Bookworm Transcripts

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I hate that thing when I open up the quick, what do they call it when you command tab?

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What's it called?

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I know, I just, I'm blinking on it right now.

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Yeah, whenever I hit that and I have my mouse.

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App switcher.

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There you go.

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Whenever I'm in the app switcher, I hate it whenever I'm doing that, but my hand is

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on the mouse and I accidentally move the mouse and then it automatically selects whatever

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the cursor is over.

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And then I end up in some random application I didn't want to be in.

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I do that more than I care to admit.

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Have you ever had it where you start moving the mouse and then it'll start moving to the

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right and then you let go of the mouse and it just keeps going?

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No, I have not had that.

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Yeah, I use a couple different applications that kind of modify that a little bit.

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One of them is I've used which, I don't think I have it active at the moment actually, but

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it allows you to go instead of just to a specific app, a specific window.

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So if you have a bunch of Safari windows open, for example, you can choose the one that you

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want to open.

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Nice.

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So it's kind of nice, but it does funky things with the app switcher and occasionally it

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will get stuck in this carousel loop where I can just scroll from left to right and then

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go back to the right and scroll again and just keep going.

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It's like it's taken over your computer and you can no longer control the thing that you're

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supposed to control.

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Exactly.

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Kind of freaky when you think about it.

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That's true.

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It's true.

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So I'm looking at our list of follow up here and someone sent in, this is a Roger who sent

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in a quote via contact form, I believe, on the Bookworm site.

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I know this Roger.

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You do know this Roger?

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Yeah, Roger is a member of the dojo and he's posted essentially like a 12 week year thing

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where he wants to be held accountable for writing poetry and his poetry is really good.

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I'll try to find a link so we can share it in the show notes and give Roger a shout out.

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Nice.

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Nice.

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Well, I was not familiar with Roger.

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So Roger sent in this quote by Mortimer Adler, which I thought was very fitting and I wanted

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to share it here.

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So here we go.

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So Mortimer Adler, in the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can

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get through, but rather how many can get through to you, which I thought was very fitting since

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that seems to be our intent with Bookworm is not so much about how many books we go through

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but getting something out of them.

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So there you go.

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I liked that one.

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It was a good quote.

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Thanks, Roger.

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Very profound Mortimer/Rodger.

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Roger did the hard work of digging it up.

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Mortimer did the harder work of figuring it out.

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I totally agree with this quote though and I really like it.

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I was interesting.

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I was listening to your latest Whims at Work and you and Drew were talking about reading

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books and I found it interesting the way that Drew reads books where he's got the apple.

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You can tell me if I'm messing this up because I was listening to it in the car on the way

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you're actually.

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Right.

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But it sounds like Drew actually has apple notes open and then has kindle kind of on

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a slide over.

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So he'll read and then he'll go to notes and then he'll take the notes and apple notes

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and kind of slide the book over when he's reading it and slide it off when he needs to

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get out of the way so you can actually interact with apple notes.

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I think that's a really cool idea.

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I also like for the life of me cannot get on board with the whole digital books thing.

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I've used the overdrive app that he talks about.

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Yeah, that's kind of a sticking point for us on that show.

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Yeah, it's decent.

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And I had the same revelation like, oh my gosh, there are all these awesome ebooks that you

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can get with your library card.

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That's amazing.

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Yeah.

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And then also like the whole checking them out thing does seem weird.

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And I have like a huge collection of digital books that I never read because I don't know,

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Drew is a better person than I because whenever I sit down with a knife ad, it's not long

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before I end up in a social media app.

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I cannot with a digital device say, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do this

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unless I've got some sort of support system on the Mac that isn't like a physical barrier

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where it's like blocking me from those things, but I run the app timing and it gives me a

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report.

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So I know that if I'm slacking off, I'm going to get a report the next morning.

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It says, hey, you were only 50% productive yesterday and I'm going to feel bad about

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that.

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And I don't like that feeling.

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So I try to avoid that.

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It's nice.

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Yeah, I don't know.

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Like Drew's got the whole e-reader thing figured out.

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I think he has a little more self discipline than I do because I could not.

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I can't do that.

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I need to make sure like even when I sit down to read, I make sure my phone, I set it down

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on the couch as I'm walking to the other side of the couch such that I can read so that my

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phone is not within arm's length.

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I have to do that.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, it's kind of interesting because I used to be a big digital book person.

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Like I said, but I found that never read those books.

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I was probably one of the first people to embrace digital books.

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I remember that Oyster app that he was talking about.

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It was awesome.

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And then I remember seeing like when Kindle Unlimited was announced, my initial thought

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was this sounds amazing.

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They're probably going to have a bunch of junky books in there and it's not going to

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be anything close to Oyster, but no one's going to understand that.

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And Oyster is going to go to business within six months.

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That's basically what happened.

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That's exactly what happened.

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But I've gone like completely the other way where I'm now as much of a book snob.

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I feel as I am a coffee snob where like I don't even just get like the physical books.

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I get the hardcover books whenever possible.

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Nice.

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Because I like stacking up all those hard covers on my bookshelf.

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Well, I'm with you on the paper book thing.

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That's something that I know it helps me in a lot of different ways.

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But I like seeing the physical books because then I can look back at these are the ones

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I've gone through.

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And I do, especially whenever I'm putting a book away after I've finished reading it,

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I have a habit of looking through the ones that are the other ones that are on that shelf.

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And I keep finished books and yet to read books separate on my bookshelf.

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So I can always see the ones that I have completed.

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And I like to look through that shelf to see here are the ones I've gone through.

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And it's not uncommon for me to see one of those pick it up and thumb through it just

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out of curiosity.

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And I don't think I would ever do that with a digital library.

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I don't think I would, as I complete a book, I wouldn't look through the list of books

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that are there.

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Not to mention it'd be a lot harder to do that all at one shot.

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But I just don't see myself ever doing that.

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Right.

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So on the topic of analog versus digital, why don't you tell us about your new email machine?

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My new email machine.

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That's one way to look at it, I suppose.

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So if you're in the latest whims at work, you've heard about my new computer.

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And for the listeners, if you want to know that whole story as to why I have a new computer

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and all that, you can go check out that episode.

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I'm not going to repeat all of that here because it's kind of a long story.

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But I have a new MacBook Pro, of course, Space Grey, but it's one of the new new new new

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new ones.

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So it's what, three weeks old, four weeks old maybe as of when they released it.

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Yeah, it's better than mine.

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Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

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And it makes my life much nicer in the world of what I do on my Mac.

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So I'm excited about said Mac.

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Yeah, it's looking at the specs that you got here.

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It's fairly identical to mine.

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I'm a little bit surprised also that you went with the 13 inch just because the 13

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inch does not have a dedicated video card, which I know from past experience, I had the

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same thought.

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I love the 13 inch.

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I'm going to stick with 13 inch because of the portability.

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And then hit the wall where I was bashing my head against it because it couldn't export

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videos and it was basically taxed to the limit.

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So you have to let us know how that works maybe about six months, I guess.

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Well, I debated the 15, but it's just too big for I move around and travel enough that

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it's just too much to try to do that.

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I'm not going to have multiple machines for things like that.

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I have run some video through it and I can tell you it's significantly faster than the

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one I had previously.

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And I think that has more to do with the 16 giga ram that I have on it.

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I think that's mostly what it is, but I'm with you.

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I know that the dedicated video card would have made it even faster, but the way that

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my workflows are are set up.

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I don't get too caught up in in the need for that because if I'm if I'm cranking out

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like a 10 minute video, which is a longer video for me, like even doing that, it only

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takes it like 30 minutes to crank it out.

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So I can easily work on the next one.

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If I've got that and by the time I've got the next one ready to go, that one's done.

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So it doesn't really change anything and it just it essentially takes me from needing

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to wait on it to not waiting on it.

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And that's a big deal in my workflows.

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Fair enough.

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That's what I also also touch ID on the Mac.

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Oh, yeah.

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Yeah, it's awesome.

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I like touch ID.

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I could care less about the touch bar.

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Really?

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See love touch bar.

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You heard that episode.

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I love touch bar.

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I did.

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Yeah.

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And I was kind of surprised honestly because the touch bar, the issue I have with it is

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that it's supposed to be context aware and switch with the apps that you're using, but

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the the fact that it changes means that the buttons aren't always in the same place.

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And so I find it very difficult to establish any sort of like muscle memory that you would

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with traditional keyboard shortcuts using the the controls that are on the touch bar itself.

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And I find that I end up just bumping it by accident more often than not.

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Now see, this is where I think some of my developer habits come in because that muscle memory

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on the touch bar translates perfectly.

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And I think that's because so many of the applications I use.

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I treat touch bar as like another keyboard shortcut.

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And that essentially means that I have context aware keyboard shortcuts and they may be the

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same shortcut, but they do different things in different applications.

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So I'm already used to that process.

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And whenever it gets to the touch bar, like even using Apple mail, I know where the archive

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and delete buttons are.

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And even though they are right next to each other on the touch bar, I don't think I've

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missed once on hitting the right one.

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So and I'm not even looking at it anymore.

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So yeah, I could see what you're getting at.

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I think for me, I'm so sensitive in how I move and use input devices on my Mac that

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it just doesn't matter.

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Well, if it's working for you, more power to you, but I don't understand.

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I guess you can show me in a couple of days.

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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I'll show it to you.

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It's pretty slick, I think, but that's maybe that's just because I've customized it in

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a couple of small ways to make that possible.

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Like I've seen a few people that think I'm crazy because I use I put the lock button right

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next to the touch ID sensor.

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And that essentially means that as I'm hitting the delete button, if I go too high, I will

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accidentally lock the computer, which happens, but not very frequently.

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But whenever that does happen, it's very easy to slide over, push the touch ID button

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to kick it back on and then automatically logs in.

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So it's like this one second whoops.

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It's probably way quicker than hitting the Siri button and then having it sit there and

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try to process what you're saying, even when you're not saying anything and then say,

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Oh, right.

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I didn't get that.

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Here's what you can say.

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I don't like it to quit.

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Yeah, I don't use Siri on the Mac.

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I don't know why it just seems weird to me.

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I figure if I'm going to do that, I'm going to use my phone.

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You can only see the phrase.

