Bookworm Transcripts

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So Mike, hey, let's do some follow up. How's that sound? Let's do it. Bootleg listeners will know

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why that's funny. Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. So first things first, you're creating a reading

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workshop. How's that going? It's going pretty well. I've got a few people who have signed up already.

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So thanks everyone who has signed up. This is the first paid workshop that I have ever done solo.

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I've done some paid workshops with other people in the past, and I know that I can do a good job

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with this one. But it is a bit of a mental hurdle to get over, you know, this is not just a free

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webinar. This is actually a paid workshop. But that being said, I love doing these because you can

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just sink your teeth into delivering the absolute best presentation you can. Whereas with a free

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webinar, you give some information at the beginning, but you only have really like 45 minutes before

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people's attention starts to wane because they don't really know exactly what they signed up for.

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And then you got to get to the pitch for the thing that you're actually selling. Like, this is just

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really clean, you know, $49. I'm going to help you get more out of the books that you read.

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So I'm really looking forward to this. I've got a bunch of the slides already made up,

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and I've got some ideas for new things that I want to build out for this yet.

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The data is going to be April 19th, by the way. I pushed this back just a little bit,

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because I am also getting my community off the ground. So I haven't officially announced this

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yet, but by the time this goes live, there'll probably be a public link that you can sign up for.

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So I know we're talking about the reading workshop. Let me get back to that in a second,

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because the community has an interesting pricing model. I'm going to do just yearly no monthly,

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but $100 a year for the first 100 paying members. And just kind of as a way to thank the early

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adopters, the people who followed me for a long time. So everyone who signed up on the page that

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you made me create as the waiting list, they get first dibs at those 100 spots.

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And then after that, it's going to go up probably to $150 a year, and then eventually $200 a year,

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because I don't want it to get too big. I want to, again, deliver an insane amount of value to

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the people that are there. And I feel like if I'm going to do this solo, there's a limit to the

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number of people that I can really serve well. Anyways, you can go to the link in the show notes

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if you want to find out more about that. But that's got all my book notes, my sketch notes,

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weekly live co-working calls, ask me anything calls, stuff like that.

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And Mike would tell me not to do this, but I got early access to help give

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little feedback and take a look at things that it's looking good, everybody. It's looking good.

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So be one of those first 100 if you can.

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The thing that took the longest out of that was the onboarding.

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I created a special onboarding section that has a whole bunch of custom CSS. I'm not sure if you

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caught that. The like buttons are not like buttons. They say mark is completed.

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I didn't see that. No, I didn't see that.

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Yeah. So anyways, all that to say, I wanted the first time you enter the community to be just a

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great experience where if you're not familiar with this at all, it walks you through the whole thing.

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I spend a lot of time creating a bunch of videos and just styling that. So it feels different

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than all of the other areas. And it feels very linear. Like you go here, you go here, you go here,

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you go here, by the end of it, you know exactly what's going on there. But yeah, so that's been the

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focus. But that's basically done now. That onboarding took me 10 times longer than I thought it was

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going to. But it's not. It was worth it. It's good. Thank you. Yeah, that so now the focus is on the

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the reading workshop. And I don't think I've ever been more excited to do a presentation

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than this one. I love talking about not just books, but like the whole reading process.

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And it kind of shocks me that more people don't really dig into this. Like, I don't know, maybe

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I'm just a nerd. But I find the whole process fascinating. And every time I bring up like how

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to read a book being influential by Mortimer Adler, I get two kinds of reactions. One, if I'm talking

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about this stuff online, people are like, Oh yeah, I really got to find out about that. But if I do

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it in real life, like the people who I see day to day, they're like, why do you need a book like

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that? But also they'd never picked up a book in the last six months. So I think the number of the

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number of real people online or like that that exist out there that actually pick up books as

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frequently as you and I do. Yeah, so the all that to say that the small group of people that will

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be joining for this live workshop, I feel like there is not a group of people on the internet that

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is more my people. Yes, those are your people. You're gonna make some friends. Hopefully.

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That's great. Okay, so next thing is we launched a pro show and we launched a Patreon. And that's

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going well. So I just want to thank everybody for the folks who signed up, the folks who are

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considering signing up. Thank you so much. We are excited to do that and we're excited to

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figure out a way to support the show a little more long term. And you know, just the update on

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that is it's going well. So thanks. Yes, I will echo everything. Corey said thank you to everybody

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who supports us via the Patreon. And what we did to keep this kind of simple is we created a couple

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of feeds. And I'm using a service called Hello Audio for this, but we've got a bootleg feed where

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basically we hit record on zoom when we get connected. And then that gets uploaded to the

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bootleg feed without any edits. So that's why I made the comment about bootleg listeners will

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know why that's funny when we started the episode because there was a little bit of a,

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I don't know, misfire? Absolutely. Absolutely.

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So that gets published really, you know, we record these almost two weeks before the episode launches.

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So those get thrown up right away. If you want to get the earliest possible version of the show,

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that's the one hot off the press. But then there's a pro show which has a separate segment. Today,

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we talked about apprenticeships and Corey asked me where I would like to apprentice and it caught

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me completely off guard. So you wanted to hear my answer. Thank you. All that Toastmasters training

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paid off. But yeah, so it has an extra segment. And then when we have ads, those ads will be

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removed. So that is another separate feed that you can sign up for. And then there's also a book

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worm wallpaper, which is uploaded there, all that stuff you get instant access to when you sign up

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for Patreon. We use Patreon because they handle all the merchant records stuff. I don't have the

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bandwidth. Corey didn't want to and I don't blame you, you know, manage all the

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VAT tax and all that kind of stuff. So Patreon is just the simplest way to support the show.

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So there'll be a link in the show notes if you want to join Patreon at seven bucks a month.

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There is no yearly option for this. Not patreon.com/bookwormfm. And thank you to everybody who already signed up.

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All right. So next mic is your action items. So you were going to create an automatic or an

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autopilot schedule. Were you able to do that? Yeah. So I'll actually cover the three of these

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sort of together. Okay. So the idea behind the autopilot schedule is that it's Monday at three p.m.

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This is when I do this. And I am still working on this, but essentially I am building this out.

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And one of the things that is sort of it sort of tangentially related to this is the implement

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the work cycles. This isn't exactly what I was talking about with the implement work cycles, but

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the idea with the implement work cycles is I want to do these like eighth week, every eighth week,

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take it off essentially. Like regular breaks, not just a vacation every once in a while when I feel

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like I'm submerging and I just need a little bit of time because every time I take a vacation like

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that, usually like the first several days, I'm just completely exhausted by the time I'm actually

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starting to feel good about the vacation. It's time to go back to work. And then I feel depressed

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again. Like hopefully people can relate to that cycle. But when you have these like regular breaks,

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then it's more sustainable in the long run. The first time you're like, Oh, this is amazing.

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I should have done this a long time ago. The second time you're usually like, I don't want to take

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a break yet. I'm still good. There's stuff to be worked on by the third time you're just like,

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okay, yeah, this really makes sense. And it allows me to do my best work. I used to do this

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sort of rhythm when I was at Blanc Media. And I want to do that for myself now. Okay, so that

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actually ties to my autopilot schedule because I was thinking about my regular work week. And

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because I'm an elder at my church and we're there for both services, I plan the worship

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tunes have to be there early both services. Sundays basically are not a rest day. They're

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more a work day than any other day of the week, to be honest, they're from eight in the morning

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till eight at night usually. And that means that Monday morning has always been hard.

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And I realized it was because I was making it hard. So I would force myself a lot of times,

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like, okay, this is why I got to get done this week, got to hit the ground running on Monday

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morning. If I'm going to get all this stuff done, I'm finally at the point where I think

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as part of my autopilot schedule, Mondays are going to be for finishing off the newsletter.

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So I've got it written at that point, but it's putting it all in ConvertKit, making sure the

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links all work, if there's anything tangential that needs to be added to that. Like today,

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when I sent mine out, I had to make sure that the link to join the community was available for

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the people who raised their hands early. They wanted to be notified when it was available,

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that sort of thing. So that's happening on Mondays. We're happy to be recording bookworm

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on a Monday, which is a little bit weird. But normally there is a mastermind group that I'm

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a part of, which is later in the afternoon. And then Mondays is also the day that I do the one

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on one with my kids. So just putting that all Monday and treating Monday essentially as an

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off day where I do just a little bit of work. I know those that doesn't jive, like it's not really

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an off day if I'm doing some work. But it also just sets up, I don't know, it feels really good.

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It feels like this is a really good rhythm. And then I'm not finding that Tuesday through Friday,

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I'm not able to get the rest of the stuff done. So I think this is really working. And then kind

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of taking that concept to the rest of my autopilot schedule, I've got Tuesdays are the days when

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focus gets recorded, Thursdays I've got these regular meetings, Wednesdays, there's certain

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things that happen Fridays are the Ask me anything's in the library, my community.

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So I'm kind of putting the pieces into place. But I'm also trying to limit the number of things

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that I am putting in these days, which is the other action item I had, which was simplify my daily

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schedule. So I'm not trying to, you know, three most important tasks. And then all of the other

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things, I'm trying to just if I have things on the calendar, those actually count. Yeah, yeah.

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And don't try to do too much. But also, I think one of the things that's helping with that is

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larger blocks of time and less context switching, which sounds so obvious. But as an example,

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I've got a screencast online tip video that I have to do. And instead of like working on that

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a little bit on this day, a little bit on the next day, and a little bit on the next day,

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I've just blocked a couple of hours where I can just sit down with nothing else to do and crank

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that up. And that is, that has been helpful. So obviously, you know, I'm all in with the whole

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idea of slow productivity, these action items, there's nothing like super amazingly like transformative

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with any one of these. But I feel like I'm making progress on these. And it is moving me in that

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slow productivity direction, which ultimately, I think is a good thing. Yeah, that's definitely

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a good thing. It sounds good in terms of the Monday routine seems reasonable. Like,

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like, you know, my opinion on this that you didn't ask for. But it's like, it seems like that makes

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sense with Sunday being so crazy that you need an ease into the focused work that happens on,

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you know, Tuesday through, Tuesday through Friday. So that seems, seems reasonable.

