Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, Mike.

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So we didn't have any follow-up items from last week.

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- It's true.

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Like you put the, like, I don't know what,

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I don't know the names of emoji,

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but you put that face in there on the last one.

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It was like, "What, we had no follow-up."

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And I remember thinking back going,

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"Yeah, we didn't have any follow-up."

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But you have something in the show notes

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that I think will be a fun pseudo follow-up

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or replacement for follow-up.

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So tell us what you're doing.

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- Yeah.

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Well, first of all, I think that's the screaming face emoji.

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And the only reason I know that

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is 'cause I use an app called Rocket,

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which allows you to put like Slack-style emoji anywhere.

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So I have this trigger of like the double colon,

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and then you can use the picker

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and you can just kind of like type what you want

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and it'll show you the emoji.

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So highly recommend Rocket, but yeah.

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The thing that is actually in the notes is Mac stock.

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And Mac stock, actually, I'll quiz you.

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Have you ever heard of Mac stock before?

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- The only way reason I know of Mac stock

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is because of you and your wife.

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That's the only reason I know of Mac stock.

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Otherwise, no.

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What's the other one that everybody used to go to

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whose own relay?

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They don't do it anymore,

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but there was another one that everybody used to go to.

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- Yeah, there was...

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- I was in Ireland.

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- Oh, the one in Ireland, I don't know what that is.

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Yeah, there was one in Ireland that Jason Snell,

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I think, went to and a couple other people,

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but it wasn't everybody on relay sort of thing.

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I think probably everybody but me on relay goes to WWDC

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in some way, shape or form, but I've never been.

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Actually, I was going to go to Mac world,

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the year that it got canceled.

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I had finally convinced somebody to go with me.

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And out of that being canceled came Mac stock.

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There were a couple of guys who missed Mac world

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and they wanted to do something local

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so they could hang out with their fellow Apple nerds.

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And one of them lives in a town called Woodstock, Illinois,

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which is where they shot the movie Groundhog Day.

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So it's kind of this cool historic little town

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that's got this square in the middle

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with an awesome bookstore, by the way,

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called Re Between the Lines.

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I'll put a link in the show notes.

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And I heard about it and I saw that it was

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like three hours from my house.

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So I just drove down one year and sat next to

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Don McAllister screencast online,

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watched the first Mac stock and met a bunch of people

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at lunch who, you know, I'm an introvert,

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but I went down there, didn't know anybody.

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And then I just like sat down with a bunch of people.

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I didn't know at lunchtime and started talking

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about Apple stuff.

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Like it was pretty cool.

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So the next year I weaseled my way into speaking

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and I've been speaking there actually ever since.

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It's a smaller Apple conference, essentially.

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And the URL for the website is max.conference.xpo.

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And that will be in the show notes.

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There's a handful of speakers that present these sessions

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on Saturday and Sunday.

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I think the dates are like July 11th and 12th,

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something like that.

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It's that second Saturday and Sunday in July.

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And there's always like great sessions

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on how to do different things by different people.

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Allison Sheridan, Brittany Schuenner,

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Chuck, or sorry, Brittany Smith, Chuck Joiner.

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I'm mixing up names here.

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But a lot of like,

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Mac nerds basically presenting on,

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this is how you do certain stuff.

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So if you're interested in that sort of thing at all,

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it's definitely a good time.

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And what I like about the conference

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is that it's pretty small.

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Even in its heyday when David Sparks

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and Stephen Hackett were there recording

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Mac Power users episode 500 live,

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it was only a couple hundred people.

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So you're there in this smaller town

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and everyone just kind of hangs out together.

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It's very easy to meet new friends at Mac stock.

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And the organizer, Mike Potter,

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has kind of been planting this bug in my ear

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for the last couple of years about,

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"Hey Mike, you'd be great to do these workshops.

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I wanna add these workshops at some point."

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So we had some conversation this year

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and it turns out with the venue that they've got

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that they can get an extra day.

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And now we've got workshops that are happening at Mac stock.

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So these are gonna be like longer sessions

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that are more hands-on

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and they'll be for these sessions

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that'll happen on the Friday

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before Mac stock officially starts.

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So there's two options.

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You can sign up for like the weekend pass,

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which is the Saturday, Sunday

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and the normal Mac stock sessions.

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That I think is $299.

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And then the, to add on the day of workshops

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is an extra $100.

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So $399.

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I do have a coupon code for this.

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So if you want to save $30,

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you can use the coupon code, Mike Schmitz.

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But if it's something that you can swing,

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I can't recommend this conference enough.

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I really, really enjoy it.

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I'm there every single year.

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If you are a bookworm listener,

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please come say hi.

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I like meeting people who listen to the show.

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And yeah, it's gonna be a good time.

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So definitely check it out,

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max.conferenceanxpo.com.

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- How long have you been doing it?

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So you said you started when?

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Roughly like five, 10 years, what's the point?

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- I don't know what number they're on.

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And I don't know if they continued the official numbering,

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like when they had to go virtual over COVID

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and stuff like that.

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But it's been almost 10 years, if not 10 years.

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And the first official year, I guess,

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was the year that I talked, Mike into letting me speak.

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I had just started working with the Asian efficiency team

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and shared some of the OmniFocus videos

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that I had been working on.

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He's like, yeah, let's give this a shot.

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And I have been there every year since.

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- Yeah, that's awesome.

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That's awesome.

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That size of the conference sounds perfect

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because I used to go every year

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to a couple of different conferences.

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One was huge, like 5,000, 7,000 people.

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And it just felt so unreal.

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Like in terms of like,

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there's just so many people floating around

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and you know your little groups and stuff.

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But then there's another one I used to go to every year.

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And it's about 500.

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You know, it ranged between 400 and 500 people.

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And it felt like the perfect kind of sweet spot.

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So that size of a conference makes a lot of sense.

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You can really actually get to know people there

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and then form good friendships

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where a lot of other ones you can't.

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They're just too big and everything feels too passerby.

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If you will.

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So that's awesome.

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MaxDock, July.

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All right, are you ready to get into today's book?

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- Let's do it.

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- All right, so today's book was called Scarcity Brain

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or is called Scarcity Brain.

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It's by an author named Michael Easter.

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He's written some books before the comfort crisis.

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And that's how I got introduced to Michael Easter

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is through the comfort crisis.

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And I wanted to read this one.

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This is his new one out.

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And it was different than I thought it was gonna be.

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So I'm excited to talk about it.

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But I'll give you a little intro on the different sections.

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So we've got an intro and then we have 11 chapters

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and an epilogue.

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So he breaks it down.

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Unlike some other books,

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I can't remember if Mike and I talked about this on the show

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or if we just talked about it outside.

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This book actually takes the full page count.

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He does not have 30 or 40 pages at the end of the book

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where there's appendices and charts and figures

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and notes and chapter notes and all that stuff.

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So when you're looking at reading this one,

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go into it knowing that that's the full page count.

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He starts off with this concept of the scarcity loop,

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which we're gonna talk about in the first few chapters.

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Then he gets into basically the scarcity loop

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or the scarcity loop model applied to different things.

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So the first four chapters are basically all about

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the scarcity loop and then craving

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and why we want more of these things.

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And then five, six, seven, eight, nine,

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I guess five through 11,

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you have escape certainty, influence, food, stuff,

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information, happiness, and then you have epilogue

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is the last one.

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So that's a general overview of it.

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Mike and I didn't really talk about this prior

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coming into it, but I think we'll hit all of these.

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We'll just do them kind of fairly quickly

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'cause there's really no good way to,

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basically the way I just broke them up

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is probably the best way you can break them up

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and I don't think it makes sense to talk about them like that.

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So we'll hit them, it's just some of them,

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I think will be a little shorter based

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on how we wanna cover them.

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So I'll start off by saying, Mike,

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what did you think about this concept of the scarcity loop?

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I think the concept is interesting

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and the first part of the book kind of played out

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the way that I thought it would,

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but the rest of it kind of did not.

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I feel like the scarcity loop that he's talking about

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is a really solid, probably science backed idea,

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but he doesn't have, you mentioned

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like there's no visuals at the end and the appendices,

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there's no visuals, period for this.

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Yeah.

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It's not a single diagram.

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The little slot machine,

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but there's the little slot machine

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that's a little break up chapter.

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That's true, but I was waiting for a visual

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of this scarcity loop.

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This feels very much like the habit loop

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from the power of habit

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and then you can build the rest of the book on this thing,

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which he kind of built the book off of this thing.

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But though I think towards the end,

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it kind of just goes in some weird directions,

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not weird as in like why the heck is this in here,

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but interesting, not where I thought it was gonna go.

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(laughs)

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Yeah, I didn't expect to say this upfront

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or this fast upfront,

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but I think Michael Easter may just want to travel

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and like do things.

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So we figure out like,

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how do I take these experiences

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and then turn them into a book

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and justify it as like this cool expense?

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And I'm not knocking that on any level.

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I'm just saying, I really think that's why.

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And as we talk about these chapters,

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you'll understand more if you haven't read the book with us.

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So, okay, so let's get into what the actual,

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this idea of scarcity.

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So we're in the introduction right now.

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He talks about that we often talk about developing

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good habits, but we don't talk about getting rid of bad ones.

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That moderation is key.

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We have these ideas of the scarcity queue.

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See, even right there, he uses the word queue.

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Like lean into this loop.

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Come on, it's right there.

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Yeah, it is.

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It is.

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So we got the scarcity queue, right?

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Where we think we don't have enough of something,

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then the scarcity mindset,

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which he breaks down as queue fixation behavior

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and then the death of moderation.

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So he then contrasts that with this idea

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of this abundance loop,

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which would be this permanent change

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that helps us overcome this whole idea of the scarcity loop.

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So I'm trying not to give away

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the actual scarcity loop yet,

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but more talk about this idea of scarcity and moderation.

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And that's essentially what he hits on

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in this first introduction.

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Yeah, the introduction is fine.

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I think I mentioned when we recorded the last episode,

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I had just started this book.

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I think I had read through the introduction.

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And you kind of alluded to the fact

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that he wants to travel these different places.

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It's a very like intense story.

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He's in this place where it sounds pretty dangerous.

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It's kind of like, what in the world am I doing here?

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And then it's like,

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oh, I'm talking to these people about this scarcity loop.

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It's very much a movie trailer style introduction.

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Yes.

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Which I think he does,

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I actually think he's a pretty good storyteller.

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Yes.

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He's kind of immersed in the,

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when he's telling me these stories,

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I thought they were actually like really good stories.

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Now, how well did they relate to the point

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or the takeaway of the book?

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That's a whole other conversation.

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But like, I was really like kind of taken in

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by the stories he tells.

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He comes from a journalist background.

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So maybe that's where some of that comes from.

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Is he's good at this,

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how do we hook him?

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How do we get him to read through the entire article?

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And he's then taken that and molded it down into the book,

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the longer format for the book.

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All right, so we've got this set up with the introduction.

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Now we actually get into the scarcity loop.

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And he makes a switch here in his stories

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and he goes into slot machines.

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So he starts to talk about slot machines

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and how slot machines are designed and engineered.

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We've gone from wire.

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From Baghdad to Las Vegas.

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Yes.

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And it's like, boom, so it's fairly quick.

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And we're talking about how they're meant to kind of hook us

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and keep us going.

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And he'll finally,

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and this is where Alex will introduce it.

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So he finally gets into the three steps of the scarcity loop.

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And the three steps are,

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you have the opportunity to get something valuable.

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You have an unpredictable reward.

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So that's really, you don't know at any given time

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whether you're gonna get that thing of value or not.

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And then you can do this in a quickly repeatable fashion.

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So if you think about a slot machine,

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this actually makes complete sense.

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I have the opportunity to win.

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So there's step one, right?

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I have the unpredictable reward.

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Well, every time I pull the lever,

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I might win or I might not, right?

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And then can I do it fast?

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And yes, I can pull that lever as many times

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as my hand will pull that lever

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or as many times as I keep feeding money

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and pulling that lever.

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So that's essentially the nutshell of chapter one,

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which chapter one is called the scarcity loop.

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So I thought this was a good,

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I mean, I hadn't really thought about, you know,

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scarcity, moderation, these ideas of bad habits

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and how they might or might not run this loop.

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It seemed and it still seems, right?

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Like it's a good way to explain this idea

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of me feeling like I have scarcity.

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So therefore I overdo it in certain areas.

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- Yeah, this chapter kind of set up

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a direction for the book that I don't think he stuck with,

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which I think ultimately is okay

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because this kind of felt very much like,

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maybe it was the discussion of the slot machines,

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but it was sort of like your attention is being taken

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by these engineers and it's almost like all the research

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that goes into holding your attention

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with the gamification of these slot machines

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and how they went from these things

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that people spent a couple minutes at

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to things that you'd spend all day doing

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just because they're fun, whether or not you win

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and the close wins and all that kind of stuff.

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It felt like it was setting it up

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for a very negative portrayal.

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Like I guess the direction I was sort of anticipating

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this was going was sort of like the social dilemma

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that Netflix documentary where you have these people

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who are talking about these things

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and then it just continues to go deeper and deeper and deeper

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and like the whole time you're going down that path,

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you feel more and more uncomfortable.

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But at some point in a few chapters,

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he just kind of switches to telling stories.

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(laughs)

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- And there isn't a clean break.

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I mean, at least I didn't identify a clean break

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where I was like, oh, we're switching now.

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It was more just like, wait,

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this was not the way the book started.

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Like this was very much not the way the book started.

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- Yeah, this part was kind of what I thought the book

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was gonna be about when I looked at the cover

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and I read the description.

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I kind of felt like what I was gonna get

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was a scientific approach to maintaining my,

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I'll say attention, but it's really broader than that.

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I mean, the whole idea of scarcity is we never have enough.

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So I figured there would be a little bit of eye-opening

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enlightenment in terms of like you have enough.

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So just be content and kind of recognize

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that all these systems are engineered to get you

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to consume and want and have more.

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And there is a little bit of that,

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but this chapter by far is like the strongest version

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of that and then it kind of goes somewhere else.

