Bookworm Transcripts

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Mike, why don't you start us on how you did with your action items?

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Well, I did okay.

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I don't think that I did something that sucks every day.

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Although you could say my hard thing has been writing.

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I've written probably 65,000 words in the last three weeks.

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Wow.

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Many of them are for the Pro Vault, which I squeezed out just in time because I mentioned

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it on the last episode and then forgot about it until I was reviewing.

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I created a landing page with a 20-minute visual tour of what that all looks like, but

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I've been creating how-tusical along with that.

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Then I've also had a couple longer articles that I've had to write.

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That's a lot of words and now that I got past all the deadlines and the writing is done

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for the Pro Vault, stuff like that, I'm kind of taking a step back and asking myself,

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how did I manage to do that?

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Yes.

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But that's not what I intended to do, so I don't think I can mark that one as complete.

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That one's probably got a red X, to be honest.

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I'm trying to justify it live, I guess.

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If I'm being real, I don't think I did it.

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That's a lot of words in three weeks.

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There's a lot of words in three weeks.

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It is, well, I don't know.

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I guess I'll mark it as complete then if you're going to talk me into it.

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The other one I did have more success with the content audit.

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The way I did this was, initially I was thinking I'm going to go through and think about who

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I'm following and what are the sources of the information that I am consuming because

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I try to be intentional about that stuff.

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I recognize that everything that I create is downstream from something that I consume.

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The intention was to go through the people that I follow or the subscriptions in YouTube

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and stuff like that.

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What I ended up coming to was there are certain types of things that I just don't want on

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my phone, which is where I would tend to consume this stuff.

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I deleted X, I deleted Instagram, and I want to engage with those things only on my computer.

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We're talking a little bit in the pro show about my preference for having devices for

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specific context.

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I'm recognizing that by default, the social media stuff has crept back onto my mobile device

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and I want to draw a hard line and say no, that is not even possible there.

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Regardless of whether I'm looking at my PKM list in Twitter or whatever, it's just not

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the right place for that.

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There are tools that I can use when I do this on the Mac.

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There's all sorts of different Chrome extensions and things where I can block the For You tab

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because that's the thing I don't want to fall into anyway.

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I just want to see the stuff I've decided I want to see.

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I don't want to see what the algorithm thinks I should be interested in.

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I'm going to say that that has been the result of my content audit, but it was a little bit

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different than I initially thought going into it.

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I know you had the same action item, so how did you do with yours?

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I did pretty well with the content audit and what I can tell you is I don't like some of

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the content that I consume regularly.

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I think it's just because it's low quality.

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There's high quality content, there's low quality content.

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The books we read, whether I like the book or not, is their high quality.

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People have thought critically about those.

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It's been reviewed, all of those things.

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I consider that high quality.

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Certain articles that I'll read or other works that I'll read online, those are high quality.

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I'm good with those.

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I spend a lot of time just in the in-between moments looking at news headlines or looking

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at slick deals or looking at some other silly thing that hacker news or something like that.

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Every once in a while, it goes back to scarcity brain.

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It goes back to scarcity brain.

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Where I get enough positive hits on those that it keeps me doing it.

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At the same time, most of the time it's junk and most of the time it's just wasted time.

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My content audit says get rid of that.

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I know you have a strategy where you'll always have a book in your hand or you'll always

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have something there that way you have that.

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I'm sure you don't 100% of the time go to that book.

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But at the same time, that is where I tied into the rearrange your physical environment.

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How do I make sure I have a thing that when my brain goes, I want something to do right

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now.

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It's a high quality thing.

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It's not a low quality thing.

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What I want to think about more is is there an RSS type reader?

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Is there a pocket save for later kind of a thing where I've got some canned high quality

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material that I've stocked away and then I can go and I can grab that high quality

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material as opposed to instead of going to the normal three websites that I always go

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to that are annoying and low quality.

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I did not develop, I guess that is a content strategy, but I didn't sit down and think

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of a very rigorous content strategy.

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I didn't make it that far in that one.

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So that was number one.

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So I would say that's like, I don't know, if we're going to go red X green check mark,

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this was more of like yellow light on the thing.

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I was kind of in the middle of that one.

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We can incorporate some other colors in here.

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That's what, do you ever listen to Conduit on Relay?

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I do, I do, yes.

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Yeah, so they have basically just red, yellow and green emojis, I think, and people just

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pick a whatever emoji when they're describing their own connections they call them.

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So I'm definitely in the yellow.

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I'm definitely in the yellow in this one.

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The next one I have was think about something that's anxious or bothering me, like, and

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then think about it from another perspective or write about it from another perspective.

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I'm yellow in this one too because I didn't write about it from another perspective, but

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I thought about it from another perspective.

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So I had one of these pop up and kind of went through it and I thought about it from the

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perspective of a different individual who has a very different reason for wanting things

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done in a way that's different than I do.

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I'm trying to be very vague here.

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But at the same time, I understand why they would want it done that way, even though I

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disagree with it and I don't want it to be done that way.

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I get it and it made sense and it kind of made me go, okay, Corey, just be okay with

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that.

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You know, lose this one.

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It's okay to lose this one and not fight the fight on this one.

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It's not worth it.

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The last one and I got a green check mark on this one.

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It's look up the MBSR, which is mindfulness based stress reduction.

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And I had no idea that this is like actually a real legitimate thing developed by medical

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professionals.

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It's been around for like, I don't know, 30 years or something like that, 40 years.

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There's a National Institute of Health article on it.

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UMass Memorial Health has this whole like program that you can do with it.

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So mindfulness based stress reduction is a thing.

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There's supposedly some evidence that it actually can help, you know, with some illnesses,

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some like chronic illnesses.

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So pretty cool.

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That was fun to look up and realize it seems like a very well resourced and, you know,

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well researched kind of thing.

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So that's pretty interesting.

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So those are my three action items.

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You ready to get in today's book?

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Let's do it.

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All right.

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So today's book is called the ritual effect from habit to ritual harness the surprising

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power of everyday actions.

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And it's by a guy named Michael Norton and Michael Norton is the Harvard M. Briarley

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Professor of Business Administration at Harvard.

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He's written some other books and his, you know, they put the praise for the shout outs

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and the call outs on the back of the book.

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He's got some big names on here.

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So he's got, you know, Arthur Brooks, who's another professor at Harvard Business School.

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He's got Charles Duhigg on there, which we've read super communicators and Mike and Mike

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is done the power of habit.

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And then Angela Duckworth who wrote, wrote grit.

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So he's got some big names endorsing the book.

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Overall, the book is about the idea of rituals, but not the idea.

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And we're going to get into this.

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It's not the idea of what we would consider legacy rituals, which I think is the way I

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went into this book thinking about like the big, you know, monster legacy rituals that

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everybody thinks about, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.

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But it's more of the everyday rituals.

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It's more of the ones that you don't really pay attention to as much.

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But then you end up realizing that they are rituals.

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This book is much more a summary of his research and the research that's been done in the

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ritual space than I anticipated it to be and then I thought it was going to be.

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So yeah, that was not, that was not really what I wanted it to be.

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But at the same time, I walked into that one.

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Mike, what do you think when you're first, first thoughts on the book?

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So my first thoughts were kind of, why are we reading this, to be honest?

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I thought it was going to be more like a habits book.

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And I'm glad it wasn't.

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It's interesting to hear that you thought it was going to be more like legacy rituals

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as opposed to, I guess I would define it as daily rituals and how much of our life is

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these routines that we've established and the meaning and the benefit that comes from

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having those things.

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So I was skeptical at first.

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The cover has a white bathtub with a red apple on it, which still makes absolutely no sense

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to me.

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It's Agatha Christie.

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Okay.

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Remember she would eat the apple in the bathtub and that was one of the rituals he described

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at the very beginning of the book is that's one of hers, right?

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So I do remember some of the rituals that he shared.

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There was a writer who would strip down naked and then his butler basically wouldn't give

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him his clothes back until he had achieved his writing goal for the day.

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That's definitely not like the majority of the material in this book.

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But if you are interested in that sort of thing, by the way, there's a really good book

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called Daily Rituals, I think, by Mason Curry.

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And it's just a whole bunch of the morning, evening, crazy, creative routines by people

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who do really impressive stuff.

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Not just like artists and writers, but scientists, mathematicians, all sorts of people.

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So yeah, I didn't make that connection with the beginning.

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I don't know why.

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Maybe they were only a handful of those, but apparently that one didn't land.

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I do think once I got into the first part of the book, though, I saw that I was becoming

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more and more optimistic.

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Okay.

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We'll talk through the different parts here, but it wasn't exactly what I thought.

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And I think that's a good thing.

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Okay.

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All right.

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So that's not a, that's not like a glowing review going into it, but that's okay.

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We're going to talk about it.

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I don't know what I thought about this book either when I picked it.

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I was like, I'm not sure.

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It seems like an interesting one to read.

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I like the idea of ritual.

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I hadn't even like the tagline where it says from habit to ritual, I hadn't even like

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processed that in my brain.

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So I just more thought of like, Oh, it'd be interesting to think about like rituals and

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like what are the rituals that I engage in often and how to, why do I engage in those?

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But I really had very little, you know, motivation other than that.

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I thought it looked, looked pretty good.

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Book breaks down into four parts.

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You've got what rituals do.

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Part two.

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Just for ourselves, part three, rituals and relationships, part four, rituals at work and

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in the world.

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And then within those, there's about three chapters in each section.

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There's a total of 13 chapters.

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There's a preface and an epilogue.

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And it breaks down in that way.

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I will tell you that some of these parts I found more interesting than others, not that

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I didn't understand what he was doing, but it felt very much like a, this is where we've

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done the work.

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So therefore, this is going to be this part of the book, not this is the story I want

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to tell and the threat I'm trying to weave here.

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So therefore it made sense in that way, which I think that detracted from the book for me,

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right?

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Like I felt like at times we would just shift into a different thing and it's like, why

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do we shift into this?

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Oh, it's because you want to talk about this research study that you or one of your colleagues

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did or a couple of these research studies that you were one of your colleagues did.

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From a reading standpoint, I thought this book was really easy to read.

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It was really fast.

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I didn't think it was a slog in terms of the reading style.

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There were times where I was just more or less interested in it.

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So that's my overview, anything else you want to do the overview before we get rolling into

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the actual content?

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Nah, I think that's pretty good.

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Let's get into the book.

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Alright, so we're getting into the book now.

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So the preface is very short.

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So I don't think it's worth us taking the individual time.

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Mike, I actually think I want to do this book in parts.

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I think it's going to make more sense instead of doing it in 13 chapters to do it in parts.

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If you're okay with that.

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So the part one is called what rituals do.

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It's got three chapters in it.

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It's got three full chapters in the preface.

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It's got the preface.

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What are rituals?

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You get out of it what you put in and then the ritual effect.

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And it's kind of setting the stage for, hey, we're going to talk about rituals.

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In this section, it's this idea of legacy rituals, which you can essentially think of

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legacy rituals as anything that's connected to a bigger institution.

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That's the way I would think about them.

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So a religion would have rituals, a holiday would have rituals.

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Like they're these bigger ones that kind of get passed down to you.

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You have less agency in the fact that you're going to do them, but everybody does them.

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We all do this thing around this time of the year.

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So that would be a legacy ritual.