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Yeah. And I guess one of the things that I didn't mention, but the bad habits, you know, full

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transparency, what has been happening was work had been slipping into Saturday, not all day

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Saturday, but there was basically always something that needs to be done on Saturday. Regardless of

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how early I hit the ground running on Monday. So I was like, okay, well, Saturday is not turning

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into my day off. Let's just put it out the other end. Let's make Monday the day off. And that's

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that's helped a lot. Actually, what's happened since I started doing that is that I've been

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having more time off on Monday and also less to do on Saturdays. Yeah, it seems like a win-win

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on both ends of the spectrum. Yeah. All right. So I had four mine were to figure out the big and

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small. I was trying to do one project a day, figure out other poll system items, and then can I be

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more specific with my rituals and spaces? So I'll tell you two of these I was able to work on.

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The other two I was not. So figure out what's big and small that I was able to think about that one

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and put in some good focus thought on that. I think what I got to partially is the fact that

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that's going to take a longer period of time. Right? Like it's going to be a refining process.

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Like some of the things I think are big, I need to transition those into small. And then some of

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the things that are small right now, I want them to be bigger. So therefore I need to transition

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those in. So it's like some of them I can just axe right now and I could say, okay, that's done.

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Like I'm that small. I'm not going to worry about that anymore. And I'm going to treat the big stuff

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as big. But then some of these ones I noticed that there was a transition period that needed to happen.

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And I'm starting to figure out how that transition works and how I move one from the other to the

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other bin and move the other one back. The one project per day, not going to happen.

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Like that is just not in the cards for me and this season of life. I think, so with running

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an academic schedule, I think in the summers and then during like winter break where I have a larger

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block with less commitments, I think that's doable then. Right? So I can say like, okay,

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today I'm going to work on this and that's the only thing I'm going to focus on. But I don't have

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to teach a couple classes and mentor students and advice students. Like I have the ability to

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not be so all over the place. The other pool system items, probably just going to can that.

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I think I'll go back at some point and revisit pool systems and how those might work. But I

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just think that's going to take too much front end work right now in terms of me trying to set

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that up and trying to make sure other people understand it and how that works and I'm just kind

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of not going to focus on that one right now. The can I be more specific with my rituals and spaces?

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I go on an adventure mic all the time where I will set up a working space and it'll work for a

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couple months and then something happens and it doesn't work anymore and I need to set up a

00:16:15

different working space and I need to set up a different working space and I'm honestly tired

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of doing that. I don't like doing that. It annoys my wife very, very badly and then it also bothers

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me because I feel like I'm spending too much time setting up and tearing down and figuring

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anything out. But the counter of that is I don't like setting up and tearing down a lot.

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If we're going to record an episode, I don't like to have to set everything up every time

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and then tear it down when I'm done. If I'm going to write and I want to focus space,

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I don't want to have to do that. I don't know the answer to this but I've been basically looking

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at every aspect of my house and my work space isn't going, "Could that be the space? Could that be

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the space? Could that be the space?" There's a space in my garage and I'm like, "That could

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totally be the space in the summer." But then the winter comes and it's just a little too cold out

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there. "Could I heat it? How much would it cost me to heat it?" I run all those things through

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through my head and I haven't landed on any specific place yet and then with the number of

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children I have, I feel like they expand. They have owned the entire house and owned every

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corner of the entire house and I can't figure out how to gain any of that back to get some of that

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back. So like the Lego room and this other room and then we need some storage but it'll work out.

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I think we're going to land on a space here at some point. That's my update. What you need is

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one of these rooms that I just shared in the chat. Have you seen these? I'm looking at this right now.

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Okay, so the funny thing about this, and I told you, this is infiltrating almost every aspect of my

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life right now. I'm looking for spaces to work. I saw the, so at our church we have the drummer

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inside the fishbowl and I was like, "I wonder if I bought a fishbowl and if I put that in the garage,

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could I then work inside the fishbowl and it would be less space to heat?" And maybe that would work

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really, really well. But this looks like a fishbowl only, you know, times a thousand.

00:18:15

Yeah, so the website here is room.com and essentially it's these little phone booth style things that

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you can pop into and they're completely soundproof. These two have these at the day job.

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And the focus room is the one that I think you need. Yeah, but for $18,000, I don't think I need

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that mic. Yeah, well, these are the original but I think that there are a lot of knockoffs of these

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and essentially you could build something if you were handy. I'm not handy, but if you were, you could,

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I'm sure build something similar pretty easily. They're fairly straightforward. I don't think

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you can download the plans or anything like that anywhere, but somewhere somebody has to have a

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version of this, you know? But I think this is a really cool idea.

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That's my leading candidate right now. My leading candidate is to build a room like this

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inside of my garage, but I haven't convinced myself that it's worth it enough or that I'll use it

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enough to do this. That was cool. I like that. I've not. I did not know there's a website that

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sold these. That's amazing. Yeah, I actually see Instagram ads for all of the knockoffs just because

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the type of internet activity I have. How are Instagram ads so good? Like they are so

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no idea. It's unbelievable. Yep, that's scary. Unbelievable. All right, are we ready to launch

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into our book? We are. All right, so we did a book called Mastery by Robert Green and for those who

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are new to Robert Green, he, I believe when I was reading up on him, he's got like seven

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international bestsellers. I mean, he's written a lot of books that have become very popular

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and this book was written in 2012, 2013. It was written in 2012 and then kind of reprinted in

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2013. It's got an introduction in six chapters. There is no conclusion, which I thought was really

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interesting. We'll talk about it as we work through it. He seems to have a system for his book writing.

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I don't know if you've noticed this or not, Mike, but like he'll pick interesting people or famous

00:20:30

people or however you want to position that and then he'll make a book out of talking about them

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and he'll grab their stories and then he'll make a book out of that. If you look at his Wikipedia

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page, you can see the people he focuses on in the different books and this book is no different. He

00:20:48

did exactly that with a group of people and you're going to hear us talk a lot about that process

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and those people. We can go ahead and get started on the introduction. The book is called

00:21:00

Mastery. Really what he's trying to introduce us to is this concept of mastery. The way he

00:21:05

defines it is the feeling that we have a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves.

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That's his super-duper high-level definition of mastery, but he goes into process and mirror

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neurons and what are the obstacles to become a master and what are the mindsets for achieving

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mastery. Then essentially what he does is he breaks each of these out throughout the introduction

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into each of the chapters and it basically gives you a guide to thinking about these things but

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then a bunch of examples from these other famous folks' lives. That's setting the stage on it.

00:21:42

What did you want to talk about or what did you want to hit on as we set the stage?

00:21:47

Well let me just say that we covered one other Robert Greene book for Bookworm prior to this one

00:21:54

before you joined the show, Corey, and I was not a fan. I actually liked this one a lot better,

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but it followed very much the same format and that phrase or the definition of mastery that you

00:22:10

shared, the feeling that we have a greater command of reality of other people or ourselves.

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That, when I read that I was like, "Oh boy, here we go again," because 40 laws of power feels,

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and this isn't, I don't think, attributed directly to Robert Greene, but I mean it's essentially

00:22:28

how to wield power over other people to get what you want. So there is a very obvious negative

00:22:36

application of that power that your mind instantly jumps to when you start reading those stories

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and it feels very uncomfortable, at least it did to me. That I think though is not what you get with

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mastery. I like mastery a lot better and the two keys to motivation are the one thing I want to

00:22:54

add to this from the introduction. The first one is that you must see your attempt at attaining

00:23:00

mastery as something extremely necessary and positive, and the second one is you must convince

00:23:05

yourself that people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in

00:23:10

life. Which sounds kind of funny, but I also think it's very true. So essentially the TLDR

00:23:20

with mastery is that if you are not just putting in the time, so it's really not about the 10,000

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hours or later in the book he says 20,000 hours to really become a master. Those 20,000 hours though

00:23:35

don't really matter if you're doing it wrong. And so that's really what the rest of the book is about

00:23:42

is approaching the work that you're trying to become excellent at the right way. And that second

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key kind of leads into the fact that maybe there are people who are living at a level lower than they

00:23:58

really are capable of. And the way that I read that was kind of like yeah you want to help people,

00:24:05

but you can't just pull people out of that either. They have to make the decision.

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It's kind of like the people who are, you hear all these stories about people who are

00:24:16

in a tough spot financially, they win the lottery and they end up back there. Because they just

00:24:22

don't have the right mindset, the right financial management skills in order to steward all the

00:24:29

wealth that they just acquired. So in some ways it's really not the blessing that it appears to be on

00:24:36

the surface. I think Robert Greene would say that everything worthwhile in life you've got to earn.

00:24:43

But when you realize that what you get is dependent on your effort, and if you do things the right

00:24:52

way that can actually be very freeing. I'm a big believer in the idea of self-determination or my

00:25:00

dad with the software business had an assessment skill building system called Personal Responsibility,

00:25:07

which was sold to at-risk programs in schools like inner cities where you have kids who are

00:25:18

at risk not because of something that they did, but just the situation that they were born into.

00:25:22

But the first step of getting out of that is to decide that you're not just going to let it be

00:25:27

the way that it's always been and you're going to do something about it. So I feel like this

00:25:33

introduction does a really great job of setting the stage for the next, what are their six different

00:25:39

parts here? I guess they're chapters? I don't know. Well, they're chapters, but they sure didn't feel

00:25:44

like chapters because I mean you're taking 350 pages and you're chopping it into like seven-ish

00:25:51

sections, which you know, those are pretty long chapters there. Now he subdivides that

00:25:57

in a way, but like there wasn't in my perspective, there wasn't a lot of structure in terms of the

00:26:03

subdivision except for when he would say like we're going to talk about the seven strategies to do

00:26:09

whatever, right? So then he would then he would break that down, which I thought was good.

00:26:12

As you were going through the introduction that what stood out to you, the one other piece that

00:26:19

I thought about was he talks about his whole life being an apprenticeship. And I really, really like

00:26:24

thinking like that. I really, really like that mindset of like at any given time, I'm in a process

00:26:30

of learning and at any given time in a process of, you know, trying to get to mastering and

00:26:36

and trying to develop and trying to grow. And I think that's a good way, just I mean, maybe it's

00:26:42

the educator in me, but it's like I think that's a good way to approach approach life, right?