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Your file and it's so style in so many times.

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There you go.

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All right.

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Talk about your new journal and meditation.

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Yeah.

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Actually, one other thing I want to point out here regarding the Mac book and the touch

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bar.

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Are you do you use better touch tool at all?

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I don't.

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Okay.

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Check out better touch tool because they actually have the ability to program these,

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essentially, the keyboard might show type shortcuts, but you can, instead of having it

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assigned to a swipe gesture or a keyboard combination, you can actually create workflow

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buttons for your touch bar.

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Interesting.

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Now, see, I can maybe see.

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Maybe.

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Maybe.

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Yeah.

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I can maybe see getting behind that.

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I have not gone the route of better touch tool in the past.

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It's something I'm very aware of and have considered a number of times, but I've never

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gotten into it.

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I've also never gotten into keyboard maestro at all because it's very easy for me to get

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me to just use Automator to create services and write my own scripts for that and assign

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them keyboard shortcuts.

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So I don't.

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I suppose if you know scripting, then Automator's got just about everything that you would

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possibly need.

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Right.

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Right.

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And I had done a two part, I think two part series for screencast online on Mac automation.

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And it was right after the new Mac book pros had come out and I had one with a touch bar.

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And so I'd saw something about better touch tool being able to use like the touch bar

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shortcut.

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And it's kind of an example of that if you go into screencasts online, but I've only

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scratched the surface of it.

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But it seems like if you're really going to use a touch bar to customize your workflow,

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which is kind of the potential there, then better touch tools.

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Definitely worth a look.

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Yeah.

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I'll take a look.

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I know promises.

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I tend to dial things in.

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And then once I know how they work, I tend to leave them because I can become more efficient

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with them that way.

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So makes sense.

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I'm not much of a fiddler anymore, it seems.

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All right.

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So my new journal, let me grab a link here because this is going to be a little bit difficult

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to explain.

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So after we recorded the 12 week year episode for theoretical accountability here, other

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podcasts.

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All right.

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Because you joined us.

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Yeah, I was kind of in the middle of my 12 week year planning and I had done the planning,

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but it was still looking for a system that help it stick and help me follow through with

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it every single day.

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And then randomly I saw this and maybe was even an Instagram ad, which was odd, but I

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gave it a look and I ordered it and it's awesome.

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So now I need to find Chrome and I'll paste this here for you.

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This is called the self journal.

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And what it is, is it is essentially a moleskin type journal, which has a bunch of stuff built

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into it.

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Like the pages are designed to help you implement successfully a 12 week year.

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They don't call it 12 week year.

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It's not branded 12 week year.

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In fact, they say like a 13 week period or something like that.

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But it follows that same timeframe.

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Yeah, it's the same concept.

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And so what you do at the beginning of the journal is there's these different sections.

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So there's a section where you identify your three goals and then the three things that

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you need to do underneath each of those goals.

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There's a page for every week.

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So you can go back weekly and evaluate your week.

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And then there are the daily pages where it's got space where you can plan out your

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day.

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So there's like a six to nine, I think on the left and then on the right, there's like

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places to add notes.

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So it's kind of like a calendar, but then there's also space for like morning gratitude, evening

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gratitude, what are the things that would make today a win, there's space to write your

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goal so that you see it every single day.

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And it's just something that is designed to help the 12 week year approach actually stick.

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Now I've only been doing this since the beginning of this week.

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So three days.

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But maybe not enough to know.

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Definitely not enough to say that yes, this is the thing, but I'm super excited about

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what I am seeing with this because this is part of like a whole bunch of things that

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have been happening that have all kind of aligned together.

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Okay.

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So I also mentioned, I think on theoretical accountability, the book 10% Happier by Dan

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Harris, which is actually my gap book for today.

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So maybe we'll talk about this a little bit later.

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But that is Dan Harris of NBC Nightline who had a panic attack on the air and then decided

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to try meditation.

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And it's basically it's not even like a prescriptive type book where like a lot of the books that

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we read for for book remarks, more like a biography.

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It's more just his story about how he thought meditation was crazy and then he ended up

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going to this 10 day silent retreat and he's like, why the heck am I here?

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And then the breakthroughs that he had and all that type of stuff.

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But he's a really, really good writer and the story is awesome.

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And it's just very easy to track with it in the way that he writes.

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I felt like he was speaking directly to me in a lot of the situations.

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Like there's a lot of a lot of very similar situations I felt like or a lot of similar

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emotions, at least the way that he was describing them.

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And so like I've known for a while, we've talked about on this podcast that meditation

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is something that would be beneficial for me.

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And after reading that book, going through the 12 like your stuff, I actually have one

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of my 12 week your goals is to establish a meditation habit.

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And so having the the the self journal as a place where I'm tracking those habits and

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being forced to go back to that journal multiple times per day because there's the morning

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gratitude and the evening gratitude is making this stuff stick.

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And again, very small sample size.

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I know that.

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But I can also tell you that my wife and I were talking just last night actually about

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the changes that she's seen in me since I started doing this because what the meditation

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practice does and I think that there's a couple pieces here.

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It's the meditation in the morning because I do it in the morning.

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And it's also coupled with the gratitude that's part of this self journal.

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That just like completely changes how I approach my day.

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I can't even describe exactly what the change is.

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But I can tell you that whenever I encounter something, I'm able to understand like in the

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book that the 10% happier book he talks about how meditation is essentially mindfulness

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and recognizing that this thing is happening.

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But you don't have to get upset about it.

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You don't have to get super excited about it.

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You can just be grateful that this thing is happening.

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You can observe it and then you can move on to the next thing.

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You can always be fully present.

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I think is how how he put it.

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That's kind of a buzzword in the productivity space.

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But hopefully that makes sense.

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And I've noticed that.

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I've noticed that where like I can just appreciate what is happening without stressing about

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all the things that I know I have to do today, even though nothing else has changed from

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a task management perspective.

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It's literally just I'm getting up a little bit earlier.

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I'm writing down this gratitude in this best self journal.

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And I am meditating for five minutes before I start my day.

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And it's made an incredible difference.

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So there will probably be another meditation book on the horizon.

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It'll make you go with me.

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How long have you been doing this meditation thing?

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Because if you're seeing that much of a benefit in how long of a time?

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Just a couple of days.

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I started it this week.

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So I don't know, three days, four days.

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Wow.

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That is the...

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But it's the...

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It's the difference in that sort of time.

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Consistency though.

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Yeah, I'm not like Dan Harris mentions in a podcast that he's got a 10% happier podcast

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as well.

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There was an episode I listened to where they had Gary Vaynerchuk on and they were trying

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to get him to meditate, which was entertaining.

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But Gary Vee asked him like, "Well, how long do you meditate?"

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And he's like, "I meditate for two hours every day."

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And Gary Vee's like, "Oh, that would be great.

00:20:49

I'd love to not have all this stuff to do."

00:20:51

And Dan's like, "No, I got lots of stuff to do.

00:20:52

That's why I have to meditate."

00:20:54

Because if I don't meditate, I'm not in the proper mental space to handle these things

00:20:58

the right way.

00:20:59

They take longer, I mess up, I've got to do it over.

00:21:02

And that was just kind of like a bombshell to Gary Vee.

00:21:07

But I've noticed that on a micro level.

00:21:10

I'm not going away on a 10-day silent retreat.

00:21:12

I'm not doing this for hours a day, but I can tell you that from doing it consistently,

00:21:18

even for a very small time period, it has made a huge difference.

00:21:22

Interesting.

00:21:23

Yeah.

00:21:24

I've gone down that path before and after a few days, even after a couple weeks of doing

00:21:30

it every single day, still didn't see even what you're seeing in two days.

00:21:35

So that's why I'm kind of like, "Wow."

00:21:37

Because it didn't get anywhere close to that for me.

00:21:39

Yes, see, I've done that before too.

00:21:41

I've tried it, quote unquote, before too.

00:21:44

And it's not worked.

00:21:45

And so as I'm thinking about what is different this time, I think it's a couple of things.

00:21:49

Number one, I read that 10% happy book.

00:21:51

And even though it's a lot of just the story behind it, Dan Harris is a really good job

00:21:56

of explaining the things that he's learned along the way.

00:21:59

And so it's an entertaining read that gives you, I think, a pretty good idea of what meditation

00:22:03

should be or mindfulness should be without the prescriptive, very traditional Eastern

00:22:09

philosophy type stuff.

00:22:11

And that's what most people think of if they're not familiar with meditation, is like the

00:22:14

Eastern religion, the Buddhism, stuff like that.

00:22:18

And there is, I don't know how to describe this, the practice of meditation couples nicely

00:22:25

with that belief system, I guess.

00:22:28

But that doesn't mean that you can't use the practice of meditation.

00:22:30

Like for me, it's explicitly a Christian belief system.

00:22:35

You can, they're not mutually exclusive.

00:22:38

You don't have to pick one or the other.

00:22:40

And I think that it's not necessarily, I don't know.

00:22:46

I guess it's kind of unfortunate that it's been coupled so closely with Buddhism because

00:22:50

I think that's alienating to a lot of people like myself who are just kind of like, oh,

00:22:55

I don't want to go into meditation because that's taboo or whatever.

00:23:00

There's a stigma associated with that, which whether you believe it to be right or wrong,

00:23:04

like you kind of want to distance yourself from it if you don't really understand it.

00:23:08

But the practice of meditation, if you're able to isolate it, I think, is a lot of value.

00:23:12

And in that episode with Gary V, he talks about the reason that he's on there is he thinks

00:23:17

that this is the next big health breakthrough that in the future everybody's going to be

00:23:22

meditating because there's all this research that's being done right now that shows that

00:23:26

it helps you in all these different areas.

00:23:29

So he thinks that essentially there's a lot of money to be made in meditation in the future.

00:23:36

But.

00:23:37

Interesting.

00:23:38

Okay, well, I am looking forward to the book that you're potentially proposing somewhere

00:23:45

in the future on this.

00:23:47

I will jump into it wholeheartedly with you and read through.

00:23:52

But I will remain as skeptic because I've tried it multiple times.

00:23:55

So you need to keep this going so you can continue to tell me that it's helpful.

00:24:00

Fair enough.