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Then he's going to counteract that with this idea of these everyday rituals.

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These things that really we're doing, they're not habits, but they're more meaningful than

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that.

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And we do them and we sometimes often don't even realize we're doing them.

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We have these rituals that we don't even realize we're doing.

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He gives some examples of these throughout the what are rituals and he delineates them

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from habits.

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We can talk about whether we like the way he did that or not.

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He talks about this idea of you get out what you put in where essentially we feel more strongly

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about the rituals that we create as opposed to the ones that were given to us or the ones

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that were thrust upon us.

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And then he goes into the ritual effect chapter is more of like, okay, why do rituals even

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impact us?

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What is the effect of them on us and why do we latch onto them and why do we care about

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them?

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So that's essentially the overall gist of part one.

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Mike, I want to take you to what did you think about his discussion between habits and rituals?

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What were your thoughts there when he separates these two things out?

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This is one of the big aha moments for me I think with this book was the difference between

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habits and rituals.

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I never really thought about it this way before, but I like the way that he broke these apart.

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So habits are the what that's something that we do and those are things that generally

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are used to automate and they help us get things done.

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And I just got done with the whole life HQ.

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I have a section in there on habit tracking that was actually my most recent YouTube video

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as we record this.

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Hopefully I'll get another one out before this goes live.

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But I was walking through in that video how I built a habit tracker in obsidian.

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So I've long had morning routines, I've long had evening routines.

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And I've tried to automate certain things in those morning and evening routines.

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And then the habit tracker that I've been using is kind of additional things on top of that

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that really just aren't creased yet.

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So I'm not tracking everything, but I'm really just trying to get to the point where these

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things are automated like he describes in this particular book.

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But then rituals he defines as the how, the specific way that we do something.

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And if habits automate us, then rituals animate us, they enhance and enchant our lives.

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And when I heard that word enchant, I'm like, oh, that's kind of clever.

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But the more I think about it, I think that that's actually pretty accurate.

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I think that's a good descriptor for what these rituals do.

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And we were kind of talking earlier about how there are certain people who have these

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crazy rituals, but they don't always need to look like that.

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And kind of the point he makes is that we've all got these little things that we do.

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And if we think about them, I think they can mean a lot to us.

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One of the rituals that I've established in my family just got back.

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We're recording this on a Monday, Monday mornings are the day that I take one of my

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kids to the coffee shop and we get coffee and play games.

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And I'm realizing that that is a ritual that I started doing because I wanted to build

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a platform to speak into their lives as they got older.

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But it kind of hit me as I was reading this book that it's cool that my kids really look

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forward to that day with dad.

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It has become a ritual for them in a way that I didn't think it was going to become a ritual.

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I got just viewing it from my perspective initially.

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And then that got me thinking about all of the different little things that I could do

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in my day that could add more meaning.

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And they don't have to be crazy.

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I guess another ritual that I came up with, which is meaningful to me, is that when I

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do publish a YouTube video, as a way of celebrating, there's a Bobaty place in Appleton and I'll

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go get a Bobaty.

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And that's the only time that I go out of my way to get the Bobaty.

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I love Bobaty.

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I drink it every day if I had the means.

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Probably not healthy for me.

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But I could occasionally just go get a Bobaty.

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But I've defined that as a part of the ritual and the celebration for publishing a YouTube

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video.

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So as I'm working on the YouTube video now, I look forward to the Bobaty.

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It sounds ridiculous.

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Like you're grown adult.

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You can go buy a Bobaty if you want.

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But that's like how I've defined it.

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And I don't think about it outside of that and it creates this anticipation and something

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that I look forward to.

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So again, the whole idea of rituals, if you were to ask me as I'm starting part one, what

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is a ritual, I probably would have defined it as the legacy type rituals that you were

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mentioning at the beginning.

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But this kind of took me in a different path and it really got me thinking about things

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in a different way.

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And I'm glad that it went that direction to be honest.

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Yeah.

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My biggest example that was running through my brain while I was doing this is when I

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write things or when I need to write critically, I have a ritual that I do.

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And it involves a coffee shop, it involves the process to get there, setting up, clearing

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my brain.

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There is this process and it is amazing to me that how much more effective I am at writing

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when that ritual happens before I try to sit down and write.

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Like before I try to sit down and actually put words on paper.

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And it's only for a specific type of writing.

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Like I can write other things that are less meaningful.

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But it's like if it's an important piece of work that I need to write and I backed into

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that.

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Like it wasn't like I designed that ritual and said, "Oh, I'm going to do this and this

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and this and this."

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And then I follow that checklist every time I do it.

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It was more a matter of these are the things I find myself consistently doing.

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And when I do those, I have a good writing day.

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And when I don't do those, I don't have a good writing day.

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And it was this, you brought it up, but it's this idea of like this delight or wonder

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or piece.

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And it made me think about like rituals tying into focus and rituals tying into these other

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aspects of our life in a ways that we wouldn't necessarily think that they do that.

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So like I really liked, whereas habits aren't like that.

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Like I don't think, "Oh, what do I do?"

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Before I leave the house every day, I make sure I lock the door or I check the burner

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or whatever it is.

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That doesn't bring me joined the light.

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That's just a habit that I do because I want to make sure the burner is off.

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But there are these other things that like really tie into this joined the light and this

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sense of focus.

00:22:24

I thought chapter two was pretty straightforward.

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Okay, if you develop it yourself, you tend to like it more.

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And the big example here was the IKEA effect.

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You like the furniture more because you built it.

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I think that's very true.

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Like the dinner tastes better because you cooked it.

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You know, like all of those things, I think that was a pretty easy one.

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So I'm going to gloss over chapter two and feel free to bring us back if you want to

00:22:48

hit anything hard on chapter two.

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Chapter three, I thought was interesting because it ties into some of these more psychological

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ideas, I guess that you would link them into rituals.

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So operant conditioning, action insight, casual opacity, so operant conditioning.

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It's basically that good action outcomes lead to more of the same.

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So when we do a thing and we get a good outcome out of it, we then will repeat that thing.

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We'll repeat that thing and we'll repeat that thing where we won't do that with ideas

00:23:18

that or actions that produce a bad outcome.

00:23:21

We'll figure out how way to adapt those.

00:23:23

And I think that's a really interesting concept.

00:23:25

It's been around for a very, very long time, but I think it's a really interesting concept.

00:23:28

Action insight that any action can be identified by mechanical parts, the literal movements,

00:23:34

and then the high level aspirations that inform it.

00:23:36

And his point is rituals get us more into those high level aspirations that inform it.

00:23:41

And I think this is where maybe Mike, you know, you differ a little bit where, you know,

00:23:46

it's said about how actions and rituals, I think you think very critically about those

00:23:49

high level aspirations, just, you know, knowing you, right, to where like maybe some of more

00:23:54

of your what you call habits are actual rituals because you've thought about the high level

00:23:59

aspiration behind that, behind that habit.

00:24:01

Whereas he's probably writing for a more, you know, general audience where it's like,

00:24:04

oh, the habit is just a habit.

00:24:05

And then they're doing these high level aspirations on the more ritual, ritualistic things.

00:24:10

I'll talk about the last one that I'll open it back up to you.

00:24:13

But the casual opacity, when something is hard to explain or predict, we believe it's special.

00:24:18

So it's like, oh, I didn't know why that happened the way it did.

00:24:21

Oh, it must be magic.

00:24:22

It must be who it's like, and it's like, no, there's probably a good reason behind that

00:24:27

that it's just it's opaque to us right now.

00:24:29

And we can't we can't really see that.

00:24:31

And the fact that rituals are embedded in all of these things, like when we when we do

00:24:37

a ritual that produces good outcomes, we tend to repeat that ritual, you know, sporting

00:24:41

events and athletes would be would be that one.

00:24:44

Oh, why I turn on the time I left shoe first, we win.

00:24:46

It's like, no, it really has nothing to do with your left shoe.

00:24:48

But okay, now you've developed this ritual around that.

00:24:51

I like breaking these ideas down.

00:24:53

What are the parts of the thing that we're doing?

00:24:55

What are the movements of everything?

00:24:56

And then what are the aspirations behind it?

00:24:59

And then we try to put these rituals behind these things we can't explain.

00:25:02

So I like I like how we like chapter three, I thought was good to kind of launch us into

00:25:08

into the rest of the book.

00:25:10

Yeah, I agree.

00:25:12

One of the rituals that he describes in chapter three was really interesting to me because

00:25:17

I'm a tennis player.

00:25:19

That's the Raphael Nadal.

00:25:21

He's got this this weird ritual whenever he he serves.

00:25:25

And I never thought about that.

00:25:27

I realized that I had my own ritual and I think I was aware of it even when I played college

00:25:32

tennis.

00:25:33

I was D three.

00:25:35

I was not really all that good.

00:25:38

But it was a fun experience and I got to play competitive tennis for a while.

00:25:42

And I realized that I would always do certain things and I'm trying to think back what was

00:25:47

my ritual that still burned in my brain.

00:25:50

I think I would like twirl my racket twice, bounce it three times with the racket.

00:25:56

And then as I'm like getting into the rhythm of my serve, I would bounce it with my hand

00:25:59

four times.

00:26:01

And then I would go into my my serving motion.

00:26:04

But Raphael Nadal is a whole nother level.

00:26:07

Yeah.

00:26:08

And I am kind of curious if he is cognizant of every individual piece of that because

00:26:17

I think it is something that you just do.

00:26:19

You don't really think about it.

00:26:21

It's this rhythm that you end up falling into.

00:26:25

And with tennis specifically, it's a it's very much a game of of rhythm.

00:26:30

In fact, you have so long to serve and some people will pull a jerk move in my opinion.

00:26:39

But as the server is about ready to hit, they'll step off of the baseline and like go wipe

00:26:45

their hands on their towel or something just to get them out of their rhythm.

00:26:49

Yeah.

00:26:50

And you can only do that so many, so many times.

00:26:53

Like I said, I was never very good.

00:26:54

So a D3, you know, you don't have a line judge there or a referee that you could go talk to

00:27:00

and be like, Hey, this guy's being a jerk.

00:27:02

Yeah.

00:27:03

Yeah.

00:27:04

When they've called enough shots out that are actually in, you can go request somebody

00:27:08

and maybe they'll come and help you.

00:27:10

But otherwise you just got to figure it out on your own.

00:27:14

But I do think that as I was thinking through my my ritual, I realized that in I can picture

00:27:20

it in my head still as I was playing, but when I was playing, I never thought about it.

00:27:25

It was just something that I I did.

00:27:28

And Rafael Nadal is one of my favorite players.

00:27:33

I don't think I always would have said that, but he's been very successful.

00:27:40

And I think that it's true that the rituals are a large part of that for a sport like tennis.

00:27:50

It's so mental, you know, and anything that you can do to calm yourself is going to allow

00:27:57

you to play at a higher level than you would have otherwise.

00:28:03

Like the physical difference between the very best tennis player in the world and the hundredth

00:28:10

rated player in the world is very, very small.

00:28:13

It's just how did they handle the big moments and can they make the big shots when they need

00:28:17

to in practice?

00:28:18

Everybody can.

00:28:19

Yeah, I would think golf is the same way, right?

00:28:21

Like I bet you golfers, you could you could probably write like a whole chapter of this

00:28:25

book on just golfers rituals and what they go through to get ready for, you know, for

00:28:31

their their round.