00:26:46

As I'm trying to learn some skill, I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to advance in some way where

00:26:51

I got I got rubbed a little bit the wrong way, I would say, is the fact that like the people he

00:26:57

puts out as the masters, right, that he refers back to, I don't know that there's a direct

00:27:03

connection between if I do the things that he tells me, I'm going to achieve what they

00:27:07

what they achieved or close to what they achieved. I think there's a very, very realistic path to

00:27:11

where, hey, I can, I can think about my whole life as an apprenticeship, I can work hard my

00:27:16

entire life, I can stay open, I cannot fall to the obstacles of all this stuff. And I can still not

00:27:22

achieve what these six or seven people achieved in their life. And like, we don't, I don't think

00:27:28

we really talk about that enough in the book and I get why you wouldn't talk about that. But it's

00:27:32

like that kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. Yeah, I think there's a lot of potential

00:27:38

overlap here with the 48 laws of power, but I'm kind of glad that it's not as explicit as I was

00:27:43

worried it would be. Okay, so, so chapter one then moves into, and I'm really intrigued to hear

00:27:49

what you say about chapter one, because as the guy who runs the life theme cohort, right,

00:27:54

chapter one is called discover your calling the life's task. Now, I think there's a discrepancy here,

00:28:01

but I don't want to bias you. So what did you think about the life's task? I'm intrigued with what

00:28:08

you thought about that. Well, first of all, it's kind of a clumsy term, if you ask me.

00:28:13

I agree. But there are five strategies he mentions for discovering your inclinations and life's task,

00:28:22

return to your origins, which is the primal inclination strategy, occupy the perfect niche,

00:28:28

the Darwinian strategy, avoid the false path, the rebellion strategy, let go of the past,

00:28:33

the adaptation strategy, and find your way back the life or death strategy. Those are all obviously

00:28:39

different strategies that you could use to land on this life's task. So the process for this,

00:28:47

regardless of the strategy that you use, is connect with your inclinations, your sense of

00:28:52

uniqueness with this connection established, look at the career path that you are on or about to

00:28:56

choose, and see your career path as a journey of twists and turns rather than a straight line.

00:29:00

That is straight from the book. That is the process. What the heck does that mean?

00:29:04

I agree. So I think this is actually pretty good. I appreciate that he's leading people down

00:29:14

thinking about these types of questions. And I don't think it's a simple formulaic answer that

00:29:22

you could just say, just do this, and then you get it. So I'm not sure that there's a different

00:29:29

approach really to be taken at this point. This is the place to start. But if I were to add to this,

00:29:35

because as you mentioned, do have the life theme cohort and I've coached people through this,

00:29:40

this kind of thing, I think there are some other ways to get to the clues that can help you kind

00:29:47

of lock into this. And then also the life's task, I feel like is a little bit, I don't like that term.

00:29:55

It feels like you pick one thing that you're going to do. And then that becomes the thing

00:30:01

that your whole life is about. The life theme. And when I came up with that term, it was kind of

00:30:07

like extending the yearly theme idea from the Cortex podcast, like, well, if you've got a theme

00:30:13

that you're filtering your decisions through for your year, what if you had that for like a larger

00:30:18

timescale? Let's just call it a life theme. But I also tell people like your life theme can change,

00:30:23

I've actually changed mine not too long ago. And my current version of it is I help people

00:30:28

multiply their time in town, leave a bigger dent in the universe. So the very short version,

00:30:32

I'm a multiplier. So when I get an opportunity to do something, I ask myself, how do I think this

00:30:38

is going to align with that life theme? It's not a life's task. And then this is a different task.

00:30:45

So it's obviously no. It's this is an interesting task. Can I bring meaning and purpose to this thing?

00:30:53

And if not, then it's an automatic no. Maybe I think that I can bring meaning and purpose to it.

00:31:00

But once I start doing it, I realize, ah, this really isn't the thing. Okay, well, now the

00:31:03

personal retreat process comes comes in because every three months I can reevaluate things. And

00:31:08

just because I said yes to something six months ago doesn't mean it's still a yes for me today.

00:31:14

So you have to look at all these different pieces. And I feel like you really can't do that justice

00:31:20

in a single chapter. But also, you know, it's a fine intro to or a fine place to start with the

00:31:26

whole concept of mastery, I think. Yeah, the part that I like that he did here was

00:31:32

when he talks about figuring out your life's task, he separates it into three different

00:31:36

sections. So there's the inward journey. There's then assuming that that's going well, right? Like

00:31:42

you're working should be a pretty verification or what you're doing should be part of that

00:31:47

when you figured out what that inward journey is. And then your mindset is realizing that like

00:31:52

this journey or this thing that we're doing is the way we learn more and the way we adjust and the

00:31:58

way we shift. Now I wouldn't have been like this is why I love having these conversations, right?

00:32:04

Because I didn't realize that task bother task the word task bothered me as much as it did until

00:32:09

until right now. Because trajectory theme context, right? Like all of those seem better. And then

00:32:17

especially in this this three part series he gives. If I figure out the inward journey, right? Like

00:32:21

I look at the patterns and like what are my unique and what are my inclinations? Like so for me,

00:32:25

personally, this would be teaching, education, learning, development, right? Like that's where I

00:32:31

feel like I've I've got this inclination or this inner calling to continue to do this type of work.

00:32:36

Okay, then it changes the way I think about my vocation, right? So vacation would be job because

00:32:42

now it doesn't matter where I'm doing that. Like you can teach and you can help people learn and

00:32:48

you can like mentor and coach and do all these things in a bunch of different contexts. Okay,

00:32:53

so why would I pick this context over this context? Well, maybe there's something I need to learn in

00:32:57

that area or maybe I've just got a random opportunity that came along in this other area. Like it takes

00:33:04

some of the pressure off of the picking the perfect job kind of thing, right? Like because

00:33:08

you often think about like, Oh, I need to pick the perfect thing. No, no, no. If it's in that

00:33:11

inclination area, if it's in that unique area, or what he would call life task, we would call life,

00:33:16

you know, like theme, if it's in that area, you're good. Like just run that. And then the other one

00:33:21

is the mindset of like, okay, if that changes, change, stay within that theme, but allow that

00:33:27

to change. Yeah, and then coupled with this is a heavy emphasis on natural selection and evolution.

00:33:35

So kind of biased with this is like, if you really want to make any sort of difference,

00:33:41

you got to connect to this thing as early as you possibly can and make your entire life be about

00:33:46

it because you are just a blip in the universe, which I agree with that on some level. You know,

00:33:52

I really liked 4,000 weeks by Oliver Berkman, which essentially was that he talks about this idea

00:33:58

of cosmic insignificance theory, which the positive side of that is the entire universe doesn't

00:34:06

depend on you following through and doing the thing. So don't put all the pressure on yourself that

00:34:12

I guess I tend to do. But then also with that, like, I'm changing my career and I'm not going to

00:34:19

share my actual age. Let's just say I'm north of 40. Okay, is it too late for me? I mean, based on

00:34:26

the examples that he shares here, you might think so. He even says in some of the stories,

00:34:30

the person was in their mid 20s and they were realizing that their life was passing them by

00:34:37

and so they decided to do this thing. So some of that stuff was like, I don't know if I agree with

00:34:42

that. I personally believe that when you really are doing the thing that you are supposed to be

00:34:52

doing at whatever stage in life, the compound effect kicks in and you now are not adding to

00:34:59

your life, you are multiplying. So I kind of don't worry about that, but is that that tone throughout

00:35:07

the entire book. And I don't know how that might influence somebody who is younger. Like younger

00:35:18

Mike reads this. He probably thinks, okay, this is really important. I got to nail this down by the

00:35:24

time I'm 25. And I'm not sure that that's healthy or helpful necessarily. Now that doesn't mean that

00:35:32

you can't get good stuff out of it. I just think like he probably doesn't even mean to lead people

00:35:37

that way, but just that is a little bit of the tone that comes through. So you got to recognize

00:35:42

that and you also have to approach this plug for the reading workshop, I guess. Like you find the

00:35:48

stuff that's useful and then you discard the rest. Well, and I thought that was very relevant in

00:35:54

this book because I thought there were certain things in here that were extremely useful and

00:35:59

extremely valuable. And then there were other like, I mean, fairly long sections that I was like,

00:36:04

okay, we could like, we could just hack this out of here. And I would not have missed anything

00:36:08

anything in this book. So that's good. I want to call out one thing. There is a section here and

00:36:14

I don't remember where it is. I don't remember what chapter it's in, but he does talk about,

00:36:17

oh, I think it was Benjamin Franklin. Does any talk about Benjamin Franklin doing really,

00:36:21

really good work in the later part of his life and like acknowledging that like, hey,

00:36:26

really good work in like your mastery phase might not achieve until the very end. But then he like,

00:36:32

kind of like pops his own balloon because he's like, he had a lot more really, really good work

00:36:35

to do. And then he died at like 83. And I was like, oh, man, what if he'd stayed alive?

00:36:40

I can't remember. So I definitely remember him talking about Benjamin Franklin. I feel like,

00:36:46

well, actually, I know that Cal Newport talked about Benjamin Franklin in slow productivity.

00:36:54

So we heard a different version of that story of Benjamin Franklin's life in the last book that

00:36:59

we read, but obviously different details and different emphasis here, slightly different, I

00:37:06

would argue. So I think maybe a little bit of that perspective, I kind of thought the same thing as

00:37:14

I was reading about Benjamin Franklin, but then I realized, well, maybe that's just to carry over

00:37:17

from a slow productivity. And I'm not sure, you know, I did not go back and reread the

00:37:24

section of Benjamin Franklin to see if I was accurate in like attributing, well, that's not

00:37:28

exactly Robert Green is saying he's using these stories to emphasize these points.

00:37:32

Because this book is ridiculously long, I'm trying to find out online and I cannot find it

00:37:38

anywhere how many words are actually in this book. But if the average nonfiction book is like 60,000

00:37:42

words, this has got to be like 120. I agree. It was long. It's over 300 pages and it's tiny,

00:37:51

tiny print. It's just like the 48 Laws of Power. I mean, there's, I would argue, not a whole lot

00:37:57

of filler words in here, but this is, you know, this is a mammoth of a book to get through.

00:38:04

Yeah, I agree. Okay, so let's move to chapter two, we'll get there, we'll get the style of

00:38:08

rating because I'm sure we're going to have things to say about that. So I put you on the spot on

00:38:12

chapter one, I'll take chapter two in terms of intro and the listener to it. So it's submit to

00:38:16

reality, the ideal apprenticeship. So the point he's trying to make in this one is the fact that

00:38:22

these individuals, so let's we, I don't think we've actually talked about the individuals that he

00:38:26

that he hits and I won't remember them all. But Da Vinci is one of them. Temple Grandin is one

00:38:31

of them. There's a filer fighter pilot. Can you can you remember the name? I can't remember it off

00:38:38

the Caesar something or other. Yeah, there's a fighter pilot, then there's

00:38:43

all I say is name wrong every time. He's German, Gertha. I forget how you say it. Oh, yeah.

