming here.

00:54:26

But then there's a whole other section on brainstorming later.

00:54:29

And the fact that they separated those or that they didn't do more on this early,

00:54:33

they did it later in the book, I thought was strange.

00:54:36

So that was something that caught me in kind of a strange place.

00:54:42

One of the things I loved about this chapter was the anchor problems.

00:54:44

And then they distinguished between these gravity problems and the anchor problems.

00:54:47

So an anchor problem, right?

00:54:49

They say it's a real problem.

00:54:50

It's just a really, really hard one.

00:54:52

It's actionable, but we've been stuck on it so long.

00:54:55

Often it seems insurmountable.

00:54:57

And I really like this idea and how they separate these two things.

00:55:00

Okay, there are these gravity problems where we kind of just have to go like,

00:55:02

this is the reality and what are we going to do about it?

00:55:05

And then we go, there's these anchor problems and wow, we've been stuck on this so long

00:55:09

that I don't know if there's any way we could ever solve this problem.

00:55:12

But what it does is it helps you reframe it, you know, oh, let's explore new possibilities.

00:55:17

Let's challenge the way we've currently been approaching this.

00:55:20

And what I started to do, at least informally in my head,

00:55:24

is I started to actually categorize things in my life and say, all right, this is gravity.

00:55:29

This is anchor.

00:55:30

This is gravity.

00:55:30

This is anchor.

00:55:31

And it was a really good way.

00:55:33

This is one of those core concepts I was talking about before.

00:55:35

This was a really good way for me to think about kind of how I should see the world or

00:55:41

how I could see the world, not should.

00:55:43

I guess how I could see the world in different ways and how that helped

00:55:47

me process through things.

00:55:50

Yeah, that's interesting.

00:55:52

I mean, I'm not going to clarify the problems into the different categories

00:55:56

in any sort of formal way, but I think that is interesting and important to recognize

00:56:01

the subtle difference there.

00:56:03

I agree.

00:56:03

I like the anchor problems a lot.

00:56:04

So chapter five is design your life.

00:56:08

And this is where we get introduced to the concept of the Odyssey plan,

00:56:13

which is a plan for the next five years of your life.

00:56:17

Now there's three different versions of the Odyssey plan that they say you're supposed to make,

00:56:22

or is an Odyssey plan all three of these things side by side?

00:56:25

I was a little confused by that.

00:56:26

So yes, they would say it's an, they would say,

00:56:29

they're the Odyssey plan is three side by side, and you do life one, life two, and life three.

00:56:36

So life one is the thing that you're doing or the plan that you're currently on.

00:56:40

Life two is the thing that you would do if one was suddenly gone.

00:56:44

So for some reason plan one went out the window, what would we do?

00:56:47

And then life three is basically the world is your oyster, open it up,

00:56:51

whatever you want to do.

00:56:52

Resources are unlimited.

00:56:54

What would that plan look like?

00:56:56

This is the part of this book that I'm most familiar with,

00:56:59

because I run my students through this design challenge.

00:57:02

I usually run them through them in their first year here,

00:57:04

and I run it through them in their last year here.

00:57:06

And I like to let them look at them and say like,

00:57:08

okay, look how different your five year plans might be.

00:57:11

And then what's happened in those five year plans.

00:57:14

So I resonated with this section a lot, but because I've done it before,

00:57:19

and I've seen the effect it has on students and people, I guess in general,

00:57:24

because I've done it with not just students.

00:57:25

But one of the really cool things that you get out of this is how difficult it is for people

00:57:31

to think beyond two years.

00:57:33

It's actually really, really interesting, because the first two years,

00:57:38

they usually do fine.

00:57:39

But then when they start to get like three or three or four year five,

00:57:43

I mean, they just, they freeze and they're like,

00:57:45

ah, I don't know what I want to do in four years.

00:57:47

I don't know where I'm going to be in four years or what goals I want to achieve.

00:57:50

And I was like, okay, that's what the activity is for you then.

00:57:52

Like that's what you need it, you need it to be.

00:57:54

So I resonate a lot with this because I've seen it work very effectively with folks.

00:57:59

So when you do this, do you follow the format that they have in the book,

00:58:02

which is there's a visualographic timeline.

00:58:04

It's a title for each option in the form of a six word headline.

00:58:09

And then there are questions that this alternative is asking and the dashboard

00:58:13

where you gauge the resources, the likeability, the confidence and the coherence.

00:58:17

Yes. So I follow that.

00:58:18

But what I focus on more is I focus on more the visual graphic in the timeline

00:58:24

and then the questions that come up out of this timeline.

00:58:28

I find that the students and even I don't really resonate as much with making the six word headline.

00:58:35

I mean, it's fine, but you don't get as much out of that one.

00:58:38

And then the dashboard, I think the dashboard, the way they set it out,

00:58:42

where it goes, resources, likeability, confidence and coherence,

00:58:45

those are an okay starting place.

00:58:48

But this is where I think the individual can change that.

00:58:51

The one that I think is the most valuable out of that,

00:58:55

or I guess the two that would be the most valuable.

00:58:57

What resources do I have?

00:58:59

Like how, you know, because you get into some likelihood on that one is like,

00:59:03

if I have a ton of these resources, okay, that's much more likely.

00:59:06

And if I don't have any of the resources, now you start to ask questions of how do I get those

00:59:09

resources, but then the confidence side of it too.

00:59:12

So you tie into the confidence side because a lot of times students can develop these five-year

00:59:17

plans and they're really effective, or they're really promising, if you will.

00:59:21

But man, they have zero confidence that they're ever going to do it.

00:59:24

They have zero confidence that would ever come to fruition and you go, okay, why?

00:59:28

What is the thing?

00:59:30

So what these do, these one, two, three, four, you know, visual graphic title questions dashboard,

00:59:36

they basically help people and later on in a chapter, they're going to talk about the team

00:59:41

that you go through this designing your life process with.

00:59:43

They really help other people ask a bunch of really interesting questions and say, oh,

00:59:47

I noticed that you've rated this resource really, really low.

00:59:50

What are you going to do about that?

00:59:51

How is that going to, you know, how are you going to overcome that?

00:59:54

Or you rated this really, really high.

00:59:56

You know, where do you get that resource from?

00:59:57

And how can I get, you know, how can I access some more of that resource or whatever it might be?

01:00:02

So yeah, I like this a lot, this section.

01:00:05

Nice. I did not do this, but I feel like I've done elements of what the Odyssey plan is trying

01:00:12

to accomplish before. Maybe because you've gone through a bunch of them, you can kind of tell me.

01:00:17

In my mind, I'm thinking the average person is going to go through this and they have no

01:00:21

trouble thinking about the thing that they're currently doing.