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- Well, and I heard him talk about this book somewhere

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prior to reading it.

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Like I had heard him be interviewed by somebody

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and this is what hooked me to the book.

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It was like this idea of, I thought about it from a,

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are there things that I wanna stop doing?

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Okay, they're not necessarily bad.

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It's just a matter of I do them too much

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and I wanna stop that.

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And I'd heard him talk about this opportunity

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on particular reward, quick repeatability thing.

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And I was like, oh man, that seems like a really interesting

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way to analyze different things.

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They're in different scenarios.

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And if there's an action item I have from this book,

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it's definitely that.

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We're not there yet, but that's probably

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the key action item I have is can I look at,

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particularly those things that I'm not excited about

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continuing or continuing to the level that I do them?

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And is there a way for me to break one of those three?

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So one of the things he says in this first chapter

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is how to get out of the scarcity loop.

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Well, take the opportunity away,

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stop getting the rewards or slow the repetition down.

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And if you can do one of those three things,

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you can basically break the scarcity loop cycle.

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So I thought that was a good way.

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And I wanna think about that more,

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but I'm putting the cart before the horse as we go.

00:18:12

What else do you have on chapter one?

00:18:16

Well, there's some interesting stuff in here

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about casinos and how they work.

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One of the things I jotted down was that casino games

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return 87 to 98% of every dollar wager,

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which kind of goes back to the idea of like the close wins,

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which are you can kind of see,

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let's say you gotta get five cherries in a row.

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So you see him spin and you see the three,

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first three lock in right away, cherry, cherry, cherry.

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And then it like creates this expectation

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that maybe I'm gonna win this time.

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So then the next one that leads you along

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and it's another cherry.

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And then the next one takes even longer, finally stops.

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And oh, you just missed it.

00:18:57

Well, that was close, but you lost.

00:18:59

And a lot of times what will happen is you won't lose,

00:19:02

let's say you bet a dollar, you won't lose the whole dollar,

00:19:04

you'll win back 75 cents.

00:19:07

And your brain views that as a win as opposed to a loss.

00:19:11

The lab that the guy talked about in this section

00:19:13

was kind of fascinating and it kind of opened my eyes

00:19:16

to all of the, you kind of know this is going on

00:19:20

from a distance, but when you get into the specifics,

00:19:23

it really is kind of scary.

00:19:27

How much they've done in terms of trying to keep you glued

00:19:31

to the machine.

00:19:33

Everything that's, everything about those games

00:19:36

from the lights to the sounds is engineered to hook you.

00:19:41

And I see that stuff, 'cause I remember going

00:19:43

through the Las Vegas airport last summer,

00:19:45

maybe it was on the way to crafting commerce

00:19:48

or something, I don't know.

00:19:49

And they had all those in the airport

00:19:52

and people were lined up at them.

00:19:54

And I was like, get me away from these

00:19:56

'cause they're so loud, the airport itself

00:19:59

is so dark and dreary, but then you have these bright,

00:20:02

blaring slot machines everywhere you go.

00:20:06

But there's definitely people who are attracted to that.

00:20:09

And I think probably once you do it a little bit,

00:20:12

you get hooked, I've just never done it.

00:20:15

So it's not appealing to me in the least.

00:20:17

- So the only time I've ever been in a casino

00:20:21

was we were in New Orleans

00:20:23

and to get to the restaurant we were gonna eat at,

00:20:25

there was a casino between our hotel and the restaurant.

00:20:28

And I said to my wife, I was like,

00:20:29

"Hey, let's just walk through the casino."

00:20:30

Like, I don't have any desire to do anything.

00:20:32

Let's just walk through the casino.

00:20:34

We went in, I was 50 feet inside.

00:20:37

I immediately got this crazy headache

00:20:39

from all the lights and music and all the stuff.

00:20:42

And I was like, yeah, we should probably get out of here.

00:20:45

But I had a formative experience when I was,

00:20:47

I don't know, 12, 10, something like that.

00:20:49

I was at a fundraiser for a church actually.

00:20:54

And it was like a, play these games fundraiser.

00:20:59

Well, the game was Kino.

00:21:02

- Okay.

00:21:02

- I mean, I had no idea what,

00:21:03

like I still don't even know what Kino is.

00:21:05

I don't remember what the game is at all.

00:21:07

But all I remember is like,

00:21:08

the money that I had to spend that night was gone so fast.

00:21:12

And I thought to myself, I'm never gambling again.

00:21:15

I'm never doing this again.

00:21:16

Like this is a terrible thing.

00:21:18

Your money just goes away really fast.

00:21:19

And thankfully that's never triggered me

00:21:21

to want to gamble again ever really.

00:21:24

- I remember, I grew up in Wisconsin

00:21:26

and there aren't many casinos in Wisconsin.

00:21:29

There are a few, but I remember my grandma,

00:21:33

she lived in Minnesota,

00:21:35

my mom's family is from Minnesota.

00:21:37

And they grew up in a small town Welch, Minnesota,

00:21:40

which is like 60 people.

00:21:42

And the thing of note in Welch is the big ski hill.

00:21:46

But there's a small town like next to that

00:21:49

called Red Wing, which is where everybody goes

00:21:51

and does everything.

00:21:52

That's the big city and it's maybe like 20,000 people.

00:21:55

I don't know.

00:21:56

But I remember going to visit my grandma all the time

00:21:58

and she would always joke with my parents,

00:22:02

like I'm gonna take your kids to the casino

00:22:03

'cause she liked to go and play cards.

00:22:05

She would always have cards at her house

00:22:08

that had the corners clipped off.

00:22:09

Like basically when they're done using the cards

00:22:11

for a card game, they cut the sides off

00:22:15

so they know that that one is done.

00:22:17

And then they like give those away or sell them.

00:22:19

I don't know, my grandma always had all of these decks

00:22:22

of cards from the casino with the corners cut off.

00:22:24

So she was always joking about how she's gonna take us

00:22:26

to the casino and my parents were always,

00:22:28

you better not.

00:22:29

(laughs)

00:22:31

That's awesome.

00:22:31

All right, so we'll move on to chapter two.

00:22:34

Chapter two, now we get into some more of the science

00:22:38

behind the scarcity loop and how the scarcity loop hooks us.

00:22:44

So this is where, and I still don't know how to work through

00:22:49

this in my processing of this book,

00:22:53

he mixes like evolution and nature and biology

00:22:58

and then gambling and Baghdad and, right,

00:23:02

like all of these other things in such a weird way

00:23:06

that like I got used to it.

00:23:07

You know, I mean, it's 11 chapters long

00:23:09

so I got used to it by the end.

00:23:11

But while I'm reading it like this first time

00:23:13

'cause he talks about this optimal foraging theory

00:23:16

that animals will do everything they can to get

00:23:18

the most food for the least amount of work.

00:23:20

Okay, that seems to make sense.

00:23:22

Then that scarcity loop is an evolutionary trade

00:23:24

and then we get into ding, ding, ding, dopamine,

00:23:27

here we go, right?

00:23:29

And we get into all these things.

00:23:31

And I was just like, man, what a strange mix of like

00:23:35

evolution later on religion, like in all of this,

00:23:39

but let me get back to the summary of the chapter.

00:23:42

So he does talk about this optimal foraging theory.

00:23:45

He talks about the fact that the value or reward

00:23:48

of a behavior depends on part,

00:23:50

how often you'll think you'll get it.

00:23:52

He says boring jobs, why some jobs are boring is

00:23:56

'cause there's little unpredictability,

00:23:57

so we might get a ton of value out of it,

00:24:00

but we're gonna get value in a paycheck every Friday.

00:24:02

And because there's a lot of predictability,

00:24:06

little unpredictability, we go, okay, you know, whatever.

00:24:09

And what I liked about this is,

00:24:11

so I studied entrepreneurship a lot in my past life.

00:24:14

And it says, this is why serial entrepreneurs exist,

00:24:16

is because serial entrepreneurs,

00:24:18

once the company becomes a stable company,

00:24:22

and it's basically just churning and doing a good job

00:24:25

and adding value and, you know,

00:24:26

it's kind of a repeatable thing,

00:24:28

they lose interest because they want

00:24:30

that unpredictable reward.

00:24:32

So what do they do?

00:24:33

They leave the company and they spin off

00:24:34

and they go and start another company.

00:24:37

So I thought that was really interesting.

00:24:39

He throws out, lastly, I'll stay here,

00:24:42

is he throws out one,

00:24:42

the basic learning and behavior formula.

00:24:44

We do a thing, we're not sure when we'll get the reward

00:24:48

or how rewarding it'll be.

00:24:49

It increases the dopamine and the desire for the reward,

00:24:52

so then we keep trying and trying

00:24:53

and trying for the rewarding thing,

00:24:55

and we do this over and over and over and over again.

00:24:57

So, but this whole chapter to summarize,

00:25:00

it was a little bit more of the science

00:25:01

behind why we crave and have scarcity loops.

00:25:05

- A little bit of the science.

00:25:08

Not a ton, I would argue.

00:25:11

I do appreciate the fact in this section,

00:25:14

they talk about dopamine and how that's released

00:25:19

and we're pursuing and anticipating

00:25:20

receiving the pleasurable thing,

00:25:22

but not when we actually receive it.

00:25:25

But they do kind of, I think it's in this chapter,

00:25:27

they talk about how dopamine isn't the huge driver

00:25:32

that we think it is.

00:25:35

Like it's not automatic just because

00:25:37

dopamine's been released that we're gonna follow through.

00:25:40

And the thing, it's a part of the equation,

00:25:42

but there's still some agency that we have with this.

00:25:47

I don't actually have a whole lot of notes on this section,

00:25:51

I don't have a whole lot of notes

00:25:51

on the first part of this book, to be honest.

00:25:54

This is the part where it's very systematic

00:25:56

and it feels like if you're gonna condense

00:25:59

the promise of the book from the introduction

00:26:03

through chapter four,

00:26:06

that is essentially the scarcity loop in a nutshell

00:26:11

without all the applications in the various areas.

00:26:14

That's probably a couple thousand word blog post.

00:26:17

- I would agree with that.

00:26:20

- And you could extend that out into the length of a book,

00:26:24

but he didn't, he just kind of left that with those sections

00:26:27

and then kind of took it in a different direction.

00:26:30

Sort of wonder why there wasn't a part one and a part two.

00:26:33

It's like, okay, we're gonna close the

00:26:36

chapter on this approach and we're gonna go

00:26:40

in a different direction here.

00:26:42

- All right, so can we go book nerdery for a second here?

00:26:46

- Sure.

00:26:46

- Is that the author's responsibility?

00:26:48

Is that the editor's responsibility

00:26:50

or is that both of their responsibilities?

00:26:52

Like I kind of think it's both,

00:26:55

but I think a good editor should pick up on that

00:26:57

and be like, hey, Michael,

00:26:59

we really need to like make a cut here at chapter four

00:27:02

and tell the reader we're doing something

00:27:04

completely different for the next,

00:27:06

we're not completely, but like something that's different

00:27:08

enough that they should think about it that way.

00:27:11

- Yeah, I think it could be both.

00:27:13

I think, yeah, I'm not sure which one probably shoulders

00:27:18

the majority of that.

00:27:20

I think probably if you're an author

00:27:23

and you get a book deal from a publisher

00:27:27

and they assign you an editor that you're going

00:27:29

to be working with, it's ultimately the editor

00:27:33

who is signing off on things with the publisher.

00:27:38

So probably that's where the responsibility lies,

00:27:43

but I don't know.

00:27:45

I will say though that with this section,

00:27:49

it's a fairly simple idea at this point.

00:27:51

There's this scarcity loop that we can easily fall into.

00:27:55

Dopa means a piece of it.

00:27:57

And if we don't get the consistent reward

00:28:00

that you were talking about,

00:28:02

then we feel like we need to keep going.

00:28:04

And there's all sorts of examples here

00:28:08

with the birds and the rats and all the different studies

00:28:11

that they did that show like if you press it,

00:28:14

if you press the bar every time and you get the reward,

00:28:18

you don't press it all that much,

00:28:19

but when it's a variable reward,

00:28:21

you're pressing it all the time.

00:28:23

I mean, this is kind of stuff that we've heard

00:28:25

different versions of or were aware of

00:28:27

in different arenas before,

00:28:31

but he does a good job in this chapter of condensing it

00:28:34

and making a strong case for,

00:28:36

hey, this really is a thing that you gotta be aware of,

00:28:39

but it's still definitely at this point,

00:28:43

anchored in the scarcity loop and watch out for this thing.

00:28:46

So it kind of has this negative tone to it still.

00:28:50

- Yep, I agree.

00:28:52

All right, so chapter three,

00:28:54

chapter three is the chapter I have the least notes on.

00:28:57

And it was basically because like,

00:29:00

hey, where's the scarcity loop everywhere?

00:29:04

I mean, the examples that he gives social media, email,

00:29:07

shopping, personal finance, mobile gambling,

00:29:09

television, health, dating, video games,

00:29:11

gig work, news, right?

00:29:13

My biggest takeaway out of this,

00:29:15

I do not have a lot to say about this chapter,

00:29:17

but my biggest takeaway out of this was

00:29:19

the hook then charge model.

00:29:20

I had not heard of the hook then charge model,

00:29:24

although it makes complete sense

00:29:25

and you see it all over the place,

00:29:27

but the game candy crush would be an example

00:29:30

of the hook then charge model,

00:29:31

where you get to play for free,

00:29:32

you get to play for free, and then they're like,

00:29:35

well, if you don't wanna wait for the next round,

00:29:40

just pay us a little bit of money, right?

00:29:41

Or if you don't wanna see this ad pop up every,

00:29:45

30 spins, pay us this amount of money,

00:29:47

so they've hooked you to the game

00:29:48

by giving you enough of the free nature of it

00:29:51

that then you're willing to let go

00:29:53

of some of your resources to play that.

00:29:56

And I remember, like, I can't remember where it was,

00:29:58

but I remember Jason Stell talking about the donut game,

00:30:02

or no, it might've been somebody else talking

00:30:05

about the Simpsons donut game,

00:30:07

and where basically they were like,

00:30:08

I had no intention of paying anything for it.