00:38:51

I'm not sure how to pronounce it. G-O-E-T-H-E. There you go. But so he's got these series of people,

00:38:59

right? So what, and what he does here is he pulls out some of these examples where they were

00:39:05

apprentice or they did an apprenticeship under certain other people. So, you know, one of the ones

00:39:11

that he calls out here is Faraday and how Faraday did an apprenticeship under, I forget who his

00:39:16

apprentice was, but another very, very popular scientist at the time. And then what he's trying

00:39:23

to say is like here, here are the keys to mastery from an apprenticeship standpoint. So I'm going

00:39:27

to focus mastery in now just on this apprenticeship perspective. And I'm going to hit it in a bunch

00:39:32

of different ways. What's the goal of your apprenticeship? What's the ideal apprenticeship have in it?

00:39:37

What are apprenticeship mistakes? You know, how do you transition out of an apprenticeship,

00:39:42

those type of things? And then he even goes further on that and he says, here are the

00:39:48

eight strategies for completing this ideal apprenticeship. And then you can walk through

00:39:53

what each of those are, right? Like value learning over money, keep expanding your horizons,

00:39:57

revert to a feeling of inferiority. Trust the process. And he goes through,

00:40:01

goes through all of these. And at times he ties back into the examples that he gave originally.

00:40:06

And at times he uses the example to set up the front end of it and then brings out his teaching

00:40:11

points at the very end. And he kind of switches back and forth between those styles, which

00:40:16

I don't have a problem with. And I thought they were effective other than if I thought some of them

00:40:21

were a little too long. I thought he went on a little too long in certain situations.

00:40:28

So the things that I'm going to say like I got out of chapter two, right? Again, so it's all about

00:40:33

this apprenticeship is like what my major takeaway from this is, I wish we did more apprenticeships.

00:40:39

I wish we lived in a world and in a society where this type of work was, I guess, the process

00:40:49

of doing it was more part, more ingrained into our society. We are in an educational society.

00:40:54

And it's funny for me to be saying this as somebody who works in education. We live in an educational

00:40:59

society. It's go learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And when you're 21, now you go and essentially

00:41:05

work for the first time. Right? Maybe you've had a job. Maybe you've had an internship,

00:41:10

but really you haven't had any seasoned period of time where you've been doing work unless you did

00:41:14

that intentionally. And I think there is such value in going and studying under somebody. Now,

00:41:22

five to seven years, I don't know about that. I don't know if I think that's relevant. But like,

00:41:27

this ties into the idea of gap year. So if you do a gap year and you do it appropriately and you

00:41:32

spend a strategic period of time learning something underneath the tutelage of somebody else who's

00:41:38

an expert in that or who's a master in that, man, I think that's so valuable. And I just don't think

00:41:43

we do that anymore. And it's not even part of our culture. And like that, I mean, out of all the

00:41:48

stuff he says in this chapter, that was my like, aha from this whole thing was like,

00:41:53

why really wish there was there were more avenues for connecting apprentices and apprentices and

00:42:01

mentors or masters and figuring out a way that even if you did it informally, and it was like

00:42:07

part of the part of the day or, you know, a couple hours a week, you went and you apprenticed under

00:42:12

somebody. And I just think I think we'd be so much better off for that professionally and personally,

00:42:17

as we move forward. Well, I agree with you. I think however, you don't need to let a lack of a formal

00:42:27

apprenticeship necessarily stop you the general you. As we talked about in the pro show, when you

00:42:40

asked me what my apprenticeship looks like, I feel like I kind of have gone through an apprenticeship

00:42:46

over the last several years as I've changed my career. However, I also think there's a dangerous

00:42:53

side to this where you have to find a master, because I think, yeah, you want someone who really

00:43:02

understands something if they're going to be the ones who are going to show you the ropes.

00:43:05

However, we live in the internet age and you can connect with a lot of different people and

00:43:11

essentially you can have different apprenticeships in different forms. A lot easier, you have a lot

00:43:18

more access to to people, but you got to be specific in knowing what exactly you're hoping to

00:43:25

to learn from this person. So if I know that I want to, I don't know, become a better,

00:43:37

I want to become a better at internet business as a solo preneur. I can go study Justin Welsh

00:43:44

very easily as the solo preneur guy. I can access the courses, I can join the communities,

00:43:52

you can get direct access to somebody a lot easier than you could back in the day. I think

00:43:58

that is pretty cool. But also, as we talked about, I have a little bit of a hard time embracing the

00:44:06

idea of, yeah, you're just going to become my guru and I'm going to commit to you for the next

00:44:11

five to 10 years, which is a lot of the stories that he told in the book. And a lot of them are

00:44:16

historical examples, obviously, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s. So what I just described with the online stuff

00:44:24

was obviously not an option. And I do think that there is a deeper level of this apprenticeship,

00:44:31

but there's probably a lot to be said for that. I just have a hard time thinking through how that

00:44:36

actually gets lived out in a positive, practical way. I think the steps are still great, though. So

00:44:44

like, there's these three steps to the apprenticeship phase, where you go through deep observation,

00:44:49

you observe the rules, you observe the power relationships that exist within the group. Step

00:44:54

two is the skill acquisition. And this is where you start with one skill that you can master,

00:44:58

and that serves as a foundation for acquiring the others. And then there's the experimentation or

00:45:02

the active mode where you step out, you embrace the criticism, and you start to think about new

00:45:07

ways that you can do things. And that's kind of when stuff just becomes like second nature.

00:45:12

So that's really the goal, right? He talks about that in this chapter is to transform your mind

00:45:18

and body, where this just becomes tacit knowledge. It's a feeling for what you're doing. It's hard

00:45:23

to put into words, but it's easy to demonstrate and put into action. So I think the biggest thing

00:45:32

that is holding people back from embracing an apprenticeship mindset, not necessarily going

00:45:38

through a formal apprenticeship, but he talks about two kinds of failures, never trying out

00:45:42

your ideas because you're afraid and making mistakes with a bold adventure, some spirit,

00:45:45

that's the kind that you can learn from. I feel like the opportunities are there for just about

00:45:51

everyone to learn from an apprenticeship relationship. But the thing that will keep people from doing

00:45:59

it, I think, is that they don't want to look like a fool. You have these people who are in the past,

00:46:07

I've called them my internet heroes, right? You don't want to look like an idiot in front of them.

00:46:11

So you don't ever say anything. You don't enter the conversations that are happening

00:46:18

in the appropriate way to actually get better because you don't want to make a mistake.

00:46:24

And if you're too afraid to make a mistake, then you're never going to become great at the thing.

00:46:30

That's really what apprenticeship is, I think, and if I were to summarize this,

00:46:34

is admitting that you don't know very much and being willing to learn from people who know more

00:46:41

than you do. So you said, you talked about the tangible side of this and what it would be like.

00:46:48

So, Mike, if somebody came to you and they were like, "Okay, I want to be a solopreneur content

00:46:54

creator on the internet, will you apprentice me? What would your gut reaction be?" And let's say,

00:47:01

let's get the character personality side out of it. It's purely a, you've already vetted them,

00:47:09

you know that they would be okay, that they would not come in and wreck your whole situation.

00:47:14

But would you entertain it? The only reason I hesitate is because I feel like I don't know enough

00:47:21

about it to actually help someone in that situation. Now, if you're telling me, "Hey,

00:47:26

teach me how to read books better." Yeah, that's kind of what the workshop is. It's a mini-apprenticeship.

00:47:32

So, I also think, though, that you have to, with the internet, the best way that this gets lived out

00:47:41

is when you apply one of ConvertKit's values that I really like, teach everything that you know.

00:47:47

You don't have to get to the point where you are an expert before you are sharing the things

00:47:52

that you know. So, with the internet, you know, I think there's a lot of nuance with that question.

00:47:57

I need to know specifically who you are and what stage you're at. Because if I have gone through

00:48:02

what you have, what you are going through and I can help you, then yes, I am absolutely willing

00:48:09

to do that. But that doesn't mean like, "Okay, give me $50,000 and I'm going to teach you everything

00:48:14

that you need to know." That's kind of what the library is for in a sense, is like, you can make

00:48:20

these small bets. You can enter these conversations where the stakes are lower. And then, if you really

00:48:28

want to go deep, usually there are opportunities for you to do that as well. I'm working on that

00:48:33

type of stuff for the library. Right now, there is nothing else for people who really want to work

00:48:38

with me other than the 100 bucks a year to join the membership or sign up for one of the cohorts.

00:48:45

But as I develop more mastery myself, I think those opportunities to walk people through that

00:48:51

process will present themselves. I kind of already are in the areas of like PKM and the life-themed

00:48:58

stuff. But then essentially, you know, I'm not going to step outside my, what is it, zone a genius,

00:49:07

whatever. I'm not going to pretend like I know more than I know. I'm going to recognize that

00:49:12

I'm a traveler on this path as well and I'm not going to pretend like I have all the answers.

00:49:17

Yeah. I think the reason I asked the question is I have a little bit of a different,

00:49:23

I don't know if it's different or just a different nuance or spin to it. But it's like,

00:49:26

if somebody came to me, which this happens all the time in education, right? Somebody comes to me

00:49:30

and they're like, "Hey, I want a student teach under you." Or, you know, I would want to apprentice,

00:49:35

you know, from a classroom management perspective. And that maybe is the wheelhouse you're talking

00:49:40

about where you narrowed it down and said, "Yes, this is my zone of expertise." Like,

00:49:45

I would have no problem with them coming in. As long as they do from the beginning,

00:49:50

I don't have it all figured out. I don't have it all together. But sure, I've been in a classroom

00:49:54

longer than you have. And if you want to come in and learn some things that work and some things

00:49:59

that don't, like that'd be great. I don't think I'd have any problem bringing them in.

00:50:04

Well, education I feel like is a little bit different because in order to get in front of the class,

00:50:08

you have to have the credentials, right? What are the credentials that I have earned?

00:50:14

Experience. Each people's stuff online. Yeah, that's about it though. Like with education and with

00:50:21

medicine specifically, like, there are all of these formal channels that you have to go through.

00:50:26

And so the fact that you have the letters at the end of your name means that you know what I want

00:50:34

to know. It's a lot harder to verify that with just solo-preneur guy online.

00:50:41

Make up some letters for the back of your name.

00:50:44

That's why the testimonials and the social proof are such a big deal.