01:00:24

The thing you do if the thing were suddenly gone, now you're starting to open the door

01:00:27

to some additional possibilities, some things that you didn't know that were already adjacent.

01:00:32

And then the last one is really designed to get you to think bigger.

01:00:36

I can probably see how before this, I'm so focused in on just like, I'm following this track.

01:00:43

And now I start to look around and I see the other options.

01:00:46

And I would guess that most people are going to end up somewhere between the thing they do

01:00:51

if they were suddenly gone and the thing that they would do if they had no limitations.

01:00:55

And then that goes into the prototyping thing in the next chapter.

01:00:59

I can't say that that's where they land. I don't think there is a place where most people land.

01:01:06

Some people have that path, the thing you do path the first one, so clearly planned out.

01:01:12

And they're just on a trajectory and they know that's what they want to do.

01:01:15

And they've got it settled that they actually have a lot of trouble with the other two.

01:01:20

And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that in a very good way.

01:01:23

Like they are the exception to the rule in terms of they've got it figured out.

01:01:28

Then there's other ones that need the brainstorming step that comes in step two.

01:01:31

And then they need the freedom to really, really open up in step three.

01:01:37

Because that's really what step three is doing.

01:01:38

Step three is saying you put all these limitations on this when you're doing this.

01:01:42

Well, I can't, I can't, I can't. No, no, you can.

01:01:44

Like just imagine that you can. Like there are limitations.

01:01:47

And they need those two to open up the brainstorm.

01:01:50

And then where I think the value comes in and they don't really talk about it in the book.

01:01:54

Where I think the value really comes in and as I say, okay, look at those three plans.

01:01:58

What's the plan you want to do?

01:02:00

Take the elements of all three plans and put them in the plan that at this moment,

01:02:04

it's a snapshot in time, but at this moment, what's the one you want to do?

01:02:08

And what's really fun is you'll get students who will come out and they'll be like,

01:02:12

man, I didn't realize how much I like to travel.

01:02:15

Because I put travel in all three of these plans.

01:02:18

So therefore in the one, whatever I'm going to do, long term, travel has to be a part of that.

01:02:23

Like I have to either have enough vacation time that I can travel,

01:02:25

or I have to have a job that lets me travel a lot.

01:02:28

And it's like the smushing of those three together and then coming out on the other side

01:02:34

is really where I see, I see the value in this process for the way I've used it in practice.

01:02:43

And I'm guessing that the next step is going to be the chapter six and that's going to be

01:02:48

applicable no matter which path they go down, correct?

01:02:51

Yes, yes, absolutely.

01:02:53

Cool. So let's go there then.

01:02:54

Chapter six is prototyping.

01:02:57

I know you had mentioned at the beginning, this was one of the big ideas.

01:03:02

And maybe you can introduce this one.

01:03:06

I'll just real briefly, prototyping is kind of the crappy first version of something.

01:03:12

It's the first step, but it's never designed to be the final product.

01:03:16

It's sort of like a test when you're starting this and that's really the important first step

01:03:23

to start going down one of these paths, especially if it's one of those ones that you really haven't

01:03:27

given yourself permission to consider previously, I'm guessing.

01:03:31

Yeah, so if we were going to section this book into parts, this is where we switch from curiosity

01:03:36

into bias to action.

01:03:38

So the point of this is they say, well, as a designer,

01:03:42

and they write this in the book, building is thinking.

01:03:45

And I've heard this in different forms from a writing standpoint that writing is thinking.

01:03:49

So don't think that I think first and then I write this stuff or I think first and then I create,

01:03:53

as I'm creating it, I'm actually thinking through and making it better and refining it.

01:03:58

Well, that's the same idea.

01:04:00

It's this bias to action and we're going to move towards action.

01:04:02

Now, what I'll tell you is in my experience running through these frameworks and working

01:04:08

through these ideas with folks, this is the hardest part, is them coming to an idea of like,

01:04:12

okay, what is a prototype that actually makes sense for the thing I want to explore?

01:04:17

And what we always have to back people into is we have to say, what do you want to learn?

01:04:20

Okay, what do you want to learn directly ties into what you explore?

01:04:25

So if you want to learn what it might be like to move from, I don't know, finance to health care,

01:04:32

right? So okay, let's think about what's a prototype look like that's going to help you

01:04:37

understand the difference between the work context of finance and the work context of health care.

01:04:41

So it's like, this actually gets really, really hard and this is where

01:04:45

having somebody who's done this a few times before or at least can give you really good and

01:04:50

honest feedback will help. So they talk about different ways to prototype and they really only

01:04:54

throw out two here. They throw out prototype conversations and prototype experiences.

01:04:59

So prototype conversations are basically interviews. You're doing interviews to glean as much wisdom

01:05:06

as you can from other people about what they do and why they do it and how they do it and the

01:05:10

context that they're doing it in. This is one of my action items, right? So we'll get to it to the end,

01:05:16

but I want to do more prototype conversations around the intersection of faith and technology

01:05:21

and what does that look like and where are people working in it right now and where's the field

01:05:25

growing and how is it growing? But then these prototype experiences, they call out, you know,

01:05:30

the one person in the book does like three internships, right? And he figures out a way to smush those

01:05:35

three internships together. Well, that would be a prototype experience. So let's say I wanted to

01:05:39

be a content creator, right? Instead of me launching something like a podcast and doing all the background

01:05:45

work to get it all set up and get all the feeds set up, I would try to find somebody and like

01:05:50

try to work network in which we'll get to later. I'll try to network my way into into this and say,

01:05:55

hey, Mike, could I come on your show once and just figure out what it's like to be a podcaster? Or

01:06:01

I would say, hey, Mike, you make podcasts all the time. Could I could we sit down and make a fake

01:06:06

podcast together so I can get the experience of what it would be like to make one. And these two

01:06:11

things allow us to really learn, but they lower the stakes significantly. We don't up, you know,

01:06:18

we don't cause enough people in our life. You know, we don't, you know, go off the deep end with it,

01:06:23

but we really get some good tangible feedback. But I would say this is one of the hardest pieces

01:06:29

of this process is because making good ones is sorry, making good prototypes is challenging.

01:06:36

And I think the best advice they give here is trying to figure out where they give it. But they

01:06:40

talk about dropping the prototype down to learn one thing from the prototype. So whenever you're

01:06:47

going to try to do just try to learn one thing, don't try to learn 10 things that makes it too hard.

01:06:52

Figure out what the minimum viable prototype is, if you will. So if you know, if you'll know the

01:06:56

startup world MVP, like the minimum viable prototype to learn that one thing.

01:07:00

Yeah. So real quickly on the podcast topic that you mentioned, I feel like there's an

01:07:06

important distinction here. I mean, this is kind of based on their life design interview thing.