00:28:32

Okay, so let's move into part two.

00:28:35

If you're good with that.

00:28:38

Part two is rituals for ourselves.

00:28:40

So it's going to take this inward focus on these rituals for ourselves.

00:28:43

There's four chapters in part two, one, two, three, the four chapters in part two.

00:28:47

How to perform, how to savor, how to stay on track and how to become.

00:28:53

And Michael, open to you first on this one, right before I go through anything.

00:28:58

Did any of these chapters stand out to you more than others?

00:29:02

Yes, I really liked the how to savor chapter.

00:29:09

Everything is a topic that is interesting to me, kind of seated by my friend, Chris Bailey.

00:29:18

He brought this up as a topic in the mastermind group one time, just the concept of savoring.

00:29:23

And I never had really thought about it before.

00:29:26

And then he really got me thinking about it, but it definitely connects to ritual.

00:29:31

And so the section ritual for ourselves, a lot of the the rituals that we have, I think

00:29:37

having the intention of savoring, what that really means is you're extracting more value,

00:29:45

enjoyment.

00:29:46

So we'll let down joy, I guess, fun out of life's day to day.

00:29:52

And I recognize that there were definitely parts of my routine that were designed to

00:29:59

savor.

00:30:00

And I never really thought about it that way, but it made sense.

00:30:03

Like they talked about ritual and serving drinks.

00:30:06

I don't drink alcohol.

00:30:08

So for me, it was coffee.

00:30:09

But for a long time, I've been making pour over coffee at home.

00:30:13

I have just about every pour over mechanism that has ever been made.

00:30:18

I've got the V 60.

00:30:20

I've got the cleat away.

00:30:21

I've got the chemex.

00:30:22

I've got this crazy.

00:30:24

They call it a Phoenix 70.

00:30:25

So it's like a V 60, but it doesn't have walls.

00:30:28

And it's at a higher angle.

00:30:30

I've got a blue bottle dripper.

00:30:33

Like you name it.

00:30:34

I've probably got it.

00:30:36

And I've been making this pour over coffee for a long time with a goose neck kettle,

00:30:41

even though it takes several minutes to grind the coffee and do the pour over method.

00:30:47

It was worth it to me because of the ritual that was a part of it.

00:30:53

And I could have told you this if somebody asked me about it, like, well, why do you

00:30:56

continue to do it?

00:30:57

Is there something about the process?

00:30:59

I'm going through and I'm making this fussy coffee.

00:31:02

And that makes it taste better when I'm done.

00:31:05

Like the whole thing just kind of calms me and centers me.

00:31:08

And I'm not thinking about what else I have to do at that moment.

00:31:11

If I'm thinking about responding to an email or something, I'm not going to make the pour

00:31:16

at the right time.

00:31:17

And I just loved all the mechanics of it.

00:31:20

It really wasn't all that complicated once you knew this is the ratio that you use for

00:31:24

the beans.

00:31:25

And this is what the water should be.

00:31:26

There's like three or four things you have to pay attention to.

00:31:28

And then it's just paying attention.

00:31:30

And if you pay attention, you can make a great cup of pour over coffee.

00:31:34

And I loved that.

00:31:35

Now since then, I've got this automated pour over machine.

00:31:39

It's a Chemex automatic.

00:31:40

I call it the coffee robot.

00:31:42

So we grind the coffee, we put it in the Chemex, put it in the machine, turn the button on

00:31:47

and you can walk away and come back and it's made your pour over coffee for you.

00:31:52

And I realized I was reading this that I've lost something.

00:31:56

I'm not sure I want to go back to spending another 15 minutes a day making fussy coffee,

00:32:02

especially since now I drink it, my wife drinks it and my son drinks it.

00:32:08

That would probably be a little too much.

00:32:11

But that was kind of the beginning of this ritual for me.

00:32:16

They also mentioned in the how to savor chapter about FICA.

00:32:19

And there was a tea place near my co-working space that I would go to frequently called

00:32:25

FICA, it's shut down now unfortunately.

00:32:26

But I was familiar with the term FICA from that tea shop and the word FICA is a break

00:32:32

for coffee tea in sweets.

00:32:33

It's a Scandinavian word.

00:32:35

And it's a whole thing.

00:32:37

Like it's an event.

00:32:39

So you're not just going to go grab a coffee quick.

00:32:43

You're going like this is the main thing and you're mourning.

00:32:48

Everything revolves around the FICA.

00:32:51

Which I think is actually really cool.

00:32:54

So if you all could see the video, I've been smiling and kind of laughing the whole time

00:32:59

because I don't have this.

00:33:01

What Mike just described, I understand it from a mechanics in how it could impact one's

00:33:09

life in a better way.

00:33:10

I just want the coffee now.

00:33:13

I want it to taste good and I want it to come right now and I don't care if you drip

00:33:17

it and I don't care if you steep it and I don't care if you, whatever, he's got all

00:33:23

these different methods and all these different tools.

00:33:25

And what I want is I want Mike to make me coffee.

00:33:28

So I want to send Mike a message and be like Mike, make me one of your fancy fruit

00:33:32

fruit coffees and then I get delicious coffee and I didn't have to do any work.

00:33:37

So we could not be more different on that.

00:33:41

Now the second thing you said though, which I would agree with you, I didn't grow up in

00:33:46

like a culture or an environment where, you know, like the English have their afternoon

00:33:51

tea, like the British have their afternoon tea or, you know, the, is it Fika?

00:33:56

I can't remember.

00:33:57

I didn't remember this, this term.

00:33:59

Fika.

00:34:00

Yeah.

00:34:01

Like I didn't grow up in that where, but I kind of wish I did.

00:34:03

Like I like this idea of, hey, at 11 in the morning, everything shuts down for 20 minutes

00:34:11

or a half hour or whatever it is.

00:34:12

And we all do this collective ritual.

00:34:15

We all do this collective thing together.

00:34:18

We're doing it like actually physically together or we're all just doing it at the same time,

00:34:22

but you know in the two offices beside me, they're doing the exact same thing.

00:34:25

Why?

00:34:26

It's 11 o'clock and that's what everybody does at 11 o'clock.

00:34:28

Like I want one of these in my life.

00:34:31

Like I want this activity in my life.

00:34:33

I just don't, I just don't have it.

00:34:35

And I wasn't ingrained with this, this idea growing up, but well, you don't need to have

00:34:40

a cultural Fika that you can use to savor.

00:34:45

I guess sort of, it's still a ritual, but maybe not connected to the idea of savoring, but

00:34:52

a cultural thing would be like the Spanish siesta, where this is the time when everything

00:34:57

shuts down and you do this thing instead.

00:34:59

But they, they, he talks about four strategies for savoring, which I thought were pretty

00:35:04

good.

00:35:05

The first one is to try to be present for positive moments and appreciate them.

00:35:07

So essentially you were talking about the mindfulness stuff at the beginning, the MBSR

00:35:12

that you were digging into.

00:35:13

That's the road of this is recognize what's going on and appreciate things.

00:35:19

So be grateful for things, you know, whole gratitude practice.

00:35:22

That's an important part of my, my journaling routine.

00:35:25

I express gratitude in my journal every single day and that definitely helps you notice things

00:35:28

like that.

00:35:29

The second one was to communicate and celebrate savoring with others.

00:35:33

So making it a group thing, it doesn't have to be a whole big cultural thing.

00:35:37

But if you found even one other person who, hey, it's time to go do the thing, then that

00:35:43

helps it become more sticky.

00:35:45

Yeah.

00:35:46

Express your savoring through nonverbal behaviors like smiling.

00:35:48

I mean, I think that would kind of happen naturally.

00:35:51

I don't think I want to be thinking as I'm drinking my, my coffee.

00:35:54

Okay, time to smile now.

00:35:56

Richly remember details about past positive experience.

00:35:58

That's the fourth one.

00:36:00

Again, just the gratitude practice and remembering, oh, I did that thing and it was actually really

00:36:04

nice.

00:36:07

I think it's, it's easy to just be focused on what's coming up or the hard things you

00:36:15

have to do.

00:36:16

I actually ordered a, a stoic coin that Ryan Holiday sells.

00:36:22

I think it's going to be delivered today with the phrase something along the lines of he

00:36:27

who suffers ahead of time suffers more than is necessary or something like that.

00:36:35

The main idea is just don't worry about the stuff that you can't do anything about.

00:36:42

Which is where my mind tends to go like, oh man, that thing coming up at the end of the

00:36:45

week, that's going to be really difficult.

00:36:47

I got to talk to this person about this thing.

00:36:48

Oh, it's going to be so hard to do that.

00:36:51

And I'll think about that all week and I'll let that affect me all week.

00:36:56

So I need a visual reminder like, hey, just chill and don't even worry about it until the

00:37:00

time comes, then you can worry about it.

00:37:02

Then you can worry about it.

00:37:03

Yeah.

00:37:04

Yeah.

00:37:05

You called out the same chapter that I did, like how to savor, I think was my favorite

00:37:08

chapter out of part two.

00:37:10

The other chapters are good.

00:37:12

I liked how to become, this was chapter seven.

00:37:17

One of the reasons I liked the how to become chapter is because of the rights of passage

00:37:20

idea.

00:37:21

Like I really like, and I really think these rights of passage are meaningful and I think

00:37:25

they've been meaningful in my life leading up to now and I'm trying to think about how

00:37:28

do I want to encourage these with my children.

00:37:31

And I don't want to do it in like a overly extraordinary way where it's like, okay, now

00:37:38

child, I'm going to take you into the woods, seven miles away from our house and you have

00:37:42

to figure out a way to get back on your own.

00:37:44

Like, I don't want it to be like that.

00:37:46

I think that's a little too much.

00:37:49

But like, I do like the idea of like, okay, when you're this age, we're going to go on

00:37:55

this trip or when you're this age, you're going to get to pick this thing that's really,

00:38:00

really meaningful and really, really important to you.

00:38:02

Like I like these ideas of like acknowledging the end of a chapter and the beginning of

00:38:07

a new chapter and in talking about that that's okay and that's transition and that's important

00:38:13

and we need to do these things.

00:38:14

And I really liked, you know, how you brought that in.

00:38:19

And then I, he does it here and he does it later in the book as well.

00:38:23

He ties rituals to identity and he talks about how they're tightly woven together.

00:38:28

And I think this is really, really important.

00:38:31

He talks about how they're effective in helping us transition from different identities and

00:38:36

that we often go through like the rituals when our identity changes, right?

00:38:40

So the easy examples of this would be I was a high school student, now I'm a grad, now

00:38:45

I'm a college student.

00:38:46

Well, what was the, what was the ritual?

00:38:47

I went through graduation, right?

00:38:48

Well, okay.

00:38:49

I was a student in college and now I'm going to go, you know, work my first job.

00:38:55

What do I do?

00:38:56

I went through graduation or marriage or, you know, whatever it might be that there are

00:38:58

these rituals that we do that help us make that mental shift, that identity shift, you

00:39:05

know, like, and I, and I really like the idea of how he links those two, those two things

00:39:11

together because I think it's really important.

00:39:12

And I think that's, no, I wouldn't have been able to say this when we first got the book

00:39:17

and we first started reading it.