00:50:48

I agree. You know, you go to a course and you see, you know, do I recognize anybody who is saying

00:50:52

nice things about this because you want to know that they can actually get you where you want to go?

00:50:57

All right. So let's move to chapter three. So chapter three is absorb the master's power,

00:51:02

the mentor dynamic. I do not like the name of this chapter at all, the title of this chapter

00:51:10

at all. So absorb the master power. Now the content I'm actually okay with, but like the

00:51:15

the name just doesn't do it for me. So again, he has this section. I guess if there was a

00:51:19

substructure in the book, he has subsections in some of these chapters and maybe all of them

00:51:25

that are keys to mastery. Right. So how do you master this thing? And then he goes through and

00:51:29

kind of gives you strategies for it. But the first thing that he's going to start talking

00:51:35

about in this chapter is how do we find the right master? How do we use books to temporarily

00:51:42

serve in a place where we can't can't get a master? It's okay to have multiple

00:51:47

masters or multiple mentors as you work through this. Then he says how do that he has a whole

00:51:51

section on how to get the most out of this mentor or most out of this master. And there's four steps

00:51:56

in this one. He's choose the right mentor according to the your needs and inclinations. So he ties

00:52:01

this back to what he would call the life task. If the if the mentor doesn't relate to the life

00:52:06

task, what are you doing? You're picking the wrong mentor. Gaze deep into the mentor's mirror.

00:52:11

You know, so this one gets a little interesting, but it's like you kind of have to stop somewhere

00:52:17

right? So you have to figure out where the mentor is going to stop being able to mentor you and then

00:52:21

then move that one. That's kind of like the the mirror thing. And then transfigure their ideas.

00:52:26

So you can't just replicate exactly what they do. You take what they do, you spin it with your own

00:52:32

uniqueness and your own perspective and then you it ends up becoming different, maybe better,

00:52:37

hopefully better in your mind than what they they worked with you on. And then create a back

00:52:43

and forth dynamic. So how do you adapt and learn and grow and go back and forth? And I can tell you

00:52:48

that from my experience in like the closest, it's definitely a mentor advising relationship,

00:52:54

but the closest apprenticeship relationship I've had, this back and forth is huge. When you

00:52:59

you can tell when you reach that phase where it becomes less of a true mentee mentor situation

00:53:06

and they're coaching you almost all the time, and where they almost start to treat you like a

00:53:10

colleague. And like you're not officially a colleague yet, but like it's very, very close and you feel

00:53:15

it like because they start to get your opinion and ask you questions and like it's much less

00:53:21

I'm going to teach you this or coach you this. It's much more of a we're gonna have a conversation

00:53:24

about this. And I'm really hoping to get stuff out of you just as you're hoping to get stuff out of

00:53:29

me. And it's a really, really fun time in that situation. I'll give the the listeners a

00:53:36

an example of like one of the case studies that he uses. So he uses Manny Pacquiao and his boxing

00:53:44

coach Roach was the guy's last name. So basically Roach develops this new style of

00:53:50

training as boxers where he puts on these big mitts and he basically tries to mimic

00:53:55

the opponent for the fighter, right? So he figures out what the ticks are on the fighter

00:54:00

and like where they have flaws and where they have weaknesses and then that helps the person

00:54:05

he's training kind of see those things before the fight and like be able to take advantage

00:54:10

of those things before the fight. But what he learns through this is like basically

00:54:15

Pacquiao would make suggestions on how he would do certain things and then he would

00:54:18

they would have this back and forth and basically they both got better. He got better, Roach got

00:54:22

better as a trainer, Pacquiao got better as a fighter and there was this back and forth dynamic

00:54:26

that evolved or that happened throughout the course of their training together. And

00:54:32

for those of you who don't know anything about boxing, Pacquiao just absolutely owned the sport

00:54:36

in his weight class for a very, very, very long time. So it was a very effective and a very

00:54:42

beneficial relationship for both of them. Yeah, I want to go back to the book's

00:54:47

conserves temporary mentors. Really? I'm surprised you'd want to go back to there.

00:54:51

I thought about interrupting you before you got too far down that trail there, but I resisted.

00:55:00

I disagree that they are temporary mentors. I feel like books are one of the most

00:55:06

amazing inventions ever. I mean, you have access to some of the greatest thinkers and the most

00:55:18

revolutionary ideas to ever be shared and you can get them for free at a public library.

00:55:26

That is amazing. And if you would have told somebody prior to Gutenberg's press that this would be

00:55:35

a thing, they'd be like, yeah, right? And I feel like we've kind of lost the value of this because

00:55:43

the internet has lowered the barriers so far that people can publish crap with no barrier to entry.

00:55:53

So it's becoming really hard to filter out what's the good stuff and what's the junk.

00:56:00

And if you want to find the good stuff, just go buy something with a binding on it. It's a lot

00:56:07

harder to actually have an idea worth sharing. And that's the kind of the litmus test for that.

00:56:17

So I think that this has been very important to me, obviously. And I think coupled with this

00:56:25

is a little bit of a difference of opinion with how this dynamic actually works. I'm not

00:56:33

disagreeing that the best version of this happens in person, person to person. If you are

00:56:41

committing to a mentor for the next five to seven years and there's one person that you're going

00:56:46

to spend the majority of your time with, yeah, you want to be with them day to day every day.

00:56:53

However, I don't live in a place where those types of mentors, at least for my professional

00:57:01

stuff, they're not around me. So what do I do? Do I pack up my family and move to Austin, Texas?

00:57:09

You know, I've thought about that. I could go hang out with Ryan Holiday at the painted porch,

00:57:14

right? I'm not going to do that. And I would argue that that is not limiting my professional options

00:57:20

just because I'm not physically in the same location. Maybe it lowers my chances of being

00:57:27

mentored by Ryan Holiday, but also just being in the same location doesn't mean that you're going

00:57:33

to have the access to that relationship either. So I feel like there's a historical bias here

00:57:42

where cities were the places where these ideas were shared and you did have to be in those places

00:57:48

engaging in those conversations in order to even have a chance for these apprenticeships to

00:57:53

present themselves and that I think is changed. So I think the question you have to be asking as

00:58:02

you go through this whole book, and I hope I'm not going to just harp on this every single chapter,

00:58:08

but we have to think differently about what are we trying to get out of this whole idea of

00:58:14

apprenticeship and what are the different ways that we can apply ourselves and develop these skills.

00:58:21

Now there is something that is important here that he talks about to learn requires a sense of

00:58:26

humility. So you have to believe that there are others that are better than you are and that's

00:58:30

hard to do online. Everyone wants to project. Oh, I've got it all together and I know everything,

00:58:37

right? But you aren't going to learn that way. But he also says that if you work on yourself

00:58:44

first and you develop a strong work ethic and organizational skills, the right teacher will appear.

00:58:48

I 100% agree with that statement, but the right teacher is going to appear in different ways

00:58:55

now than, you know, in 1800. Now the right person appearing might be, I'm trying to become a better

00:59:05

writer. So I buy this course and then I go through this and I see other people talking about this

00:59:12

tangential thing and holding up the work of this other person as like a example of quality.

00:59:18

Oh, I'd never heard of that person before. I'm going to go study their work. And that is a very

00:59:26

valid approach, I think, to learning the skills that you need to learn. And that's where I say,

00:59:31

like books can absolutely serve as more than temporary mentors. Having read, I don't know,

00:59:37

there's probably something like 500 books in the last eight, nine years since I first started the

00:59:44

bookworm podcast and all the gap books and things that came before that. There's 188 versions of the

00:59:51

the mind map notes in the community for people who are interested. I recognize that there is value

01:00:00

to be gained through the quantity as well. So books can't just be like, you know, I'm really stuck on

01:00:06

this problem. I wonder if there's a book. The reading life has to be developed, but I think it's also a

01:00:14

very important part of modern day apprenticeship. If you're neglecting books as a way to develop

01:00:22

skills, you are hindering yourself. And it's kind of amazing to think about how much access we have to

01:00:30

to this stuff. So let's take advantage of it. Yeah. All right, anything else on chapter three?

01:00:34

No, I don't think so. I think the absorbing the master's power feels a little bit weird.

01:00:43

I agree. It feels almost like science fiction. I think though, hidden in that phrase is something

01:00:52

that he didn't speak directly to. But as a parent, you may be kind of get it. You want as a parent,

01:00:58

you want your kids to go further and do more than you did. And I feel like when you have a real

01:01:06

apprentice relationship like that, and it doesn't have to be again, the formal apprentice relationship,

01:01:11

there have been people who in my life, there are currently people in my life who I look up to,

01:01:17

and they recognize the fact that, you know, I am just absorbing everything that they are willing

01:01:23

to share. They are mentors in my life. And I think they would say the same thing. Like,

01:01:29

it's rewarding to them to invest in someone who actually wants to hear what they have to say and

01:01:37

actually and put it into practice. So I think if you understand that, it's probably kind of natural

01:01:43

for the master to want to launch the apprentice at some point past where they've been able to go.

01:01:53

Yeah, I can tell you that I've seen situations where they haven't wanted to launch that. And

01:01:58

it never ends well. It really does not end well because everybody ends up getting bitter in the

01:02:02

end and it's a bad situation. But yes, that would be the hope is they would launch.

01:02:07

All right. Chapter four, Mike, I felt like chapter four kind of came out of nowhere.

01:02:15

And it's not that it didn't relate eventually. But like chapter four is see people as they are

01:02:22

social intelligence. So if I think about this from a, we're working down this list, right? We go from

01:02:28

here's the idea of mastery. Let's get apprenticeships. Let's absorb everything we came from the master

01:02:33

and then let's figure out basically how to interact with that person and like interact with

01:02:38

them well through social intelligence. But like the way most of this chapter worked,

01:02:43

it was basically like I want to write a little, not little fairly large section on social intelligence.

01:02:51

But it's like I didn't need nearly this much depth or breadth like from a social intelligence

01:02:58

standpoint. So let me let me give the overview unless you want to chime in right now. I'll give

01:03:01

you the opportunity. Well, I want to ask you a question. What the heck is social intelligence?

01:03:05

Okay, good point. Okay, so I don't know the answer to that. That's why I'm going to move

01:03:13

move straightforward. But like we unpack important components, specific knowledge,

01:03:20

and then general knowledge of human nature. We unpack the seven deadly realities, right? Which

01:03:27

envy conformism, rigidity, self obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness, passive aggressiveness.