01:07:10

If you go into it, and I'm not saying that you did this, but let's say I've got this podcast,

01:07:17

right? If you were to approach me and be like, Hey, can I be a guest on your show? And I don't

01:07:22

know who you are. We've never had any interaction before. I'm like, no, because I'm going to

01:07:26

protect my podcast. It's my baby. Yes. Now you and I had previous conversations on your podcast.

01:07:32

So I knew at least for the first one, when I was like, Hey, let's do a guest episode,

01:07:37

see how it goes, that that episode was going to turn out well. So the life design interview that

01:07:44

they talk about here is a conversation with someone who is either doing and living what

01:07:48

you're contemplating or has real experience and expertise in an area about which you have questions.

01:07:52

He also they also talk about how people enjoy being helpful. But the way to unlock people being

01:07:57

helpful is to make it low risk for them. So just putting myself in that situation. If someone were

01:08:05

to really want to know how to start a podcast, I will give them a bunch of time. I'll point

01:08:12

them in the right direction. I'll create these resources. Like this is the mic that you got to

01:08:15

get. This is where this how you want to do the editing. This is how you connect all the pipes,

01:08:19

is how you publish the episodes. This is who I would work with in order to get a logo. Like

01:08:24

shortcutting all that stuff for people. Happy to do that. The minute that you're like, Hey,

01:08:29

let me onto your platform, my shields go up. Well, okay. So but they would say there's a

01:08:36

distinction here, right? Because in the latter, sorry, in the first side of that,

01:08:41

where you're giving me all that information, that's not a prototype. Okay, the prototype has to be

01:08:46

you tell me. So the conversational one is you tell me everything you can tell me about actually

01:08:51

making one. Yeah. Tell me about the entire process, what it's like to talk to people.

01:08:55

How do you feel when you do it? All those things. But then the thing I want to call

01:09:00

here is like, when it's time to build the prototype, you better do that on your own. Don't ask somebody

01:09:05

else who is a mentor in some sense to put their name on the line when they don't know if you're

01:09:11

actually going to follow through with this thing. This is where I think the second example of the

01:09:14

one that I came to afterwards actually fits a lot better is you would ask that mentor, like,

01:09:18

could we record a fake one? Could I glean your experience through that fake one? And that is a

01:09:24

lot better because it doesn't put the mentor at risk or it doesn't put the, you know, the guard

01:09:28

up of the mentor. So yeah, that's a that's a much better example. I agree. Okay, so did you

01:09:34

have anything else? Because I want to move us to the brainstorming idea here, because this is where

01:09:37

it comes before it. Yeah, so it actually, I didn't think about this before. I actually just thought

01:09:42

about this right now based on something I said where I said, this is the hardest section.

01:09:45

It actually now makes sense to me why they may have brought brainstorming into here is because

01:09:50

most people in my experience struggle with this stage. So where do they need help brainstorming

01:09:56

in the prototype phase? They really need help brainstorming what these prototypes might be

01:10:00

and letting the wild ideas fly, which the authors are really, really big on these ideas, these

01:10:05

wild ideas. I like the fact that they, they throw out two different methods for brainstorming. So

01:10:12

they they give you just the definition of the one which I don't think does it justice, but group

01:10:15

brainstorming and they give you a little blurb about what group brainstorming is, then they give

01:10:18

you their life design brainstorming, which is frame a good question, warm up brainstorm, and then name

01:10:23

and frame the outcomes. And I think if you if you want to do brainstorming, well, that's a pretty good

01:10:30

minimum set of criteria to help people get to a decent amount of ideas. And then when you get into

01:10:36

those name and frame outcomes, that actually helps you make them actionable. And one of the

01:10:40

things I really liked out of this was the sentence that they put. We had 141 ideas. We grouped those

01:10:45

into six categories. And based on our focal question, we selected eight killer ideas to prototype,

01:10:51

then we prioritize the list. And our first prototype is boom, because it like literally hits everything,

01:10:56

like it summarizes what we did. It summarizes why we did it. It summarizes where we're going to go

01:11:01

next. And then it summarizes after that one where we're going to go after that. And I think

01:11:05

that is a huge, like valuable sentence that they threw in the book.

01:11:11

Yeah, I like that a lot. And I like the process there where we were constantly whittling things

01:11:17

down until this is the thing that we're going to test. And then if that doesn't work, we build

01:11:21

another prototype. I agree that that part's really, really good. All right. Chapter seven.

01:11:28

Oh, Mike. Oh, Mike, this is where I stopped liking the book. I'm not going to say it wasn't

01:11:35

valuable, but this is where I stopped liking the book. Yeah. So this is interesting. Chapter seven

01:11:42

is how not to get a job. And the reason I say this is interesting is that I agree with a lot of

01:11:50

the principles of what they're saying here. But I feel like there's a whole lot more that is missing.

01:11:56

So they talk about the anatomy of the standard job description and how section one is the setup,

01:12:01

which are the generic job qualifications. Section two is the skills always based on the skills of

01:12:05

the previous job holder. And then section three is what makes a candidate special where the truth

01:12:11

sneaks into the job description. And having been in charge of revamping the hiring process

01:12:18

at the previous gig, I can tell you that this is pretty much spot.

01:12:23

However, I don't know, like they have tips for internet job searches and stuff like that. And I

01:12:34

agree that the standard way to go find a job is not probably the way that you want to do it.

01:12:40

However, I don't think that this is completely on the person who is reading creating the job

01:12:48

description or the person that is reading the job description. Now, obviously, you want to take

01:12:51

ownership of this if you're from the perspective of them trying to find a job that there are things

01:12:56

that you can do. But ultimately, I think if you're trying to get a job, you want it to be a good fit.

01:13:01

And you've got to go into these interviews with perspective of I'm interviewing them just as

01:13:06

much as they're interviewing me. And then the quality of the interview is based on a whole lot

01:13:10

more factors than what you have covered in this book so far. I mean, when I read the process,

01:13:16

we integrated emotional intelligence assessments. We integrated this top grading piece from bread

01:13:23

smart where you're asking the question, like, can I interview a previous boss or manager to verify

01:13:28

what you're telling me is true? And you don't actually have to follow through it. That's what

01:13:31

the threat of a reference check, like, just the fact that they check, yes, this is part of our

01:13:36

standard process. Now they're going to tell you the truth when you actually get to the interview.

01:13:39

The whole process is just stupid. It's like, we're trying to trick people into getting the job,

01:13:46

like getting the offer. And once you get the offer and you get plugged into the company,

01:13:51

they're looking for somebody who's a right fit, but there's no way you're going to be able to tell

01:13:54

if it's a right fit till you're actually in the culture. The whole thing is messed up.