00:39:18

But I think that might have been what, what the idea of this book thought into my head

00:39:22

is like, okay, what are the rituals doing for who I am and who I'm going to become and

00:39:26

how I'm going to become those people.

00:39:28

And then where I want to be proactive about this, and this is probably one of my action

00:39:31

items is what is the, what are the rituals that I want to start or really double down

00:39:38

on and how do those impact my identity and how do I want them to impact my identity.

00:39:43

So I think that's where, like, I got to, I got there in chapter seven, I think is like,

00:39:49

oh, okay, this is why this book was intriguing to me, but I couldn't have said it at the,

00:39:54

at the onset of the book.

00:39:55

Sure, yeah.

00:39:57

I like chapter seven as well.

00:39:59

The whole idea of rights of passage, I never really thought about them in terms of the

00:40:05

three different types of transitional phases that he broke down.

00:40:09

So the rights of separation where we leave our previous identity, rights of margin, where

00:40:13

we're in the throes of change in the rights of incorporation, where we enter fully into

00:40:17

our new identity.

00:40:19

I thought that was kind of an interesting description.

00:40:23

But yeah, the majority of this one that stood out to me was the, the how to savor.

00:40:29

Even though there is some good stuff, like how to perform, I feel like that's, there's

00:40:33

definitely action items there for the right person where if you get anxious about anything,

00:40:41

like I used to get really anxious whenever I would have to speak publicly, even recording

00:40:45

a podcast like this where I knew that the end product was going to be shared with the

00:40:49

world, I would get super nervous.

00:40:51

Yeah, and I would stumble all over my words and things like that.

00:40:54

So having a whole ritual that you go through ahead of time to just kind of calm you when

00:40:59

you recognize that this, I'm in this scenario where I'm doing this hard thing and I don't

00:41:03

want to freak out more than I have to.

00:41:05

I think rituals are definitely can be used there.

00:41:10

And then there's another, another part of this, I think, especially with, with savoring,

00:41:16

kind of a minor point that he talks about here, but he mentions that people's social circles

00:41:21

shrunk 16% during COVID and a lot of it was from not being able to participate in these,

00:41:28

these shared rituals.

00:41:29

And I never would have been able to put a number on that.

00:41:32

Like I knew that that had actually happened, but I thought it was interesting that they

00:41:35

were able to actually pinpoint that.

00:41:39

And I think that's the, the first step in undoing some of that or recovering from that

00:41:45

is to recognize what damage that actually happened.

00:41:48

And I think that adds a little bit more incentive to maybe craft intentionally some of these

00:41:54

social rituals back into your day to day.

00:41:57

Yeah.

00:41:58

Okay.

00:41:59

So before we leave part two, these, this chapter is called rituals for ourselves.

00:42:05

So I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit.

00:42:06

And if you want me to go first, tell me I'll go, I'll go first.

00:42:09

But like what is the, the one that comes to your mind that you're willing to share that

00:42:12

is like, Oh, yes.

00:42:14

Like that is, that is my ritual.

00:42:16

Like that's the one I do.

00:42:17

I find myself doing or just one that you're interested in that you weren't, didn't necessarily

00:42:23

think about it before.

00:42:25

Hmm.

00:42:26

But you focused on you, like, cause you talked about the one with your kids, right?

00:42:29

Like you talked about them with your kids, but what about the one for you?

00:42:33

I don't know.

00:42:34

So when I, one of the action items I have from this is essentially to think about all of

00:42:40

my routines and kind of put those under the microscope.

00:42:46

However, I don't think that I've neglected those or not thought about those.

00:42:51

I just maybe haven't thought about those as much as I, I think maybe I need to.

00:42:56

I've got very firmly established morning and evening routines.

00:43:00

I don't know that there was one here where it really stood out to me like, Oh, that's

00:43:07

what's happening there, or this is really something that I should add.

00:43:11

I guess as I was reading through this, I realized that my routines had shifted more towards

00:43:18

the habit side and lost some of the meaning.

00:43:22

But I don't think that there was like a hole that needs to be plugged or that even the,

00:43:27

the what is actually going to change.

00:43:29

It's probably all going to stay the same.

00:43:31

It's just thinking through like, how do I add a little bit more meaning into the, some

00:43:35

of the things that I'm already doing?

00:43:37

I don't know.

00:43:38

Once you go first and I'll see if I can come up with something after, after you go.

00:43:41

Yeah.

00:43:42

I mean, mine would be, you know, the ritual that is before I teach a class, right?

00:43:49

And you, you said an interesting word that I hadn't thought about before, like routine.

00:43:52

Like what's the difference between ritual and routine?

00:43:54

I think that would be the meaning aspect of it as well.

00:43:58

But like there's this, there's this ritual that I go through before I teach class where

00:44:02

I try to remind myself it's not just, there's a, there's a phrase that you use an education

00:44:08

called Sage on the stage, right?

00:44:10

Where you're just the person standing up there delivering some, you know, some content,

00:44:15

but you're actually, you know, trying to partner with people to actually get them to learn.

00:44:20

So there's this like little mini ritual that I would do where as I'm prepping for that

00:44:25

day's lesson, you know, I'm thinking about like, okay, how do you make this meaningful

00:44:30

and relevant to the actual students that way it's not just delivering them content and

00:44:35

pumping knowledge into their head, but it's actually like coming alongside of them and

00:44:39

helping them get better and, you know, it goes back to that like 1% everyday rule, you

00:44:43

know, it's like, if we can get better, if we can get 1% better every day when you, when

00:44:46

you look across the spectrum, you got a significantly, you know, a larger amount better.

00:44:53

And I can't tell you that I know that there are specific actions in that ritual.

00:45:01

If I thought about them, maybe I could figure out what they are, but I can tell you that

00:45:03

if I don't do that, like if I miss that ritual, that, that prep ritual, that thinking ritual,

00:45:10

it's a significantly different feel for the class.

00:45:14

You know, like I, like I, I don't go into the class with the same mindset that I do when

00:45:18

I do that ritual.

00:45:20

And I don't have to do it before every class because a lot of times the classes shift too

00:45:23

fast.

00:45:24

So it's not like I can do that in between if I've backed it back classes, I can do that

00:45:27

in between.

00:45:28

But if I haven't done that, like during, like before the days teaching, I can tell like

00:45:33

the rest of the day is just kind of, oh, we're just kind of going through the motions.

00:45:36

Like we're not really, you know, engaged with what we're, what we're doing here.

00:45:40

So I think that's the one that I, that I find myself, you know, leaning towards, it's

00:45:45

like, oh yeah, I actually do have a get ready, get in the zone ritual before I teach classes

00:45:52

that, that's really meaningful and really, really important and it impacts the rest of

00:45:56

the day.

00:45:57

I think that would be, that'd be my easiest example.

00:45:59

Well, I actually have one that gets into the next section.

00:46:03

So you want me to go there?

00:46:05

Yeah, do it.

00:46:06

Okay.

00:46:07

So the next section is rituals and relationships.

00:46:14

And one of the action items that I have from this book comes from chapter eight, how to

00:46:21

stay in sync.

00:46:22

And the realization here is that date night is a ritual.

00:46:26

And so the action item is how can I make the ritual of date night more meaningful?

00:46:31

I don't have a specific thing in mind with this because again, this ritual exists and

00:46:38

we have a process for this.

00:46:40

Um, and I actually have a whole family meeting template that we, we follow.

00:46:47

And I've been thinking a little bit about, since I read this, what are kind of like the

00:46:52

small flourishes that I can add on top of that?

00:46:57

And yeah, I don't know exactly what I'm going to come up with.

00:47:01

But that's the one that specifically that I was kind of thinking about.

00:47:06

Now like I said, there is actually the, um, the larger question of just, I think putting

00:47:13

all of the rituals under the, the microscope and asking myself, what of this should I change

00:47:20

if, if anything, but I think that's kind of a, a thinking time process for me.

00:47:25

It's not something that I even have any notion of what I would do differently right now.

00:47:31

I need to spend some time just thinking about that stuff, um, in order for that, uh, the

00:47:37

insights to, to come kind of along those lines though.

00:47:41

Uh, I'll share in maybe another example of a ritual that has sort of been dialed in over

00:47:47

the, the years, it continues to, to change.

00:47:49

So maybe I don't know.

00:47:51

Maybe I just kind of naturally gravitate towards this stuff.

00:47:54

But um, I was a little bit late on doing my personal retreat this quarter.

00:47:59

Um, so I just did it a, a few weeks ago and I have a very specific routine now with this

00:48:07

where I get a tiny cabin, a getaway house, which I think I've mentioned previously.

00:48:11

Okay.

00:48:12

So I will get to the tiny cabin, uh, usually late afternoon and then maybe 10, 15 minutes

00:48:20

from there, there's a small town that has a, uh, wood fire pizza place.

00:48:25

And so I will go there for dinner.

00:48:28

And that's kind of like a ritual before the ritual.

00:48:31

Like I haven't really done any deep serious thinking yet.

00:48:36

It's sort of like the, the meal before it's time to get to work.

00:48:41

Yeah.

00:48:42

Yeah.

00:48:43

That makes sense.

00:48:44

So I'll bring a book and I'll read it while I'm, I'm there and I'll, you know, I'm,

00:48:47

I'll have already changed locations.

00:48:49

So I'm starting to think about personal retreat stuff, but I'm really not getting into the

00:48:52

specifics of it yet.

00:48:54

But I'm that going to that place, sitting in the booth, eating the pizza, that kind of

00:49:00

primes the pump for, okay, now I'm going to drive back when I get to the cabin.

00:49:04

Now it's time to go.

00:49:05

Yeah.

00:49:06

It sounds kind of silly, but like that was an additional detail that got added just a

00:49:10

few personal retreats ago.

00:49:12

But at this point, you know, you go to the getaway house, you go get the pizza, you come

00:49:17

back, you do the first part of the personal retreat.

00:49:19

The second part, there's a walking trail that ends up at this old boy scout camp.

00:49:24

So it's a bunch of buildings that they, they used to use.

00:49:27

And when I'm walking that trail, that's when I'm doing a specific part of the personal

00:49:31

retreat with the, what should I start doing, which I stopped doing, which I keep doing.

00:49:35

And then go home at 11 o'clock for checkout.

00:49:39

And yeah, it's, it's dialed in at this point, but there's little pieces of it that I always

00:49:46

end up, I'm going to tweak this for next time.

00:49:48

Or I'll, I didn't really like the way that that worked.

00:49:50

So I'm going to change this, this one little piece of it.

00:49:55

But having done it enough at this point, I really am happy with how that has, how that

00:49:59

has ended up.

00:50:00

Yeah.

00:50:01

It's funny.

00:50:02

We are in the relationship section now, you know, so that had to stay in sync one.

00:50:08

One of the, the silly ones that we would do is when we get back from church, we will

00:50:13

make eggs, we make scrambled eggs.

00:50:16

And it's, it's funny how like, if you don't do that, right?

00:50:19

Like the, the afternoon feels off.

00:50:22

It's like, well, hold on.

00:50:23

It's scrambled egg time.

00:50:24

Like why, why didn't we make scrambled eggs?

00:50:26

Like what are we doing?

00:50:27

Like we're supposed to make scrambled eggs when we get home.

00:50:30

So I really like that staying in sync one.

00:50:34

We'll go through it a little bit here.

00:50:36

But basically there's four, he outlines four lessons of relationship rituals.