01:03:33

Then the four strategies for social intelligence, speak through your work, craft the appropriate

01:03:38

persona, see yourself as other CU, suffer, suffer fools gladly. Like all of this stuff is not bad.

01:03:46

I don't think any of this is bad. I just felt like it was kind of like, and we're going to detour,

01:03:52

but it's going to be like a really big detour, right? Like we're going to go

01:03:56

from, you know, it's a very American reference rate, we're going to go from like New York to

01:04:02

Portland through Mexico. And I was like, wait, what are we doing? Like, why are we going the

01:04:08

whole way down there? That said, I think this is a really interesting section on human nature.

01:04:16

I think it's a really interesting section on some general good ideas to avoid the set. I mean,

01:04:20

the seven deadly realities, right? Like, if we avoid those things, we're going to be in a much

01:04:24

better situation than we are if we have those in our life and they're impacting our relationships.

01:04:28

The four strategies for social intelligence, I think those are really, really good in terms of,

01:04:32

you know, like advancing your work or helping you not get stuck in these obstacles. So

01:04:39

that's my general take on chapter four, and that we can get more specific after you give us your

01:04:45

commentary. So the title, first part of the title, see people as they are, I like that.

01:04:54

The concept of social intelligence, I think that's mislabeled. I think what he's really talking about

01:05:03

here is emotional intelligence, which has a social aspect to it. I used to work for family

01:05:13

business that has a emotional intelligence assessment and skill building product, not the

01:05:18

personal responsibility piece that I mentioned earlier, but another product called the Success

01:05:23

Profiler, which, and this is going to color my bias on this, which is why I'm sharing this.

01:05:28

That product has been used something like eight and a half million times and has 120

01:05:35

doctoral level papers and books written on it. So like huge research basis, right? Emotional

01:05:41

intelligence is a thing. Let me tell you. And it's hard to measure. So primarily, family business

01:05:51

sells to school systems where the focus is on test scores. And did your kids graduate,

01:05:58

especially with like special education programs? It's, did they do what they needed to do for their

01:06:05

IEPs? And we're not necessarily concerned about the social aspect of this. I mean,

01:06:12

if you were to ask a teacher, yes, obviously they are concerned about it. But how do you,

01:06:16

how in the heck do you teach that stuff? How do you test for that stuff? How can you measure that

01:06:20

stuff? Well, there are tools, but it's, it's difficult. Okay. So when I am thinking about

01:06:26

emotional intelligence, I'm thinking about a couple different aspects of this. There's an

01:06:31

intra personal part of this, which is how do I deal with my own emotions? And that kind of,

01:06:40

he talks about with the naive perspective, which is viewing people out of our own emotional needs.

01:06:45

So if you don't have intra personal emotional intelligence skills, then everything feels like

01:06:51

a big deal. You can't see things, how they really are. And you're projecting that on everybody else.

01:06:56

But there's also the interpersonal piece of this, which is how do I communicate effectively. And

01:07:03

this is where like all of the other emotional intelligence skills typically get measured.

01:07:09

And one of them that I really like is called sales orientation, but essentially it's leadership.

01:07:13

And every time people go through that, they're like, I don't want to be a salesperson. I hate

01:07:17

this scale. And I'm like, well, are you married? Because if you are, you're a salesperson,

01:07:22

you've sold yourself at least once. Sales is really the belief that you can get people where

01:07:28

they want to go. And so there's a lot that goes into this. And I feel like when he's talking about,

01:07:35

in this, when we talk about in this chapter is how to manage the complexities of relationships

01:07:41

effectively. Now there are complexities in the relationship with the master that you may be

01:07:48

apprenticing under that you kind of alluded to, where maybe they don't have the emotional

01:07:53

intelligence skills and they're not seeing things right, where they're launching you as the apprentice

01:07:59

at some point. I've seen that that too. So that doesn't mean that you can't learn from them,

01:08:04

but you got to go into it with your eyes open and not just blindly trusting this person. And then

01:08:09

all of a sudden is like, well, I thought they were going to do this. And they didn't. I'm the victim

01:08:13

here. No, recognize what's going in going on here. And again, use what you can better yourself.

01:08:20

You're not trying to use the master and then just discard them. That was one of the scientists

01:08:27

examples that you alluded to earlier. That was kind of my take on that apprenticeship model is

01:08:32

like at some point, the guy that he was apprenticing under wasn't he was he wasn't willing to share

01:08:40

the spotlight. But the apprentice had gotten so good that he's like, well, okay, I can't grow

01:08:45

here anymore. So I'm going to go do something else. He didn't like throw his master under the bus or

01:08:49

anything like that. So you got to be don't be a jerk. But then there are also like all of the

01:08:54

people. If I'm in a day to day job, these are all my coworkers that I have to manage my relationship

01:09:03

with them effectively. And I'm not just talking about like the suffer fools gladly, although that

01:09:09

could be applied here. I mean, there are people that you work with probably who are not helping you

01:09:16

as much as they are needing something from you. I remember Michael Hyatt did a blog post about

01:09:21

this a long time ago about these two types of people in the world, people who have their own

01:09:25

battery source and those who don't. And the ones who have their own battery source, they bring life

01:09:30

and energy to every meeting that they're a part of and the ones who don't, you got to like pull

01:09:34

them along. And you can identify people from your own work situations that fit those two different

01:09:39

categories. So that's what I'm thinking of as suffer fools gladly is like this person is part of

01:09:43

this team and yeah, it's going to be a little bit harder to work with them. But it's necessary.

01:09:47

Doesn't mean that I'm going to spend all my time working with them. I'm going to do what I need

01:09:52

to do with them. And then I'm going to go where I'm celebrated, not just tolerated. There's people

01:09:57

who are easy to work with and we can do something awesome a little bit easier. Right. And I used to

01:10:01

in the past get offended and I'm not saying this is this is right. But like I would get so

01:10:07

frustrated whenever I was in one of those situations that it became evident I feel to everybody else

01:10:12

who was there when I felt like this was a waste of time like you knew it. So I feel like I'm getting

01:10:19

better at hiding that stuff. And that's what he's talking about here. So I feel like the topic is

01:10:25

important, but I don't really like the approach that he took. And I feel like obviously I'm biased

01:10:32

here, but there's another another way to tackle this, which makes a lot more sense.

01:10:36

And I don't think I don't think it needed to be any longer for sure. But like it was like maybe

01:10:42

social and emotional intelligence right and hitting both sides of that. And that's a way you

01:10:46

could have structured chapter four and saying like, well, that's what they call it in the schools,

01:10:50

social emotional learning like there are coupled. So that that might have made that might have made

01:10:56

more sense. I did like a quick search on I was like, I wonder what emotional intelligence like

01:10:59

what's the first reference on Wikipedia to like this. But I can't easily find that I can tell you

01:11:06

that it's early. It's fairly early. It's before this book was written. So clear.

01:11:11

All right, chapter five, awaken the dimensional mind, the creative active. Now, as somebody who's

01:11:18

thought about creativity a lot, I'm intrigued at your perspective on this. I'll give a very,

01:11:26

very light overview and then I'll let you take off. So basically calls out the what's the

01:11:32

dimensional mind. It's active creative. It's got a childhood spirit. We're trying to then unlock

01:11:38

the dimensional mind. He'll say the two essential requirements are a high level of knowledge about

01:11:43

something and then an openness and flexibility to think new and original, right? That would,

01:11:47

that's what he would call the dimensional mind. Then the other major section of this one is

01:11:50

basically the nine strategies or sorry, the nine strategic approaches to being most creative.

01:11:56

I did not personally think this was the most interesting part of this section. I thought this

01:12:02

was kind of like, okay, yeah, that's fine. But I'll go through the nine real quick.

01:12:05

Authentic voice, fact of great yield, mechanical intelligence, natural powers,

01:12:10

the open field, the high end evolutionary hijack, the dimensional thinking, and then

01:12:15

alchemic creative and the unconscious. And part of the reason why I didn't think I like these

01:12:19

is because I don't think you get very much from those titles at all. You can read those titles and

01:12:25

be like, I have no idea what this guy is talking about. And for me, that's a problem. So I will

01:12:30

stop and I will let you take on the creative first.

01:12:34

- I agree with you 100% that you don't get a whole lot out of those. In fact, this chapter,

01:12:39

I have the most notes on and I didn't write down those at all because I felt they were not very

01:12:46

useful. I do think this is a really good chapter, by the way. He's got a lot of good stuff to talk

01:12:53

about here. You kind of hit on a little bit with the dimensional mind. Let me share the

01:12:56

definitions for the conventional and the original mind here because the dimensional mind is blending

01:13:01

them. Conventional mind is you force your mind into tighter and tighter grooves in order to make

01:13:05

a living and conform to society. And that has negative connotations. But I feel like your mind

01:13:09

has, it's naturally going to do that. That's your body's efficiency mechanism. It's going to try

01:13:15

to make a routine out of everything. Then you've got the original mind, which is naturally creative,

01:13:19

actively transforming everything around them to play with ideas. So the dimensional mind is

01:13:23

the blending of the two where you've got discipline and a child like spirit are the two terms that

01:13:28

he used there. And I like that a lot. So you've got the discipline where you're going to show up

01:13:34

every day and you're going to do the work. There's that famous quote, I forget the author, but

01:13:39

I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it shows up promptly at 9 a.m. every morning.

01:13:44

So that's the discipline part. But then also the child like spirit. I mean, we're probably familiar

01:13:51

with that from a different phrase for having faith like a child where you're just constantly

01:13:55

maybe curious as the right word. You don't feel scared or intimidated about playing with these

01:14:04

different ideas. And you never know which one you're going to get completely sucked into. And

01:14:09

that is ultimately, I would argue a good thing. Now, there's also some stuff he talks about later

01:14:17

on in here that I think are are good like tidbits. I don't think there's a whole lot here in terms of

01:14:24

actual effective creative structure. And I say that as somebody who has a model called the creativity

01:14:31

flywheel. So maybe I'm biased there too. But I'll just share a couple of the things that I liked

01:14:38

here. So the primary law of the creative dynamic is that your emotional commitment to what you are

01:14:44

doing will be translated directly into your work. So if you want to be creative, you can't just be

01:14:50

deadline driven and be like, Oh man, I got to crank out 500 words by tomorrow. It's got to be

01:14:55

stuff that you love thinking about and that you are curious about. And that's the, you know,

01:15:00

the dimensional mind and that that original mind coming through that has to be there.