00:30:11

And then randomly, here I am spending, you know,

00:30:13

like a couple hundred dollars on donuts,

00:30:15

and it's like, oh my gosh, so.

00:30:17

- Yeah, I mean, there's a,

00:30:20

I just shot it down the different areas

00:30:22

where the scarcity loop lives,

00:30:24

but I didn't jot down anything about them

00:30:26

because I think they're fairly obvious.

00:30:29

The one that stood out to me the most was news,

00:30:33

because you maybe don't think of news by default that way,

00:30:38

but news really isn't news,

00:30:42

like people from the 50s think of news

00:30:46

and being informed, it's programming.

00:30:49

And it's programming that's designed to keep you engaged.

00:30:53

The longer they keep you engaged,

00:30:55

the more ads they sell, the more money they make.

00:30:58

And so there's certain types of things

00:31:00

that they'll show you and most of it's negative,

00:31:03

and that's just part of the deal.

00:31:05

Has nothing to do with keeping you informed,

00:31:06

has nothing to do with you being in a positive mental state

00:31:11

when you're done, you're just a cog in the machine.

00:31:15

But the mobile gaming one also, I think,

00:31:19

is very, shall we say, charged in how people think of it?

00:31:24

And maybe it's just me because I hear people like John Gruber

00:31:28

talk about casino games for children on the App Store,

00:31:33

and that's totally what they are.

00:31:35

- Yes.

00:31:35

- And if you were to describe it like that to Apple,

00:31:39

obviously they would refuse to acknowledge

00:31:43

that they'd frame it differently,

00:31:46

but it's the same mechanism that's in the slot machines

00:31:51

that he's talking about in chapter one.

00:31:53

I almost wanna give whoever's in charge of the App Store

00:31:57

a copy of this book and be like, here,

00:31:59

now maybe make some policy changes,

00:32:02

but they won't because that's how they make their money

00:32:05

and that's part of the deal.

00:32:06

I mean, other people do the same thing now at this point.

00:32:09

- There's a whole layer of this book

00:32:10

that is an ethics conversation.

00:32:12

- Exactly.

00:32:13

- Like I don't know if I would read the whole book

00:32:15

just to have the ethics conversation, but it's there, right?

00:32:18

Like there's a whole level of this book that it's like,

00:32:20

"Wait, what's the ethical stance on that?"

00:32:23

You know, gambling, the casino games, the shopping

00:32:27

and how Amazon plays tricks with you as you, you know,

00:32:31

I don't know if you know this, but I assume you do.

00:32:34

You can look at a price of something on Monday morning

00:32:37

and look at it, you know, Monday afternoon,

00:32:39

it's a completely different price.

00:32:41

You're like, their prices vary.

00:32:42

You can log in on one browser and then log in

00:32:44

on a different browser and based on your location,

00:32:46

they'll throw a different price at you.

00:32:48

Like it's a completely like algorithmic model

00:32:51

for what they're doing to get, you know,

00:32:54

an extra 25 cents or an extra dollar or whatever it is,

00:32:56

depending on how much the price is.

00:32:58

- Yeah, I was a business major econ minor in college,

00:33:02

so the price discrimination is what you're describing there.

00:33:06

- Various levels of legality.

00:33:09

(laughs)

00:33:10

- Legality, yeah, exactly.

00:33:12

- All right, so let's get into chapter four

00:33:14

if you're good with it.

00:33:16

- All right, let's do it.

00:33:17

- All right, so chapter four is, again,

00:33:19

we're wrapping up this whole intro.

00:33:21

We're basically laying the foundation on this model

00:33:24

and craving and moderation.

00:33:26

So it's called Why We Crave More

00:33:28

and he gets into a couple different ideas here.

00:33:31

The one is a study by Klutz

00:33:34

where basically people would solve problems,

00:33:37

but they would solve problems by adding

00:33:39

as opposed to removing possible or features, I guess,

00:33:43

if you will.

00:33:44

I see this all the time teaching my engineering students.

00:33:46

Engineering students want to add more features

00:33:49

to solve problems instead of,

00:33:51

why don't we reduce the amount of things

00:33:53

that this device will do because then it'll solve

00:33:57

that one problem we want it to solve much better

00:33:59

than it would, you know, it's the Leatherman idea, right?

00:34:02

Like the Leatherman is the wrong tool for every job, right?

00:34:06

It's not a very good screwdriver, it's not a very good knife,

00:34:08

it's not a very good set of pliers,

00:34:10

like, but at the same time it can do all those things,

00:34:12

it's just not a very good,

00:34:14

so it's that whole ad to solve problems.

00:34:16

So that was one.

00:34:17

Then he gets into a researcher,

00:34:19

and I can't remember if he did this before,

00:34:21

but this is the first place I took a note on it,

00:34:22

it's Zental's research, who researched pigeons,

00:34:26

and basically said, we get bored too easy,

00:34:29

or sorry, we get bored because it's too easy

00:34:31

for us to find resources,

00:34:33

so basically we look for a way to fill the gap in stimulation,

00:34:36

and that kind of came out of his pigeon research,

00:34:40

which then he refers to Zental off and on

00:34:43

throughout the rest of the book.

00:34:44

So there are a couple different kind of core theories

00:34:48

about why we crave more, so.

00:34:51

Mike, I don't know if you have anything you wanna add here.

00:34:55

- I think the big takeaway from me from this section

00:34:58

was the thing that you mentioned at the beginning

00:35:01

where in the human brain less equals bad,

00:35:05

so we tend to try to solve problems by adding things.

00:35:07

And I feel like this chapter right here

00:35:12

has a very clear message associated with it,

00:35:14

and this is sort of where I thought we were gonna get to

00:35:17

by the end of the book when I first dove into it.

00:35:19

(laughs)

00:35:20

- Okay.

00:35:21

- So it's kind of weird that we're encountering this

00:35:25

in chapter four, but I do think that it's an important message,

00:35:29

and I don't have an action on what's associated

00:35:31

with this necessarily, but I do want to start thinking

00:35:36

about how do I remove things as opposed to how do I add things

00:35:41

in terms of finding the sweet spot.

00:35:45

Sometimes removing things is the right solution,

00:35:48

and I've already got the mechanism in the personal retreat

00:35:51

to do it where I ask the questions,

00:35:52

what should I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing?

00:35:55

So just leaning into the stop doing

00:35:57

and not trying to always add things.

00:36:02

But yeah, I mean, at this point,

00:36:06

I feel like the big message of the book

00:36:10

has already been delivered,

00:36:13

and it's delivered in a way where it's a little bit weird

00:36:15

because he's not necessarily calling you to action

00:36:18

at this point.

00:36:19

This is kind of where he transitions into all

00:36:21

of the different stories, which we can talk through

00:36:24

and then decide if that's an effective tack to take.

00:36:27

(laughs)

00:36:28

- All right, so let's do that.

00:36:29

So as we said, this is the end of chapter four,

00:36:31

we're gonna go into five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11,

00:36:34

and basically it's the same idea

00:36:38

through the rest of the chapters,

00:36:39

where there's an idea, so for instance, chapter five

00:36:42

is escape.

00:36:44

He'll have a story that allows him to talk about

00:36:47

the idea of escape and how the scarcity loop ties into it.

00:36:51

Now, one of the things that I thought was interesting

00:36:53

was there's reference and mention to the scarcity loop,

00:36:58

but he doesn't hit it really hard.

00:37:01

It's more about telling the story

00:37:04

and making some points through telling the story

00:37:06

than it is about tying it to that scarcity loop,

00:37:08

which I thought was, I was kind of surprised by that.

00:37:10

I expected him to tie it to the scarcity loop more

00:37:13

as he was doing the things.

00:37:14

But basically in chapter five, escape is the title.

00:37:19

He's talking about his trip over to Iraq

00:37:22

and meeting with all these people,

00:37:24

and it's thinking about this drug

00:37:26

and the influence of this drug called Captagon

00:37:29

while he's there, and he's trying to meet

00:37:31

with all these officials, and a big part of this was

00:37:33

him having this experience of he had a fixer,

00:37:36

which is supposed to, a person who's supposed to set up

00:37:38

all the meetings and the rides and all that stuff.

00:37:40

And he basically said his fixer was not an honest

00:37:44

and/or trustworthy person, and he kind of said

00:37:47

he would do a lot of things that he didn't really do,

00:37:49

though, so it's like, there's a whole part about that.

00:37:52

But then he gets into this whole,

00:37:53

like I have this whole arm on the mind map,

00:37:55

like this gigantic arm on the mind map about addiction.

00:37:58

And it was almost like, I want to write a chapter

00:38:01

about addiction.

00:38:02

And I need to find a good story.

00:38:04

And there's no judgment here.

00:38:06

I'm saying, I'm not even saying it doesn't tie

00:38:08

to the scarcity loop, but that's what this felt like to me.

00:38:10

This felt like I want to write a chapter about addiction,

00:38:13

and he writes this chapter about addiction,

00:38:14

and he has Captagon and the Iraq trip

00:38:18

as the foundation of that chapter.

00:38:20

And then he says it kind of at the end of the chapter,

00:38:23

and oh, by the way, it doesn't just apply to drugs,

00:38:27

it applies to technology, food, extreme sports,

00:38:29

social situations, more and more and more.

00:38:31

But it was kind of like a thrown in thing,

00:38:34

like the whole thing we're talking about as drugs.

00:38:35

And I mean, that's okay, it's a fine way to do the chapter,

00:38:38

but that's what the chapter felt like to me.

00:38:41

- Yeah, it's kind of weird.

00:38:43

So we mentioned in the introduction,

00:38:46

he starts with elements of the story of being in Iraq,

00:38:51

and he's trying to get into this police station

00:38:55

to meet with the chief.

00:38:56

He wants to ride along in one of the real dangerous areas,

00:38:59

essentially so that he can see what's going on

00:39:03

with this Captagon at the source.

00:39:08

And this whole idea of the Captagon, by the way,

00:39:13

isn't necessarily brand new in the Middle East.

00:39:16

He does mention in this chapter

00:39:18

about how lots of World War II soldiers took amphetamines,

00:39:21

which is really what Captagon is,

00:39:23

as a way to increase courage and boost morale,

00:39:26

but the Captagon specifically, he mentions

00:39:28

that this is the pill that ISIS fighters would take

00:39:31

to kill fear before they would embark on suicide missions.

00:39:34

So this is a very powerful mind-altering,

00:39:39

life-altering substance,

00:39:44

and kind of digging into why do people take this?

00:39:48

And as he's telling the stories about where he is,

00:39:52

he doesn't actually get the ride along,

00:39:54

but he does kind of unpack some of the things

00:39:58

that he experiences while he's over there.

00:40:00

And essentially, there's a lot of bitterness

00:40:04

about how things unfolded over the last 20 years.

00:40:09

I think they tie it back to the Gulf War and Saddam Hussein.

00:40:16

But essentially, like a lot of the country

00:40:22

is looking for a way to escape reality.

00:40:25

And this is a cheap, easy way to do it,

00:40:27

because they get it from Syria,

00:40:29

which one of the things I jotted down,

00:40:31

Syria's Captagon export was 45 times

00:40:34

that of the entire legal export industry.

00:40:37

Did you catch that stat?

00:40:39

- I did, yeah.

00:40:39

- That's crazy.

00:40:40

So he's telling these stories,

00:40:43

and he's cherry-picking these data points

00:40:45

to kind of show how powerful this stuff can be.

00:40:48

And then the chapter of the title, "Escape,"

00:40:51

essentially the message he's trying to say here

00:40:53

is that scarcity loop can come into play

00:40:56

in terms of the drugs that people will take

00:41:01

and alcohol to any sort of substance abuse

00:41:04

is possible because of the scarcity loop.

00:41:09

But one of the things that I thought was kind of interesting

00:41:12

from this section is that the term addiction

00:41:15

doesn't appear in the DSM-5,

00:41:17

which is the psychology Bible.

00:41:19

Like they don't actually define this

00:41:20

as what addiction is,

00:41:22

because essentially, my takeaway from reading the chapter

00:41:25

was there's all these different shades of gray.

00:41:27

It manifests a lot of different ways.

00:41:28

So you can't say this one thing is what addiction is,

00:41:32

but one of the other things that I jotted down here

00:41:35

is that kind of one of the triggers of addiction, I guess,

00:41:38

can be one of the top reasons for alcoholics to relapse

00:41:43

is believing that addiction is a disease.

00:41:45

So it's something that they don't really have power over.

00:41:48

They don't have a choice in.

00:41:50

And that's kind of the message he's trying to get across

00:41:53

in this chapter, I feel, is that you do actually have a choice.

00:41:57

You maybe have more choice than you realize.

00:42:01

And I think there's not a real clean,

00:42:06

this is what you do about it,

00:42:08

which is gonna be a recurring theme

00:42:10

in a lot of these chapters.

00:42:12

It's kind of like I was interested in this topic,

00:42:15

so I went to this place, I met this strange person,

00:42:18

this is what I learned,

00:42:20

and then kind of summarize it all at the end

00:42:22

and onto the next chapter.

00:42:24

- Yeah, I mean, I would think that putting the layer

00:42:29

on top of this, it would be, okay,

00:42:31

addiction's gonna hit the value,

00:42:35

the opportunity for value,

00:42:37

and then it's gonna hit the unpredictability too,

00:42:42

really well.

00:42:43

And he mentions that, he says some things around that,

00:42:46

especially, I'm remembering,

00:42:47

I didn't write it down on my notes,

00:42:48

but I'm remembering him talking about

00:42:50

the unpredictability of, will I find it,

00:42:53

how potent will it be,

00:42:57

those type of things when he's talking about

00:42:59

the drug side of it.

00:43:01

So what I didn't remember him doing though,

00:43:04

is saying, okay, if we talked about moderation

00:43:07

in the introduction, and that's what we're trying to get to,

00:43:10

this would be a way that you would address this.