00:50:42

They wake up our experience of commitment.

00:50:44

They are exclusive to the actual relationship that we're in.

00:50:49

Rituals not routines bring the magic.

00:50:51

So you need the ritual, you need the meaning behind it, not just the routine, the routine

00:50:55

there.

00:50:56

And then they're not all about the how, right?

00:50:58

They're about the why and what are we doing?

00:51:00

So the how is less.

00:51:01

And I think those are really four good outlines.

00:51:04

He talks about these when he's talking about relationships.

00:51:06

It's more in like a romantic relationship if I'm remembering the book correctly.

00:51:11

But like, I think these apply across all relationships, right?

00:51:14

So you think about like, they wake up our experience of commitment.

00:51:17

Well, okay, if I'm going to do this with my, with my kids or with my, you know, really,

00:51:21

really good friend, it's showing that sign of trust and that shot, that sign of, you know,

00:51:26

we care about each other.

00:51:27

When it comes to, you know, they're exclusive, there are rituals that you like, you're like,

00:51:32

why couldn't do that with that other person?

00:51:34

Like, no, no, no, that's our thing.

00:51:36

Like we, we do that.

00:51:37

Like we would not want to share that with, you know, the rest of the world.

00:51:41

They bring, they bring the magic, which like gets into this, you know, gets it into more

00:51:46

like scientific topics.

00:51:47

So if you're, if you're thinking about reading this book, there's a little bit of a blend

00:51:51

with the scientific topic, although he doesn't go into any real detail on any of the scientific

00:51:55

topics.

00:51:56

And it's in this one, it's called hedonica adaptation.

00:51:59

When we stop noticing the wonderful aspects of what was once fresh and captivating.

00:52:03

And he's saying like, this is in a relationship where, hey, you know, you first start dating

00:52:08

and everything's amazing.

00:52:09

And then, you know, by the time you're six or seven years into it, you stop noticing all

00:52:13

of those things that you once thought were amazing and cause that hedonica adaptation.

00:52:17

But like you don't really get anything much more than a, than a definition of it.

00:52:21

But then the rituals are all about the how and I, I like that idea a lot too, right?

00:52:26

Like I think I might have said that wrong the first time I said it, but the rituals are

00:52:29

all about the how.

00:52:30

Like how is where you get the meaning?

00:52:32

Like how do we do these things?

00:52:33

You know, it doesn't have to be super extraordinary, but it has to be meaningful.

00:52:38

It has to have that deep side of it.

00:52:40

The chapter nine goes into how to survive the holidays.

00:52:44

I got to tell you, Mike, like I thought this was strangely specific.

00:52:48

I was like, wait, like we're now like, we're not like doing like a deep dive into the holidays.

00:52:53

And it was like, it just kind of came out of nowhere.

00:52:55

And this is where I said at the beginning when I was introducing the book, it almost

00:52:59

feels like, oh, we did holiday research.

00:53:02

So let's just throw that in here, right?

00:53:03

Like let's throw our holiday research in here.

00:53:05

And then, then the next one was how to mourn and coping with loss.

00:53:09

And again, I think holidays and mourning, these are definitely rituals that rev, that

00:53:13

evolve relationships and, and they're all around relationships, but like very specific,

00:53:17

very like almost strangely specific in terms of what we were talking about here.

00:53:21

So that's kind of the overview of, of chapter of part three.

00:53:27

I don't know if I care to really get into much about, you know, the holidays or the, or the

00:53:32

mourning unless you're interested in talking about that.

00:53:35

But that's just three.

00:53:37

Well, I'll just say that the, how to survive the holidays section.

00:53:41

Yeah, you're right.

00:53:43

Like the way it's framed with that, that title, I don't really like, but there is some good

00:53:48

stuff in here.

00:53:49

Like the family meals are really important.

00:53:51

That was one of the points.

00:53:53

And again, like I know this, maybe it's a reminder, I don't have an action item with

00:53:59

pertaining to this, but one of the things that you mentioned is that when you are eating

00:54:04

a meal together, you can't just ask really simple, how a school type questions.

00:54:10

Yeah, call that that one specifically.

00:54:12

You have to go off script with conversation.

00:54:15

And I tend to do this already.

00:54:18

I've shared, I think probably here, about how when I am out to eat with like a big group

00:54:26

of people, I'm the one who will just, to someone I've never met before, ask the random deep

00:54:32

question.

00:54:33

Yep.

00:54:34

It's kind of a running gag with people who know me.

00:54:36

He's like, oh, what deep question is Mike going to ask this time?

00:54:41

Just because I like how jarring that is and how you can force people to go to a deeper

00:54:46

level with that kind of stuff.

00:54:47

So I don't know, maybe I'm kind of primed for that sort of thing already.

00:54:53

They also mentioned with how to mourn the whole idea of Memento Mori.

00:54:57

You familiar with that?

00:54:58

I think we talked about that before.

00:55:00

I am.

00:55:01

Yeah.

00:55:02

And I know that can make people feel uncomfortable sometimes, but I think that that's an important

00:55:07

part of this.

00:55:09

He's not necessarily a ritual associated with that.

00:55:12

So I don't know.

00:55:13

The thing that set out to me isn't necessarily tied to anything specific in this book, but

00:55:18

the whole concept of remembering that you're going to die someday, I can see how that would

00:55:24

change rituals and relationships potentially.

00:55:27

Although I don't think I've figured out a way to apply that to a group level.

00:55:32

Most people who I know in real life, if I were to tell them about Memento Mori, they'd be like,

00:55:37

dude, you're weird.

00:55:38

Yeah.

00:55:39

I would agree.

00:55:40

I think it comes across as so brash and kind of like, whoa, really?

00:55:47

But it gets to his point that he makes in the very beginning.

00:55:51

Everybody dies.

00:55:53

We often think of it as this crazy topic that nobody wants to talk about.

00:55:56

It's like, no, why don't we talk about it?

00:55:57

We should talk about it more and kind of be okay with it.

00:56:02

So now that I've got your opinion on this, I'm going to take a step back and go to the

00:56:06

holidays one.

00:56:08

He talks about holidays as being like largely logistics management.

00:56:13

And I think that's why I don't like rituals for the holidays.

00:56:16

Like I think that's why they bother me is because you get into this mindset, this ritual,

00:56:22

the stuck mindset of, well, this is how we do it.

00:56:26

Why?

00:56:27

Oh, it's how we've always done it.

00:56:29

Why?

00:56:30

Well, and like, and yes, it's a ritual and yes, it has meaning.

00:56:34

But like oftentimes I find that the answer to the why question is silly and isn't meaningful.

00:56:40

Like, it's just like, oh, well, that's just because that's how we had to do it.

00:56:43

And it was logistics.

00:56:44

And it's like, no, like let's let's figure out rituals because they're very meaningful

00:56:49

to us like because they, you know, oh, well, why do we eat this food?

00:56:53

Well, because that was the food, you know, grandma bought over on the boat from whatever

00:56:58

country and it's okay.

00:56:59

Now we're talking like we're doing it to remember grandma, like we're doing it to because there's

00:57:04

a big meaning behind it.

00:57:06

And I get so annoyed with we do things ritually.

00:57:10

Why?

00:57:11

Because not everybody can fit in the living room at so and so's house.

00:57:15

So therefore we have this event at this other, at this other place or whatever.

00:57:19

And it's just like, I don't know, like maybe I shouldn't be as annoyed by it as I am, but

00:57:23

I just get really, really annoyed by it.

00:57:25

So it's like when, when I think about rituals for our, for our family, like my immediate

00:57:29

family, it's like, I want them to have meaning.

00:57:31

I don't want them to just be like rituals for the sake of rituals.

00:57:33

I want them to actually have meaning to them around the holiday time or otherwise we're

00:57:38

just, we're just spinning our wheels to make things more difficult.

00:57:41

Yeah, that's fair.

00:57:43

So box finished.

00:57:44

Sorry.

00:57:45

I needed to go in my, I need to go in my holiday sandbox.

00:57:47

Maybe that's why I didn't like this one.

00:57:50

Well I think also the whole title of the how to survive the holidays kind of sets the stage

00:57:58

for a certain perspective, which I don't think necessarily he's saying this is how he

00:58:03

feels about his extended family members, but it's alluding to, I think, the general idea

00:58:10

of you have to spend time with your extended family members and there's going to be people

00:58:14

there you don't like.

00:58:16

And I don't know what to do with that.

00:58:20

I mean, on some level, yeah, you're going to have to deal with that kind of stuff, but

00:58:25

I think like that's life.

00:58:27

That's not just holidays.

00:58:30

You probably have coworkers that you wouldn't have chosen either and you just learn to deal

00:58:36

with it and it's fine.

00:58:38

And ultimately you get to decide who are the important people in your life.

00:58:43

So if it really bothers you to a certain level, you could just completely disconnect.

00:58:51

And yeah, I don't know.

00:58:53

I feel like the whole framing is kind of like, I can't do anything about this, but I hate

00:58:58

it and that I just rubs me the wrong way.

00:59:01

Yeah, I agree.

00:59:03

And it makes me want to basically shuck off all the old rituals of the holiday and make

00:59:10

my own and figure out what they are or just not have them.

00:59:13

But I don't think that's going to happen.

00:59:15

I think we're always going to have rituals.

00:59:16

He did talk about the torchbearer, the person who continues the ritual forward.

00:59:20

And man, I had a fun little five minute session thinking back through and it's like, oh, yeah,

00:59:24

that person continues that tradition.

00:59:26

That person continues.

00:59:27

It's like you knew who the torchbearer was for the different traditions or rituals.

00:59:31

There was another term called kinkeeper that I liked, which is someone who keeps the family

00:59:35

connected.

00:59:36

Yeah.

00:59:37

Yeah, I hadn't thought about that either.

00:59:39

Yeah.

00:59:40

Okay.

00:59:41

So you mentioned work.

00:59:42

So that moves us into part four.

00:59:43

So you naturally transition into part four, which is rituals at work and in the world.

00:59:48

So this is three chapters.

00:59:49

So how to find meaning at work, how to divide, how to and how to heal and then the epilogue

00:59:56

is in there as well.

00:59:58

So I'm going to talk about the one I think is the most ridiculous first and then we can

01:00:02

talk about the serious stuff.

01:00:03

So he talks about in the pandemic, people started working from home, but they were used

01:00:08

to commuting.

01:00:10

So therefore they would get on their bike and they would ride to the next room.

01:00:14

Well, that was one person specifically that.

01:00:17

Yeah.

01:00:18

Okay.

01:00:19

But I thought, man, like what are we doing here?

01:00:21

Because if we go out, we get on our bike.

01:00:24

We ride for 15 minutes around the neighborhood, come back to our house and then go to the

01:00:29

other room.

01:00:30

Cool.

01:00:31

I'm in.

01:00:32

Right?

01:00:33

Like that actually makes sense to me.

01:00:34

Like now, what am I doing?

01:00:35

I'm replicating or somewhat replicating my mental space of riding to work.

01:00:40

Okay.

01:00:41

Cool.

01:00:42

Got that.

01:00:43

Like, but you're talking like seven feet.

01:00:44

Right?

01:00:45

And I was like, man, this, this example, like we're just too far here.

01:00:48

We're too far with this example.

01:00:49

Okay.

01:00:50

Ridiculous done.