01:14:01

These two chapters just felt so out of place to me. Like, it's not that they're not saying good

01:14:07

and interesting things. Like, I'll actually probably use a decent amount of this as I advise

01:14:12

students and as I counsel students. Right. But it just felt so out of place because I was like,

01:14:17

wait, how did we go from prototyping to now we're just going to start talking like very,

01:14:24

very laser focused on the problems with the job process, the fact that they're these hidden jobs,

01:14:30

and then like getting into this dream job and networking and I was just like, wait,

01:14:34

like what just happened? And then this ties back to the thing I said before.

01:14:37

It makes sense now why they've repositioned this book as your work life because in a book that's

01:14:43

titled your work life, this makes a lot more sense. Right. Like, I mean, I can, I still don't think

01:14:47

it should be in seven and eight. So I'd want to see if it's if it's moved, but I think it just

01:14:52

doesn't fit in this section for me. I agree with you. Now you kind of mentioned chapter eight.

01:14:58

Let's actually just do that real quickly because there's not a whole lot else I want to say from

01:15:01

chapter seven. And chapter eight is a separate chapter and that's designing your dream job.

01:15:07

I think there's one thing worth understanding in this chapter from the perspective of somebody who

01:15:13

is going to be looking for a job. You don't want to get a job offer. They told a story in here about

01:15:20

someone who had all these crazy qualifications and they were trying to get a job offer and they sent

01:15:25

out all these different resumes and they got nothing. I'm there basically saying you shouldn't be trying

01:15:30

to get someone to give you a job offer. You should be having a whole bunch more conversations. You

01:15:36

should be networking in a way, not just like what can I get from people, but being curious and

01:15:42

developing these relationships and then what that will lead to in the long term is a whole bunch

01:15:47

of offers, a whole bunch of options. And then from there, you can pick the one that resonates

01:15:53

with you that the best or you think is the best fit. And I think that's actually pretty good advice.

01:15:57

Yeah. And I kind of buried in that is the whole idea of like effective networking.

01:16:02

They told one story about this guy who moved to this town and just started talking to all these

01:16:06

people. And then he goes into the interview for the board and they're like, how do you know that

01:16:11

you're going to be able to develop the relationships? You're new here basically. How do we know that

01:16:16

you're going to be able to develop the relationships? You need to be successful. And he's like, well,

01:16:19

I've already done it with three of you, because three of the five people he had connected with.

01:16:23

Like that's that's this in action. The best version. It's not always going to play out that way. But

01:16:28

yeah, just be curious, be nice. Don't be a jerk and talk to people.

01:16:32

Yeah. I think the big thing that stood out in chapter eight for me were networking, like you said.

01:16:37

So I'll double down on the idea that helping folks understand that networking isn't slimy,

01:16:45

that like everybody needs to know other people. And you can do it in a, you know, they say the

01:16:49

word slimy. That's why I said it. But it's like you can do it in a way that's off putting to everyone.

01:16:54

But at the same time, everybody knows that building a network is a valuable thing. And like,

01:16:59

when you've seen the benefit of a good network, man, it is very, very encouraging. It's like, oh,

01:17:07

I need to talk to somebody. Like, oh, that person might know them. And then next thing,

01:17:11

you know, two steps later, you're talking to the person and you're like, wow, that was incredible.

01:17:15

Like I had no idea that was going to happen. You can use it in a bad way. Like you can use it just

01:17:19

to take advantage of people. So don't be that person. But I thought there are ideas there around,

01:17:24

like using it to learn and using it to edify both, both situations is fantastic. The one,

01:17:29

the other one that got me that I liked a lot about the section was the hidden job market.

01:17:34

And I think this is more true than we all realize or than people realize. So you think, indeed,

01:17:40

LinkedIn, whatever these are, that these are, this is the job market or the corporate website or

01:17:44

whatever it is. And it's amazing to me the number of times that people find their way into an interview

01:17:50

or an offer based on just random conversations they had during the week or somebody knew somebody

01:17:56

who thought you were an interesting person or your background was interesting and they wanted to

01:18:00

tell this other person about it. Like, I think that is a really, really interesting idea. And

01:18:06

then they do another quote here that I really, really love. And it demonstrates how to do this.

01:18:13

The more I learn about XYZ environmental, like they're saying a company there, the more I learn

01:18:17

about your company and the more people I meet here, the more fascinated it becomes. I wonder,

01:18:22

what would be the steps involved in exploring this more or moving forward with this? And that's

01:18:25

such a natural way to like, you connect with them because you've just had a bunch of conversations

01:18:30

with them. And they dispel the idea of like, you have this interview and you say, well, what jobs do

01:18:36

you have open right now? And it's easy for the person to just be like, none. Have a good day,

01:18:41

right? Like, you know, and like, it ends the conversation where when you say, is there any way

01:18:45

for me to get more involved in what you're doing? Is there any way for me to get more involved in

01:18:48

the organization? It plants that seed of like, wow, maybe there is, right? Like, we've been talking

01:18:54

about this position or, you know, we had so and so just quit. And I wonder if, and I really liked

01:19:00

that aspect of this again, but it's weird because it feels odd where they put it in the book. But I

01:19:06

think it's very valuable. So I have a short story that you'll appreciate. My brother-in-law

01:19:11

is one of the top salespeople for a brick and stone company that's local. And he's kind of climbed

01:19:21

the ranks since he's been there. And he just started showing up on one Monday. He showed up in the

01:19:30

office. I'd forget if he had somebody who had worked there, like a friend who invited him to come and

01:19:37

have a conversation, sit down for an interview, whatever the interview didn't actually happen. So

01:19:40

he's just there. And he just starts working. And then he shows up every day. And then on Friday,

01:19:45

the boss is walking in and he's like, going up the stairs and he looks, he's like, you've been

01:19:51

here all week. It's like, yeah, it's like, are you on the payroll? No. Well, just go talk to this person.

01:20:00

That's awesome. And they got the job. So I have a similar story. I'm coming out of undergrad.

01:20:05

Katie, my wife is going to go to school in Dallas. Well, okay, so now I got to figure out

01:20:11

a job in Dallas. Well, we didn't live in Dallas. We live in Pennsylvania. And I went down to Dallas

01:20:17

on a trip. And there was a company that I wanted to check out because I really truly just wanted to

01:20:22

know what they did. Like, I had read about them and I had heard good things from one of my advisors.

01:20:27

So it's like Friday afternoon. I randomly show up at the company. And I had a suit on. I looked

01:20:33

professional and stuff. And I said, hi, my name's so-and-so. I learned about your company through

01:20:37

this individual name that they would actually recognize. And I just wanted to come and see what

01:20:43

you all do. And I'm wondering if anybody's willing to just chat with me about the work that you do.