00:43:13

If you're in this situation,

00:43:14

and maybe he didn't want it to be

00:43:16

a self-help book like that,

00:43:18

but that seems what's missing to me,

00:43:20

it would be really easy to just be like,

00:43:22

well, let's address the unpredictable repeatability,

00:43:27

or unpredictable nature of it,

00:43:29

and let's say, okay, how do we make this more predictable,

00:43:31

or how do we, whatever it might be?

00:43:34

I think that would have helped me

00:43:37

get more out of the book, I think.

00:43:40

- Agreed.

00:43:41

I should say that there is one thing he mentions

00:43:44

in this, towards the end,

00:43:47

that one of the best ways to break the scarcity loop,

00:43:50

as it pertains to this area of escape,

00:43:53

is to make a big change.

00:43:55

Not that you necessarily want to create

00:44:00

big moments of change frequently in your life, I would argue,

00:44:06

but my takeaway from this was to leverage the ones

00:44:09

that are already there.

00:44:11

So, something like a milestone birth thing,

00:44:17

birthday or anniversary,

00:44:19

like using those as triggers to rethink certain things.

00:44:24

Not that you're constantly going back to drawing board,

00:44:26

and is this really what I want to do with my life,

00:44:29

but there's elements of that

00:44:30

kind of built into the personal industry process as well.

00:44:32

The dates are kind of arbitrary,

00:44:34

but look for the opportunities to reflect

00:44:38

and make those big changes,

00:44:41

and it doesn't always have to be something like,

00:44:45

"I'm quitting my job and doing something completely different."

00:44:49

But I think thinking about those things

00:44:54

can either spur that change,

00:44:57

or I think the other effect is just as powerful.

00:45:00

You reconcile your situation and you feel okay with it,

00:45:04

and so you have more motivation and clarity

00:45:07

to show up and do the thing that you were already doing,

00:45:11

you just kind of recommitted to why you're doing it.

00:45:14

Okay, good. Are you ready to move to six?

00:45:16

- Let's do it.

00:45:17

- Okay, we made it halfway.

00:45:18

So we're over halfway.

00:45:20

The next chapter is certainty.

00:45:23

So, this chapter is around him having a conversation

00:45:28

with a guy at a coffee shop, basically.

00:45:32

Or it's like a bakery/coffee shop,

00:45:33

and that was the nature of the story.

00:45:37

The last one was at Iraq.

00:45:38

This one is him having this conversation.

00:45:42

Nguyen is the guy's name,

00:45:44

and he talks about gamification a lot.

00:45:49

The fact that we gamify everything now,

00:45:50

which this one hit home pretty hard,

00:45:53

because I was like, "Yeah, we do gamify everything."

00:45:56

As he's doing all these examples, I'm thinking,

00:45:58

"Yeah, we gamify that.

00:46:00

"Yep, we gamify that."

00:46:01

And he talks about basically the problem with that,

00:46:06

or one of the problems with that is it changes the goals

00:46:10

from what we were doing to then trying to play

00:46:12

the game, right?

00:46:13

Instead of trying to, let's say it's social media,

00:46:17

that's the easiest one to pick on, right?

00:46:18

Well, what am I trying to do

00:46:19

with having a good presence on social media?

00:46:23

Well, maybe I'm trying to provide value

00:46:25

around a topic area that people don't know about.

00:46:28

Well, when I turn it into just getting followers,

00:46:30

I stop, I lose the goal of actually trying to provide value

00:46:33

and content that will edify people,

00:46:35

and I'm really just trying to find,

00:46:37

trying to do things that'll get clicks,

00:46:39

and it'll get likes, and it'll get follows,

00:46:40

and it'll do those things, so it changes the goal.

00:46:43

And then he says that we typically gamify things

00:46:46

as an escape, but we can't escape everyday life.

00:46:49

So when we start gamifying everyday life,

00:46:51

we can't escape that, and that's a problem.

00:46:54

The biggest thing I think I got out of this chapter

00:46:56

was this, when we put an overly simplified scoring system

00:47:02

on something, how it changes that goal.

00:47:05

Okay, so the one that I'll give you a sleep score,

00:47:09

you and I have talked about this in the past.

00:47:12

So if I have an app that tells me a sleep score

00:47:14

and I'm trying to get the sleep score,

00:47:16

I'm trying to get the sleep score,

00:47:16

I'm trying to get the sleep score.

00:47:18

Well, there might be a bunch of other things

00:47:20

that I'm negatively impacting

00:47:23

to try to get that good sleep score,

00:47:27

and I have to think about that,

00:47:29

that overall simplified or overly simplified one metric

00:47:33

that may be absolute garbage,

00:47:35

I'm adjusting all of these other things

00:47:37

in a negative way to get that one thing better.

00:47:40

And I think that was my biggest take away

00:47:42

from this whole section.

00:47:44

- My big takeaways from this were twofold.

00:47:48

One, they talk a lot in this section about games,

00:47:52

which I like a lot.

00:47:53

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this to you,

00:47:58

but we actually have a board game table

00:48:01

in our kitchen/living room,

00:48:04

and we probably have close to 200 board games at home now.

00:48:09

The number keeps growing.

00:48:13

We play lots of games,

00:48:15

and I do think that there's a lot of value

00:48:17

that comes from playing games.

00:48:19

One of the things, and I don't remember where I heard this,

00:48:20

but I have seen this play out.

00:48:24

When you play games with kids,

00:48:26

it helps them get adjusted to losing

00:48:29

'cause they're not gonna win every time,

00:48:32

which is really good,

00:48:34

but also I feel like there's just a lot of conversations

00:48:37

that happen at the table when you are playing games,

00:48:42

and it just feels like a quality way

00:48:44

to spend time together, so that's what we do.

00:48:48

But he mentions on page 102,

00:48:51

and I'm not gonna even try to pronounce the person's name,

00:48:54

but the games are a balm for the confusion

00:48:56

and anxiety of real life.

00:48:59

I can see this.

00:49:00

One of the points that they make

00:49:01

is that you can control certain things in games,

00:49:03

which I think is why I really like games like Civilization VI.

00:49:08

That's available on the iPad,

00:49:11

which is the one game that I'll still get sucked into

00:49:14

and play for hours on end.

00:49:16

My iPad at this point is a Civilization machine

00:49:20

and a good notes machine.

00:49:21

But with that, you have all of the different aspects.

00:49:27

You're controlling an entire civilization

00:49:30

and you're controlling what gets built at different cities

00:49:33

and it affects the economy,

00:49:34

it affects your science and research,

00:49:37

you're building the military, all that kind of stuff.

00:49:40

And I really like those kind of games,

00:49:42

and I think it's because I like to micromanage.

00:49:45

And I like to control every aspect of things,

00:49:50

which Toby's a lot like I am,

00:49:54

and probably explains a little bit

00:49:57

why he gets really into these really complicated board games.

00:50:01

Like he'll play these games that take eight to 10 hours to play

00:50:04

and I just don't have the time

00:50:06

or the attention span for that kind of stuff,

00:50:08

but he's got a group of guys that he'll play those with.

00:50:12

And I think that's kind of interesting.

00:50:14

The other one I wanted to double click on

00:50:16

was the social media, which you kind of hit on already,

00:50:19

but it should be used towards a goal, not just likes.

00:50:22

And we kind of talked a little bit about this

00:50:23

in the Pro Show with the description of what's the abyss,

00:50:26

because my abyss is related sort of to social media.

00:50:29

And specifically email,

00:50:30

I'm trying to get to 10,000 email subscribers

00:50:32

for my independent creator business.

00:50:35

Just from what I've heard from different coaches

00:50:38

that I've worked with,

00:50:39

like that's the point where now you're cooking with gas,

00:50:43

essentially, in terms of you've got people who are interested

00:50:47

and what you have to say and what you're making,

00:50:50

and you can probably earn a living at this point.

00:50:53

So we're not there yet.

00:50:56

Scarcity Loop is definitely real for me there.

00:50:59

Well, but I would say, like your goal,

00:51:01

your goal is good there, right?

00:51:03

Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:03

You're not trying to get subscribers just for the sake

00:51:06

of getting subscribers to like pad your stats.

00:51:08

You're trying to do it because you want to add value

00:51:11

and you're making living, right?

00:51:12

Exactly.

00:51:13

So this is the thing that I've learned, though,

00:51:15

because I'm using YouTube specifically in a way

00:51:18

which is driving growth to the email list.

00:51:21

Basically, I started publishing consistently to YouTube

00:51:24

around September and I was just publishing stuff around Obsidian

00:51:29

because I realized that the Obsidian stuff that I was publishing

00:51:32

was getting like 10 times the engagement, the views,

00:51:39

the comments, the likes, whatever is anything else.

00:51:41

So, okay, lots of people want to see from me,

00:51:45

so I'll make more of that.

00:51:47

But after a little while, the switch gets flipped

00:51:53

and it's not how can I make stuff that's going to get

00:51:57

the most attention?

00:51:59

Like I'm finishing up a video right now and I know that there

00:52:02

because I've made enough of them at this point,

00:52:04

there's certain things that I want to add to the video

00:52:07

that are going to take it to another level,

00:52:10

to just have an extra level of polish.

00:52:13

And at this point, it's like, well, this is the better video.

00:52:16

I know that the numbers will be connected to that,

00:52:21

but the numbers aren't the reason for it if that makes sense.

00:52:25

Whereas if you don't have that goal,

00:52:27

what ends up happening is I want to post something.

00:52:31

What can I post that's going to get a bunch of likes

00:52:34

or get a bunch of engagement?

00:52:35

And it's because it's so short-sighted, short-term,

00:52:40

that I feel like kind of tends to sharing certain types

00:52:44

of information, but kind of the opposite is happening

00:52:48

with me with these videos now, where I want to make

00:52:51

this killer video because I want people to like it, yes.

00:52:56

But ultimately, I know that when I publish it,

00:52:59

maybe there'll be a spike, people will like it.

00:53:01

But this is going to continue, if I make a good video,

00:53:05

it's going to continue to be a benefit

00:53:09

to achieving my goal for months down the road.

00:53:13

That kind of what I'm realizing at this point

00:53:15

is the videos that I made in September and October,

00:53:17

the good videos.

00:53:19

When I release a new video now,

00:53:21

I'll get a whole bunch of views on the new video,

00:53:23

and then people will start clicking

00:53:24

and watching all of the other videos that I've made.

00:53:28

Because I made something that they actually want to see,

00:53:31

that's actually helpful.

00:53:32

That's why I like YouTube, honestly,

00:53:33

is I feel like the algorithm is designed,

00:53:37

it's incentivized to get your videos

00:53:41

in front of people who actually want to see them,

00:53:44

and that can be used for good or bad.

00:53:46

I'm trying to use it for good.

00:53:48

People want to learn how to use Obsidian.

00:53:50

So I'm not just going to do something quick,

00:53:53

something easy, something stupid.

00:53:54

I want to show people how to actually use it

00:53:57

in terms of living out their vision and their values,

00:54:00

the whole life theme idea, the PKM stack.

00:54:03

But it was interesting that he's saying,

00:54:07

but there's actually a good way to use social media,

00:54:09

and it's this way.

00:54:10

But it does feel very different.

00:54:14

When you're creating things for social media that way,

00:54:17

and I say social media because I think this can apply

00:54:19

like LinkedIn and Twitter/X, whatever, threads.

00:54:23

There are tools, and this is kind of the next step

00:54:26

for me in terms of my business systems.

00:54:27

I want to take the content that I use in the videos

00:54:30

and the stuff that I write about in the newsletter,

00:54:33

and like break it apart and share those as valuable threads

00:54:37

and posts on social media through a tool like Typefully,

00:54:41

where you can actually post that stuff

00:54:44

and not have to just scroll through all the things.

00:54:47

That's what you want to avoid in my opinion,

00:54:50

and that's kind of what he's advocating for.

00:54:52

- All right, good, let's move to Influence,

00:54:55

which is chapter seven.

00:54:57

So Influence, there were a couple of things out of here,

00:55:03

so I'm gonna try to say it.

00:55:05

Schismogenesis, right?

00:55:07

I had never heard of that word before,

00:55:09

and then when I read it and he defined it,

00:55:11

I was like, "Oh man, that's a really good word,"

00:55:14

but it's our entire sense of self and cultural identity

00:55:17

is effectively a reaction to others,

00:55:19

and I was like, "Oh man," right?

00:55:21

Like, how true is that in so many different places

00:55:25

where it's like, "I say a thing,"

00:55:26

and then I see how somebody responds,

00:55:28

and I'm like, "Okay, was that a good thing?

00:55:32

"Did I do a good job there, or did I not do a good job there?"

00:55:34

And it's like, and really, it's less about what I said,

00:55:37

and it's more about how the person reacted to what I said.

00:55:40

So I thought that was a, that was a really good one.

00:55:43

He talks about humans desiring a high status,

00:55:46

that we wanna have an influence over other people,

00:55:48

we want to kind of be able to impact others

00:55:53

with our behaviors and our actions

00:55:56

and the things we say and the things we do.

00:55:59

Then he gets into kind of some of the negatives of this,

00:56:02

or some of the things you need to be careful of,

00:56:03

so pride, he said, "There's good pride,

00:56:06

"there's authentic pride, then there's heuristic pride,

00:56:09

"that basically we can have the overblown implications effect

00:56:11

"when we think one silly mistake will ruin our image,

00:56:14

"spotlight effect where we overestimate what people think,

00:56:17

"fundamental attribution error,"

00:56:20

and then he says this thing,

00:56:22

"Do you wanna be right or happy?"

00:56:24

Which I think is a really, really clever way to do this,

00:56:27

but I thought the point of this was really, really good,

00:56:32

and then where I wanted more was I wanted it tied again

00:56:35

to the scarcity loop.

00:56:36

I wanted it tied better to the scarcity loop.

00:56:38

So I think about this and is there an opportunity,

00:56:42

is there a value in influence?

00:56:43

Yes, there is.

00:56:45

Is it unpredictable?