01:00:51

What you got?

01:00:52

Yeah.

01:00:53

So, example is ridiculous.

01:00:55

Not the riding the bike part, obviously.

01:00:59

So one of the things that I did during COVID that, well, 2020 specifically was that as soon

01:01:08

as it got nice enough out, I think probably March.

01:01:15

So right around the beginning, I decided I was going to get outside and either run or

01:01:19

bike every day.

01:01:22

And I did that from March until the middle of October in Wisconsin.

01:01:28

That's quite a feat.

01:01:29

Like it doesn't, it didn't matter the weather.

01:01:31

Didn't matter if it was raining.

01:01:32

I got outside.

01:01:35

And I believe that that helped a lot with my mental state during that time, just getting

01:01:40

outside.

01:01:42

But I never thought of it as, well, I don't have a commute anymore.

01:01:45

So I have to find a way to figure out how to do that.

01:01:49

I think that's the issue I have with this.

01:01:51

Not that we have to figure out new rituals, but I personally believe that COVID was in

01:01:59

some ways a blessing in disguise because it was a break from the normal routine for everyone.

01:02:06

So the argument that's sort of being made here is let's do things to nudge us back towards

01:02:12

the regular routine.

01:02:14

And I think the best things that came out of that were the things that I was like, okay,

01:02:19

we can't do what we used to do.

01:02:20

How do we do, how do we achieve that outcome a different way?

01:02:26

So like one of the things that we were doing was we were taking kids to the music store

01:02:30

downtown.

01:02:32

That's kind of where I got the analog book habit because I was bringing a book with me

01:02:36

to piano lessons, which is, you know, there's some good that came from that.

01:02:40

But also it meant that either myself or my wife was at the music store for about three

01:02:45

hours on Monday nights.

01:02:47

And we were fortunate that they all got back to back to back, otherwise we're there multiple

01:02:52

nights.

01:02:53

And when we couldn't do that anymore, it was like, well, we obviously want to keep going

01:02:57

with music lessons.

01:02:58

I know nothing about piano.

01:03:00

What are our options?

01:03:01

And we had friends who were missionaries who Rachel and I had actually gone down to Costa

01:03:07

Rica with them the summer before.

01:03:11

And they're both very good musicians.

01:03:15

And their missionaries in Costa Rica now and COVID's happening down there too.

01:03:19

And they're trying to figure out how do we make ends meet.

01:03:22

So hey, can we pay you to try zoom lessons?

01:03:26

And they're like, well, we can try it.

01:03:27

We haven't done it before.

01:03:29

It was the right thing at the right time for us and my kids absolutely thrived in that

01:03:33

environment.

01:03:35

So we're supporting missionaries that we care about personally and we don't have to drive

01:03:39

down to downtown and spend all Monday night at the music store.

01:03:43

Like this is a win-win.

01:03:44

Yeah, win-win.

01:03:45

Yep.

01:03:46

Yep.

01:03:47

And so I like the fact that we had to figure out where to redraw the boundaries.

01:03:53

We kind of did that with sports too, we're prior to that.

01:03:56

Like all our kids are doing all the sports things.

01:03:58

And we kind of figured out we're a part of this homeschool co-op and I coach middle school

01:04:04

soccer now because we got involved with this.

01:04:06

But it's kind of like a chill way to do sports.

01:04:10

Like they practice a couple of times a week, but we're a homeschool group.

01:04:12

We don't have our own gym that we can have basketball practice in every day.

01:04:15

So we don't practice every day.

01:04:17

And you know what?

01:04:18

They still get to play and they get better and they're in these tournaments and they

01:04:21

have all the camaraderie and the experiences, but it doesn't have to take over their lives.

01:04:27

You know, we have family members who their kids are going to be on the varsity team and

01:04:32

they get things at the beginning of summer.

01:04:35

This is what you're expected to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday leading

01:04:39

up to the season.

01:04:41

You know, it's like, okay.

01:04:46

And that's just, you know, what you do.

01:04:49

If there's a conflict, you want to go on vacation as a family or you got church on Wednesday

01:04:55

nights or whatever, it's expected like you're going to adapt to our schedule.

01:05:02

And so it just gave us a whole bunch of power, I guess, is the right term.

01:05:08

But we're playing on our terms now.

01:05:10

As opposed to just trying to keep up with the way that the culture went.

01:05:16

And I think that's really valuable.

01:05:17

I wish more people would have taken advantage of that opportunity because no one knew what

01:05:23

was going on.

01:05:24

Like everything got reset.

01:05:25

So we got to figure out how to put all this stuff back together.

01:05:28

Yeah.

01:05:29

So I think it's interesting in this book that we get to chapter 11 before we get to what

01:05:37

makes a good ritual.

01:05:39

I mean, we're in chapter 11 and we finally get Norton's version of what makes a good

01:05:45

ritual and it's synchronicity, right?

01:05:48

Do the same action alongside the same people with shared attention, contact and physical

01:05:53

movement.

01:05:55

And then the work should be, should build a new identity.

01:05:59

So the work should build a new identity.

01:06:00

So we've got, we're doing actions alongside people with shared attention work because there's

01:06:05

contact and physical movement and the work should be, should build a new identity.

01:06:09

And I was like, why did it take us 10 chapters to get to, this is what actually makes a good

01:06:16

ritual from our evidence and from, from in my mind.

01:06:20

And why was it buried in the finding meaning, finding meaning at work section?

01:06:26

Like I just don't understand because like what I thought about this, I more thought

01:06:30

about it in terms of my family.

01:06:32

Right.

01:06:33

So I actually called out my action items, I said, you know, what are the meaningful rituals

01:06:37

my family needs?

01:06:38

What are the meaningful rituals my coworkers need?

01:06:40

Right.

01:06:41

Like, so I'm trying to think about these relationships idea and, and this is where like the structure

01:06:45

of this book, and I'm going to talk about this since the writing, but it's like, this

01:06:48

is where the structure of this book just kind of, kind of gets me and I feel like it was,

01:06:53

I'd have done it differently.

01:06:54

I think I'd have done it differently in terms of how, how to, I would have laid it out and

01:07:00

would have organized it.

01:07:01

Sure.

01:07:02

So I, I thought it was fun that he, he calls out the shutdown ritual, which I've heard many,

01:07:07

many people talk about in many, many different ways.

01:07:09

It's like, okay, this is what I do.

01:07:11

And I do it at four o'clock every day.

01:07:13

I do it at four 30 every day.

01:07:14

I do it at five o'clock every day because it lets my brain turn off, you know, and I,

01:07:19

I can then go home.

01:07:21

My shutdown ritual happens in, in the car on the way home.

01:07:24

Right.

01:07:25

Like, so I, I will still think about work until I hit the car and then it's like, nope, when

01:07:29

I hit the car, I'm done.

01:07:30

Like, I don't want to, I don't want to think about work anymore.

01:07:32

And I have like a 15, 20 minute period where I can unwind and just debrief before I get

01:07:37

home.

01:07:38

And then I try not to, try not to think about work again after that.

01:07:41

So, so that was chapter 11, chapter 11's at work.

01:07:44

And, you know, it's talking about teaming in different, you know, things that they try

01:07:48

to get you to do with chance and cheers and, you know, bringing you together as a, as a

01:07:54

group.

01:07:55

We take a turn in chapter 12 where we go how to divide, you know, when, when rituals breed

01:08:00

tension and trouble.

01:08:01

And we've all got these, I think examples that aren't too hard to think of is, you know,

01:08:06

you do a ritual and it causes, you know, consternation with some other people.

01:08:11

I think it's hilarious that he caught out the dishwasher, right, loading the dishwasher

01:08:15

because I don't know if it's because I'm an engineer or whatever it is, but I look at

01:08:19

it and I think we are just not optimizing the way we're putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

01:08:23

Right.

01:08:24

They, they can be put in in a much more efficient way.

01:08:27

And we need to be clear about this.

01:08:32

So I thought it was hilarious that he caught up the dishwasher one.

01:08:33

I was laughing while I did that one.

01:08:34

Then after the divide, the tension and the trouble one, he rolls right into, okay, how

01:08:39

can they heal and how can they bring reconciliation?

01:08:42

So how can we use rituals, whether it's an individual, you know, we've, we've harmed somebody or,

01:08:50

you know, we've done something wrong.

01:08:52

How can we use a ritual to renew bonds within the family or renew bonds with friends or

01:08:58

when companies come together, right?

01:09:00

Like how can we use rituals to actually bring the two organizations together and make them,

01:09:06

you know, kind of mesh well and like he calls out at the very, very end of chapter 13, you

01:09:13

know, that one of the big aspects of the here of mending and healing this is this joint

01:09:19

identity.

01:09:20

And this is where I think, you know, there's a, there was a huge opportunity to really ride

01:09:24

this identity idea and it wasn't brought up enough and it wasn't connected enough because

01:09:31

it's like that would easily roll back to chapter 12 and say, well, when we divide and when

01:09:35

our rituals divide, a lot of that division, I think comes from a lack of shared identity,

01:09:41

right?

01:09:42

Or a, you're different than me.

01:09:43

So therefore we have this conflict and it's like, well, hold on, are we really that different

01:09:47

and identity or we're doing a ritual that is intentional to say, I'm different from you

01:09:52

and look at all the ways I'm different from you.

01:09:54

And that is causing, you know, this, this trouble and we can do the exact same thing

01:09:58

with reconciliation where, hey, we're not that different.

01:10:02

Like look at this ritual that joins us and binds us together, which is a lot of times

01:10:07

what I think a lot of like not family or not personal rituals are meant to do.

01:10:12

Like these rituals are meant to show us this collective unity, this collective identity

01:10:17

and how we're more alike than we are than we are different.

01:10:20

So, you know, we get into the part four and I just think that the rituals that work in

01:10:26

the world, it was almost like too big.

01:10:30

Like it was too like all encompassing for the sub chapters that were in it and I kind

01:10:34

of, I kind of got a rough, you know, kind of bad taste in my mouth.

01:10:37

I was like, I don't like the way this was organized and the way it was structured, not

01:10:40

that there weren't good things in there that I took, you know, good notes on and I'm going

01:10:43

to walk away with interesting ideas from.

01:10:46

Yeah, I agree with you.

01:10:52

The section was intriguing to me at the beginning.

01:10:55

I felt a little bit let down by it, but the whole beginning of the getting everybody pulling

01:10:59

in the same direction, how to find meaning at work, that's kind of my jam.

01:11:04

Okay.

01:11:05

In fact, one of the things that stood out to me on this topic, but not necessarily from

01:11:14

this book was an episode of the Good Work podcast by Barrett Brooks, which seems like

01:11:19

I bring that up every time.

01:11:22

You have been a lot lately.

01:11:23

Yes.

01:11:24

Yeah, I like this one a lot.

01:11:25

I like Barrett a lot, but he is a really good interviewer and pretty much every episode

01:11:31

I listened to, I end up being fascinated by, I was on my way to the personal retreat and

01:11:39

I was listening to an episode with someone named Benji Bakker.

01:11:42

I'll put the link to this specific episode in the show notes.

01:11:47

And Benji is a person who had founded a nonprofit that was sort of a conservation agency, but

01:11:59

also he has a very specific political background, which kind of made it like a bridge organization

01:12:08

between conservatives and liberals.

