Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

I like new setups and they're fun, but it means that I have to get my act together, I guess.

00:00:06

Are you using the Shure SM50, whatever?

00:00:10

At the moment, I'm on the Shure Beta 87A, which I am quite the fan of, I will say. I highly recommend it.

00:00:18

Sounds good.

00:00:18

Do you think it sounds good? That'd be the ultimate question. You do this quite a bit and you listen to voices a lot in this way.

00:00:25

Your dulcet tone sounds even dulcet-er.

00:00:28

Ooh.

00:00:29

That's probably not a word.

00:00:30

Make one up if you want. I'm good.

00:00:32

Put in a new soundboard. I put in a new microphone.

00:00:36

I will be selling said Road Podcaster, which is a little sad to me,

00:00:42

but at the same time, there's no point in keeping it around because I won't be using it.

00:00:46

Even if I try to travel, I would probably still take the 87 and the soundboard with me.

00:00:50

Really?

00:00:50

Yes.

00:00:51

I kind of went the other way. I bought a cheap USB microphone, so I didn't have to do that.

00:00:55

That's fair. That's fair.

00:00:58

I just know that I can get a carrying case for the soundboard.

00:01:03

I would still be carrying the mic around and the stand and such for it anyway.

00:01:08

So that's not any different. It would just be the one component.

00:01:12

In every instance where I would travel with it, it's not a big deal to do that.

00:01:17

I travel so little and record so little as in, I don't think I've ever actually done that.

00:01:22

I've always recorded in my studio in some form.

00:01:26

Well, I competed at the district level Humor Speech Contest last weekend as we record this.

00:01:33

And?

00:01:33

I did not win.

00:01:34

Bummer.

00:01:35

I did not place.

00:01:36

They only tell you who took first, second, and third, and there were eight people there.

00:01:40

Okay.

00:01:40

The competition was much stiffer than it was the first couple of rounds, which I expected.

00:01:46

But the guy who won was a professional comedian, so I don't feel too bad.

00:01:52

I did what I had set out to do. This was the biggest Toastmaster stage I've competed on.

00:02:00

And I wanted to prove to myself at the very beginning,

00:02:03

and this only reason I entered the Humor Speech Contest was that I was competing in

00:02:07

the inspirational contest last spring, got on stage and blinked.

00:02:11

So I needed to prove to myself that I could do this.

00:02:14

And I've now done it several times, including the last time on a stage with a Britney Spears

00:02:21

style microphone attached to my head.

00:02:22

It was the most formal setting I've had in quite a while.

00:02:28

And definitely the most pressure-filled scenario I've spoken in.

00:02:33

And I delivered it about as well as I could.

00:02:35

I was happy with the performance, so I'm completely okay with not winning.

00:02:40

While I was there, I got connected with the keynote speaker.

00:02:44

His name is Aaron Beverly.

00:02:46

And if you were to do a Google search for him, you would see he is the runner up from the 2016

00:02:53

World Championship of Speaking.

00:02:56

And he did it by breaking all the rules.

00:03:00

So Josh would probably like this guy.

00:03:02

All right.

00:03:04

Like in Toastmasters, you're supposed to have a very short to-the-point title,

00:03:08

because when you compete, they say your name, they say your speech title,

00:03:11

then they repeat your speech title, and then they repeat your name, and then you go.

00:03:16

And this guy had a 57-word title, which was just rambling.

00:03:21

And he used it to make a point in his speech.

00:03:23

But it was really funny because you've got this guy.

00:03:26

It's a World Championship of Speaking.

00:03:27

So I don't know if it was in India or wherever when he competed.

00:03:31

But there was an Indian man who was announcing him.

00:03:35

And so he's got this accident.

00:03:36

And he's just this big run-on English sentence that like,

00:03:40

I don't speak multiple languages, but I can, this sentence really only makes sense

00:03:45

in my head in English.

00:03:46

Like I don't know that this title would translate well at all.

00:03:49

And you could tell like as he's reading through this, he's kind of having trouble

00:03:53

piecing this together because it's grammatically incorrect.

00:03:56

It's breaking all the rules and the audiences just cracking up for like two minutes before

00:04:01

Aaron Beverly even gets on the stage.

00:04:03

Well, anyway, so he took second in the world competition and he is going to be coaching me.

00:04:10

So that's pretty cool.

00:04:11

Nice.

00:04:11

So I need to understand this.

00:04:14

So he made the long speech title completely ridiculous because by the time he actually

00:04:19

gets to speak, people are already laughing.

00:04:21

Is that part of it?

00:04:22

Pretty much.

00:04:23

Yeah.

00:04:23

And I am searching right now for the link.

00:04:27

So maybe you can include this.

00:04:29

Yeah, there it is.

00:04:30

The title of it is the 57 word speech title.

00:04:34

Okay.

00:04:37

He's a really good speaker.

00:04:39

He did a great job at the conference and then he had a booth set up.

00:04:42

And he does coaching and he had a special package he put together for

00:04:46

conference attendees.

00:04:47

And so I've got my intro session with him on Monday.

00:04:50

Nice.

00:04:51

That sounds like a pretty good gig.

00:04:54

From what he told me, like there's a lot of people who compete with the goal of becoming

00:04:58

a coach and helping other people do this.

00:04:59

And it sounds kind of like he's figuring out the business side of it.