00:56:46

Yes, it is, because I have no idea how you're gonna react

00:56:49

to what I say or things like that,

00:56:51

and then is it predictable?

00:56:52

And this is where it kind of fell down for me

00:56:54

from an influence standpoint is like,

00:56:56

"I have no idea how you're gonna react."

00:56:58

Now maybe with enough data,

00:57:00

or with a consistent enough demographic,

00:57:04

I guess that's the way I'll say that,

00:57:06

I could get pretty predictable results.

00:57:07

So maybe I could manipulate this to fit

00:57:11

into the scarcity loop.

00:57:12

But this one didn't fit as much with me.

00:57:16

Is it a thing that we go after?

00:57:17

Is it a thing that we strive after?

00:57:18

Yes, without a doubt, 100% influence

00:57:21

is something we wanna do.

00:57:23

I don't even remember.

00:57:24

Did he have a story around this one?

00:57:26

Can you remember the story around this one?

00:57:27

'Cause I don't have this one jotted down.

00:57:29

I actually did not write down any of the stories

00:57:32

that he tells.

00:57:33

Okay, okay.

00:57:34

Specifically because they're all,

00:57:37

like interesting situations that he finds himself in,

00:57:40

but the people other than this is someone

00:57:45

who is doing this thing that I'm interested in,

00:57:48

the names really aren't that important.

00:57:51

He's not interviewing the world's leading experts

00:57:56

in any of these areas.

00:57:59

He's just, "Ah, this might be a cool experience.

00:58:01

"I'll see if I can get in there."

00:58:03

You know, and then he finds someone who allows him to do so,

00:58:06

and then he tells cool stories about it.

00:58:07

But I don't think that that is really gonna be

00:58:12

something that sticks with me months or years later

00:58:15

from these books.

00:58:16

But I do have a couple things jotted down

00:58:18

from this section on "Uninfluence."

00:58:21

And I do think, well, so one of my action items was

00:58:24

that phrase, "Do you wanna be right,

00:58:25

"or do you wanna be happy?"

00:58:26

I wanna start asking myself that.

00:58:28

'Cause my default is to want to be right,

00:58:31

and I feel that that is,

00:58:34

that could maybe be tempered,

00:58:35

not just in my relationship with my wife,

00:58:38

but with, I think there's a lot of opportunities

00:58:42

to exercise this.

00:58:43

Then just be a little bit more picky

00:58:46

about where you're gonna draw the lines.

00:58:50

But also the thing that kinda stands out to me

00:58:55

with the pride, 'cause you mentioned the authentic pride,

00:58:58

the type of pride that you get when you feel good

00:59:00

for achieving something great.

00:59:01

And then heuristic pride, which is undeserved pride

00:59:03

that creates a drive for getting other people

00:59:06

to appreciate us.

00:59:07

I feel like that is the one that's sorta naturally

00:59:11

aligns with social media use.

00:59:15

It's like a fake pride.

00:59:18

And I, as I read this section on "Influence,"

00:59:23

and I'm thinking about the different types of pride,

00:59:26

the thing that kinda stands out to me is that authentic pride,

00:59:30

I've seen that connected for me

00:59:33

to the act of creating things of quality.

00:59:37

And you could argue how much quality,

00:59:40

especially if you listened to some of the earlier podcast

00:59:43

episodes that I did, some of those,

00:59:47

I still can't go back and listen to it, it's too painful.

00:59:52

- You're too hard on yourself.

00:59:54

- Yeah, but the point I'm trying to make is

00:59:57

whenever I make something,

00:59:59

it's the very best that I can do right now.

01:00:01

I'm not mailing it in, I'm not just checking a box there,

01:00:05

I publish something to the internet.

01:00:07

I'm doing my best, I'm putting something out there,

01:00:10

and then that creates the feedback loop

01:00:13

so that I can learn from it and get better next time.

01:00:17

And I have this system that I follow

01:00:21

for doing this sorta stuff, which I've taught

01:00:24

called the creativity flywheel.

01:00:27

And that came from me trying to figure out

01:00:30

how do I do this consistently,

01:00:33

and how do I seem to do it with some degree of success

01:00:37

where people actually want to listen or want to watch

01:00:41

or want to read the things that I make?

01:00:45

And I feel the authentic pride comes whenever you put forth

01:00:50

your best effort and you share something out into the world.

01:00:56

And I think that the more that I understand

01:01:01

about how creativity works,

01:01:06

the more I feel everyone is creative

01:01:08

and everyone should be looking for their creative outlet,

01:01:12

I really feel that there isn't anybody

01:01:15

who's just not creative.

01:01:17

And I was the guy who said that at one point,

01:01:20

but that's kinda what triggered to me

01:01:21

is I was thinking about this authentic pride

01:01:23

and you were kinda talking about finding your tribe,

01:01:25

changing your words a little bit,

01:01:27

but getting around the right types of people,

01:01:29

I feel like when you lean into the thing

01:01:33

that you really wanna make, you do it the best you can,

01:01:37

and then you continually just keep publishing,

01:01:40

keep making, and it keeps getting better,

01:01:44

you'll sort of find the people that align

01:01:48

with the things that you're making.

01:01:49

Case and point, the max stock conference

01:01:52

that we mentioned at the very beginning.

01:01:55

You know, I was a poser when I first started going there,

01:01:59

and at this point now, I feel like I can actually do it.

01:02:02

(laughs)

01:02:03

- Yeah, that's awesome.

01:02:04

All right, let's move to food.

01:02:07

So chapter eight is food.

01:02:09

We go back into the story,

01:02:12

the strong storytelling here, so the chamani.

01:02:14

He talks about going to visit them.

01:02:18

I can't remember where, what country?

01:02:21

Do you remember Mike?

01:02:23

- I don't know.

01:02:24

- And I also, as I got into this chapter,

01:02:26

I was kind of like, why?

01:02:28

(laughs)

01:02:29

- Yeah, so basically, I think he might have a vendetta

01:02:34

against the American diet, and that's partially,

01:02:39

the reason I say this, partially from the comfort crisis,

01:02:41

if you link those two things together,

01:02:43

you can kind of see that,

01:02:45

'cause he talks a lot about going and hunting caribou,

01:02:48

and then like how good it is for you,

01:02:50

and like all that stuff.

01:02:51

So there's a whole section of it there too,

01:02:53

on the comfort crisis as well.

01:02:54

But, so basically it gets into food,

01:02:56

and how food ties into the scarcity loop model.

01:03:00

The fact that, this one actually I thought was the,

01:03:03

probably the cleanest connection,

01:03:05

I mean maybe the cleanest connection that we had here

01:03:08

is because back in the day, right,

01:03:11

you needed food to stay alive.

01:03:13

You were hunted together, so you either found it,

01:03:16

or you hunted it, so it was very unpredictable

01:03:18

whether you'd get food,

01:03:20

and then you could repeat that.

01:03:22

You had to do that every day, right, so okay,

01:03:23

there's the scarcity loop model there.

01:03:25

Like that one, very clear,

01:03:27

like very, very clean connection here.

01:03:30

The rest of it is basically,

01:03:32

I'm telling a story about me going down

01:03:34

and eating roots, and plants, and rice,

01:03:37

and fish that was just caught out of the river.

01:03:41

And basically the, like my key takeaway is,

01:03:45

eat chamomile food, and don't snack, right?

01:03:48

That was kind of my biggest takeaway from this chapter.

01:03:52

I don't really know what else to do with it.

01:03:57

I mean the one other comment that I have here

01:03:58

that maybe you can add more,

01:04:00

but negative information triggers our brain

01:04:02

to unconsciously assume that the bad thing is going to happen.

01:04:07

So when we get negative information,

01:04:09

we're like, "Oh, the bad thing's gonna happen,"

01:04:11

which really that might not have anything

01:04:12

to do with the bad thing, it's just, it does that,

01:04:14

and this is related to food, right?

01:04:16

Like so, "Oh, I can't find berries today.

01:04:21

"I'm going to die of starvation."

01:04:22

And it's like, "Maybe not,

01:04:24

"maybe you just couldn't find berries today,

01:04:25

"and you gotta look somewhere else tomorrow."

01:04:28

But really my big takeaway from this was,

01:04:31

eat chamomile food, like whole fruits and vegetables,

01:04:35

and don't snack.

01:04:37

That was kind of what I got.

01:04:38

- Yeah, the specific diet that he talks about,

01:04:41

the chamomile diet, or meals,

01:04:45

composed of 25% lean protein,

01:04:48

chicken fish, couple of eggs, or red meat,

01:04:51

25% vegetables, like cabbage,

01:04:53

and the 50% unprocessed staple crops,

01:04:55

potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice,

01:04:56

kimwa, squash, corn, plantains, et cetera.

01:05:00

So you could take that and be like,

01:05:02

"Okay, yeah, I'll eat that

01:05:03

"because that is a healthy diet."

01:05:06

But yeah, it's attached to this story of him

01:05:09

going into the jungle, and it's kind of like why.

01:05:13

The things that I jotted down from this chapter,

01:05:16

and I had not heard of the comfort crisis,

01:05:20

and to be honest, I've had no interest

01:05:22

in picking up any sort of diet or food book,

01:05:27

because I feel like a lot of them,

01:05:31

I've had a lot of them shared with me.

01:05:32

I've had a lot of them given to me by people close to me.

01:05:36

Like my parents specifically are, what's the word?

01:05:40

- They gluten-free.

01:05:44

- Okay. - So like they don't eat bread.

01:05:46

I love bread. - Are they celiac

01:05:48

or are they gluten-free?

01:05:49

- I think celiac, but I know my dad,

01:05:55

'cause he had all the tests done at one point.

01:05:59

My mom, I think, eats gluten-free primarily.

01:06:03

I don't think she had it as bad as he did,

01:06:04

so maybe she's in the middle.

01:06:06

And I remember they had me get tested at one point

01:06:12

as I was finishing high school,

01:06:14

or maybe I was even in college

01:06:16

because they had gotten this revelation,

01:06:19

and my dad stopped eating bread,

01:06:20

and he started feeling a lot better.

01:06:22

Cool, more power to you,

01:06:24

but then they had me test

01:06:25

the frolleys different foods,

01:06:26

and I remember there were some that I was fairly allergic to,

01:06:30

and then there was the bread one,

01:06:32

and it wasn't even close to being like the biggest one,

01:06:35

but there was a little bit of a reaction there,

01:06:37

like, "See, see, you should cut out bread, too."

01:06:39

And I'm like, "No."

01:06:41

To this day, I love my bread.

01:06:42

So as a guy who is exactly like you mentally,

01:06:46

I love bread, carbs, pasta, all that stuff, pizza.

01:06:51

I get, that's my go-to food,

01:06:54

and I can't eat any of it,

01:06:56

like I can't eat any of it.

01:06:58

So I'm not celiac,

01:06:59

where like celiac, I mean, you'll potentially die, right?

01:07:02

'Cause you actually have a physical reaction to it.

01:07:05

I just like, it's terrible.

01:07:07

It's terrible, right?

01:07:08

So like my dad'll start coughing,

01:07:10

and he doesn't feel well when he has,

01:07:14

not just bread, but anything that's like coming in contact.

01:07:18

Yeah.

01:07:20

I have learned my limits,

01:07:22

and it has nothing to do with bread,

01:07:24

but there are certain things that I gotta be careful

01:07:28

not to eat too much.

01:07:30

And yeah, so I've kind of figured that out for myself,

01:07:34

and I don't drink soda.

01:07:37

Like there are a lot of things that we do,

01:07:39

I feel like I eat fairly healthy already.

01:07:42

I do think I could probably eat a little bit more balance.

01:07:46

So this idea of the 25% lean protein,

01:07:49

25% vegetables, 50% on processed staple crops,

01:07:53

that's kind of interesting to me.

01:07:54

Maybe I can start to move a little bit in that direction,

01:07:57

but I don't feel like I need to turn my world upside down

01:08:00

in order to try to eat this way.

01:08:02

Like he's doing, you know,

01:08:04

he mentions he's going to Costco,

01:08:06

and his wife's making fun of him.

01:08:07

And instead of the fresh, fresh-caught fish,

01:08:10

he's getting like fish burgers

01:08:11

from the frozen food section.

01:08:14

(laughs)

01:08:14

Which if you wanna do that, fine,

01:08:16

but it kind of sounds like,

01:08:19

I don't know, there's a tinge in the story.

01:08:25

I mean, he's choosing to do this,

01:08:27

and he's talking about how he's lost weight,

01:08:29

and he's feeling better.

01:08:31

You know, I've experienced that too,

01:08:32

and I've made some dietary changes,

01:08:34

but it wasn't just like, I'm gonna completely cut off

01:08:37

this stuff.

01:08:38

I don't know, like, probably as I get older,

01:08:43

I will be a little bit more strict

01:08:45

about some of these things,

01:08:47

but I'm kind of already moving in that direction.

01:08:49

I mean, I used to really enjoy,

01:08:52

not that I was ever drinking a lot of soda,

01:08:55

but I would always, we got to eat it, always get a soda.

01:08:59

I don't do that anymore,

01:09:00

and it's been years since I've done it,

01:09:02

and now it's just the thought of a super sweet soda

01:09:05

is completely appalling to me.

01:09:08

I have no desire for it whatsoever.

01:09:10

And I don't think you're gonna convince somebody

01:09:13

information-wise, especially when the source

01:09:16

of the information is, I went to this place

01:09:18

and did this thing, and I saw these people.

01:09:21

- I'm gonna disagree with you on this one.

01:09:25

Not because I personally disagree with you.

01:09:26

I'm gonna disagree with you because his audience,

01:09:29

this is the core, the crux of his audience.

01:09:33

And this, I told you, it comes,

01:09:34

this chapter reminds me of the most of the comfort crisis

01:09:36

because it's very much a, like,

01:09:39

oh, I'm gonna do a thing that's gonna make me uncomfortable,

01:09:41

and then I'm gonna report back on what it was like

01:09:43

and what that experience was like.

01:09:45

So it's like, I think he has a built-in newsletter

01:09:49

podcast audience here that eats up chapter eight.