00:24:01

And the other thing I think that makes this work for me is that I've made this part of

00:24:05

my 12 week year and again, like that journal helps me because I've written it all down

00:24:09

now.

00:24:10

It's pen and paper like I can't change it.

00:24:13

I could obviously like cross it off and write something else if I wanted to.

00:24:15

But I've said that in the next 90 days I'm going to give this my best shot.

00:24:19

And so if I say two weeks from now that, oh, this isn't really a work in, I'm just going

00:24:23

to give up on this like I've sabotaged my 12 week year.

00:24:27

So I think that that creates a little bit.

00:24:30

It makes it a little bit more sticky as well.

00:24:33

Makes sense.

00:24:34

All right.

00:24:35

How's the conflict in every meeting going?

00:24:39

This is interesting.

00:24:40

Okay.

00:24:41

So my wife listened to the five dysfunctions of a team.

00:24:43

She really liked that episode.

00:24:45

She she could tolerate Josh.

00:24:49

She loved Josh's perspective on that book.

00:24:52

So that was that was pretty cool.

00:24:54

She said that was really interesting.

00:24:57

The dynamic with all three of us.

00:24:59

So that was that was a fun episode to record.

00:25:03

It was like it's a fun episode to listen to at least according to my wife.

00:25:06

Yeah.

00:25:07

And that's one of those things.

00:25:08

We are on it.

00:25:09

So you can't get a true feel for how people will see it.

00:25:14

And I eat the number of times that I wish I could see how someone else views this podcast.

00:25:20

I so value that perspective because I can't get it.

00:25:25

Right.

00:25:26

Absolutely.

00:25:27

But coming back to the conflict in every meeting thing.

00:25:30

So my wife is on board with this and she understands the the principal.

00:25:35

And so we've kind of applied that to our family meetings where she actually brought it up

00:25:40

last time.

00:25:41

She's like, okay, so where's the conflict here?

00:25:43

Like, what are we actually resolving?

00:25:46

I actually brought it up last night even in we've got an outreach team that we had up

00:25:51

at our church.

00:25:52

And so there's a eight people that we work with on this on this team.

00:25:55

Well, awesome.

00:25:56

And six others.

00:25:58

And I actually mentioned that like I was casting the vision essentially for how we want the

00:26:02

team to work.

00:26:03

And I brought up the fact that like we want this to be the place where we can have discussion.

00:26:07

We don't want just a list of agenda items like this is communication.

00:26:10

We want to tell you we want there to be actual communication.

00:26:13

We want your input.

00:26:15

We want way in before there's buy in.

00:26:17

And if you have any issues or any concerns about anything like we want to have honest

00:26:21

and open discussion about it here.

00:26:23

And I actually use the phrase we want conflict in every meeting.

00:26:27

So I'm trying to I'm trying to spread this slowly.

00:26:31

But one thing that I have noticed with this is I have to be careful about how I bring the

00:26:36

conflict because there are some teams that I am involved with where they don't have this

00:26:45

mindset at all.

00:26:47

And if I try to bring conflict, it can appear to come across as a personal attack I've discovered.

00:26:54

And it's that sounds like you've been burnt a couple times.

00:26:58

Not necessarily.

00:27:00

But I was having a meeting and then somebody brought up like I said something in the meeting

00:27:05

essentially just to kind of correct a problem that I had had seen or an observation that

00:27:10

I made and like okay if we really want this to be successful this is what we all should

00:27:13

do.

00:27:14

And afterwards somebody comes to me and is like hey you were talking about me and this

00:27:16

guy right and I'm like oh no sorry I didn't even think about that because my mind it's

00:27:21

weird.

00:27:22

I don't want to I don't want to make it sound like I've arrived or anything like that.

00:27:26

But like my approach to meetings is completely different than how other people approach meetings

00:27:31

I am recognizing.

00:27:33

And so my interpretation of the events in the meetings is completely different from other

00:27:38

people's interpretation of the events.

00:27:40

So that's kind of the revelation I've had is I need to be careful and consider all the

00:27:45

possible ways that this could be interpreted until I guess the teams that I'm on get to

00:27:53

that same point where we've battled through all of those five different levels or all

00:27:59

the those five different dysfunctions and we can have that honest and open conversation

00:28:02

that's obviously the goal.

00:28:04

But I can't just show up and be like I conflict.

00:28:07

Yeah.

00:28:08

That's like an end well.

00:28:09

Right.

00:28:10

Right.

00:28:11

So many of the meetings I get into there with clients and it's typically because I don't

00:28:16

really have to I don't have to work to create the conflict not create it but to to work

00:28:22

through a conflict because typically whenever I'm on a call or in meeting over video or

00:28:28

something like that which is always interesting when you get other cultures involved.

00:28:31

But whenever I'm in those they have a problem that I'm there to solve.

00:28:38

If you really boil it down there is a conflict or something that we're trying to work through

00:28:42

as it is because they want something they want a new website they want features added

00:28:47

to an existing platform like there is something that doesn't work and they want it fixed.

00:28:52

So they are bringing the conflict which makes my life a lot easier.

00:28:56

But it also gets very tricky like I alluded to a little bit ago is whenever you throw

00:29:00

in another culture or a different a different way of doing meetings it just complicates things

00:29:06

and makes it very tricky.

00:29:10

Yeah I can I can totally see that I haven't had to necessarily deal with that I don't

00:29:15

believe but yeah so conflict every meeting is.

00:29:19

I don't know that you would ever I don't think you would need to know or see that.

00:29:26

Does that make sense because I think with your with what you do you're doing maybe some

00:29:31

one-on-one stuff but you have a set number of teams that you're involved with and you

00:29:36

tend to build longer term relationships with those whereas in my scenario it's very easy

00:29:41

for me to be meeting with a different team every single week.

00:29:45

Yeah that's that's true that that is definitely true.

00:29:50

So conflict every meeting is still a work in progress but I feel like we're we're getting

00:29:54

there.

00:29:55

Yeah yeah cool.

00:29:58

Well on that note let's transition into today's book because talking about conflict there's

00:30:02

always going to be the the time when you need to say no and that brings us into today's

00:30:08

book which is my pick of the power of a positive no by William Murray and this is one that I

00:30:15

feel is it floats around the productivity world quite a bit it seems and it's it's extremely

00:30:23

helpful you know that William Murray has had a handful of books that came out before this

00:30:30

and this is a way because he's the author of getting to yes and he realized in the process

00:30:37

of writing that and going through with people after the fact that there's also the side of

00:30:42

saying no not just yes so this is kind of the counter to that which is very helpful because

00:30:49

we all need to say no and we need to say no more often I definitely needed this.

00:30:55

So I'm curious why specifically did you pick this book.

00:31:01

I pick this yeah I there's a little bit of an ulterior well not ulterior but alternative

00:31:08

motive maybe in that I am a recovering people pleaser and I love solving problems and it

00:31:15

doesn't matter if they're mine or someone else and the trouble with that is whenever

00:31:22

someone has a problem and I'm aware of it my instinct is to go fix and although that's

00:31:29

a very good instinct to have in a lot of scenarios especially the world that I've decided to

00:31:35

work in it's very easy to become overwhelmed and that's something that I'm working through

00:31:42

right now with some of the goals that I've got on my 12 week year with Josh on theoretical

00:31:47

I'm working through some of that with him is I've just got a lot going on and I'm trying

00:31:51

to fine tune that into where I should be learning where to say no so as I so that I

00:31:55

know where to say yes.

00:31:57

Gotcha yeah that that makes sense I think that going into this this book I wasn't exactly

00:32:05

what I anticipated I really enjoyed it we'll get into the specifics here but I can definitely

00:32:12

see this being the type of title that would jump out to you if you're feeling overwhelmed

00:32:19

by everything that you've said yes to but I also feel like the information that they

00:32:26

provided here is not necessarily stuff that is going to fix your problem overnight which

00:32:33

is I guess not implicitly yeah exactly exactly it's not implicitly said in the title but it's

00:32:41

the kind of thing that like you see the title and you're like oh this this I need right

00:32:47

it wasn't it wasn't exactly that it was really good information but it was more more general

00:32:51

stuff that I thought then just like okay this is what I need to do right now to fix everything

00:32:55

that's wrong in my life yeah I would agree it was very different than what I was expecting

00:33:00

I I was expecting I guess a little bit more of here's how to say no and here's what that

00:33:07

will create for you like that's kind of what I was expecting and that's kind of in there

00:33:13

but it it the more I went through it the more I realized this is about the process of saying

00:33:19

no and the nuances that can come in the process of saying no is that fair yeah that's a very

00:33:26

good description I totally agree and honestly this was kind of a hard one to outline for

00:33:32

bookworm in fact just a couple minutes ago I was moving stuff around on the outline and

00:33:36

I didn't even add anything to what you put here because I didn't know what to add because

00:33:41

it's broken down in a kind of interesting interesting way there's essentially like nine

00:33:48

chapters in the in the beginning part of it where they're broken down into different sections

00:33:52

like prepare where the three things under there are uncover your yes and power your

00:33:57

no respect your way to yes then there's the deliver where you express your yes to start

00:34:01

your no proposal yes and we'll get into the formula here in a little bit and then follow

00:34:05

through where you stay true to your yes you underscore your no and then you negotiate

00:34:10

to yes but the the real value of this book to me was a lot of the the little things that

00:34:17

were kind of hidden in there this William definitely likes lists so I teased out like

00:34:25

I've got a mind node file and one of the the separate branches that I have is for these

00:34:28

three benefits of a positive no which was I felt like not super prominent in the book

00:34:35

but is also one of the most valuable pieces of it and so real quickly the three benefits

00:34:41

of a positive no according to the book you can create what you want you can protect what

00:34:46

you value and you can change what no longer works and I think what's really appealing to

00:34:51

me about this is that the three benefits of a positive no what they do is they allow you

00:34:58

to control the narrative they allow you to control your own story and you're in you're

00:35:04

in control of the outcome so you get to decide what you want you get to decide what you value

00:35:10

you get to change the things that no longer work but in order to do that you need to be

00:35:17

able to say no and I think I agree with you with the the constant list making and it always

00:35:24

kills me whenever people start doing a list and then do a list within the list because