01:20:46

Next thing you know, I'm having ice cream with them and they're ice cream social because every

01:20:52

Friday afternoon they had an ice cream social, just to hang out. So I'm having ice cream with them.

01:20:56

I'm learning about the company. And then the next week they sent me an email and they're like,

01:21:01

hey, so you mentioned that you were looking for a position in Dallas. We're wondering if

01:21:05

you'd want to come work with us. And it's like I ended up not taking the job. But it was just

01:21:09

completely random. And it was like a crazy, interesting experience about how well this process

01:21:16

might actually work for people. Like, I thought it was fantastic. So two decent examples of that

01:21:21

actually being somewhat true. All right, let's get to happiness. Let's choose some happiness here.

01:21:26

Okay, cool. So the next chapter, chapter nine is choosing happiness. And the thing that I took

01:21:34

away from this chapter is not to second guess your decisions. There's no right choice. There's only

01:21:40

right choosing, basically follow the process, which is step one, gather and create options. Step two,

01:21:45

narrow down the list. Step three, choose discerningly. And then step four is let go and move on. They

01:21:50

talk about standard step four is agonize over the choice that you made. And that's totally

01:21:56

what I naturally do. Should I bought the other one? I've got a buddy who's doing this right now.

01:22:03

And he's like, well, I don't know if I shouldn't. And I'm like, come on, man, just let go and move

01:22:06

on. And I use the book immediately. So yeah, so I think that's useful. But I don't think that

01:22:13

there's a whole lot that we need to really talk about from this chapter. They talk about

01:22:17

grokking, which is interesting. It's not the first place that I heard about this. But grokking is

01:22:21

understanding something deeply and completely. And then once you grok something, like disconnect

01:22:28

from it, move on is kind of the thing that they're talking about. You don't need to

01:22:33

know absolutely everything. At least that's my interpretation of it is like there's a certain

01:22:37

level of comprehension. And once you reach that for most things, you can disconnect from that now,

01:22:42

move on to the next thing. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you that this, it was a fine chapter, but

01:22:48

nothing, nothing stood out to me. So I'm okay to move the 10.

01:22:51

All right. So then the next one, chapter 10, is failure immunity. And that title is maybe a

01:23:02

little bit clickbaity. Some of these titles are clickbaity. Like chapter seven, how not to get a

01:23:06

job is a very clickbaity. Yes, it is. Failure immunity basically is about being resilient enough

01:23:15

or anti fragile enough to endure whatever failure you happen to happen to encounter.

01:23:23

So they mentioned it's impossible to never fail, but you can become immune from it,

01:23:27

avoid the negative feelings that come with it. And that I think I agree with, they talk about

01:23:32

grit by Angela Duckworth, which was a phenomenal book that we covered a long time ago for for

01:23:37

bookworm. And was something that came out of that was this hard things chart that my family started

01:23:44

started doing. So I'm very much in alignment with the core message of this chapter.

01:23:51

They have this visual of be do become, and it's like this circle, which I think is interesting

01:24:00

because do you become something or do you do something first? It's kind of like a chicken and

01:24:06

egg scenarios. How kind of how they describe it? Well, there's not any one thing. There's this

01:24:11

cycle. So you have to do the thing, then you become the type of person that translates into the

01:24:18

identity. So it's almost like the identity based habits from atomic habits. There's a lot of good

01:24:24

stuff in this chapter, to be honest. One other thing is the two kinds of game, the finite and

01:24:28

the infinite games. We did the infinite game by Simon Sinek a while back, but they mentioned

01:24:34

another book, I forget the title of it, but I did buy it. And it came the other day of the as the

01:24:40

kind of like the canonical source of the finite versus infinite games.

01:24:45

Yeah, I actually think it's called finite and infinite games. I think that's the actual title

01:24:49

for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to reading that one, but since he already covered one

01:24:54

on that for book, we're probably not going to read it for this. Got you.

01:24:57

Now, I really like this section. So the concept that I've always heard when it came around failure

01:25:03

is fail forward fast. And the reason wasn't that you want to, like that you want to fail, like nobody

01:25:10

wants to fail, but they cover it really well that failure is a part of life. You accept the fact

01:25:15

that failure is a part of life. And as long as you're moving forward and you're learning

01:25:18

something from that, okay, great. And then the, they're in the startup world. So when I was teaching

01:25:24

entrepreneurship education, you know, the idea of failing forward fast allowed you to get through a

01:25:29

lot of that, a lot of those hurdles that the longer they took, the more of your bandwidth they

01:25:35

spun down or the more of your runway they spun down. So if we can learn the mistakes early,

01:25:39

and we learn from those and go and go forward, that's a benefit. That's a win. So it's a way to

01:25:44

reframe failure in your mind from a thing that harms you to a thing that helps you move forward.

01:25:50

I really, really like the finite and infinite games. So one, so the finite game is one in which

01:25:56

we play by the rules in order to win. And when we don't win, then boom, it hurts us, you know,

01:26:01

it hits us hard, but an infinite game, one in which we play by the rules for the joy of getting

01:26:05

to keep playing. So, okay, I failed, but I'm still playing. Like nobody, you know, nobody told me I

01:26:11

couldn't come back to work. Nobody told me I couldn't, you know, still do whatever it was I wanted to

01:26:15

do is I just made a mistake. Like, okay, I made a mistake. I learned from that and I move on. And

01:26:19

I really, really like that concept. I think the reframe exercise, the failure reframe exercise is

01:26:24

one that I'll add to my action items list, because you log your failures, you categorize your failures,

01:26:29

and then you identify what I can grow from those. And I think the identify what I can grow from those

01:26:35

is the huge step there, that if I log them and I categorize them, I still can feel the failure

01:26:40

pretty hard. But if I go, oh, this is teaching me this. So for instance, I'm really bad at email.

01:26:47

So every time I, I, I flub up on an email and I don't send it back in time, if I reframe that and

01:26:53

say, what could I learn from this? Oh, I learned from this that if it takes me less than 30 seconds

01:26:57

to respond to an email, I should respond to it right now. Like, don't wait. Don't say I'm going

01:27:01

to respond to it later today, because it's only 30 seconds. And that's important to that,

01:27:05

to that person. And it's only 30 seconds. It's not going to take me that much time.

01:27:08

When they're longer, short, push them, push them off. But like, that's an example of where I would,

01:27:12

where I would use this concept. But I really like this section, I thought, because I think failure

01:27:16

is a big thing that, that hits a lot of people. And this had had some really practical tips from a

01:27:21

life standpoint that helps you move forward. Yeah, I like this, this section a lot. The next one,

01:27:27

I like even more though. So anything else from chapter 10? No, because I'm interested to hear

01:27:32

what you say. I did not like this section as much. I did not like laughing as much.