01:15:04

The negative capability is the ability to endure and even embrace mysteries and uncertainties.

01:15:11

This is underrated, I think. This is at the heart of some of the advice that I'll share in the reading

01:15:19

workshop is like, if you're not sure what book to pick up next, think about a problem that you've

01:15:28

been wrestling with. Richard Feynman has this concept of like the 12 favorite problems where

01:15:33

you're constantly just thinking over these problems that you don't understand. For months,

01:15:38

maybe even years, not knowing the answer. That's this negative capability. It's being okay,

01:15:44

not having the answer and constantly just kind of searching the, the horizon for when that,

01:15:50

that thing is going to show up. But if you're like, I have to have this thing by 4 p.m. on Friday,

01:15:56

you're never going to get it. Yale talks about how the brain is an instruments

01:16:01

instrument developed for making connections. I feel like that is really why I am so fascinated

01:16:09

by the concept of PKM or personal knowledge management. I like the idea of being able to

01:16:15

see how things connect together. I think the big like graph views in obsidian and apps like that,

01:16:21

where you've got all those little dots connected. I feel like those sorts of views, they look cool

01:16:25

on social media, but they are absolutely useless. However, the local graphs where you can see like,

01:16:30

this note is connected to this note. And then when you go to that note, you see, oh, there's another

01:16:34

connection here. And as you kind of surf through things, you can see things connecting down the

01:16:39

chain like that is, that is, that's pretty cool. And then the greatest, greatest impediment to

01:16:44

creativity ultimately is your impatience. You've got to get it done. And it's got to be great.

01:16:50

It's got to be done now. Like, yeah, absolutely. If there was a place where he basically like had a,

01:16:57

you know, a map and he could look directly into my brain or sorry, like a magnifying glass,

01:17:02

look directly in my brain. It was in the emotional pitfalls around creativity, complacency,

01:17:07

conservatism, dependency, impatience, inflexibility, and gradio. And I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes,

01:17:14

and then you mentioned it and I want to, I want to double down on it, right? Like,

01:17:18

the primary law of creative dynamic, the emotional commitment, right? Like, and I feel like that's,

01:17:22

that's my biggest struggle with being creative and doing creative things is like,

01:17:26

am I really committed to this thing? And am I committed to it long enough to really

01:17:33

demonstrate those creative outputs, right? And that's where, you know, like, that's one of the,

01:17:39

one of the major struggles I have. Well, there's another thing that's kind of related to that here.

01:17:46

So your mind rises to the level required and the lack of intensity keeps the brain from kicking

01:17:51

into a higher gear. So if you really want to have consistent, prolific, creative output, I think you

01:17:58

do have to get to the point where you are kind of forcing yourself to show up and do it. And when

01:18:06

you do that, you might be surprised of what you are actually capable of. But that has to be coupled

01:18:13

with this, this creative process and the playing with the ideas and not putting things out there

01:18:19

before they're ready. Now, I recognize that those are kind of contradictory. That's why the creativity

01:18:26

flywheel exists is because I was thinking through, you know, back when I was with Asian efficiency,

01:18:32

I had to, in addition to write things for the blog, in addition to creating the outlines and

01:18:37

hosting the episodes for the productivity show, I had to create from scratch a different productivity

01:18:44

video course every single month. And I didn't know what I didn't know. So when they asked me to do

01:18:51

it, I'm like, yeah, sure, why not? And I look back at it now and I'm like, how the heck did I do that?

01:18:57

And it was essentially because I was constantly reading, I was constantly learning, I was constantly

01:19:05

curious. And when I was actually going through that stuff and taking notes and then looking back

01:19:10

at my notes, there was always enough content to be made. So you have to kind of get into this

01:19:18

rhythm. And sometimes the thing that you need in order to like kickstart that rhythm is you do

01:19:23

need a deadline, you do need to force yourself to ship something. Because I think it was the last

01:19:27

episode we were talking about the slide I made from the creativity presentation where it was the

01:19:32

quantity produces the quality. And you've got like the poop emoji and then the poop emoji, poop emoji,

01:19:38

diamond, right? And everyone loved that one. The first time you make something, it's going to be bad.

01:19:43

The second time that you make something, it's still going to be bad. It's going to be a little bit

01:19:46

better. But by the by the fourth, fifth, the hundredth time, you've gotten pretty good at the thing.

01:19:53

I'm not a great podcaster. I've just made like a thousand episodes at this point. So the stress

01:20:00

and anxiety of showing up to talk into a microphone is not the same as it was the first time that I

01:20:05

did it. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, so let's go to six, the sixth and final chapter.

01:20:12

Fuse the intuitive with the rational and then mastery. So fuse the intuitive with the rational

01:20:20

mastery. So again, he's got a keys to mastery section here where you basically says masters have

01:20:26

a sensation of the sudden heightened intellectual power, the intuition or fingertip feel. High level

01:20:33

intuition is distinct from rationality kind of makes a distinction between those two things.

01:20:37

The higher level intelligence, okay, he talks about basically like putting things into practical

01:20:44

reuse, looking for connections, looking for deep reflections, looking for questions, and looking

01:20:49

for how we learn from this. A lot of this chapter then is taken up with how many are there? Seven.

01:20:57

There's like seven basically revisit the people we've talked about. And then we're going to try

01:21:03

to glean a couple things out of those from a how they fused together and became a master.

01:21:09

So again, I'm not a big fan of the titles because I don't think the titles really helped me get

01:21:16

what I was supposed to get out of the thing. I think when he got to the end and he would like

01:21:23

summarize it. So you do like a paragraph or two at the end of every story where he'd summarize it,

01:21:27

that all came together nicely. But like if I look at my mind map here and I look at the title

01:21:32

and then what I got out of it, it was like, yeah, there's there's maybe a connection there,

01:21:36

like maybe a loose connection. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

01:21:38

you said look at the mind map. Did you do a mind map for this book? I've done a mind map for all

01:21:44

of all of the books since I started to do my math. Because I know you were talking about the

01:21:48

mind maps, then you're like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with this. No, I like it. I like it.

01:21:52

Okay, cool. It's a very, very good way for me to organize my brain, right? As you would know,

01:21:57

very well. But like I said, some of them are clear connections and other ones I thought,

01:22:04

you know, weren't as great. And it's just too much content, I mean, to go through in detail,

01:22:11

all seven of them and what they covered. But he again defines mastery here, the ability to get

01:22:18

very specific in knowledge, but also remain expansive in the dimensions of reality or contextual

01:22:24

relationships. So I think what would be fun to do, which I didn't do, it's not an action item,

01:22:28

but it would be interesting to do is go back and like try to peg out every time he gave more detail

01:22:33

about what mastery is, and then try to lump all those together into a, this is what Robert Green

01:22:39

says mastery is and what the characteristics of it are. Yeah, I like to think of this chapter as

01:22:47

the Star Wars chapter. Okay, I'm intrigued. So he has this term he introduces called the dynamic,

01:22:56

which is the living force that inevitably operates in anything we study or do. I never even once put

01:23:04

that together. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, well, I mean, the rest of this is kind of a summary about mastery,

01:23:12

but he talks about the ultimate reality being that all beings are interconnected. So definitely

01:23:18

some Star Wars vibes here. I think there's, you know, set aside the Star Wars piece. There's some,

01:23:25

some actual, actually useful stuff here. Like he talks about on page 261 that you must see every

01:23:31

setback failure or hardship as a trial along the way as seeds that are being planted for further

01:23:35

cultivation, if you know how to grow them. A couple of reasons why that stood out to me.

01:23:41

I talked about the creativity of flywheel briefly. I, when I explain that to people,

01:23:45

I talk about your PKM system or the place where you're capturing your notes. It's kind of like an

01:23:51

idea greenhouse. So I talk about how when you capture things, they are seeds and you don't really

01:23:58

know what you have to work with until you give them the right conditions and you cultivate them

01:24:02

for a little bit. So I like that a lot, but also kind of zooming out from that essentially,

01:24:07

like everything that you feel is wrong or this is a setback and this shouldn't be happening.

01:24:14

You kind of have to take the approach of it's all going to be fine. This too shall pass.

01:24:20

Like it's the obstacle is the way essentially. I had a reference earlier to so good they can't

01:24:28

ignore you. So good job. I'm glad we're getting all these. Well, side note up with that. In the

01:24:34

end of the book, he has the people that he thinks. He thinks Ryan Holiday. So Ryan Holiday actually

01:24:39

did a lot of research for this book. I didn't see that. Yeah. So it makes a lot of sense that all

01:24:45

these stories and all the details that he's sharing is like, these sound familiar. Not the same

01:24:50

stories, but the same sort of style. He has a very similar storytelling style to Ryan Holiday.

01:24:56

And I was like, well, that makes sense. Wow. I had no idea that connection. I didn't make it

01:25:00

that far in the acknowledgments. Yeah. So yeah, I think this is a great, actually,

01:25:06

a very great way to end the book. I feel like it's kind of setting the stage for like, okay,

01:25:12

so there's this all these different steps that we've talked through. Now you could just do these

01:25:16

things, but essentially it's not just going to click and it's going to be awesome from that moment

01:25:20

forward. You do have to sort of stick with it. And then the other thing that I jotted down here,

01:25:26

the page 269, mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It's a function of time and intense

01:25:31

focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. So it's almost like the TLDR of the last chapter

01:25:40

here is trust the process. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a good way to end a 320 page book, but it's not

01:25:46

through in 20 pages. I don't even know how many words. I still can't find it, but it's got to be

01:25:51

like 100,000 words maybe twice. It's got to be like twice as long as your normal productivity self

01:25:57

help type book, but it's very much, you know, Robert Green. If you read 48 Laws of Power,

01:26:02

it's the same sort of deal here. But I thought this was a really cool way to end it. I don't mind

01:26:07

that it's abrupt and there's no like conclusion. Yeah. By the time I got done with this, with this

01:26:12

chapter, honestly, I was ready to be done with the book because it's so long. And then in the next

01:26:16

section was basically he does like biographies for all the people that he covered and then

01:26:20

acknowledgments and it's absolutely done. All right. So anything else before we get to action items

01:26:26

from this book? Nope. Do you have action items? I have one. And my action items, I don't know,

01:26:34

Mike, like feel free to call me out if you think my action items are not worthy of the bookworm

01:26:38

podcast. But like the one I want to think about is I really would like to apprentice under somebody.

01:26:45

Like I would like to establish like an apprenticeship relationship with somebody.