01:09:53

They're like, yeah, and I didn't mean to do that,

01:09:55

but that's actually- - Yeah, so I think

01:09:57

you're probably right, and that was kind of the inclination

01:09:59

I had is like, there's gotta be more to this

01:10:01

because you don't share some of these statistics

01:10:05

just by going to visit this people that lives in the jungle.

01:10:08

Like the US cardiovascular disease

01:10:10

killing someone every 34 seconds

01:10:12

and cardiovascular disease killing more people

01:10:15

than the eight other top causes of death combined.

01:10:17

This is something obviously we should be paying attention to,

01:10:21

but I don't think the solution to cardiovascular disease

01:10:24

is you have to eat this exact diet.

01:10:28

Like you can convince me that a lot of the ultra processed

01:10:31

foods that we eat are bad for us and we should avoid them.

01:10:35

100%, I'm with you there.

01:10:37

I'm just not gonna follow you down the,

01:10:39

how do you say it?

01:10:40

- Chamoni. - Chamoni, yeah.

01:10:42

- Chamoni meal train.

01:10:43

- I'm very happy though that his wife made fun of him

01:10:46

because that's like, that makes me like her more, you know?

01:10:49

It's like, hey, you should be eating real fish.

01:10:52

No, fish birds.

01:10:53

Okay, so let's go to chapter nine.

01:10:57

Chapter nine, I liked a lot 'cause it talks about stuff

01:10:59

and right now for some reason I have this problem

01:11:03

that's haunting me right now where I feel like

01:11:06

we just have so much stuff in life.

01:11:08

There's just stuff everywhere and I'd love to get rid of

01:11:13

most of it, all of it, as much stuff as we could get rid of.

01:11:16

But the story around this one--

01:11:19

- You're gonna become a minimalist on me?

01:11:21

- So yes, but not practically.

01:11:25

- We can talk about that later.

01:11:28

So this whole chapter has wrapped around a story

01:11:32

with a, I can't remember, is there her first name?

01:11:36

I think zero is her first name, right?

01:11:37

- Yeah. - Oh man.

01:11:38

Okay, so the story--

01:11:40

- The warrior lady who lives in the wild.

01:11:43

- Yeah, so she, you know, is very much has been this way

01:11:46

for a long, long time and just really likes to go out

01:11:50

and I had heard that people do this,

01:11:53

but I didn't know that we were gonna read a chapter about it,

01:11:56

but they would go out and they'll animal shed

01:11:59

or animal skull hunt, right?

01:12:01

So they'll try to find animals that have died naturally

01:12:04

or however they've died in the woods

01:12:05

and then they'll get their antlers

01:12:07

or they'll get their full skull

01:12:08

and that she doesn't do it for anything,

01:12:11

any other reason than just the thrill of doing it,

01:12:15

but basically that she's learned to live

01:12:18

essentially out of a backpack, right?

01:12:20

Now, she does not follow the Chamonni diet, right?

01:12:23

So immediately we start to contradict ourselves

01:12:25

because she's eaten a piece of bread

01:12:26

with a half stick of butter on it,

01:12:28

which is not the Chamonni diet,

01:12:30

which that's, you know, that's, there's a dissonance there.

01:12:34

But basically the point of the chapter is humans

01:12:37

are defaulted as to collect more stuff

01:12:38

that we think having stuff or that actually having stuff

01:12:43

helps us survive, that we think it can bring us status

01:12:45

and then it can make us feel like we belong with others,

01:12:49

that we have this, I actually think this is a really

01:12:52

interesting point of this chapter

01:12:54

that there's this compulsive buying disorder

01:12:56

that got worse during the pandemic.

01:12:58

And I think that's a really interesting argument

01:13:01

that however it fits into this book

01:13:03

is a whole another story, but like,

01:13:05

I think it's a really interesting argument

01:13:08

that basically he has the 60 second idea

01:13:11

that if you can make a decision in 60 seconds,

01:13:13

you should do it.

01:13:14

If not, that's something.

01:13:16

That's telling you something.

01:13:17

You probably shouldn't do that.

01:13:18

I like that a lot.

01:13:20

- Yeah, there's a lot more into this.

01:13:21

So I'm gonna kick it to you in a second,

01:13:23

but the one other thing I wanted to say

01:13:24

before we dialogue this chapter is he actually has,

01:13:28

it's either his whole newsletter or it's a day

01:13:31

of his newsletter that's called "Gear Not Stuff."

01:13:35

So he has taken this concept, this gear not stuff concept

01:13:39

and turned it, like, and had made it part of his normal

01:13:42

content creation routine, where he's trying to talk about,

01:13:44

like, I didn't buy this thing just to have more.

01:13:47

I bought this thing because I consider it gear

01:13:50

and it's useful and it has an effectiveness in my life

01:13:53

beyond just getting something.

01:13:57

So I'll turn it to you now.

01:13:59

- Well, those are the two things

01:14:00

that I really wanted to talk about from this chapter two.

01:14:03

I mean, he also, he makes a very good compelling argument

01:14:06

for we buy a lot of stuff that we don't need.

01:14:09

According to Wall Street Journal,

01:14:10

Americans spent 1.2 trillion annually on things we don't need.

01:14:15

He shares that the dog clothing industry is projected

01:14:18

to be worth 16.6 billion in a couple of years.

01:14:22

- So my brain filtered that out.

01:14:26

I never made it, like, that's the first time I'm hearing that.

01:14:29

- Well, that stood out to me because I remember hearing

01:14:32

several years ago that the productivity market

01:14:37

was like $9 billion.

01:14:40

And I thought that was pretty high,

01:14:42

but if the dog clothing industry almost doubles it,

01:14:47

maybe it's not that impressive.

01:14:48

(laughing)

01:14:51

So the deciding on purchasing decisions within 60 seconds,

01:14:54

essentially what that's designed to do is

01:14:56

to avoid finding justification for things.

01:14:59

I think this is a really cool rule.

01:15:00

This is one of my action items.

01:15:03

Not that I'm even doing anything specifically formal with this,

01:15:06

but when I get tempted to buy something,

01:15:09

I'm either gonna buy it right away

01:15:11

because it's really clear.

01:15:12

This is how this is gonna be useful,

01:15:15

or I'm just not gonna buy it,

01:15:16

and I'm not gonna think about it anymore.

01:15:18

And so related to that is the second thing

01:15:20

about the collecting gear, not stuff.

01:15:22

This was another action item that I jotted down

01:15:24

from the section.

01:15:25

Gear having a clear purpose in terms of helping us achieve

01:15:30

a higher purpose.

01:15:31

I like that definition a lot.

01:15:33

I have actually sort of inadvertently

01:15:37

already taken action on this.

01:15:40

So I'm recording this episode today

01:15:44

on a new 14-inch M3 Space Black MacBook Pro.

01:15:50

(laughing)

01:15:53

- How black is the Space Black?

01:15:55

- It's pretty black.

01:15:56

- Nice. - Black enough.

01:15:58

Now I had a M1 MacBook Pro that had 36 gigs of RAM

01:16:03

and a terabyte of space.

01:16:07

This was an open box at Best Buy

01:16:09

that had a really great deal.

01:16:11

I think it was like $1,600,

01:16:15

but it's kind of a base model, 18 gigs, 512,

01:16:19

18 gigs of RAM, 512 gigabytes of space.

01:16:21

So I actually had to clear a whole bunch of clutter

01:16:24

just to get everything onto this device.

01:16:28

But the thing that spurred this

01:16:31

is that my kids are done with school for the year,

01:16:34

and Toby has told me a couple of times

01:16:36

he wants to help me with the video stuff.

01:16:39

So it's gonna become kind of a school work machine

01:16:44

for my older two who share a bedroom in the basement

01:16:47

next to my office.

01:16:48

The computer stays in my office.

01:16:50

They can bring it into the room to use it,

01:16:51

but it doesn't stay in the room at night.

01:16:55

And we have that rule with all our phones and stuff.

01:16:57

Like there's no devices in the bedrooms.

01:17:00

That's where their desk are,

01:17:01

that's where they do their school.

01:17:02

So I don't care if they bring it in there,

01:17:03

but he needed something that was gonna be able

01:17:08

to do video editing and Final Cut and ScreenFlow,

01:17:11

the programs that I use for the YouTube videos.

01:17:14

So this is a forcing mechanism for me to delegate

01:17:17

some of my video production to my son.

01:17:20

I'm at the point now with YouTube

01:17:23

where I make some money every month from YouTube

01:17:28

and I can see it going up every time I release a video.

01:17:34

So the thing that six months from now

01:17:37

is going to really hold me back from realizing

01:17:42

the full creative potential of my independent creator business

01:17:47

is me continuing to try to do everything on my own.

01:17:51

Yes.

01:17:52

Which YouTube has been the thing,

01:17:54

I'm still figuring it out.

01:17:55

I really care a lot about these videos.

01:17:57

They gotta be perfect.

01:17:59

So it's been hard for me to delegate pieces of it.

01:18:03

And the excuse that I've always had is

01:18:04

well, you don't have a machine that could actually

01:18:06

do this sort of stuff.

01:18:08

So I bought a machine.

01:18:10

And now he's gonna be able to do some of that stuff.

01:18:14

So you turned gear into gear for your son.

01:18:18

Yes.

01:18:19

And then you turned, you got new gear.

01:18:21

Yes, okay.

01:18:22

This started actually with the iPad Pros that came out

01:18:25

because I use a 2019, I think the current version

01:18:30

of the iPad mini, I bought that when it came out.

01:18:32

And as I mentioned before, I do use my iPad

01:18:36

for Civilization 6, but also for GoodNotes.

01:18:39

And if you look at my slides from like the reading masterclass

01:18:43

that I did and all my big presentations now,

01:18:46

I use the things that I draw in GoodNotes.

01:18:49

I'll grab those and I'll use those as images in my slides

01:18:53

alongside a sketch note font.

01:18:55

So when I'm creating things, I have my iPad open.

01:18:58

I'm drawing the thing and then I'm copying that,

01:19:01

pasting it into keynote.

01:19:03

So it is used for my work.

01:19:06

And I saw the iPad Pros, I'm like, this could be cool.

01:19:09

Then I kind of got to the point where I don't need

01:19:11

a new iPad Pro, especially if you're gonna spend $1500

01:19:15

when you get the new pencil, the new keyboard.

01:19:18

But then it was like, you know what I could do

01:19:19

with that money that would be a better use of that money.

01:19:23

Get a computer for my son to actually help me

01:19:26

with some of the video stuff.

01:19:28

'Cause that's the bottleneck.

01:19:29

That's the thing that takes all my time.

01:19:32

So even if I just record the videos

01:19:34

and then he does like the first pass

01:19:36

and he can put in some of the B roll,

01:19:38

that sort of stuff, that would be a huge help.

01:19:40

And that's the difference between me doing a video

01:19:43

every two or three weeks, as opposed to doing one every week.

01:19:46

- Yeah, you turned a temptation

01:19:48

into a actual productive purchase.

01:19:52

- Well, we'll see if it's productive, I guess,

01:19:54

in the like yet to be determined, but that's the belief.

01:19:58

- Yeah, okay.

01:19:59

All right.

01:20:00

All right, let's keep moving.

01:20:01

We're gonna go to chapter 10 and now this is information.

01:20:05

And I actually have quite a bit of notes on chapter 10.

01:20:08

I guess I'm interested in information.

01:20:12

So the story around this one is the International Space Station.

01:20:15

He interviews a guy who wanted to talk to him

01:20:19

because of the comfort crisis.

01:20:21

So he ends up talking to this guy about information

01:20:24

and science and doing those things.

01:20:26

But then this is where he really goes hard

01:20:28

into the evolution side,

01:20:30

because he starts talking about this fish

01:20:32

that had arms like human arms

01:20:35

that could crawl out of the water.

01:20:37

And I'm gonna try to not go super heavy on here,

01:20:41

but like--

01:20:42

- I forget what that fish was called.

01:20:44

There was a name for it.

01:20:45

- Yeah, it's called the Tikalik.

01:20:48

- Okay.

01:20:49

- All right, Tiktalik, Tiktalik, there you go.

01:20:52

Tiktalik, I had to get all the letters in there.

01:20:55

But basically there's a connection there

01:20:58

and I'm not gonna,

01:21:00

I don't wanna get into evolution right now.

01:21:02

Mike, I don't wanna do that whole thing

01:21:05

and what our beliefs are on that.

01:21:06

I think that's a different podcast

01:21:08

or a pro-show topic for another time.

01:21:12

But we get into that

01:21:13

and then we get into basically that the scarcity concept

01:21:18

is the mother of why we need this information

01:21:21

and we're driving for that scare,

01:21:22

get more information, more information.

01:21:27

What I really liked about this was the word informivores.

01:21:31

I thought that was awesome, right?

01:21:33

And basically it's creatures that search for

01:21:35

and digest information just like carnivores hunt for

01:21:38

and eat meat and I was like, man,

01:21:39

that is a great concept, right?

01:21:41

So when you're finding the diamonds in the rough

01:21:43

of the book, right?

01:21:44

That was one of the diamonds walking out for me.

01:21:47

Talk about information overload.

01:21:49

I also liked his conversation of knowledge versus understanding.

01:21:53

I thought that was good where knowledge is just facts.

01:21:56

Understanding is having facts, seeing how they connect

01:21:59

and being able to use that knowledge

01:22:00

to explore, categorize and gain insight.

01:22:01

And I thought that was a really good kind of overview.

01:22:05

So those I think were my few takeaways,

01:22:07

my few big takeaways from this chapter.

01:22:09

- So I have my own heuristic, whatever,

01:22:13

for the difference between information, et cetera.

01:22:18

And the way I describe it is that information

01:22:23

is the stuff that you collect, you put it in an archive,

01:22:25

you can look it up.

01:22:26

So something that you have.

01:22:30

Revelation is something that you've internalized,

01:22:34

you can spit back the numbers, you know the stuff.

01:22:36

So it's something that you know.