01:12:11

So he gets into it in the episode, but he basically grew up very conservative and then

01:12:17

starts getting concerned about climate change, which tends to be a very liberal issue currently,

01:12:23

but wasn't always.

01:12:24

And now essentially what he does is he's in DC and he arranges these dinners and he invites

01:12:31

Republican and Democrat senators, Congress people to a dinner and they get there and

01:12:38

they're kind of like, well, what are we going to do?

01:12:41

Like this, I'm sitting by these people that I don't like.

01:12:44

This is really uncomfortable.

01:12:46

And he just gets them to start talking and they realize that they actually have a lot

01:12:51

of overlapping interests and it's not as cut and dry us against them as it tends to be.

01:13:00

He calls out kind of the specifics of how they don't live in the same places anymore.

01:13:07

So they've kind of dehumanized the other side.

01:13:09

It used to be that they went to the same churches.

01:13:11

Their kids went to the same schools.

01:13:12

They saw each other outside of the battleground of the Senate floor.

01:13:18

But over years, they've lost that and essentially when it comes to something like climate change,

01:13:24

which is his big thing, he's trying to get people to understand like we are on the same

01:13:31

side here and this really shouldn't be this partisan issue that it is.

01:13:36

And that's the thing that's interesting to me is how do we apply that across a lot of

01:13:42

different ideas and concepts?

01:13:45

What do you build bridges essentially?

01:13:49

But what's also interesting about this particular episode that caught my attention was that

01:13:53

he mentioned some specifics about a story growing up and he's from Appleton.

01:13:57

So same town as me.

01:14:01

But that has nothing to do necessarily with the takeaways from the episode.

01:14:08

And I've been in the position of trying to organize some of the company team building

01:14:13

stuff and I realized some of the difficulties that come with that.

01:14:19

He mentions this whole idea of collective effervescence where even a series of random

01:14:23

actions performed together can turn a gathering of strangers into a meaningful unit.

01:14:27

I really like that whole idea.

01:14:30

I really like helping teams and organizations dial in their vision and their core values.

01:14:35

And just like you could have people who are already working in an organization in the

01:14:39

minute that they get clear on that sort of stuff, there's alignment and they're pulling

01:14:43

in the same direction and you now have found meaning at work.

01:14:47

You didn't have to manufacture it.

01:14:49

It was already there and you just got clarity.

01:14:52

So I definitely think rituals can help move in that direction just in terms of like business

01:14:58

ops and things like that.

01:14:59

One of the things I was doing at the agency prior to leaving was revamping all of our

01:15:04

meetings and having a positive focus at the beginning and ending of every meeting.

01:15:08

I think I talked about that previously where we would express gratitude at the end of the

01:15:12

meeting.

01:15:13

So you're fighting with people in the middle of the meeting.

01:15:15

Like I don't think we should do this.

01:15:16

Well, I think we should do this trying to find what is the right thing to do, not consensus,

01:15:20

but can I get to the point where I disagree but commit, let you make this call.

01:15:25

And then at the end, you express some gratitude to someone and it kind of just wipes away

01:15:30

all of the negative stuff that happened in the meeting.

01:15:34

And obviously, you have to do it right.

01:15:37

You can't get personally, you can't call people names, things like that.

01:15:40

You got to talk about the work, not the people.

01:15:43

But when you get everybody on the same page, like we're all trying to make this place better

01:15:46

because this is our vision, this is what we're trying to accomplish here.

01:15:48

These are the things that we're going to use as decision making criteria.

01:15:53

It can be really powerful.

01:15:54

And then you have all of these little things that you do as part of the day to day, the

01:16:00

regular routines that kind of reinforce that.

01:16:02

You can't just tack them on though.

01:16:04

That's the thing.

01:16:06

Well, Slack does this.

01:16:08

Slack the company because they actually had a pretty great company culture when they started

01:16:12

their product.

01:16:13

I don't know if it's still that way, but insert your favorite company and you can look at,

01:16:18

well, this is the things that they do and why they do them and what they've been able

01:16:21

to get as a result.

01:16:22

Oh, that's awesome.

01:16:23

I'm going to totally steal that.

01:16:24

But you have to connect it and make it your own.

01:16:27

Otherwise, it's just why are we doing this?

01:16:30

People don't really connect to that.

01:16:32

But I think it's really powerful.

01:16:33

And I think if you can get people pulling in the same direction, you can create alignment.

01:16:37

That's really when you can make a big difference in the world.

01:16:42

Whether that is a company, an organization, a nonprofit, doesn't matter.

01:16:47

That's what leadership is.

01:16:49

And that's the thing that's exciting to me is helping people make a bigger dent in the

01:16:53

universe.

01:16:54

However, this section, yeah, I don't know.

01:17:01

It's like, well, there's certain things that you could do like trust falls, which actually

01:17:05

do make an effect.

01:17:07

And then the whole how to divide.

01:17:09

This is the reason that no one gets along.

01:17:12

And how to heal essentially is if you have to say, I'm sorry, you were hurt by my actions.

01:17:17

That's not a real apology.

01:17:18

I was going to summarize it.

01:17:20

That's really what it is.

01:17:21

Yes.

01:17:22

Yes.

01:17:23

Just so you know, like, so it's chapter 13, then we go to epilogue and the epilogue's

01:17:26

like two pages, three pages, and it's done.

01:17:30

And basically, if I could summarize the epilogue, it's basically we're all constantly

01:17:35

creating and enacting rituals.

01:17:37

That's what we're doing.

01:17:38

We're doing these all the time.

01:17:39

They're daily.

01:17:40

And we go back to the tagline of the book, you know, basically, how do we harness the

01:17:44

surprising power of everyday actions that are these rituals?

01:17:48

Yeah, I guess we should go to action items real quick because I want to get into style

01:17:53

and rating.

01:17:54

I'm ready to talk about style and rating.

01:17:56

So I'll do my action items first.

01:18:02

So my action items break down into what rituals do I want to implement and what are important.

01:18:09

And I'm going to kind of subcategorize these because it's one action item, but it's in

01:18:13

a couple of different categories.

01:18:14

So personal and then family and then work, right?

01:18:19

So what are my personal rituals that I want to implement?

01:18:22

One of my family rituals I want to implement and one of the work rituals I want to implement.

01:18:26

And my goal, Mike, so you can hold me accountable for next episode.

01:18:29

I really just want one.

01:18:30

Like I don't want to have to, you know, I don't want the expectation to be I have seven

01:18:34

of these for each one.

01:18:35

It's more like what's one solid ritual that I'm either doing that I want to keep doing

01:18:41

or that I want to start.

01:18:44

And I want to think through those.

01:18:45

So that's my major action item for this one.

01:18:49

All right.

01:18:50

How about yours?

01:18:51

I've got a couple and one unofficial one, I'll say because I think what you're hitting

01:18:58

on is really what the book is intending for you to do is to reconsider all of your different

01:19:03

rituals.

01:19:05

And I think that I'm going to continue to think about that.

01:19:08

And what are the elements of my day to day that I could add more meaning through ritual?

01:19:15

But that feels like a lot.

01:19:16

And I don't want to break it down into I want to figure out something for personal family

01:19:20

and work.

01:19:21

I'm going to leave that one off the table for now, but I still have three specific action

01:19:25

items.

01:19:26

So the first one, how can I make the ritual of date night specifically more meaningful?

01:19:32

So I guess, you know, that's the one I want to really start with.

01:19:36

You mentioned the ridiculous getting on my bike and riding it from one room to the next,

01:19:41

but that really to get me thinking about my transition to work ritual.

01:19:45

I don't really have one.

01:19:47

I work at home.

01:19:48

So I wake up.

01:19:49

I have my morning routine and then it's like, OK, better get to work.

01:19:54

I think having a couple of things that I do on my way to work would be very helpful.

01:20:01

Maybe that means that I just don't work from home anymore.

01:20:04

Like I'll record podcasts here, but I have a co-working space I can go to.

01:20:09

Maybe that's how I start my day.

01:20:11

I get in the car.

01:20:12

I have the commute.

01:20:13

I go there.

01:20:14

I do my writing in the morning and then I come back in the afternoon.

01:20:17

I don't know exactly, but I want to think about that.

01:20:21

And then I also want to add a shutdown routine to my day.

01:20:26

You mentioned shutdown routines.

01:20:27

I understand conceptually the value of the shutdown routine, but just like my transition

01:20:35

to work routine, this one is almost nonexistent.

01:20:38

OK.

01:20:39

So these are kind of like bookends for me.

01:20:41

But if I could walk away from this book, having a transition to work ritual and a shutdown

01:20:49

ritual that actually sticks, then this would make this one of the most transformative

01:20:56

books I have ever had.

01:20:58

And you completely redeem yourself.

01:21:02

That's a lot of pressure.

01:21:03

I don't know that that's actually going to happen, but there's potential here.

01:21:09

I mean, what I'm seeing here, Mike, is coffee is the answer to both of these, right?

01:21:15

Like before you go to work, you just brew yourself one of your fruit through coffees

01:21:19

that's your ritual.

01:21:21

Then you walk that thing downstairs and you start your work day.

01:21:24

And then right before you end your work day, you brew yourself another fruit through coffee.

01:21:29

Drink that as you shut down your routine and then walk upstairs and join the rest of the

01:21:35

thing.

01:21:36

No.

01:21:37

Possible.

01:21:38

That's hilarious.

01:21:39

All right.

01:21:40

So now that we've got action items, let's work on it.

01:21:43

Let's go into style and rating.

01:21:44

It's my book.

01:21:45

So I'll start.

01:21:46

Mike, you might have heard it in my voice from the very beginning of the recording and

01:21:49

starting the show.

01:21:51

I wasn't that big of a fan of this book.

01:21:54

It wasn't that it didn't have some nuggets of things I'll take from it or there weren't

01:21:59

some good things in it.

01:22:01

But I just wasn't a fan of kind of the nature of it.

01:22:05

It felt kind of like humdrum kind of lukewarm.

01:22:09

Here's this study that we did and here's what we got out of it.

01:22:13

The thread of rituals while there wasn't wound in as tightly as I wanted it to be.

01:22:21

I thought there was a huge opportunity missed to tie it more to identity and kind of make

01:22:26

that connection there.

01:22:27

And I thought that was a meaningful piece that was missed.

01:22:30

So I don't know.

01:22:33

So my rating on this one's not going to be very good.

01:22:35

I'm not going to go crazy on it.

01:22:37

I'm going to give it a three out of five because I just thought it was okay and we'll

01:22:43

see what to get out of it.

01:22:46

I don't like recommending books that I then rate at a three out of five.

01:22:52

But here we are.

01:22:55

The ritual effect three out of five for me.

01:22:57

What's yours?

01:22:58

What did you think of it?

01:22:59

Oh, man.

01:23:00

I'm struggling with this one.

01:23:03

There's definitely parts of it that I didn't really care for.

01:23:08

Kind of ended it with a thud instead of a bang, in my opinion, with the work stuff.

01:23:15

Okay.

01:23:16

I don't know.

01:23:17

I think I'm caught up on something that you just said where you said I have trouble recommending

01:23:24

a book that is a three.

01:23:28

And I think I agree that makes it hard to say people should read this one.

01:23:33

Do I think people should read this one?

01:23:35

I actually do.

01:23:37

I think.

01:23:38

Really?