00:35:29

I I have a tendency to want to and maybe this is just me and my own issues but I have a

00:35:36

tendency to want to memorize these things whenever there's a list of things because I

00:35:40

feel like I should be able to retain that and it's a good framework so I should know

00:35:45

how it works like take take getting things done for example that whole five step process

00:35:50

like I can quote that to you but that that's what I tend to want to do with these and when

00:35:56

they are a number of lists and lists within lists of lists of lists and on it goes it

00:36:03

it's impossible for me to memorize all those and I get frustrated by it whereas the the

00:36:07

base framework that he poses the yes no yes now that I know I will never forget but I

00:36:16

always want to memorize all these things yeah and it's really difficult for for me I

00:36:22

guess because I've switched the way that I take notes for for these books and I've been

00:36:27

just been using a mine node file and so I've got a mind map of all these different things

00:36:32

and it's great for getting information down because I can real quickly identify these

00:36:37

are the quotes is the discussion points these are the action items but if I get something

00:36:41

that I feel is really important I can just create a new a new note off of the the main

00:36:47

branch like I've got a picture of the book in the middle so I could just create a new

00:36:51

major note if there's something that really jumps out to me like those three benefits

00:36:54

of a positive no but when it comes time to create an actual outline I've got all these

00:37:00

different pieces and like you like you said it's it's hard to it my brain doesn't like

00:37:04

having these all over the place it's like these need to be in order yes and I have essentially

00:37:11

based on my my node file here no idea what that order actually is anymore yeah I tend

00:37:18

to and we need to do like we should just get this on the on the calendar after this episode

00:37:25

is how we read books and just do a bonus episode we just need to do this but I have

00:37:30

a tendency to want I want to summarize a book like that's one thing that I've learned

00:37:37

I'm really good at is boiling things down to a single or a couple points that's one of

00:37:42

my strong suits and I always want to do that with a book and when there's a lot of separate

00:37:50

points which is cut and a lot of sub points that are very powerful like what you're saying

00:37:55

the three benefits of a positive no like that's something I don't even remember seeing that

00:37:59

in here and yeah yet it was extremely impactful for you like those types of things I want

00:38:06

to be able to tease out but when there's lists and lists and lists and you've got all these

00:38:11

different outlines within the outlines it's really hard to do that because you just don't

00:38:16

know where the central point is sometimes yeah I'd not I totally agree and that's kind

00:38:21

of the going back to the very beginning when you shared the quote by Mortimer Adler sent

00:38:26

in by Roger Bustle that that quote like that encapsulates my approach to to books like

00:38:34

if all I got out of the power of a positive no was that one section on the three benefits

00:38:38

of a positive no that's still worth it and that was literally I think three pages out

00:38:44

of the book it was towards the end if I remember right I can't I didn't write down exactly

00:38:49

where where I got it from but I want to give myself the freedom to have those revelation

00:38:57

points and not be so concerned about having to make sure that I encapsulate like the the

00:39:05

rough outline of what the author has actually said in the book if that makes sense it does

00:39:11

it's that that honestly to me is is pretty stressful like to be able to it's almost like

00:39:17

approaching it as a test where it's like we're going to measure how much of this you comprehend

00:39:20

based on the quality of your outline and I would prefer to have the freedom and it's

00:39:25

actually very liberating to have the freedom to just say okay I'm going to read this and

00:39:29

whatever jumps out at me jumps out at me I'm not going to try and recreate the the outline

00:39:34

that the author used when they wrote this in the first place now one of the benefits

00:39:38

that you and I have that most people don't have is if we want to review a book like say

00:39:44

I wanted to go back and see what I think about the power of a positive no in say six

00:39:48

months I can come back to bookworm and listen to the episode that we recorded about it and

00:39:55

get my fresh take on it again so that's something that I can do and you can do but most cannot

00:40:00

so I think that's helpful because we're kind of creating our own little archive but making

00:40:05

a public yeah no I think that's actually really cool because just the other day I was talking

00:40:10

to somebody in there asking me like what did you think about the checklist manifesto like

00:40:16

I liked it a lot wasn't what I was expecting like oh what do you mean like well I thought

00:40:20

it's going to be like straight up productivity advice but there's a lot of medical terminology

00:40:23

in there but I still really enjoyed it and then I was thinking about it you know as I

00:40:27

was talking to him on slack and I'm like hey actually if you want the long version of

00:40:31

my thoughts there you go so it was pretty cool yeah it's kind of nice to be able to

00:40:40

send a link to somebody say hey when you when on your next commute in listen to this if you

00:40:44

want my full thoughts on this go for this yeah exactly alright so we talked about the

00:40:51

three benefits of a positive no the next one that I put on here and this is kind of a

00:40:54

weird order I guess but it makes sense in my brain so I'll oh okay I can jump around

00:41:01

okay cool so the three benefits of the positive no and then he talks about tension which is

00:41:08

caused from this internal struggle that we have between exercising the power that we

00:41:14

have available to us and tending to the relationship of the the other person and that's where the

00:41:19

positive no idea comes in because there's essentially three different traditional responses whenever

00:41:27

somebody asks you to do something you can accommodate attack or avoid so accommodate

00:41:33

is when you say yes when you really want to say no attack is when you just flat out say

00:41:39

no you say no poorly you snap at the person you hurt the relationship in essence I've

00:41:44

definitely been guilty of this in the past and then the third one is avoid this one drives

00:41:50

me crazy I hate it when people do this I asked them to do something and they just never get

00:41:53

back to you they say nothing at all and I would like just tell me no it's okay just say you

00:42:00

can't do it I do like I've been running a 99 designs thing here lately and I tend to ask

00:42:08

for things that I know are on the edge of what you can and can't do with the design and I

00:42:13

keep asking them like if this is going to take it too far and it's not going to look okay just

00:42:16

tell me it's not smart and no one there will ever tell me no like come on push me yeah 99

00:42:24

designs is a an interesting interesting example because that whole model I feel is based on

00:42:31

having to say yes where you say yes you submit your design and you don't even guarantee that

00:42:38

you get paid for it because the client you in this case is going to pick the one that they like the

00:42:42

best so you're incentivized to do more work put more time in and then in the end you may not get

00:42:48

anything for it anyway it's yeah what I have learned is if I want to take a design really far I

00:42:53

need to select like the base layout that I like the best and the designer who can respond quickly and

00:43:00

if I find someone who is in that and those two are combined I tend to carry them and then they're

00:43:07

more than willing to spend more time on it later as opposed to upfront because they have more of

00:43:13

that guarantee that they're actually going to get paid for it so if you're running a 99 designs

00:43:18

thing do that don't get too caught up in the first round another resource by the way since we're

00:43:25

speaking about design I saw this this thing I've not I've not signed up for this but I'm very intrigued

00:43:32

but it is called design pickle have you heard of this I have not what is this this is $370 a month

00:43:41

and you get unlimited design so I don't know exactly how that works I don't know how quickly

00:43:45

they turn them around or how good the designs are but essentially it's like an on-demand creative

00:43:51

agency so for somebody like like you who needs a design every once in a while for this thing it's

00:43:57

a lot less expensive and a lot lower risk than actually like hiring a graphic designer for example

00:44:03

for your your company to crank out these designs or even paying per job if you're going to have

00:44:09

multiple jobs you know if you're if you have to make designs over and over and over again whether

00:44:14

it be icons for a web interface or whatever having somebody essentially that you can just

00:44:18

send stuff to and then they've got a team and they'll crank it out and get you the assets that you

00:44:22

need that's kind of cool actually that is interesting I just pulled this up to look through it I could

00:44:28

see like if I wanted to like if I had a website of sorts that was much bigger that I was trying to

00:44:36

always like always doing like custom ads or custom graphics that were regular I could see that being

00:44:43

a big deal because I'm hiring an actual designer huh interesting yeah because I've not had good

00:44:50

good experiences with 99 designs and obviously the other option would be like Fiverr and those

00:44:56

you're gonna get garbage guaranteed so I think if you're I mean but 99 designs I think there's like

00:45:04

it's a hundred bucks or something right if you once you pick the one that you like it's $300

00:45:09

to kick it off okay yeah so it's pretty expensive I mean for a month if you had multiple designs

00:45:14

that you wanted to do then design pickles sounds like a pretty good option I don't believe there's

00:45:18

a contract required with that it's I think it's just month to month interesting yeah 370 a month

00:45:24

per user interesting yeah no I've had good luck with 99 designs in the past and that might be because

00:45:32

I'm fairly it also helps that my wife who I've been affectionately calling Wonder Woman lately

00:45:41

is very design oriented so I tend to talk these things through with her and that helps me get better

00:45:49

designs out of it because I can give the feedback from a designer's with a designer's terminology I

00:45:54

guess so that helps me quite a bit on that and I've had some really good luck doing that yeah that

00:46:00

that would definitely be a good good asset to have maybe that was the the failure point for me

00:46:06

yeah anyway there you go there's our there's our little goat trail on design yeah so that that

00:46:13

actually like again brought it up because I think it's an example of the accommodate response and

00:46:19

one of the reasons why I personally don't like client work because once you sign the contract

00:46:25

you got to do it it's hard to say no I'm not going to do this and let's do this instead and sometimes

00:46:32

you know you you can do that if it's stipulated in the contract like I'm going to do this and then

00:46:38

the client obviously project creep they want something above and beyond that to have to say

00:46:43

well we can do that but it's going to cost additional funds like that conversation alone I don't like

00:46:48

having but even just the scope of the contract I don't like the the open-ended open to interpretation

00:46:54

definition of what is actually going to get done when you create something so great definitely not

00:47:00

for me but the formula for a positive no is a combination of two of these so accommodate

00:47:07

where you say yes when you want to say no attack say no poorly or avoid say nothing at all the

00:47:11

formula for a positive no is a combination of accommodate and attack which I think was a really

00:47:18

cool way of framing this putting those three different types of responses first helped me really

00:47:23

understand this yes no yes formula for a positive no which you alluded to earlier and because it's

00:47:30

not going to come across in audio format the formula is yes with an exclamation point no with a period

00:47:36

and then yes with a question mark so I guess it would be yes no yes well done there

00:47:44

and the if you were to break this down the first yes this is saying yes to yourself and this is the