01:26:48

My challenge with it is I don't know what it's going to be in. Like I don't know

01:26:51

where I would want to do that. And then the other thing is I don't have any idea where I'm going to

01:26:56

get the time to do something like that. Like I, you know, with having as many children as I have

01:27:00

and you know, life and commitments and all that stuff. I what I'll commit to on the action item is

01:27:06

I want to think about the realistic person because the person I mentioned in the pro show is not

01:27:12

realistic, right? Like I don't think that's a realistic apprenticeship. But I want to think about

01:27:17

a realistic person that I could apprentice under. And then maybe in the future think about whether

01:27:21

or not I try to set up that relationship. That's it. That's the only one I have out of this.

01:27:26

Well, I read a whole bunch of words and have zero action items. Is that good or bad, Mike?

01:27:37

Ah, I don't think it's either. I think it is evidence of the fact that I've been thinking about

01:27:46

a lot of the themes and concepts that he talks about in this book for a long time.

01:27:52

And I have already chosen to pursue them in my own ways. Now there were a lot of things that I

01:28:02

jotted down here, which I'm going to continue to noodle on. But I also think this has a very

01:28:10

particular bias towards the physical apprenticeship. And that's not something that interests me in

01:28:20

the least, to be honest. Wow. He said, well, least you're strong on that. I'm not judging. I was

01:28:29

just you're strong on that, not even the way. Well, let me let me say this. The last 10 months

01:28:36

of trying to run my own business have been the hardest 10 months of my life.

01:28:44

And I feel like I am still in survival mode. So I don't feel like I have the margin to go find

01:28:56

somebody to apprentice under now someone were to come to me and be like, hey, I'm going to take

01:29:01

care of all of your bills, all your debt. You're not going to have to worry about money ever again.

01:29:05

Just come learn this thing from me. Yeah, let's talk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

01:29:09

Yeah, that makes total sense. All right. So let's move on to

01:29:13

style and rating. It's my book. So I go first, right? Yep. Okay. So I want to give this book

01:29:24

three stars. And I'm going to give it three stars based purely on content.

01:29:32

I from a like style standpoint, it was it was okay. Like I don't feel like, yay, it was great.

01:29:42

Like I don't I didn't not like the whole here's a character. Now I'm going to pull

01:29:49

you know, examples from that of the points I want to I want to talk about. But I just it

01:29:53

felt clunky sometimes. And I was like, okay, I understand this example, but does it really relate

01:29:59

to the thing you're trying to tell us? And sometimes I just wanted him to be more direct in terms of

01:30:03

style. So I thought the content was good. Like I was happy with what he covered with the exception

01:30:09

of I would say, I guess what was I strong on that like social intelligence piece just felt like

01:30:14

it was like really kind of out of out of nowhere. But otherwise, I was good on the content. So three

01:30:19

stars. All right. I never would have guessed prior to this discussion that I would rate this higher

01:30:27

than you, but I'm going to give it four stars. Okay. I the reason I'm going to give it four stars,

01:30:34

I think I agree with everything that you said about the three star rating. However, I don't know

01:30:40

that I have found a better book for the I got to come up with a term for this, the apprenticeship

01:30:50

mindset. I don't know, like really, this is sort of growth mindset, sort of self help. But I don't

01:30:57

even really like that term. Like there's a lot of truth in here about becoming the best version

01:31:04

of yourself. And that's a really important idea to me that we have talents and abilities that

01:31:11

are inherent. And we have to cultivate them. We have to develop them. And ultimately,

01:31:18

we're going to be held responsible for our excellence in stewarding those things.

01:31:27

So I feel like there's lots of stuff in here that I was like, yeah, this is very much

01:31:34

things that we should be thinking about. I tend to verbalize all the little nitpicks that I have

01:31:42

with stuff. Because I feel it's probably a little bit more interesting in terms of listening to a

01:31:48

podcast. But there's a lot of stuff that I really agree with in here. And I don't think if I were

01:31:55

to attempt to write a book about this same topic, that it would look anything like what he's got here.

01:32:02

I think we have a lot of differences of opinion, but I also feel like I was able to

01:32:12

glean a lot from this, even though I don't have specific action items associated with it.

01:32:18

Maybe it's because it's from such a different perspective that it helps me kind of fill in some

01:32:26

of the blanks, like get some additional puzzle pieces. I guess for context, we read a book a

01:32:35

while back called "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray, which really impacted me. And it was really

01:32:41

about how we tend to build all of our beliefs and all of our theories and live our lives

01:32:49

according to this sliver of experience that we have. But there's so much more that we don't know.

01:32:55

And you kind of have to seek out and embrace, we'll say, contradictory mindsets if you want to get a

01:33:03

better picture. This was definitely a contradictory book to me in a lot of ways. But ultimately,

01:33:09

I feel like that was a helpful thing. So I think the stories were fun. I'm not sure I would have used

01:33:19

as many or used the ones necessarily that he used, but he's definitely a good storyteller,

01:33:26

and they are entertaining. And as you mentioned, at the end, he's got the breakdown of all the

01:33:30

different biographies that he shared. Temple Grandin was someone in particular that I was

01:33:37

familiar with, but didn't have a lot of the details that he shared and thought that was

01:33:43

really, really kind of cool to kind of fill in a lot of those gaps. So I think I would recommend

01:33:53

people read this one. I definitely liked it better than "48 Laws of Power." I feel like if you've got

01:33:59

a pick one Robert Green book that you should read, this would be the one. Now, I know he's probably

01:34:06

got others that I haven't read, but "48 Laws of Power" is kind of the one that is probably the most

01:34:13

popular. And then there's one about the laws of seduction that I have absolutely no interest in.

01:34:19

But this was kind of best-case scenario for me when I heard you say you wanted to read Robert

01:34:25

Green book. I was bracing myself, but I actually enjoyed this one. And I'll tell you that even

01:34:31

though I gave it a three-star rating, I would still recommend people read it. The thing is,

01:34:35

I just want them to go in knowing like, hey, there's good stuff in there. It's just a little bit

01:34:42

longer than it needs to be, and that might drop your expectations a little bit.

01:34:46

Yeah, that is fair. I should caveat that recommendation that people read this is like,

01:34:51

if you're going to pick this up to read it, you've got to know what you're in for. This is a very

01:34:57

long book. And I don't think I probably would have picked this one up to read it

01:35:03

without having to do it for the podcast. But having said that, I'm glad that I put in the effort

01:35:09

and got through it. Good. All right, so let's put mastery on the shelf. And then Mike,

01:35:15

you get to pick our next book. All right, so the next book that we are going to do

01:35:22

is Super Communicators by Charles Duhigg. And this is hopefully going to be a bit of a redemption

01:35:30

for me with Charles Duhigg. I was not a fan of the power of habit. Or he had one after that too,

01:35:36

which was like the big productivity book, productivity in air quotes, because it was like

01:35:41

smarter, faster, better. And it felt very much like the pseudo productivity that Cal Newport talked

01:35:51

about in slow productivity. It's also a daffd punk song, but you know, what are you going to do?

01:35:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like the idea of super communicators and just communicating better

01:36:02

more effectively. You know, having had the day job previous to this, I under have a greater

01:36:09

appreciation for the importance of communication in day to day work. So I feel like this is an

01:36:17

important topic. And haven't really seen a whole lot of books about this was kind of

01:36:21

surprise to see Charles Duhigg write one. But hey, let's let's read it together. And after that,

01:36:28

so after that, I stole a book from Mike. And this book is called Why We Sleep by Matt Walker.

01:36:35

And let me give you a little bit of a reason why I stole this book from Mike. So I want to request

01:36:40

book recommendations for from the audience. And it's going to take a minute for us to get the

01:36:48

the pipes all connected in the background that way we have a very easy, seamless way for you to do

01:36:53

that. But look for that coming up in the in the next episode, we'll describe how to give us

01:36:59

recommendations in terms of I would like to do an audience book in Mike Wood as well. We'd like to

01:37:05

do an audience book for not my next one, but that I think it'll be my next next one. And

01:37:12

what we'll tell you is that we're going to enable lots of feedback into that process. But Mike and

01:37:18

I still get to pick the book. Right. We're not I mean, we're not just going to let you all just pick

01:37:21

based on like number of votes or number of recommendations. We still get to winnow it down to,

01:37:27

you know, three or whatever, and then Mike and I will pick from the top three or whatever that

01:37:30

might be. So Mike, do you have any gap books right now? Are you reading anything on the side?

01:37:35

I do. So mentioned in the show that Ryan Holiday kind of served as the assistant to Robert Green

01:37:43

sounds like for this book. Well, I discovered a book written by Ryan Holiday's assistant

01:37:51

called Ghost Town Living by Brent Underwood. Now, have you seen there's a handful of people who

01:38:02

are online that kind of went in together and bought this ghost town called Cerogordo?

01:38:08

No, not at all. So like Nathan Berry was one of them and I forget the couple other like recognizable

01:38:15

names they went in together and they bought this ghost town. So this is that group and Brent Underwood

01:38:23

my understanding is like he was part of that group and he actually lived there for a while.

01:38:27

So I saw some of the stuff that they were were sharing, you know, like when they they bought it.

01:38:32

And I just think the whole concept of the ghost town is fascinating. You know, you have this whole

01:38:39

town that existed and then like it just disappears. Like how many stories are in those places that

01:38:46

are completely abandoned like that kind of stuff is fascinating to me. So yeah, this looks like an

01:38:52

interesting, interesting reading. I'm going to try to get through this one before super communicators.

01:38:59

Wonderful. My my gap book is the same as it was last time because mastery was so long and I did

01:39:05

have enough time to focus to that one as well. But this one's Evergood Endeavor by Tim Keller and

01:39:10

it's part of a grant project that I'm working on right now. But it's really good so far. I'm really

01:39:15

enjoying it. Just need to get a little more time in there and crack out a little bit more.

01:39:20

Awesome. So that wraps up another episode of Bookworm. We want to thank you guys.

01:39:26

Thank you all for listening. If you would like to see the episodes or find the episode, you can go

01:39:32

to bookworm.fm online. And if you're interested in the pro show or the bootleg feed, go to our Patreon

01:39:41

page, so patreon.com/bookwormfm. Check that out and we'd really appreciate it if you became a member.

01:39:48

So other than that, Mike, thanks for another great conversation. Absolutely. And if you are

01:39:53

reading along with us, pick up Super Communicators by Charles Duhigg and we will talk to you in a

01:39:58

couple of weeks.