01:22:38

But then there's application, which is the highest level

01:22:41

where you're taking the information

01:22:43

and you're doing something with it.

01:22:45

That's maybe a separate discussion,

01:22:47

but since you were talking about the information,

01:22:50

I think that's kind of how I view that.

01:22:53

And I think it's important because one of the stats

01:22:55

he shares in this chapter is that by the 2020

01:22:58

is the average person spent between 11 and 13 hours per day

01:23:01

consuming information.

01:23:03

Many of the problems that we encounter,

01:23:06

we feel like our information or knowledge problems,

01:23:10

if we just found the right information

01:23:12

or if we knew the right things,

01:23:14

we knew what to do that the problem would go away.

01:23:17

And that's not actually the case.

01:23:19

Most of the time we know what to do,

01:23:21

we just fail to do it.

01:23:22

Because we're so overwhelmed with everything else.

01:23:26

Mike, in your bookworm and just reading experiences,

01:23:30

is there anybody that talks about that in detail

01:23:32

or in depth?

01:23:33

Nothing comes to mind, but maybe there's a book

01:23:39

we should read at some point.

01:23:41

I have it on my bookshelf.

01:23:43

I think it's called information anxiety,

01:23:47

something like that.

01:23:48

And essentially it's that we're trying to collect

01:23:50

and manage too much information.

01:23:52

You add to the fact, and I'm part of this problem I guess,

01:23:57

40% of information is user generated,

01:23:59

like YouTube, TikTok, podcasts.

01:24:02

How do you feel about that, Corey?

01:24:03

We're part of the problem here.

01:24:05

- We are part of the problem, yes.

01:24:07

- Well, I don't think we're part of the problem,

01:24:10

to be honest.

01:24:11

I think the problem is not how much information is out there.

01:24:14

That ship has sailed, there is too much information.

01:24:18

The problem is how people are trying to deal with it.

01:24:22

You have to flip a switch where instead of trying

01:24:25

to consume as much information as you can,

01:24:28

you intentionally neglect certain things,

01:24:32

and you have to be okay with that.

01:24:34

You can't keep up with the FOMO.

01:24:38

And that's kind of the whole message here.

01:24:39

Information has diminishing returns.

01:24:41

We crave information, but we prefer it be easy to get,

01:24:44

which leads us to finding it from low quality sources.

01:24:48

So essentially be more particular

01:24:53

about the stuff that you're consuming,

01:24:55

which I would like to think that Bookworm listeners

01:24:58

in particular are, you may not agree with everything

01:25:03

that we say, you may dislike us as people,

01:25:05

but we are cut from the same cloth.

01:25:08

(laughs)

01:25:09

- Yep, I would agree.

01:25:10

All right, I wanna round this one out.

01:25:12

If it was there more, did I cut you off?

01:25:14

I'm sorry.

01:25:15

- Well, the only other thing I wanna call out from this

01:25:18

is the internet, how it's altered our brains,

01:25:21

because it's heard our ability to focus.

01:25:23

We've offloaded some of our memory to the cloud,

01:25:25

and it changes our social interactions.

01:25:28

Those are important things to be aware of,

01:25:31

but those are not new or original necessarily

01:25:34

to this particular book.

01:25:36

I think that there are other books that kind of talk

01:25:40

about that maybe on a deeper level

01:25:43

if you wanna get deeper into it,

01:25:44

but it is relevant for this section.

01:25:49

Recognize that we're not saying,

01:25:51

and he's not saying, avoid the internet,

01:25:54

just go into it with your eyes open.

01:25:56

Use it for good, discard the stuff that's not useful,

01:26:01

and move on.

01:26:02

- All right, so this is the,

01:26:06

maybe the one time, if not,

01:26:08

it's the strongest time he points to the abundance loop,

01:26:12

because he talks about Niantic,

01:26:15

and the founder of Niantic basically creating this thing

01:26:20

where you'd kinda walk around and you'd get information

01:26:23

about local sites and local monuments

01:26:27

and different things that are cool about where you were,

01:26:29

then turning that into a game called Ingress,

01:26:32

and then Ingress being turned into Pokemon Go,

01:26:36

and basically how the scarcity loop

01:26:40

was turned into an abundance loop

01:26:41

and went from a negative thing into a positive thing.

01:26:45

And I just thought that story was really, really cool.

01:26:47

I actually knew that Pokemon Go was developed

01:26:51

from the foundation that is Ingress.

01:26:54

I had heard that before,

01:26:56

but it was just really cool to hear the story of how

01:27:01

they took one thing and then they built on it

01:27:02

and they built on it and look how successful it's been,

01:27:05

and the stats that they put out about the number of steps

01:27:07

that people were taking and the number of miles

01:27:09

people have traveled and how it's actually improving

01:27:13

people's social interaction,

01:27:16

'cause they'll team up to go fight different bosses

01:27:19

and stuff.

01:27:20

I'm sure there are negatives to that.

01:27:21

I know of one because I had a student in my class

01:27:24

who was basically addicted to Pokemon Go,

01:27:27

and he came to me and he's like,

01:27:29

"Dr. Hicks, I need help."

01:27:30

He's like, "I really do, I need help."

01:27:32

And I was like, "Okay, let's talk about this."

01:27:35

But at the same time, it's still doing positive things

01:27:38

and I thought that was a cool story.

01:27:40

- That was a cool story.

01:27:42

Yeah, when you were starting to share with the,

01:27:45

as evidence for the abundance loop,

01:27:46

I was thinking to myself,

01:27:48

"Well, maybe it's not all abundance.

01:27:50

"Maybe there's a dark side to this too."

01:27:53

- There's always. - But they're probably,

01:27:54

they're always is, yeah.

01:27:56

Everything is not as simple as we would like it to be.

01:28:00

I think the big takeaway,

01:28:02

kind of jumping to the end of the book.

01:28:03

So maybe put a pin in this,

01:28:06

but recognize that these loops exist

01:28:09

and figure out for yourself how you want to use them

01:28:14

to advance your personal agendas,

01:28:18

which can be positive or negative.

01:28:21

You could do it in service of other people,

01:28:24

which I think he would maybe kind of argue

01:28:28

that if you're talking about your life's purpose,

01:28:30

that that is an important thing,

01:28:32

'cause that kind of gets into the next chapter.

01:28:35

But there's definitely the Robert Green style,

01:28:39

48 Laws of Power,

01:28:40

you could use this to manipulate people too, if you want.

01:28:43

- Yep.

01:28:44

Yep.

01:28:45

All right, let's get to the last chapter,

01:28:50

which is about happiness.

01:28:51

Now, he takes the last chapter

01:28:56

and he centers it around Benedictine monks in New Mexico.

01:29:01

And his visit to this Benedictine monastery,

01:29:05

this was very reminiscent of another book that I've read

01:29:09

by, I'm forgetting his name right now,

01:29:11

but it's called "Live Not By Lies"

01:29:14

and where he basically looks at the Benedictine monks as well.

01:29:18

And I think this is just an absolutely fascinating

01:29:23

group of people to look at.

01:29:24

And there are parts of their livelihood

01:29:27

that I am jealous of,

01:29:29

that I would love to try out for an extended period of time.

01:29:33

So we were talking about the abyss earlier.

01:29:35

I gave you one of my abyss things,

01:29:38

but the second one would be doing this, right?

01:29:42

Like going to one of these and saying,

01:29:43

like, I'm just gonna live there for a month

01:29:44

and I'm gonna see what that's like.

01:29:46

But the whole point of this is he goes to this monastery

01:29:50

and he lives with the monks for, I think, a week.

01:29:53

Is that right, Mike?

01:29:54

I think he's stay there for a week.

01:29:56

- I forget the timeframe,

01:29:59

but I think it sorta doesn't matter.

01:30:04

The takeaway from the story is that it sounds extreme

01:30:07

when he gets there and by the end,

01:30:09

he doesn't really wanna leave.

01:30:10

- Exactly, exactly.

01:30:12

So he's learning about this idea of what we think happiness is

01:30:16

and then where actual happiness comes from.

01:30:20

He quotes Thomas Aquinas a bunch of times,

01:30:23

happiness is the goal of all human activity,

01:30:24

the search for happiness is a common ground

01:30:26

on which human desires all human ambitions meet.

01:30:30

There's all these different kind of references here.

01:30:32

What's interesting about this chapter,

01:30:34

and I really was not expecting it at all,

01:30:37

is he goes into this whole section

01:30:39

about talking about his background

01:30:42

and a Mormon, a universalist,

01:30:44

then being a self-proclaimed, like,

01:30:46

and he says this,

01:30:47

self-proclaimed, like, ignorant/juvenau atheist,

01:30:50

and then being a deist, right?

01:30:52

So it's interesting that he goes into his kind of religious

01:30:56

journey and it would make sense,

01:30:57

I mean, he went to a Benedictine monastery,

01:30:59

so it makes sense that that would come out.

01:31:02

But he calls out the fact that basically,

01:31:05

we should challenge ourselves physically,

01:31:08

intellectually, spiritually,

01:31:09

because that will make us stronger and happier.

01:31:12

He calls out deprivation that there are times

01:31:14

when we should deprive ourselves intentionally

01:31:16

because that deprivation,

01:31:18

when we get the thing back,

01:31:19

will lead to a happier attitude

01:31:22

and more gratitude toward that thing.

01:31:25

He calls out the difference between loneliness and solitude,

01:31:27

which I had never heard anybody break those two down,

01:31:29

but I really liked it,

01:31:30

but basically that solitude is intentional,

01:31:33

and then, you know, he picks a couple of different examples

01:31:37

of people talking about how solitude led them to,

01:31:39

you know, their great discoveries

01:31:41

or their different things.

01:31:43

So overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting chapter.

01:31:47

- Yeah, the solitude, he's talking about it longer timeframes,

01:31:53

but this is kind of the personal retreat stuff for me

01:31:58

and why I advocate for getting away,

01:32:01

not just to a different place,

01:32:03

but some place that you're not really interacting

01:32:08

with other people.

01:32:09

I think I've mentioned to you the getaway houses

01:32:11

that I've been going to lately,

01:32:13

that's perfect for this sort of stuff.

01:32:17

And there is something about that solitude,

01:32:20

not just in terms of thinking more clearly,

01:32:23

but when you do it,

01:32:26

especially the first couple times,

01:32:28

it feels really uncomfortable.

01:32:30

And then afterwards,

01:32:32

you feel this calmness,

01:32:35

like you're glad that you did it.

01:32:38

And so I think that's an important point

01:32:42

and you don't need to go visit a monastery for a week

01:32:47

in order to start implementing elements of it.

01:32:49

That's kind of the point that I want to make here.

01:32:51

The other thing from this that really stood out to me,

01:32:56

so there's this running bit on focus

01:33:00

where Mike tries mindfulness meditation.

01:33:04

It doesn't stick.

01:33:06

David talks about the benefits of it

01:33:08

and Mike tries it again and it repeats.

01:33:12

And I've kind of always thought

01:33:14

that one of the reasons maybe

01:33:17

that I have trouble getting this to stick

01:33:20

is that I have a daily prayer habit.

01:33:23

So I've been trying to build mindfulness meditation

01:33:26

on top of that.

01:33:28

And I have never, I don't think explicitly said,

01:33:32

well, I don't need to do mindfulness meditation

01:33:34

'cause I'm already getting the benefits

01:33:36

from the prayer practice.

01:33:38

But I think Michael Easter just gave me the data

01:33:41

that allows me to come to grips with this.

01:33:45

- Yes, that actually makes a lot of sense.

01:33:47

- Yeah, he mentions that meditation and prayer

01:33:50

both reduce stress and help us control our emotions.

01:33:52

And I don't know specifically which study that comes from,

01:33:57

but it kind of occurs to me, oh yeah, I guess,

01:33:59

that these are kind of related.

01:34:01

And David's kind of alluded to this,

01:34:03

but I feel like I still want to try to build

01:34:08

a little bit more mindfulness into my day to day,

01:34:14

but I'm not viewing it anymore as something additional

01:34:19

that has to be tacked on to the prayer habit.

01:34:23

Like prayer is already a version of this.

01:34:26

Like I'm already kind of doing this.

01:34:28

So made me feel a little bit, a little bit better.

01:34:32

I didn't see that conversation going that way.

01:34:34

And I'm really glad 'cause that actually makes a lot of sense

01:34:37

on why I've heard you try and not do it.

01:34:41

Try and not do it, try and not do it.

01:34:44

- Yeah, just when things get busy,

01:34:46

it just never really seems to stick.

01:34:48

And that would make sense while like when I do it,

01:34:50

I don't realize the huge impact

01:34:54

'cause I've already kind of achieved the payoff.

01:34:58

So, but I also like the section in here about finding meaning

01:35:03

in our lives and stuff like that, obviously.

01:35:05

We're wrapping up the Life theme cohort

01:35:08

as we record this next week is the one

01:35:10

where people are gonna share their Life theme,

01:35:12

which I'm looking forward to.

01:35:14

But I have one additional action item

01:35:17

that comes out of this section

01:35:20

because this is not something new.

01:35:22

I've heard versions of this before,

01:35:23

but the scientific source of this

01:35:27

is the monk that he was talking to.

01:35:30

About four hours of creative work per day is the limit.

01:35:34

He makes the point that you can actually do those four hours

01:35:38

of work every day.

01:35:40

You don't need to take a day off, seven days in a row,

01:35:43

which I'm not going to do that.

01:35:46

But I do think that there are limits to creative work

01:35:51

that when I get focused on a project,

01:35:56

I just kind of try to blow through.

01:35:59

And usually what happens when I do that is the next day,

01:36:03

I have a terribly unproductive day

01:36:05

and I don't feel like doing anything.

01:36:08

So, I don't know exactly how I wanna manage this.

01:36:10

The action item I'm gonna take away from this is

01:36:13

I want to revisit my ideal week,

01:36:16

which I recently created as a table in Obsidian, of course.

01:36:21

(laughs)

01:36:22

But I wanna take a look at that and try to block

01:36:26

four hours every day for the real creative work.

01:36:31

Kind of the way I see this going is the mornings

01:36:34

are gonna be the creative time.