00:47:53

thing that has really clicked for me with this 12-week year session and again like not been doing

00:47:59

it very long I'm also coming off of a week up north where I did not even have internet access we had

00:48:04

no cell phone coverage like it was great I was completely disconnected so check with me next I

00:48:09

love you I love you follow that up with it was great it was I like being connected I like technology

00:48:16

but I also like to get away from it once in a while and so the the 4th of July we go to this

00:48:20

house on the lake and for whatever reason like it's it's in the woods and in this particular house

00:48:24

like you cannot get cell phone coverage there you go out the front door 10 feet and you get LTE

00:48:31

but in the house there's nothing there's no Wi-Fi whatever it's a nice house but it's just you have

00:48:35

metal walls and blocks all signals they do have a there's a big log cabin and it's got a metal roof

00:48:40

so I'm sure that's that's part of it ah there you go that'll do it but it's it's really nice and

00:48:49

coming back to civilization I guess back into the the normal swing of things embracing this 12

00:48:57

week year model with this this journal what it has allowed me to do and given me the support and

00:49:04

the mental scaffolding to help me stick with is to say yes to myself this sounds so simple I get

00:49:11

that you're listening to this and you're like Mike you teach about morning rituals like how how is

00:49:15

this revelation to you I can't explain it but the morning rituals that I have always had in the past

00:49:22

have not had the impact that this one has had so I don't know if it's just the right combinations

00:49:29

of things or like I said I've got this journal now which I really enjoy so it's helping me stay on

00:49:34

the stay on the right path but saying yes to yourself at the beginning of the day especially

00:49:41

super super important and I think that that is kind of coming across in this formula like there's a

00:49:46

reason that you say yes to yourself first if you don't you know this is the whole concept of budgeting

00:49:52

if you don't pay yourself first you're you're not going to you're not going to pay yourself that

00:49:58

they say that uh you know Dave Ramsey give every dollar a job well the order that you give those

00:50:02

dollars a job is important if you don't save for the kids college fund at the beginning or save for

00:50:07

your retirement at the beginning before you pay all of your bills then what you will find at the end

00:50:13

is that you've you've run out of dollars you've went ahead and bought a shiny new macbook and now

00:50:18

you've done this is why you save for the things so that when you're in my scenario you don't have

00:50:25

to worry about it right but that's what allows you to do that you know is is when you when you save

00:50:33

for the macbook and you set that money aside and you don't spend it on overpriced coffee like me

00:50:37

then you can uh you can you can say if you say yes to to that thing initially then what it does is

00:50:45

it gives you it gives you the freedom and your your dollars in essence are stretched further like

00:50:49

you don't waste them on unfrivelous things I think the same thing can be said about your energy in

00:50:53

terms of the power of a positive no where if you are saying yes to yourself first that is a very

00:51:00

key piece and it really opens the door for the second part of this where you do say no do you

00:51:06

agree disagree yeah I think so because it it really frames your own mind because if i'm going to share

00:51:16

a no with someone I I need to know that there is something you're saying yes to so for every no

00:51:22

there's a yes and for every yes there's a no like it goes back and forth every time you say yes to

00:51:28

one thing you're declining to do a different thing so you have to affirm here's what I'm saying yes

00:51:35

to before you can deliver that no once you get through the process of affirming yourself that's when

00:51:42

you're essentially saying yes to yourself and you got the balance between the two so once you get

00:51:47

through that when you're talking to the person you're saying no that's when you deliver the no and

00:51:53

part of the reason it has the period on it is because it needs to be a period like it's not a

00:51:57

question mark no it's it's this is the no so continue right yeah exactly and that leads into the last

00:52:07

part of it which is the yes of the question mark where you're saying no to the specific thing that

00:52:13

somebody is asking but you're proposing another solution which is kind of meeting in the middle

00:52:22

in essence you're protecting your interests but you're also accommodating to a certain degree

00:52:29

the interests of the other person it's the balance between having the authority to say no I'm not

00:52:34

going to do this and also tending to the relationship yes because whenever you're posing that question

00:52:43

at the end you're essentially giving a path forward as opposed to just saying if you just stop on the

00:52:51

no it really puts things in their tracks and it doesn't doesn't offer the relationship anyway to

00:52:57

move forward you're just kind of putting it up making everything running to a brick wall and

00:53:02

that's not what you want to do like you're essentially trying to find a way to to resolve the issue

00:53:06

whatever that issue is so you always need to think through like what is the path forward and what is

00:53:12

it that we want to to do in order to move that situation forward yeah yeah yeah I really

00:53:21

like the way that you define that as like the path forward essentially and what's interesting

00:53:27

about this and the next point on the outline is this whole idea about the core beliefs because

00:53:33

if you don't have your your core beliefs or I would call them core values what that does is that

00:53:39

provides the framework for you to say your first yes okay this is who we are this is what we do

00:53:46

and so in that context it's a lot easier to say yes or no to things because we can compartmentalize

00:53:51

the the ask essentially as being in line with our core beliefs or not being in line with our core

00:53:58

beliefs if it's not in line with our core beliefs then we say no and if it is in line with our core

00:54:03

beliefs then that can actually dictate a yes even when sometimes we want to say no so one of the

00:54:08

examples that he shares is the Tylenol recall and I don't remember this event specifically like I

00:54:15

remember hearing about it but essentially the Tylenol was faced with a an employee that had

00:54:22

decided they hated the company whatever and they had essentially poisoned the the pills and they

00:54:29

sent these out and it was a small batch but Tylenol recalled everything because they didn't want

00:54:35

anybody to get sick and they made this decision and according to the book they mentioned that

00:54:40

they made this decision according to the Tylenol credo which is we believe our first responsibilities

00:54:44

to the doctors nurses and patients to mothers and fathers and all those who use our products and

00:54:47

services so they viewed the decision should we recall all of the Tylenol that was made in in the

00:54:54

last whatever time period which would cost millions of dollars should we do that or not it was a no

00:55:00

brainer because their core belief was we want every single person that uses our products we want

00:55:06

their lives to be to be better and our responsibility is to them first not to our stockholders not to

00:55:13

the bottom line of the profitability of the company now contrast that with the Samsung Galaxy Note

00:55:21

Seven DeBond. I was thinking the exact same scenario yeah and this just gets my blood boiling

00:55:30

every time I think about this okay I understand that you can have production issues okay so

00:55:36

Samsung Galaxy Note Sevens they rolled them out and they exploded and they said no it's not

00:55:43

our problem there's really nothing here so they continued to explode finally they admitted there

00:55:48

is a problem we'll recall these it's just a small batch of batteries we'll fix these phones

00:55:52

they fixed it they continued to explode they recalled all the phones they replaced all the

00:55:58

batteries they continued to explode so finally they're they're getting all of this negative press

00:56:05

you go to the airport still to this day they will say if you have a Galaxy Note Seven do not get

00:56:10

on this point okay right because there's even places where you can exchange them now if I

00:56:15

understand in certain airports like if you have one of the old ones you can like put it in

00:56:19

this machine and it does all the stuff to move your data over and you get it back I think that's

00:56:25

where these things work but there's like this kiosk where you can swap them out

00:56:28

yeah exactly so it's it's well known at this point that these are not safe devices that they

00:56:37

need to be gotten rid of right like we can all agree on that no I think so no we can't because

00:56:43

just the other day I'm going to paste this link in uh in Zencaster they announced that they are

00:56:50

reselling the reclaimed Galaxy Note Seven's as the Galaxy Note Fan Edition are you kidding me

00:56:57

I mean if you're not driven by profits then then what are you driven by I mean the phone is

00:57:04

literally exploding next to people's heads and you continue to sell this after I don't I can't

00:57:11

even count how many times that they've gotten negative press for this at one point they had

00:57:16

all of the reclaimed batteries in a warehouse and the warehouse exploded like guys seriously do you

00:57:25

want this is going to follow them for years I mean this could literally be a thing that

00:57:29

this is the type of thing I'm not saying this is actually going to happen to Samsung but this

00:57:33

is the type of thing that could put a company like this out of business if you don't handle

00:57:36

this thing the right way and I feel that they have mismanaged this every single step along the way

00:57:41

well have they officially issued a recall that was the thing that got me as they they would

00:57:47

replace them but they never officially issued a recall if I remember right I think they were

00:57:53

recalled but I know they rolled out a software update which bricked the phones they essentially

00:57:57

made the batteries completely unusable and so even if my understanding again I'm not a Samsung

00:58:03

fan to begin with but this is just for all of the Samsung versus Apple stuff like can you

00:58:11

can you imagine Apple mismanaging like if this had happened to the iPhone like Apple wouldn't be

00:58:19

around anymore that people like to kill Apple because they added a feature they took away a

00:58:25

feature or they took away the headphone jack like that's a much more minor thing than your phone

00:58:30

blowing up and somebody's here and that's happened like not once not twice not three times like it

00:58:35

happened over and over and over and over again and Samsung has repeatedly said like well we don't

00:58:40

really care about the health of our our customers we're going to continue to roll these phones out

00:58:43

because this costs us a lot of money I mean that's not explicitly what they're saying but it's what

00:58:47

they're saying by their actions right they they chose to say you know to bring us all back they chose

00:58:54

to say yes to profits and said no to safety of their customers so again they're saying yes and no

00:59:02

respectively to different things but in this case it's done in a way that is not delivered well

00:59:07

or people strongly disagree with like you want your profits versus the safety of my head

00:59:14

Oh yeah and uh and I think that the reason that I point this out because I think it's

00:59:22

it's interesting and I don't know this for sure but I am going to project that

00:59:25

if you were to look at Samsung's uh mission statement or whatever because every company's got one

00:59:32

it's probably not profit above all okay that doesn't really read very well it's also likely

00:59:39

not reviewed regularly exactly this Tylenol Krito somebody in some meeting said this is our

00:59:48

Krito do we believe in this if so this is the obvious decision that obviously didn't happen

00:59:54

with Samsung and again I did not look up the Samsung mission statement but even if their mission

01:00:01

statement is you know we exist to make everybody's lives better through technology and we put the

01:00:05

safety and the health of our customers and suppliers above everything else like that's great that you've