01:27:36

All right, chapter 11 is building a team. And I won't say that this is the best section in terms

01:27:43

of the content, but it definitely got me thinking the most. I have a couple of action items from this

01:27:49

one chapter. So the basic idea here is that you live and design your life in collaboration with

01:27:56

others. Life design is a communal effort. And you should identify the players or the people that

01:28:01

are on your team. Those could be supporters who you can count on to care about your life. Players

01:28:06

are active participants in your life projects, intimates are your close family and friends.

01:28:10

And then there's the team that people that you're sharing the specifics of your life design with

01:28:14

who all track with you on regular intervals. The team's focus is on supporting life design,

01:28:19

nothing more, nothing less. And that reminds me a lot of like a mastermind group. I've been a

01:28:25

part of both good and bad mastermind groups. The good ones really when you create that alignment

01:28:30

around why are we gathering together? And everyone is there to give more than they take.

01:28:35

Then some really awesome stuff can can happen. That kind of leads into one of my action items,

01:28:46

but I'm going to pin that for now because there's another piece to this, which is the mentor piece.

01:28:54

And the mentor piece is different than people who are going to give me advice. There's a difference

01:29:00

between advice and counsel. Advice is like, well, yeah, you could do this. But if you don't want to

01:29:05

do it or you're not going to follow it, no skin off my nose. Like a lot of the stuff that people

01:29:10

make on the internet is advice. A lot of the things in books are advice. But mentors offer

01:29:18

counsel because they're invested in the outcome. And they have discernment. They can see the long

01:29:24

view and the local view is kind of how they describe it. But a mentor is someone who is

01:29:30

committed. There's like that story of the chicken who wants to start the restaurant with the pig.

01:29:35

He's like, well, we'll sell bacon and eggs. And the pig's like, no, thanks. And he's like, well,

01:29:41

why not? The pig says the chicken, you're involved, but I'm committed.

01:29:44

Yeah, exactly. A mentor is committed. So both of my action items here, number one, identify who

01:29:52

are my mentors. And like, you know, mentors for different aspects of your life. The second one,

01:29:59

and the reason that I put this one to the end, I kind of teased it, is I feel like the mentorship

01:30:05

and the mastermind piece are a little bit related for me in that I want to reboot my community. I

01:30:15

shared with you before we hit record that I've been making payments on mikeschmitz.com. It's

01:30:19

finally mine. I control the domain. I can point it wherever I want it to go. And so I've been doing

01:30:26

the faith based productivity community. I've had the city university community bookworm had its

01:30:30

own community a while back. It was too much to have all those in all the different places.

01:30:34

And I wasn't doing anybody. I wasn't adding as much value as I could in those places because it

01:30:41

was a whole bunch of other places to check. But I'm also a full time creator. People are asking,

01:30:47

like, where can I go to support your work? And I go, if you want to support this, go over there.

01:30:49

You want to support that? Go over there? No, that's too much. So I'm actually going to consolidate it

01:30:54

all into a single community at mikeschmitz.com. So at some point, there will be the book notes

01:30:59

from the bookworm community. That's all going to be there. But I also want to build in some of

01:31:04

this accountability and even some of this mentorship. Like I would love to facilitate

01:31:09

some mastermind groups for people, not that I'm exceptional at it. But I feel like I understand

01:31:16

the process enough that I could facilitate a pretty awesome mastermind group if we got the

01:31:20

right people who were really invested in it and they understood why they were there.

01:31:24

So I want to be able to set that stuff up and help other people with that. And there will be lots of

01:31:30

lots of details to be coming with that. But I've reached the point as we record this anyways,

01:31:39

that I'm going to do this now. It's just what exactly is this going to look like?

01:31:43

Nice. Nice. So who, as you're thinking through that, right, and I should say it, who? Do you have

01:31:52

supporters, players in mind for that? Do you have people in mind as you develop those things?

01:31:58

You don't have to tell who they are, but do you have people in mind for this?

01:32:00

Not really, partly because I feel like they're different than they would have been six months ago.

01:32:08

So everything has kind of been in a state of flux for me. And I need to kind of nail this down.

01:32:17

It's a good idea to figure that stuff out. So that's actually the action item is to start

01:32:23

planning my community. But that will be a piece of it is like, who's there? Because they've been

01:32:28

separate. They've been a handful of people who are like, I want to help with this or whatever I

01:32:32

can do, that sort of thing. And I really appreciate that. And I want to plug those people in. But I

01:32:37

also need to figure out kind of the characteristics of the community, which I thought this was sort of

01:32:41

interesting from this section too. They talk about community is being invested in one another's

01:32:46

lives. So characteristics of community, you've got a kindred purpose, you have an explicit mission.

01:32:51

I think anyone who's following me for any length of time knows that my thing is kind of values

01:32:55

driven productivity. You know, faith would be another way to say it. But really, it's just belief

01:33:00

that if you design your life the right way and you do the right things, you're going to get the

01:33:04

right results. A growth mindset constantly learning, constantly trying to get better,

01:33:11

and then meet regularly, share common ground, have the right intention and purpose, which again,

01:33:15

is like, in my opinion, give more than you you take. You add all that stuff together, you could

01:33:21

create a pretty awesome community with some pretty cool people in it. And so that's, that's

01:33:28

going to be my next project. Nice. Nice. So my encouragement to you would be, what would you,

01:33:32

what should you prototype for that project? Well, the prototype is going to be setting up the new

01:33:39

community in a separate instance of circle. I know circle is the one that I want to use.

01:33:44

And then start bringing things over. And the first thing that needs to be brought over

01:33:48

is all of the my book notes. So in the meantime, what people can do, I've kind of

01:33:54

revamped my newsletter lately and I've been sharing a different book note a PDF every single week. So

01:33:59

the way to sign up for that, I believe, is to go to obsidianuniversity.com. But again,

01:34:05

eventually that'll be mikeschmidt.com. And then I'll share that stuff. But then the community is

01:34:09

going to have like the archive with all the, all that stuff in there. So I guess if I ever have to

01:34:12

pick one single step, like where do I go from here, it's set up that community. And then bring

01:34:18

over all those those book notes, because that's going to be the majority of the time for me to export

01:34:23

all that stuff and bring it all over. I mean, there's a whole lot more to all the courses and

01:34:27

all that kind of stuff too. But that's step one. Yeah, okay. Good. It does, does mikeschmidt.com

01:34:34

right now have a place for people to like tell you they're interested or what they'd want or

01:34:39

give you any feedback or is that too far down the road? It doesn't. You can give me an action item

01:34:45

right now, I guess, before this goes live, turning that into like a landing page so people can say,

01:34:49

yeah, I'm interested in this when it launches. I should definitely do that. So I just think

01:34:53

that's a very low way, like a low risk and/or prototype to be like, oh, there are actually people

01:34:59

interested in this, right? Like, you know, yeah, yeah, because I think you're going to get good

01:35:02

feedback from there. Cool. Yeah, I'll add that as an action item to I'm committing right now that

01:35:08

link will be in the show notes. Nice. All right. So my key takeaway with building a team was this

01:35:13

idea of council, which you you covered very, very well. I don't really think I got a ton more out

01:35:20

of this. I told you I wasn't super interested in this section. Not that a team is not important and

01:35:25

not that I don't really, really value a team because I do. I think I just got to the point during,

01:35:31

you know, at this book where I was kind of like, okay, like, I get it and I was ready to move on. So

01:35:36

we can move on to conclusion and then style and reading and wrap it up.