01:36:36

And by the time I disconnect around noon,

01:36:40

I'd like to start a little bit earlier.

01:36:41

So I get done maybe 11 a.m.

01:36:44

And then I can go for a run, work out, whatever,

01:36:46

and then have lunch.

01:36:48

But in the afternoon, that would be the admin stuff.

01:36:52

And maybe just more blocks of thinking time,

01:36:57

be curious about less structure.

01:37:00

I am not quite sure where podcasts fit into this.

01:37:05

I kind of feel that by the time I sit down to talk

01:37:13

into a microphone, the hard work, hard creative work

01:37:18

has already been done in preparing the outline.

01:37:21

This is actually the easy part for me.

01:37:24

So I may just keep this in the afternoon,

01:37:28

but I have to think about that.

01:37:30

- Well, and you'll know if you're toast, right?

01:37:32

Like if you do this for a week or whatever,

01:37:34

and you get into those podcasting sessions

01:37:36

and you're like, nope, it's way more creative

01:37:39

than I thought it was.

01:37:40

Like you'll know that pretty quick, I think.

01:37:43

- Yeah, I think also, I gotta think about this more.

01:37:47

I think it's not real clean and clear,

01:37:52

but I will share that I have noticed,

01:37:56

usually Thursday afternoons, this one got moved

01:37:59

because scheduling, and we had to do this one

01:38:03

in the afternoon.

01:38:04

But a lot of times, what I'll try to do when I have a video,

01:38:07

I'll record Thursday afternoons

01:38:10

after we've recorded bookworm.

01:38:12

And I'll notice after the fact,

01:38:14

I know everything about presenting and exaggerate

01:38:18

your facial expressions, be over the top,

01:38:21

gooberish, smiling all the time,

01:38:23

but still sometimes I record,

01:38:25

and then I look at the video later

01:38:26

and I'm like, why am I so angry?

01:38:28

(laughs)

01:38:29

And it's probably just because I'm drained.

01:38:32

- Why am I so angry?

01:38:35

(laughs)

01:38:37

(laughs)

01:38:38

All right, Mike, we gotta move to that blog.

01:38:40

Okay, so the epilogue is super short in this book,

01:38:43

but this is kind of where the abyss idea came from.

01:38:46

Basically, he kind of puts a bow

01:38:50

and then recaps everything.

01:38:51

So you call this the epilogue,

01:38:53

you call it a summary of the book

01:38:54

'cause he does summarize everything

01:38:56

into kind of a tight little package here.

01:38:59

But basically, one of the main drivers is

01:39:02

the scarcity loop, we often flip it,

01:39:05

where we push for the short-term comforts

01:39:08

kind of at the downfall of the long-term happiness, right?

01:39:12

That would be a fairly succinct way to say that.

01:39:16

And that we should find more of these abyss-like opportunities

01:39:21

that actually help us to live in new ways

01:39:24

and that help us build endurance

01:39:25

and help us kind of work through these harder things

01:39:28

because we'll get the longer-term reward from that.

01:39:33

Other than that in the summary

01:39:35

and just kind of revisiting everything again,

01:39:37

not too much in the epilogue.

01:39:40

- Yeah, I think the big takeaway

01:39:41

is that we can shift scarcity loops into abundance loops,

01:39:45

which would be a much more powerful way to end the book

01:39:50

if there were some visuals associated with this.

01:39:53

- I can get a sense for style and rating,

01:39:57

but we'll hold off on that for a little bit.

01:39:59

(laughing)

01:40:00

All right, so Mike, let's move into action items.

01:40:03

We've kind of touched on these a little bit,

01:40:05

but let's summarize them as we go.

01:40:07

My book, I'll start with my action items.

01:40:10

So one, I have two coming out of this book.

01:40:14

In areas where I feel like I'm lacking moderation,

01:40:16

I wanna apply the scarcity loop.

01:40:18

So I wanna say, okay, I think I'm doing too much

01:40:22

of whatever it might be.

01:40:23

How do I address one of those three points to overcome

01:40:27

or get out of that?

01:40:28

Or how do I turn it into abundance loop?

01:40:30

The second one would be to take a month

01:40:33

and try to get rid of one thing every day.

01:40:37

So if I take a month,

01:40:37

I'm gonna get rid of 30 things out of my house

01:40:39

and just see what that.

01:40:40

And I've heard of this in other places, right?

01:40:42

So this is not a new concept,

01:40:43

but take a month and try to get rid of a thing every day.

01:40:46

And this would be my idea of getting towards more gear

01:40:48

and not stuff, 'cause I'd have to look at a thing

01:40:50

and say, is this gear, is this stuff?

01:40:52

Is this gear, is this stuff?

01:40:53

I think those are my two takeaways.

01:40:55

So Mike, what do you have?

01:40:57

- I've got four, and I think I mentioned all of these.

01:41:00

Ask, do I wanna be right or do I wanna be happy?

01:41:02

And that's not ask like out loud,

01:41:04

but just consider when I'm about to be actually, you know?

01:41:08

(laughs)

01:41:10

I want to decide on purchasing decisions quickly

01:41:13

within 60 seconds and avoid finding justification

01:41:16

for stuff that I don't need.

01:41:18

I wanna collect gear, not stuff,

01:41:19

things that are actually useful.

01:41:21

And I want to revisit my ideal week

01:41:23

and try to do four hours of creative work per day.

01:41:27

- Wonderful.

01:41:29

Okay, so style and rating now.

01:41:31

This was my book.

01:41:33

So overall, my comments and my rating

01:41:38

were probably not going to go hand in hand.

01:41:41

I like the stories.

01:41:43

Like I thought they were pretty good.

01:41:45

I was engaged by them.

01:41:47

I did not think that they always hit the theme

01:41:51

or the thread of what the book was trying to cover.

01:41:55

I think that's the biggest downfall I have with this book

01:41:57

is I like the scarcity loop idea.

01:42:00

I really like the thread that could have been there

01:42:03

throughout this entire book.

01:42:05

I think we could have knocked,

01:42:07

I mean, you've heard this for me before

01:42:09

and you're gonna hear this for me again.

01:42:10

I think we could have knocked 100 pages off this book

01:42:12

and it gets a lot better.

01:42:14

Just because I think it would have been a lot tighter,

01:42:15

it'd have forced you to make it a lot tighter

01:42:17

and it would have made you stick to that scarcity loop idea.

01:42:21

And maybe we'd have had one or two less stories

01:42:24

or one or two less chapters.

01:42:25

So overall, while I enjoyed the stories,

01:42:29

I don't have any problem with the way Easter writes.

01:42:33

I don't have any problem with the way he tells a story.

01:42:37

I didn't have a problem with the way he connected that through.

01:42:39

I'm gonna give this book a three

01:42:43

and it's primarily based on the fact

01:42:45

that I like the scarcity loop

01:42:46

and I like the way that that could have

01:42:48

positive impact in my life.

01:42:51

It's a mic you're up.

01:42:53

- Sure.

01:42:54

I agree with your rating.

01:42:55

I'm gonna rate it 3.02.

01:42:57

And I think that there is an alternate scenario

01:43:00

where this actually is higher

01:43:02

and that is if you just want to be entertained,

01:43:07

kind of like an edutainment type of book,

01:43:11

this would be a good one

01:43:12

'cause it is a really engaging style

01:43:17

and the stories that he tells are really good.

01:43:20

But when we talk about books for bookworm,

01:43:23

I think the prevailing mindset often is,

01:43:27

I wanna read this book

01:43:28

because I believe it's gonna solve a problem that I have

01:43:31

and the thing that could solve the problem

01:43:34

that you have would be applying the information

01:43:38

regarding the scarcity loop and the abundance loop.

01:43:42

And that is not that heavy.

01:43:46

It's not that strong.

01:43:47

Like it's kind of loosely there in the background

01:43:50

as the foundation for all the cool stories

01:43:53

that he's gonna tell.

01:43:55

Not to say that there's not stuff you can't get

01:43:57

from the stories.

01:43:58

All of my action items came from

01:44:01

those types of chapters, I believe.

01:44:02

I don't think there was a single one from the first five.

01:44:07

Yeah, there wasn't.

01:44:08

They were all from the stories that he was telling,

01:44:10

which are really fun and interesting to read.

01:44:15

But I feel like the main message of the book

01:44:17

of the scarcity loop anyways is chapters one through four.

01:44:21

I don't even know, that's like gotta be less than 100 pages.

01:44:24

So when you were talking about 100 pages being chopped off,

01:44:27

I was gonna ask you which 100 pages.

01:44:30

It would not be that part, that's for sure.

01:44:32

Yeah, but there is a book that is just fun to read

01:44:36

that does remove those 100 pages.

01:44:39

And then it's just about chapter five on, I think.

01:44:43

But yeah, I don't think that's why you picked the book.

01:44:45

I don't think that's why a lot of bookworm listeners

01:44:48

would pick up a book like this

01:44:51

when he started talking about the scarcity loop.

01:44:54

I anticipated kind of James Clear,

01:44:57

atomic habit style approach towards the scarcity loop.

01:45:02

And that is definitely not what we got.

01:45:06

So I think it actually leaves you entertained,

01:45:09

but with maybe a lot more questions than answers by the end.

01:45:13

And I've mentioned this a couple times,

01:45:15

but I cannot fathom why there is not a visual

01:45:18

associated with this.

01:45:19

I mean, literally just a circle

01:45:21

with the three different things.

01:45:22

You could go a lot further with that.

01:45:24

I mean, you could have them go the other way

01:45:26

when you're talking about the abundance loop

01:45:29

and you gotta have this mindset shift

01:45:31

to go from one direction to the next.

01:45:32

Not that that is necessary, but what that does,

01:45:36

I feel like if you are really,

01:45:38

this is what the idea I want people to walk away

01:45:40

from this book with, those visuals are a way

01:45:44

to cement it in people's brains.

01:45:46

Now we talked through it for over an hour and a half.

01:45:50

So we're gonna remember the conversation,

01:45:52

but I think if most people pick up the book

01:45:54

and they read through it,

01:45:55

you might forget the scarcity loop specifics

01:45:58

by the time you get to the end,

01:46:00

which I think is probably not his intended effect here,

01:46:03

but he's a great writer.

01:46:05

So I kind of feel a little bit confused by this book,

01:46:09

but in terms of like actionable information, 3.0,

01:46:13

in terms of fun entertaining read

01:46:17

that you're gonna get something out of,

01:46:19

if that's what you were going into it for,

01:46:20

then it's probably a 4.0, honestly,

01:46:22

'cause his writing's really good.

01:46:24

There wasn't a point in this book where I was like,

01:46:26

"Oh, I wish this would be over,"

01:46:27

even though it's almost 300 pages long.

01:46:30

All right, so let's put scarcity brain on the shelf.

01:46:34

Mike, you have the next book.

01:46:35

So what are we coming up with next?

01:46:38

Radical Cander by Kim Scott,

01:46:40

one of the culture books that comes up all the time

01:46:44

in terms of creating culture and organizations.

01:46:47

And when I heard that this was a topic

01:46:48

you were interested in,

01:46:50

figured this would be a fun conversation.

01:46:54

Outstanding.

01:46:55

So I have the next book then,

01:46:56

and as you're prepping for two episodes from now,

01:47:00

I stole a book from Mike.

01:47:03

He, I had thrown a couple ideas by him.

01:47:05

So I'm still learning kind of the bookworm books

01:47:08

and what would be best for the show,

01:47:10

but we're gonna do co-intelligence

01:47:12

and the subtitles, "Living and Working with AI,"

01:47:14

and it's by Ethan Mullick.

01:47:16

So I've wanted to do an AI book.

01:47:17

So Mike had one on the ready.

01:47:20

- Yeah, I wish I could remember

01:47:21

where I heard that recommendation,

01:47:23

but it was definitely from somebody

01:47:25

whose recommendations I trust.

01:47:28

When I trust a recommendation,

01:47:30

I buy the book right away.

01:47:31

So this is one that was sitting on my bookshelf.

01:47:32

I came across it the other day when I was cleaning up

01:47:35

and I was like, "Kori wanted to read an AI book.

01:47:36

"I should tell him about this."

01:47:37

- So thank you, thank you for that.

01:47:39

Thank you for entertaining my AI desire.

01:47:42

Mike, do you have any gap books

01:47:43

for this next period of time?

01:47:46

- Well, I guess I could try to read the para method.

01:47:48

It didn't happen last time.

01:47:50

So I'll list that one again.

01:47:53

- Okay, so we went to Moab for a little family vacation

01:47:58

and then between that and graduation

01:48:00

and I had no time to do anything

01:48:03

other than the bare minimum of life.

01:48:06

So I'm still on liminal thinking.

01:48:08

Liminal thinking, I'm gonna get to it.

01:48:11

I'm gonna get to it.

01:48:12

- All right.

01:48:13

- That's a point.

01:48:15

(laughs)

01:48:15

So thank you, everybody.

01:48:17

This will wrap us up for today.

01:48:20

If you are interested in becoming a Bookworm Pro subscriber,

01:48:25

we'd love that.

01:48:27

It helps kind of support the show

01:48:29

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01:48:32

The things you get there

01:48:33

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01:48:36

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01:48:38

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01:48:41

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01:48:43

Today we talked about abysses

01:48:45

and what our abysses would be.

01:48:47

- Abyssai?

01:48:49

- Abyssai, I don't know what is the plural of abysses.

01:48:51

(laughs)

01:48:53

But you also, it's an ad-free show.

01:48:57

You get early access to it.

01:48:59

There's a Bookworm wallpaper.

01:49:01

So if you're interested in that,

01:49:02

you can head over to patreon.com/bookwormfm

01:49:06

and we appreciate you listening.

01:49:09

We appreciate you being members and subscribers

01:49:11

and we just thank you all for being fans of the show.

01:49:15

So appreciate it.

01:49:16

- Awesome.

01:49:17

And if you're reading along with us,

01:49:18

Pick Up Radical Candor by Kim Scott,

01:49:20

and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.