01:00:11

said that but if it doesn't if it doesn't really guide your decisions if it doesn't frame your yes

01:00:16

no yes then what good is it and I've mentioned that we've got core values for our family but this is

01:00:25

kind of a reminder for me that like we have to keep reviewing those things we have to keep saying

01:00:30

those things so that our kids understand that so that they actually make their decisions framed

01:00:36

off of this the fact that we have them printed and on the wall is not good enough I looked it up so

01:00:42

Samsung's mission slash vision statement which if you go to the page for this it's it looks like

01:00:51

a blank page I should I'm gonna link to this but you go to what is it Samsung.com/US/about-

01:01:00

Samsung/corporate-profile/vision-mission.html like they don't want you to find this apparently

01:01:08

you go to that page there's like a menu bar on the left going up and down and a menu across the top

01:01:14

and a sub menu underneath of that and then there's this big white white spot and there's also a

01:01:18

menu at the bottom so they got menus everywhere and a white white space in the middle you scroll down

01:01:23

and you can get vision 2020 which is as stated in its new motto Samsung electronics vision for the

01:01:29

new decade is inspire the world create the future there you go whatever that means yeah so

01:01:38

from a productivity perspective I would say that that's actually not a good mission statement

01:01:43

because it's not very specific but again I'm not running a multi-billion dollar company so

01:01:50

it is what it is but from what I've understood of of there's a really good book called scaling up

01:01:56

by Vern Harnish I believe it's the new version of the Rockefeller habits and this is a framework

01:02:02

that we use with Asian efficiency and it's it's phenomenal I absolutely love it there's a bunch

01:02:06

of worksheets and things where essentially you can kind of do your quarterly planning

01:02:09

and you walk through and you identify these are your core values you identify these are your

01:02:15

targets you can very clearly articulate if we have a really good quarter this is what it looks

01:02:19

like if we don't do so well this is what it looks like and you have these different ranges

01:02:23

so you can you can really measure stuff very easily and you tie it all back to your brand promise

01:02:30

and your core values and something very vague like what you found on the the Samsung page if

01:02:39

there's no other description about it it's hard to attach to that and I think that the value comes

01:02:47

from when everybody in the company and this is kind of following a scaling up model like what

01:02:51

you want is you want a small company where you really buy into this mission everybody's super

01:02:56

passionate about it and it shows and then that spreads as the company grows and that's where

01:03:01

the whole scaling up idea comes but you don't lose the the vision and if all you had was was a you

01:03:08

know six words in your your vision there's no other context there I think it's really easy to lose

01:03:13

that yeah I should say there is more context there but it's it's corporate speak like they're

01:03:21

talking about exactly three key strengths new technology innovative products creative solutions

01:03:27

like it's all words without saying anything so yeah and and then here you go as part of this vision

01:03:36

Samsung has mapped out a specific plan of reaching four hundred billion dollars in revenue and

01:03:40

becoming one of the world's top five brands by 2020 okay so dollars are a part of this apparently

01:03:47

there you go then they're acting according to their their core their core beliefs and can't

01:03:52

get fault them for that it is what it is you know that's fine I don't agree but somebody somewhere

01:03:58

does so different strokes for different folks that kind of leads into the next point here though

01:04:05

where and again this is I guess just my personal mindset so the whole idea of

01:04:13

Samsung's corporate motto like their their vision being driven by profit is kind of appalling to me

01:04:19

but uh there's a quote in here that I teased out which I really really like to say you give

01:04:24

respect because of who you are not because of who they are so in the Samsung example in the

01:04:31

Tylenol example I think that that's that's two different versions of how this specifically played

01:04:37

out and I can totally see how I have embraced the wrong mindset with this in the past so a lot of

01:04:44

people think like you have to earn respect but this was one of the big takeaways for me was that

01:04:51

no you give respect based on your character not on the character of the person that you are

01:04:58

interacting with if that makes sense I've always thought of respect is like there's two different

01:05:04

kinds of respect one is I respect you because you are human like there are basic human

01:05:09

needs and things like you should respect a person because they are a person and then there's the

01:05:16

level of respect that's you know the I guess the the stereotype would be soldiers having respect

01:05:24

for their commander like there's that level of respect as well and the the former of those two

01:05:31

is one that everyone deserves the latter of those two is the one that's earned that's how I think

01:05:37

of it I don't know if that's the right way to think of it but it's at least how I separate those two

01:05:42

yeah I think that makes sense uh for me one of my action items was show respect to others before

01:05:49

responding so my definition of respect which I don't have word for word but it's basically

01:05:59

show respect regardless of the person who is asking you to do the thing I think this has been one of

01:06:07

the things that has tripped me up in the past is the I've responded attacking by saying no poorly

01:06:13

and if you show respect to the other person you can't attack you can't say no poorly it forces you

01:06:21

to to frame the no positively and so I guess for me when I when I think of this show respect to others

01:06:31

before responding it's it's acknowledging who they are and what they are asking before just saying

01:06:39

flippantly no I'm not going to do that sort of a thing yeah and that makes sense and I think this

01:06:45

is where you're you're phrase of giving respect because of who you are as opposed to like not because

01:06:51

of who they are that makes a lot of sense because if you're going to show respect when you're saying

01:06:57

no to that other person it like take for example if I if someone else is going to tell me no

01:07:03

this is the way I would want them to to do that because it doesn't come across as attacking it

01:07:09

doesn't come across as something I have done per se it may be something I've done but that's not

01:07:15

going to be their focus if they're using this this process but it's a way for them to affirm

01:07:21

something that's important to them show respect to me to see to show that you know this is important

01:07:27

enough to them that they need to say no to the thing I'm doing and then pose how to move forward

01:07:33

from there so they have to show me respect in that way like that's just natural in that sense

01:07:40

whenever it's posed that way because they're showing me why essentially and I'm you know this

01:07:45

this is nothing I really resonate with because I'm a why person like if you're going to explain

01:07:50

something is to me and you want me to do something if you can explain why I'm much better off in the

01:07:56

long run so I think that's what you're getting at with the respect piece because it's something that

01:08:01

is natural in the way that that yes no yes formula works exactly and as you're talking I'm thinking

01:08:09

to myself that it all boils down to the golden rule you know we teach our kids like treat other

01:08:14

people the way you want to be treated but it really is that simple if you if you really think about it

01:08:20

we got a whole book here on you know treat others the way you want to be treated there you go yeah

01:08:27

that probably wouldn't would become a New York Times bestseller though so not like this case I

01:08:31

guess an international bestseller so true that but the the next point on this outline it kind of

01:08:39

relates to this and that is that no is not a wall it is a living boundary which protects what is

01:08:45

important so I think I've viewed no previously as a wall like I've talked about you got to put up

01:08:53

boundaries you got to protect the things that are important to you if you want to spend time with

01:08:58

your family then turn off your phone at dinner time so you don't get the the emails and the the

01:09:03

text messages about stuff that's happening at the office or better yet leave it in a different room

01:09:08

exactly but kind of what I've recognized from this book is that that approach is maybe necessary

01:09:18

at the very beginning like if you find yourself in a situation where you're just constantly connected

01:09:25

and something has to change immediately then you may have to say no I'm just not going to do that

01:09:31

anymore but the better approach is showing respect to the other person and framing it positively

01:09:39

which takes more time but the end result is a lot better if you show respect and you don't just say

01:09:47

nope not could do that anymore but you actually do you say yes to yourself then you say no to the

01:09:51

thing and then you propose a different solution like I said that does take more time but that

01:09:57

living boundary then what that ends up looking like if I were to sketch this out you know I view

01:10:03

like the the hard wall is just like a box and you you can draw the box there's four straight

01:10:08

walls 90 degree angles and that that's uh that's okay but the better version of that is this

01:10:18

this living boundary which ends up taking all these different shapes and it may actually look

01:10:22

something like a like a human cell you know where it's it's got all of these different

01:10:27

edges and rounded corners and whatever and that allows it to fit into different spaces and that

01:10:32

allows you to encapsulate inside of there the things that are super important but also it allows you

01:10:37

a lot more flexibility in terms of fitting in with all of the other desires and things that need to

01:10:44

be done with all the other people that you work with all the other teams that you're involved in

01:10:47

does that that makes sense I'm not sure I explained that very well um it's it's a bit tricky to get

01:10:52

your head around I think because whenever you say no to someone when you say it's a living boundary

01:11:00

you're essentially saying this is a place that we can't cross because of x y and z like I cannot

01:11:07

go meet a friend of mine for dinner every night thursday night because he's going through a rough

01:11:12

time I just can't do that because I've got family things that take priority over that and that's

01:11:19

where the living boundary thing comes in I think because you have a core value you know or a core

01:11:25

belief as we're using the term here like there's something important to me my family and what

01:11:31

that family needs for me is that core belief and whenever there's another request that comes in I

01:11:40

need to say no to show what that boundary is and where that wall is in that specific scenario

01:11:45

but that where that line is may be different depending on the specific situation yeah

01:11:52

is that encompassed I believe so so let's just use like the thursday night example so you could say

01:11:58

your core belief is that family time is important and you've carved out the time on thursday night

01:12:04

as your family night that's great like that's as a general rule you're not going to say yes to

01:12:09

anything on thursday night because you've said yes to family time previously I guess what I was

01:12:14

saying with the living boundary thing though is that the tendency for me in the past would be to

01:12:19

every time that someone would ask me to do something then on a thursday night just say no okay don't

01:12:24

propose an alternative just say no I don't do that okay you've established your limits but there's no

01:12:31

invitation to reach the agreement and now in your specific example where you mentioned you got a

01:12:37

friend who's going through a tough time or whatever the living boundary to me is keeping the conversation

01:12:43

open saying no respect respectively and saying well as a general rule I can't do this on thursday's

01:12:51

but I know that you know I've got to talk you off the ledge tonight and you're important to me so

01:12:56

I'm going to make an exception just this once now obviously there is a danger there because once

01:13:01

you make the exception once you've opened the door to that thing happening over and over and over

01:13:06

again regardless of what it is and so it's really important to stay grounded in your yes the first

01:13:14

yes the explanation point saying yes to yourself but I think that as long as you stay grounded and