01:23:39

Yeah.

01:23:40

Well, so I don't have a whole lot of context with books that talk specifically about rituals

01:23:47

as it pertains to habits.

01:23:51

Argument could be made.

01:23:53

Those are really the same things.

01:23:54

But I think there's a really powerful argument at the beginning that they're not.

01:23:59

And that sets the stage for, well, what is a ritual then and what does it look like and

01:24:04

how can I get more out of it?

01:24:07

I think you take out the last section and the one that we skipped over.

01:24:16

The epilogue, a ritual life, which is basically just restating all of the famous rituals that

01:24:22

I mentioned at the beginning and then encouraging us to focus on the simple things.

01:24:28

I think that's kind of what I'm landing on is for better or for worse.

01:24:33

I don't know if this is due to good writing that didn't land with you or maybe I just

01:24:39

teased it out because I more than were add blurred this sucker.

01:24:44

But I feel like I'm able to understand what Michael Norton is getting at with rituals and

01:24:51

how valuable they can be.

01:24:53

It's inspired me in a lot of ways to consider my own rituals.

01:24:58

And I just have a feeling that I'm going to come back to the action items from this book

01:25:05

and it's going to be fairly significant.

01:25:08

For whatever reason, you know, I've talked about shutdown rituals previously and it's

01:25:12

never really stuck for me.

01:25:15

And I feel more incentivized than I ever have before to make that work.

01:25:21

Now it's possible that I forget about this the minute that we stop recording and nothing

01:25:28

actually happens.

01:25:30

And at that point, I may have some, I got my face, but I'm going to rate it four stars

01:25:34

for that reason.

01:25:38

I don't think you need to read the whole thing.

01:25:39

I don't think the rituals that work in the world section like really adds much at all.

01:25:46

Yeah, I agree.

01:25:48

But I really like the what rituals do the rituals for ourselves, rituals and relationships.

01:25:53

There's a solid three part productivity book right there.

01:25:58

And are there some flaws and could things be phrased a little bit differently?

01:26:01

Yeah, just in terms of the tone, I didn't really like the fact that he's a Harvard professor,

01:26:08

right?

01:26:09

Yeah, so kind of mentions multiple times while working with these really smart people is

01:26:15

really smart places and we are doing really smart things.

01:26:18

And it's kind of like, okay, I get it.

01:26:19

You're really smart.

01:26:23

That I've thought that was a little bit unnecessary.

01:26:26

I feel like it's sort of compensating maybe for some of the storytelling that we've been

01:26:33

getting a good dose of in the last several books that we read.

01:26:37

Maybe there's a different version of this where you don't lean on the credentials and

01:26:40

the research that you're doing so much and you're telling better stories around the power

01:26:44

of ritual.

01:26:46

But some of the stories that are in here are decent.

01:26:48

It's just not, we've had some really good storytellers and not to that level.

01:26:56

So I think you do kind of got to know what you're getting into with this one.

01:27:00

But I do like the premise of the book a lot, which is applying these rituals to your day

01:27:06

to day.

01:27:08

I don't know.

01:27:09

Maybe that's, you were talking about the legacy rituals and that's kind of maybe the

01:27:15

thing that you were after when you picked it.

01:27:17

So I could totally see if I had picked this book and I thought this is what I was getting

01:27:20

and got some totally different, that would leave a bad taste in my mouth just to be honest.

01:27:24

But like I mentioned at the very beginning, I was sort of surprised.

01:27:28

And I kind of liked the direction that he went with this, even though it wasn't exactly

01:27:34

what I expected.

01:27:35

So I think if you are wanting something that goes beyond just like the rote mechanics of

01:27:42

habits, then this is a good one.

01:27:45

Okay.

01:27:46

I mean, I can't tell you, I agree.

01:27:48

Like I don't think I would recommend that people, the people read this one.

01:27:53

Not that it was terrible.

01:27:54

It was just a matter of, I don't know.

01:27:56

I just don't, I just don't think it was that great of a book.

01:27:59

I will tell you that I have not come across or maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but

01:28:06

it's like I have not come across many other books that talk about rituals.

01:28:09

So exactly.

01:28:10

I mean, this is, yeah.

01:28:11

So that, that, that point is valid.

01:28:14

Like you, you definitely make a very clear and good point in terms of that.

01:28:19

Maybe my expectations were just too high walking into this.

01:28:22

Yeah.

01:28:23

If you are wanting a habit book, don't pick up this one because well, it's sort of talks

01:28:30

about habits.

01:28:32

There's much better books that are going to speak to that specific topic.

01:28:36

But if you want something that is, how do you create magical moments in your day to day

01:28:42

through ritual?

01:28:45

That's a very tiny niche.

01:28:47

And I don't think I have a better resource for you.

01:28:49

If I find one, that would probably bring my score down on this book, honestly.

01:28:55

But having read hundreds of books at this point, kind of surprised I haven't come across

01:29:00

that yet.

01:29:01

Like how do you actually create a solid ritual?

01:29:05

I don't know.

01:29:06

Maybe, maybe someone needs to write that book.

01:29:08

Yeah.

01:29:09

And maybe I wanted it to be more of, hey, I want to make better rituals.

01:29:15

Tell me how to make better rituals.

01:29:17

And that wasn't the nature of this book.

01:29:19

Like maybe that's probably where my little bit of letdown is.

01:29:24

Sure.

01:29:25

Okay.

01:29:26

Okay.

01:29:27

All right.

01:29:28

Let's move into upcoming books.

01:29:29

You've got the next book.

01:29:30

So what are we reading next?

01:29:33

Next we are reading a system for writing by Bob Dotto.

01:29:36

Actually you are reading system.

01:29:38

Right?

01:29:39

Because I've already read it.

01:29:41

Yes.

01:29:42

Okay.

01:29:43

Yeah.

01:29:44

But I was surprised when you mentioned that you were interested in that topic.

01:29:47

And I think it would be a really cool conversation.

01:29:52

I did talk to Bob Dotto when we had him on the Focus podcast.

01:29:58

But that was more just about, we did get into some of the content of the book, but it wasn't

01:30:04

through a critical lens like we tend to do on bookworm.

01:30:08

It was more just a conversation with Bob, who is a very interesting guy.

01:30:13

So I guess you already know that I like this book.

01:30:17

No pressure or anything.

01:30:18

Yeah, no, no pressure.

01:30:20

Although it won't really mess with my opinion that much.

01:30:24

If I don't like it, I'm going to tell you.

01:30:25

That's true.

01:30:26

Yeah.

01:30:27

You didn't like radical candor either.

01:30:28

Yeah.

01:30:29

What's after that?

01:30:32

So I think after that, and I can't remember if you've covered this one or not, because

01:30:37

I was going to do ultra learning, and then I remembered to look it up real quick before

01:30:41

we started the show.

01:30:42

I was like, "Oh no, they've done ultra learning."

01:30:46

Have you done 101 essays that will change the way you think I Brianna Weist?

01:30:51

No, we did a Brianna Weisbook, but I don't remember which one it was.

01:30:56

It was not that one.

01:30:57

So it's just a collection of her beloved pieces of writing, meditations of why you should

01:31:03

pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking.

01:31:06

It's a bunch of different things.

01:31:07

I think we'll have a very interesting conversation, whether we love it or hate it.

01:31:12

I think we'll have a very interesting conversation from this book.

01:31:16

Here's the issue, though, that I want to ask you about.

01:31:18

We should have had this conversation before we start this show.

01:31:20

Sorry, I forgot.

01:31:22

It's 448 pages.

01:31:24

Is that too long for us?

01:31:28

I think it's fine as long as you're able to get it done.

01:31:33

Yeah, let's do it.

01:31:35

All right.

01:31:36

Actually, that sounds really fascinating.

01:31:38

So I'm actually looking forward to this one.

01:31:41

Okay.

01:31:42

So yep, we're going to commit to that one.

01:31:43

We're going to do 101.

01:31:44

And Dotto's book is a little shorter, so we can get a hit startup.

01:31:49

So, okay, good.

01:31:50

Exactly.

01:31:51

All right.

01:31:52

So 101 essays that will change the way you think by Brianna Weist Weist.

01:31:56

I think it's Weist.

01:31:58

That is the one caveat with this.

01:32:01

If you're going to pick it, you got to figure out how to say the name correctly.

01:32:05

You had to do that for Hidden Genius, so I have to do that for this one.

01:32:09

Okay.

01:32:10

All right, Mike, do you have any gap books between now and next time?

01:32:13

Well, I did, but I maybe we'll put this on pause after I see how long this 101 essays

01:32:18

is.

01:32:19

Now, I mentioned before the Elements of Eloquents by Mark Forsyth and I haven't had a chance

01:32:23

to read that one yet, but I really do want to.

01:32:26

So my plan was to read that one when I was traveling to Boise shortly.

01:32:30

My wife and I are going to use the ConvertKit Studios and record some life theme videos.

01:32:37

But I'm going to focus on 101 essays first.

01:32:41

So yeah, we'll see.

01:32:43

Wonderful.

01:32:44

I do not have a gap book because 101 essays is as long as it is.

01:32:50

And I also have to read, you know, a system for writing as well.

01:32:53

So, so I'm not going to, I'm not going to do a gap book on this one.

01:32:56

We're also starting the academic semester, so a lot of my reading time is going to get

01:33:02

pulled into start of the semester meetings and meetings with students and stuff.

01:33:06

So I'm going to intentionally not choose a gap book on this one.

01:33:10

So with that, that is the end of another bookworm.

01:33:15

We want to remind everybody and thank everybody who listens to the Pro Show for doing that.

01:33:21

It helps us kind of keep the lights on and keep things moving, pay for hosting and a

01:33:28

bunch of different things.

01:33:29

So thank you for doing that.

01:33:30

If you're interested in the Pro Show, you can go to patreon.com/bookwormfm.

01:33:35

With the Pro Show, you get the unedited raw feed that comes straight down.

01:33:42

You get it really quick after we record the show.

01:33:45

You get the show with no ads whenever we do have ads that are sold on the show.

01:33:51

And that comes out basically the same dime as the ad supported show.

01:33:58

And then there's a wallpaper there and I think that's it.

01:34:03

But you can go to Patreon.com/bookwormfm.

01:34:09

If you, the Apple just released, they just kind of did a new thing.

01:34:12

So if you're using the Patreon app, I would recommend that you go to the website.

01:34:18

Or else you're going to pay 30% more for the membership.

01:34:23

And that has nothing to do with us.

01:34:25

We have nothing to do with that.

01:34:26

So I would just go online, go to the internet and go to patreon.com/bookwormfm.

01:34:32

If you're interested in that.

01:34:35

But thanks for everybody who does that.

01:34:36

That really does help out the show and we appreciate that.

01:34:39

Yeah, it's seven bucks a month and you forgot the main benefit which is the extended section.

01:34:49

So today there was a surprise technology topic that you dropped on me.

01:34:54

Yes.

01:34:55

Yep.

01:34:56

So today we talked about whether or not Mike likes Foti technology and we'll leave that

01:35:02

there for that.

01:35:03

But it was a good conversation.

01:35:05

So Mike, do you have anything else before we close out another one?

01:35:10

Nah.

01:35:11

If you are reading along with us, pick up a system for writing by Bob Dotto and we'll

01:35:15

talk to you in a couple of weeks.