01:35:39

All right. Sounds good. So the conclusion is called a well-designed life.

01:35:43

And a couple of key ideas from here. First, balance happens over time, which I think is really

01:35:49

important because everyone wants to lead a quote unquote balance life. I actually think with the

01:35:54

12 week year, the whole idea of intentional imbalance is better. But overall, they're right. What you

01:36:00

want over a long period of time is balance in a moment to moment. You're not necessarily balanced.

01:36:06

You're going all in with something or other, but there's constantly these ebbs and flows.

01:36:10

Well, and I would say, yeah, like I would say with the intentional imbalance informed imbalance is

01:36:15

okay. Right. Like if you can cognitively process that like, oh, this season of my life will be

01:36:20

very stressful or very heavy in this section. But I can see the end of that and it's not going to

01:36:26

be it's not going to be forever. So that makes sense. Exactly. Exactly. The other thing

01:36:30

they talk about is personal practices, which reminded me of routines. And specifically,

01:36:35

my morning routine, I feel like needs a reboot, shall we say, not that there's a whole bunch of

01:36:42

stuff that needs to be changed with it. But I really need to reconsider my morning routine.

01:36:46

And probably make a few adjustments to that. So that's another action that I had was to examine

01:36:53

my morning routine, possibly my evening routine too. But the morning routine is the one that I know

01:36:59

could benefit from some TLC. Yeah, I think two two ideas came out of this one. This conclusion for

01:37:06

me is one that basically it's a process. So accept the process, acknowledge the process and

01:37:11

dive into the process and just keep iterating on this process and keep iterating on this process.

01:37:15

So one of the things I really value about the way the authors did this book is the design principles

01:37:21

are, you know, integrated into this book. They are weaved in tightly into this book. And I

01:37:27

like that I appreciated that about that, because it's just such a natural fit. But we just don't

01:37:31

often think about it from a life standpoint, from a work standpoint, we think about it, or at least

01:37:35

for me, I think about it from like product design, system design, those kind of things. The second

01:37:40

one is basically they acknowledge that this is a how book. This is not a what or why book. And I

01:37:47

really appreciate that about that. So they mean they make the quote in life design, we only take

01:37:52

on questions of how to design your life, what life you should live, or why one life is better

01:37:57

than others. And I think that is a very, very valuable statement and a very honest statement

01:38:03

for them to make. And I really like that they made it. It almost like put a pretty bow at the

01:38:07

end of the book that said, okay, like this all just sits so much better with me, you know,

01:38:13

now that now they're at the end. So I really enjoyed that.

01:38:16

Yeah, I agree. Great way to end the book. Let's go to action items. So I've got five of them.

01:38:24

I was gonna say you were just rattling them off there, man, like you're all kind of action items on

01:38:29

this. Yeah, well, the first one I think might actually already be done. Check out a Designing

01:38:33

Your Life workshop. I looked up the website for this. They're super expensive. And I don't think

01:38:39

I'm going to go anywhere and do one of these anytime soon. Second one is to create those engagement

01:38:45

energy and flow mind maps. I think that might be a long term one and I'll add to those over time,

01:38:50

but I want to start those. Number three, make a list of my mentors. Number four, start planning

01:38:55

my community and create a landing page for the episode goes live. Yeah. And then the last one is

01:39:02

to examine my morning routine. What do you got? Well, so one comment on yours. This is a big part

01:39:09

of what we do. I told you we do a similar, but it's actually the more now that I've read, you know,

01:39:14

fully through the book. Our workshop is very different. It just uses a couple concepts,

01:39:19

similar concepts from what they do. But the energy and the flow maps and those other things,

01:39:25

you'll get a lot of value out of those. That's worth your time. I understand it may not be

01:39:29

a priority in the next week or two, but you'll get a lot of value out of those. The other thing is

01:39:34

the mentor, the mentor map and just remembering who all is in your network and what, what,

01:39:41

it sounds so transactional, but like what value they could bring to the things you're thinking

01:39:46

about or the things you're working through. Those are really valuable. My action items,

01:39:49

so I want to identify the gravity and the anchor problems in my life. And I want to try to categorize

01:39:55

those because there are these things that at times kind of frustrate me and I kind of think,

01:39:59

wow, I want to work on that. I want to fix that. I want to do that thing. And I've never ever thought

01:40:04

about, is it fixable? Or is it an anchor problem where the way I've been approaching it is just

01:40:12

the wrong way to approach it. And I need to really go through a brainstorm session on how I might be

01:40:15

able to approach that. And I think that would be a very valuable activity for me. So I want to

01:40:19

think through those nagging things and what are they? Maybe three of them, if I can find three of

01:40:26

them or whatever and think through what kind of problem they are and try to classify those.

01:40:29

The next one would be to think about my last three-ish failures and say, and I want to do that

01:40:35

reframe exercise, that failure reframe exercise and say, okay, this was the failure. Can I categorize

01:40:40

it into a type of failure? And then what did I learn from it? Or what can I do to progress

01:40:45

forward in that failure? So I think those two would be valuable right now for me.

01:40:51

Nice. All right. Style and rating. And I picked this one. So I'll go first. I think the style is

01:41:01

very approachable. I feel like they did a great job of condensing down the class. The book itself

01:41:09

is well designed. It's very visual. You mentioned at the beginning the call outs with the wrong

01:41:15

mindsets and the reframes. That's really helpful. There's a lot of exercises built in. There's short

01:41:21

summaries at the end of each chapter. It's very well done for someone who is coming into this topic

01:41:29

and they're trying to grok the concept to borrow one of their terms. It's written in a way that

01:41:35

you can do that very easily, I feel, because it's so visual, because there's so many examples and

01:41:42

images and exercises. It's pretty easy to get through the meat of the book. I don't think you're

01:41:47

probably getting the majority of the benefit until you go through with exercises. However,

01:41:52

I don't really want to go through the exercises. I feel like I understand the concepts of them

01:42:00

and I've got my own versions of these already. So actually the weird thing about this is I came

01:42:06

into this feeling like, "What can they teach me about designing my life?" I walk away thinking,

01:42:12

"I need to write a version of this book." Nice. Nice. Actually, I don't have the credentials.