01:13:21

you are constantly evaluating based off of your core beliefs am I spending enough time with my kids

01:13:27

for example or with my family then that gives you flexibility to where the week doesn't necessarily

01:13:36

look the same every time you don't always have to do the family time on thursday night you just

01:13:42

always have to make sure that you have the family time does that make sense yes yes that I think

01:13:47

that's what I'm trying to get at is you can have differing circumstances in the same scenario

01:13:55

I think yeah exactly so there will be there will be exceptions you can you can say as a general rule

01:14:03

you know I get up at 6am I do my morning ritual and then I'm working at at 7 and plan out your

01:14:09

entire day but what happens when you are sick or whatever you oversleep a little bit and now

01:14:15

like is your whole day get thrown off no not necessarily you can adapt and you can overcome because

01:14:20

I mean I had this I had literally had this happen this morning where I didn't sleep real well last

01:14:26

night and I didn't wake up when I wanted to but I followed this formula still because regardless of

01:14:33

even though I woke up like half hour 45 minutes later than I wanted to I still made sure that I

01:14:38

handled my morning ritual before I did anything else and that meant that some work stuff that I

01:14:45

had intended to get done before we recorded this didn't get done I'm gonna have to do that later

01:14:50

in the day but that's okay I mean if you if you have if you're over committed and you've got a

01:14:56

bunch of different things and your day is just packed and then like that 45 minutes that's enough

01:15:01

to throw your entire day off that is a problem I recognize that some people have that that sort

01:15:05

of schedule and some days my schedule is like that but that I think and you can correct me if I'm

01:15:11

wrong that's the approach that is dangerous with this this book I think is you can kind of be like

01:15:17

oh I'm in this situation I got to cut this stuff out this book is going to show me how and I'm not

01:15:21

gonna have to not gonna have to have those difficult conversations that's not necessarily the case

01:15:26

but what is a value in this book at least to me is the formula for kind of once you've once you've

01:15:34

got that margin established already it's the framework for keeping the thing going and making

01:15:40

sure that the boundaries are appropriate it's not some magic pill where you're gonna snap your

01:15:44

fingers after reading this book and all of a sudden your schedule's cleared up and you've got four

01:15:47

extra hours of free time every day but I would argue that what it does give you is actually much

01:15:52

more valuable than that yeah I could see how you could get into that I don't know that I took it

01:15:58

that way and then like I didn't see this as a golden bullet but at the same time I also have a

01:16:05

good base of knowing that there's not a single book that's going to solve a bunch of problems

01:16:11

so I don't tend to see books in that way but I know that some people do I'm just not one of them

01:16:17

so if you come at this book thinking it's going to solve some of like a lot of your problems

01:16:22

just know that you actually have to implement the things that are in it so it's not going to do

01:16:29

that just by reading it you actually have to get to work sorry sorry to burst the bubble there for

01:16:34

anybody who thought that yeah I guess maybe a better way to describe um to describe it would be

01:16:41

the tendency can be looking at the title to think like oh this book is going to help me say no better

01:16:49

but actually what it does is it helps you say yes better so yeah the actual act of saying no you

01:16:57

still have to figure out like they give you the formula for a positive no but that the hump there

01:17:03

I think is being able to say no period especially for a people pleaser yeah and that's that would

01:17:09

be the the direction I almost took it mentally was because the power of a positive no you could say

01:17:16

well this is a way for me to say yes and still get the no across without having to say no like

01:17:22

that's that's what I would love for it to be but and it would be very easy to get to that conclusion

01:17:28

if you're a yes person whenever you see the title of this but again you have to be very

01:17:34

very firm with that no in the middle of the yeses yep definitely I completely agree

01:17:42

but the way that he describes plan B in this book is interesting and I think it really encapsulates

01:17:48

what the whole book is about he describes plan B as an alternate means of success not a worst case

01:17:52

scenario which when I picked up the book that's that's kind of what I expected was like the power

01:17:59

of positive no this was a way to clear the things that I was committed to but really what it does

01:18:04

is it allows you to shift your commitments a little bit more in in favor of the direction of

01:18:11

this is something that I want as opposed to accommodating what other people want at least in my opinion

01:18:15

yeah and this is where he gets into some of that curve of acceptance I know you've got that down

01:18:21

here because there are different levels at which people will accept your no and you have to be

01:18:28

willing at any point in time to resort to your plan B assuming that you've taken the time to

01:18:35

determine what that plan B is and that's something that you need to do because it's freeing to know

01:18:40

what you're going to default to if they don't accept your no like say you're in a business

01:18:45

negotiation and you need to say no to some of what they want in the middle of that negotiation

01:18:51

if you know what your fallback is if they don't agree to it you tend to have a lot more confidence

01:18:56

in how you're delivering it and that by itself can change the way that the conversation goes

01:19:02

but that curve of acceptance and I don't have it in front of me Mike but it essentially takes people

01:19:08

from from the process of hearing you out not accepting your no at all and then flowing through

01:19:17

the process of being angry with you over that being sad that you're saying no and then eventually

01:19:24

accepting that and and being willing to move forward from that I don't have in front of me maybe you

01:19:30

yeah it's it's avoidance leads to denial leads to anxiety leads to anger leads to bargaining leads

01:19:36

to sadness leads to acceptance and it's it's totally true like I can think of a specific situation in

01:19:43

my own life where this is playing out right now and the end result I know is going to be

01:19:50

better like we're going to find some happy medium where everybody wins but it can be difficult

01:20:00

getting to that point and that's where the power of positive to know there's a lot of value in this

01:20:05

is that either there's there's two parties obviously involved here there's you in the other party so

01:20:12

what can happen is one of three different things they can understand and respect your interests

01:20:20

and you cannot and if that's the case that's probably if you were to say ignorance is bliss this is

01:20:29

the one scenario where that might actually be true because maybe you've got a boss who is telling you

01:20:33

you got to go home at five o'clock every day like there are situations like that there is also

01:20:38

the flip side of that where you respect your own interests and opinions but the other person does

01:20:43

not and that is where the tendency can be to attack and say no poorly and this is getting back to

01:20:51

you give respect because of who you are not because of who they are you can say oh it's jerk they don't

01:20:55

even understand what they just asked for you know they don't deserve a thought out response I could

01:21:00

just say no you can but that's not that's not the best way to handle it either and that is where

01:21:07

the curve of acceptance comes in like if you especially for people that you interact with frequently

01:21:13

I believe you need to move people along this curve of acceptance slowly but the process is worth it

01:21:21

in the end because what you will end up with is the ideal scenario where you and the other party

01:21:26

both understand each other's needs wants opinions whatever and you figured out a way that you can

01:21:32

work together where everybody wins but it takes a lot of work to get to that point and that comes

01:21:39

back to tending to the relationship you know we talked about the tension of exercising power

01:21:44

because you're angry or whatever to to share that no just because you want to and show that yes you

01:21:51

can say no in that scenario it's probably really easy to do with kids but tending to the relationship

01:21:58

is taking people through that process that curve and I think if we stopped and thought about it we

01:22:05

could see how we're in the middle of that curve in a number of scenarios with our children so

01:22:10

because that's like the key thing that kids I feel teach you is how to say no and how to help

01:22:17

them learn through that process even though they're doing things you don't want them to do

01:22:22

yeah you know the entire time that I was reading this book and understanding meditation I was

01:22:31

thinking of the conversation that we had with Josh and he's talking about well what does it look

01:22:37

like with your kids and I'm recognizing that in a lot of ways I've been acting like a big kid

01:22:43

page 47 he says in this book this is one of the things that jumped out to me and maybe it's just

01:22:48

because I've quote-unquote discovered meditation and mindfulness or whatever but it says there are

01:22:55

no intrinsically negative emotions only negatively charged emotions which have the potential

01:22:59

to become positively charged so I've tried to take that approach in how I interact with my kids

01:23:07

especially with discipline now we are according to worldly standards I guess very strict

01:23:15

but still like I don't want there to be just the the power-based knows that's another action item

01:23:21

for me like I don't want I never want to say no you can't do that why because I said so you know

01:23:28

that's but when I think about it like all I can identify a lot of different times in the past

01:23:33

where I've taken that same approach not just with my kids but in how I've interacted with other

01:23:36

people the way that I've said no to things and recognizing being mindful of the fact that

01:23:43

maybe this emotion is negatively charged but why is it negatively charged that's what mindfulness

01:23:50

is all about is identifying the the root causes figuring out the the pain points and then solving

01:23:57

them but recognizing that this thing is happening let's not say that this thing is is awful and oh

01:24:04

whoa is me but let's just look at this objectively what's really going on here and when you do that

01:24:10

with with kids it's it's uh if you're able to achieve that that little bit of distance

01:24:15

it completely changes the dynamic of the discipline at that particular moment you know we've all

01:24:22

probably heard the the saying like don't discipline when you're you're angry but it's

01:24:27

surprisingly easy for that anger to seep into discipline especially when you have stereotypical

01:24:33

boys like I do who just sometimes are just not gonna not gonna listen you can say the same thing

01:24:40

six seven eight times they'll look look at you in the face and just in one year and out the other

01:24:46

uh and that's that's not their fault and it's frustrating it is frustrating exactly it's

01:24:53

it's a negatively charged emotion that I'm feeling at that particular time but the whole idea behind

01:24:58

discipline is not just punishment it's not okay you did this now you're gonna suffer the consequences

01:25:04

uh so I think that this is one instance in particular where the negatively charged emotion

01:25:09

has the potential to become a positively charged it can become a positive situation where they

01:25:13

are able to learn the correct way to do this thing or the reason why you know you have to look

01:25:19

the waitress in the eye when she asks you a question when we're out to eat you know that sort of thing

01:25:23

the tendency in the past has been to just get angry like what's what's wrong with you we talked

01:25:28

about this before why can't you why can't you answer look her in the face uh but yeah I think uh

01:25:35

I'm kind of had a a revelation of that where every single opportunity I guess to discipline can be

01:25:44

to transform a negative into a positive yes to all the things

01:25:51

a lot of good stuff there do you want to cover this goodwill account thing yeah there's not a whole

01:25:58

lot to talk about here but it sounded a lot like steven coveys emotional bank account

01:26:04

and uh it's just kind of interesting that this was brought up again and I really liked it when we

01:26:11

read it in the seven habits how they affected people I really like it here as well what he talks

01:26:16

about on page 229 with the goodwill account is that you have to build up goodwill in order to say no

01:26:23

and this is really important I think because that whole curve of acceptance what you want at the end

01:26:29

of that is not acceptance of mike's gonna be weird and do his own thing but acceptance of I really

01:26:36

respect mike in his like he's got a reason for doing this even if I don't completely understand

01:26:41

it right now I know that he's not gonna screw me over sort of a thing and this is another thing

01:26:49

that I think this was one of my action items when I talked about the steven coveys seven habits how

01:26:53

affected people and it's something that I don't have a like a takeaway specifically for this or an

01:26:57

action item for this but it's a it's a reminder and it's something that's kind of just like a mindset

01:27:01

I've tried to adopt is and it's kind of coupled with the showing respect to other people before

01:27:06

responding consistently putting into the goodwill account consistently making positive deposits

01:27:13

instead of negative withdrawals and I think that that opens up a whole lot of doors and opportunities

01:27:19

to say no and then reach a yes solution that benefits both parties if you ever listen to

01:27:25

the dave ramsi show he he talks about this on occasion whenever he gets a caller that calls in

01:27:32

and say they have a strained relationship with their parents but their parents are doing something

01:27:39

with finances that they feel is destructive and they need to stop and one of dave's questions or

01:27:47

you know he'll tell them can you just talk to them about this and he typically follows that up with

01:27:53

you can't go tell them no you can't go have these hard conversations if you haven't tried to build

01:27:59

into them in some way in a positive way to build some of that respect that we were talking about

01:28:04

earlier if you haven't built some of that history and built some of that trust you can't deliver a no

01:28:12

effectively because they're going to it like you were saying with your kids sometimes that'll just

01:28:17

go in one ear one out and out the other you know it's a little bit of a different situation but

01:28:20

it's the same concept that if you don't have a solid and in a lot of cases heartfelt relationship

01:28:28

with someone you you can't deliver that no without it causing pain in that relationship

01:28:36

yeah totally agree um Dave Ramsey is an interesting guy i didn't actually meet him but i saw him i

01:28:43

went to an entree leadership one day event down in chicago and uh yeah if you've ever gone through

01:28:49

financial peace university one of the things my wife and i always laughed about is like he runs

01:28:53

out on stage and he like jumps up and down he does like the fist bump thing does the same thing it's

01:28:58

got to be like 20 years later but he does the same exact thing is uh kind of a goober but i like his

01:29:04

uh i like his message cool cool you want to jump into action items let's do it you got a bunch here

01:29:10

i do now these are all somewhat related uh really if you were to boil this down what it what it looks

01:29:18

like is say no effectively say no correctly and not attack yeah i mentioned a couple of them already

01:29:27

so some of the specific things i want to show respect to others before responding i want to

01:29:33

not use power-based nose i do not want to say no without proposing a yes when i do propose a yes

01:29:42

i want to frame it positively and i also want to use the phrase i would prefer not to when saying no

01:29:50

this could backfire i realize but uh he mentions in the book some cultures and societies they say no

01:29:58

without actually saying no and this one in particular i felt like i might be able to get some mileage

01:30:05

out of this and it just using this might frame it a lot more nicely so that's one specific thing but

01:30:13

yeah all of that like i said it's kind of encapsulated by the idea of saying no effectively and then

01:30:18

eventually getting to yes the invitation to reach an agreement now the the part that could backfire

01:30:24

you're talking about the i would prefer not to phrase yeah because i can think of a couple people who

01:30:31

may just say well that's nice do it anyways uh yep because we haven't gotten to that point yet you

01:30:37

know i mentioned the three different ways that this could play out where we both are at the place

01:30:42

where if i say i don't want to do this like oh well i respect that i know you've got reasons and so

01:30:47

we'll do it a different way uh i kind of think that that could possibly happen in a couple different

01:30:53

situations but we'll see that's fair uh my action item is fairly similar

01:30:58

only instead of breaking it into five pieces i just kind of summarize the whole thing

01:31:02

which is basically use yes no yes every time a big decision needs a no and i guess that probably

01:31:09

translates into just be aware of this and how i'm saying no and use respect whenever i'm doing that

01:31:16

so i i'm kind of summarizing i'm looking at this list of action items between us there's absolutely

01:31:22

no way we'll hold each other accountable on this in a in a very good way other than just ask how's it

01:31:27

going but yeah exactly and that's one of the things that was kind of surprising to me about

01:31:33

about this book but like i said i actually think that this is this is a better this is better than

01:31:38

what i had originally anticipated because if you're thinking about this the lens of oh this book is

01:31:44

going to allow me to just cut things then you could hold people accountable to that you could say

01:31:48

what are the things that you said no to but really the net result of of saying no positively is that

01:31:54

you haven't said no a bunch more times but you said yes a bunch more times in a way that is actually

01:31:59

benefiting you yes uh author style i i have to say one thing and we haven't talked about this

01:32:09

in how it's written he's very good at using stories and i noticed that because there's a lot of cases

01:32:15

where he proposes a a concept and he tells a story about it and then he poses another concept and

01:32:20

tells a story about it makes it very engaging and it makes it a very easy book to read and at times

01:32:27

hard to put down uh but i really appreciated that um but at the same time it also feels like he's

01:32:34

repeating it has a little bit of that getting things done nests to it where he poses something

01:32:41

and then repeats it and goes over it in more detail later on it has a little bit of that flavor to it

01:32:46

but still a good read for sure so what would you rate it that don't i yeah uh i think i would put

01:32:55

this at a four a four oh it's one of those that has a lot of wisdom in it and is highly valuable i

01:33:04

i think i would highly recommend people read this there's it's i'm just kind of stuck on that whole

01:33:09

repeating thing a little bit and some of it's kind of hard to apply it's also not all exactly what

01:33:15

i was thinking i was getting into so because of that i'm i'm putting it at the four oh all right

01:33:21

you are a tough grater when it comes to it i know i am i'm gonna give it 4.5 because i thought it was

01:33:33

great the only thing that's keeping me from giving it five i guess is just trying to keep the fives a

01:33:39

little bit more exclusive it's not the same level of some of the other books that we've read where

01:33:47

it just completely blew me away but i was definitely very surprised by what i got out of this book

01:33:54

very pleasantly surprised by what i got out of this book and i thought it was a very easy and

01:33:59

approachable read it was a pretty entertaining read i would definitely recommend this to people

01:34:07

good deal so your choice is up next we what we have us going through mike i almost put 10

01:34:14

happier here but i mentioned previously the art of thinking clearly about roll of the belly

01:34:20

uh this is a book which is about cognitive biases there's about a hundred different chapters

01:34:26

each chapter is just like three pages and each chapter covers a different cognitive bias so i've

01:34:31

started this one really really interesting and i'm looking forward to the conversation about this one

01:34:37

that one will be fun uh following that one i've selected the legend of the monk and the merchant

01:34:43

by terry feilber uh this is on the list of the day of ramsey books so of course we need to go through

01:34:50

it nice how close are we to finishing all the day of ramsey books i think that's the last one

01:34:57

okay i think i need to go look at the list but i think that's the last one it feels like they just

01:35:03

keep coming doesn't it well i know we're making progress so i'm just i'm just curious how many are

01:35:08

actually in the set that he makes people read i think there's five and i feel like we've been

01:35:14

through about four so i think this is the last one gotcha i think uh so gap books sounds like you've

01:35:23

you're in the middle of ten percent happier i've actually finished this one but i'm putting it on

01:35:29

here as my official recommendation because this book is is awesome i actually read this whole book

01:35:36

in a day and a half i believe um it's just it's really it's a really entertaining

01:35:43

ah it's average size it's like 230 pages or something like that okay so it's not like one of these

01:35:50

allegories that's a hundred pages long nope uh but like i mentioned earlier Dan Harris is who's

01:35:57

the author his writing style is is awesome uh every single chapter has a very um provocative

01:36:07

title and then you read the first sentence and just he's he's the master at this where like

01:36:12

there's instantly a hook set and you're like oh i have to figure out what happens next yeah and so

01:36:16

you get to the end of a chapter and you're like oh i don't want to start the next chapter and you

01:36:19

read the first sentence you're like okay i'll read the next chapter but it's really really good

01:36:25

so if i read this don't read the first sentence okay got it uh my gap book is the subtle art of not

01:36:33

giving an f i guess by mark manson uh this is one that josh over on theoretical wants to go through

01:36:41

with me so i guess we're doing a bookworm esque episode at some point and that book is probably

01:36:46

one that doesn't fit the the listenership of bookworm real well so thus it's a gap book

01:36:54

so i'm intrigued by the the topic but you will probably not get me to read that one

01:36:59

well we'll see uh i have to admit i'm i'm a little nervous about this one but at the same time

01:37:08

knowing the the topic of it and because i haven't started it yet and that's what i'm going to start

01:37:14

this evening but uh the topic i'm intrigued by because i feel like it plays into the whole saying

01:37:22

no thing fairly well is my expectation i'll have to give you more on that later because i don't know

01:37:30

all right uh if you want to recommend a book for us to read you can do that by going to bookworm

01:37:40

dot fm slash list you can see all of the books that we've covered all the books that we're going to

01:37:45

cover and on the right sidebar there will be a button to recommend a book uh we would love to

01:37:51

get your recommendations we've covered several reader recommendations and i know we've got a

01:37:55

couple more planned so that's where you can go if you want to recommend a book and if you enjoy

01:38:01

the podcast would you mind leaving us an iTunes review that would help a lot uh mike has a mission

01:38:07

of de-seeding kcrw as the first listing on when you search for bookworm on the iTunes store

01:38:14

you can help us beat them but you need a little review just give us a quick rating

01:38:18

write something if you want that would help us a lot and if you want to ask questions you want to

01:38:24

take exception with something we've said you know pose another topic for a conversation in the

01:38:30

future you can do that over on productivity guild dot com that's where some of the conversations

01:38:35

about the bookworm shows occur all right so thanks for listening if you're reading along with us

01:38:42

the next book is the art of thinking clearly by rolf the belly and we will talk to you next time