01:42:18

I'm not teaching a Stanford class, but there's a lot of the things that they're talking about

01:42:23

and I'm just like, "That's not the best way to do that." So I guess I got to get over my own limiting

01:42:30

beliefs because I'd struggle with that a lot. It's like, "Well, who am I to actually talk about

01:42:35

this stuff?" I'll let Bill Burnett and Dave Evans do it because they worked at Apple and their

01:42:40

Stanford teachers, but I don't know. I mean, there's stuff that I like here. There's stuff I don't

01:42:46

like here and there's probably people like me who would resonate more with my take on this. I kind

01:42:52

of had the same thing after reading Hero on a Mission. It's like, "I have some good stuff here.

01:42:55

It's not how I would do it." That's kind of what this reminds me of. So I do like the book. I do

01:43:01

think I would recommend it. I think I'll give it four stars. I don't think it's the right thing,

01:43:08

right revolutionary thing for me. If I were to go through and do all these exercises,

01:43:13

I don't think those exact exercises are the thing that's going to unlock things for me.

01:43:18

However, they're definitely in the same vein as a lot of the life-themed stuff that I really am

01:43:25

and passionate about. I like the concept. I like that this book exists. I think it's a great starting

01:43:31

point. It's not the place that I would end with a lot of this stuff. But if you're coming into this

01:43:35

concept, I think it's a good one to pick up. Yeah. I'll put the end first, four stars as well.

01:43:44

So that's exactly what I had in my head because I think there's a lot of really good value in here.

01:43:49

I think the fundamental concepts that you can get out of this book or you can glean from this book

01:43:55

are really, really valuable and they'll change the way you think, especially if you've never

01:43:59

thought about this. I can, similar to you, some of the exercises I can give and take, right? Some of

01:44:05

them I think are more valuable than others. I think if you have nowhere to start, this is a great way

01:44:09

to start doing these things. But I also think that you might run into some trouble if you're not doing

01:44:14

it with a facilitator. You're not doing it with someone with experience. So I think there may need

01:44:19

to be a little bit more. And as you said, the bar between read the book and do the workshop. I mean,

01:44:24

it's big. The gap between there because the workshop is expensive. I mean, they very much

01:44:30

have a consulting business out of this that is very lucrative, if you will. Or at least it seems

01:44:38

that way. I don't know if it is or not, but it seems that way. They're definitely making more

01:44:41

money off of their workshops than I'm making off the LifeHim cohort. Let's just say that.

01:44:44

So then we get to the dysfunctional beliefs and the reframes. And I think revisiting those every

01:44:53

so often is it would be a really valuable thing. So I think there's a lot of value contained in

01:44:57

this book. I would totally pull out or re rework chapter seven and eight. I just thought they

01:45:04

they felt odd. So I would go. I'd go four out of five. Awesome. All right, let's put designing

01:45:12

your life on the shelf. What's next? So I get to pick the next book now that I'm official,

01:45:19

which is fun. And I want to do Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley and Olav. And I think it's

01:45:28

Shwe, is how you say his last name, Olav Shwe. So learn like a pro and we're going to get some

01:45:33

strategies on how to learn effective strategies to learn. And I think it's just going to be a

01:45:38

really practical, tangible book for folks that are always interested in learning something new.

01:45:44

So I think it's going to be an exciting read. It's a little bit of a shorter read,

01:45:47

which for some of you, you'll be very happy about that. But I think it's going to be a really valuable

01:45:53

book. So that's what we're going to do next. Nice. All right. And then the one after that,

01:45:59

I'm going to pick based on a recommendation. And that is Influence by Robert Childini.

01:46:07

There's an updated version of this. I read this a while back. And this is one of those books that

01:46:12

I feel maybe gets a bad rap because the sleazy internet marketer people have taken this too far.

01:46:23

The other thing that kind of stands out to me from that vein is like the Dale Carnegie's How

01:46:29

to Win Friends and Influence People. Like I know a lot of people who really don't understand the

01:46:33

concept of that book and they refer to that as like, oh, well, that's a manipulative book.

01:46:36

And I don't think it's that's necessarily true. It's one of the better books that I've read to

01:46:40

be honest. So I read Influence a long time ago. To be honest, it was before Bookworm. And I don't

01:46:47

remember anything about it. So I'm looking forward to going back through this one. And the same person

01:46:55

who recommended this actually also recommended the one that you had picked, which is Learn Like a

01:46:59

Pro. And you brought this one up to me without knowing that this was also a recommendation by

01:47:04

Mark. So Mark, you get a two for him the next couple of books from your recommendations. So thanks

01:47:09

for sending those in. Yeah, Mike, just so the listeners know, are we doing the updated version,

01:47:13

the newer publication version? Yeah, let's do the new one. I have no idea what is updated about it.

01:47:19

But that's the one that I just ordered today. It's the updated version. Fantastic. And then,

01:47:25

so now that I'm official, I guess we get to do gap books, right, which there's always a gap book.

01:47:30

I don't know if Mike has one or not. But I'm reading one. It's called Triumph of the Lamb. And

01:47:35

it's actually for a Bible study that I'm leading on Fridays. So it's a fun book. It's a kind of a

01:47:41

crazy book in terms of introducing new concepts to me. But that's the gap book that I'm reading

01:47:46

in between at this time. Yeah, so I do actually have one that I'm going to start reading today.

01:47:53

It's one that was recommended to me a long time ago by my friend Ernie. And when I was asking people,

01:47:59

what should I do with these communities? Basically, the advice that I got was you're crazy. If you

01:48:04

don't consolidate it under your own name, that's what everybody wants to do. The whole idea behind

01:48:10

story brand for like big companies and brands is that they want to be more personal. Why would

01:48:15

you not just lean into like who you are? That's why people follow you. So this book I had in my

01:48:21

bookshelf and feels like the perfect complement to the whole action I was setting up the community

01:48:27

and what's micsmiths.com going to look like. And that is You Are The Brand by Mike Kim.

01:48:30

And I honestly don't know anything about this book other than it's been recommended to me and

01:48:35

seem to potentially contain some solutions to problems that I'm wrestling with. So I'm going

01:48:41

to try and read that one before we for learn like a pro. Okay. All right. So thanks everyone

01:48:48

for listening along. As I mentioned, and Corey pressured me to do, I'll set up the landing page

01:48:55

for the community. And if you sign up for that, that'll get you on the email list. And in the

01:49:00

meantime, you can get my book notes that way. But if you are reading along with us, please pick

01:49:06

up Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley and Olav Schwe. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.