00:05:02

But in terms of the speaking and the content, he really knows his stuff.

00:05:07

And so I'm excited to start working with him.

00:05:09

Cool.

00:05:10

Now, well, I hope that works out well.

00:05:12

I know you've been doing more and more of the speaking thing.

00:05:14

And the humorous speech was kind of a stretch for you.

00:05:17

So kudos to you on this one.

00:05:20

It was definitely a stretch.

00:05:21

The clip that I sent you, that's from the world championship of speaking,

00:05:26

that's the inspirational stuff.

00:05:28

That's more my wheelhouse.

00:05:30

And so in the little questionnaire that he sent over,

00:05:32

it's like, what is your goal in the next two years?

00:05:35

And I put to place at the world championship of public speaking.

00:05:40

And so we'll see if I can get there.

00:05:41

But I'll throw it out there for the podcast world to hold me accountable to, I guess.

00:05:44

There you go.

00:05:46

You have an item on the show notes here for follow up that says nothing more than

00:05:51

Cortex sucks.

00:05:53

Yeah.

00:05:54

What do you mean by this?

00:05:56

So I like, I like Cortex.

00:05:57

I actually recorded a podcast the other day with Brooks for the productivity show,

00:06:02

where we went through the books and the podcast that have been most influential to us.

00:06:07

And I listed Cortex.

00:06:09

Cool.

00:06:09

But they also did their own version of the seven habits of highly affected people.

00:06:14

And I disagree with them in every possible way.

00:06:17

Okay.

00:06:19

I've not listened to this.

00:06:20

I saw that it came through and overcast.

00:06:23

And I have not gone through it.

00:06:27

So I got a feeling I'm not going to like it now because of this.

00:06:31

No.

00:06:31

You've positioned me to not like it now.

00:06:33

Yeah.

00:06:34

So an interesting thing happened when I was listening to this episode because

00:06:38

Mike Hurley in CPG grade, they basically just listed all of the ways that the seven habits

00:06:43

of highly affected people is just your stereotypical business book full of businesses.

00:06:48

And it really makes no impact because all this stuff is these hypothetical scenarios that would

00:06:52

never happen in real life.

00:06:53

And so therefore you can't apply any of it to yourself.

00:06:57

And I'm just thinking to myself the whole time they're reading this you spoiled millennials.

00:07:00

You.

00:07:00

I'm a millennial.

00:07:02

So I get it, you know, but I'm just like, you have no, you have no idea.

00:07:08

What, what this is like.

00:07:10

And yeah, some of those examples are a little bit sensational.

00:07:13

And when I was listening to it, I'm hearing Mike and I'm hearing CPG grade talk about it.

00:07:17

And I know what they are saying is wrong.

00:07:21

And at least according to my experience, you know, they're interpreting these same passages,

00:07:28

exactly opposite it the way that I did.

00:07:30

And so by the content of what they're saying, I'm like, I completely disagree.

00:07:35

But I found myself occasionally because they are so persuasive, like they carry on with their

00:07:40

arguments eventually be like, Oh, maybe yet.

00:07:42

Wait, wait, no, no, this is wrong.

00:07:44

Like I had to bring myself back.

00:07:45

So it's an entertaining listen, but I just feel that they have a little bit of an isolated

00:07:55

approach to this.

00:07:56

And I'm kind of surprised that CPG grade specifically could not make the generalizations

00:08:05

and and draw out the the kind of stuff that I did based on some of the other stuff that they

00:08:10

talked about.

00:08:11

He talked about the things that he got out of the Emith revisited.

00:08:14

And that book compared to the seven habits affected people.

00:08:18

I mean, I don't know, I don't want to spoil it.

00:08:19

I guess if we ever do it for Bookworm, but you want to dry business style book.

00:08:24

Like that's it.

00:08:25

The seven habits, how affected people is not.

00:08:28

So as soon as I heard the recovering the book though, and especially once they started

00:08:31

with their content, I'm like, I got a rant with Joe about this because this is one of my favorites

00:08:36

and they're just completely destroying it.

00:08:38

But it got people fired up, didn't it?

00:08:40

Oh, yes, it did.

00:08:41

What we really need is we need to set up a podcast recording with you, myself,

00:08:47

Mike Rillie and CPG Gray, where we can debate the seven habits of how they affected people.

00:08:52

Ooh, that might be kind of fun.

00:08:54

Yeah.

00:08:55

Not sure how that would go over, but it would be entertaining at least.

00:08:57

Yeah.

00:08:58

So somebody out there in the podcast universe set that up for us because...

00:09:01

I got a feeling that's a scheduling nightmare about to happen here.

00:09:05

I will change my schedule.

00:09:07

I will show up anytime, anywhere to defend Stephen Covey and the seven habits, how they affected people.

00:09:12

All right.

00:09:12

If it happens, I'm there.

00:09:14

I'll make it happen, but I'm not going to hold my breath either.

00:09:17

The only thing that I put in the show notes was kind of a sideways mouth emoji.

00:09:25

And it was purely there because on our last book, we didn't have any action items on it.

00:09:32

So it's like, okay.

00:09:33

Yep.

00:09:34

Not much for follow-up here.

00:09:36

So now what?

00:09:37

That's why I put that there.

00:09:38

Nothing big.

00:09:40

Now we rant about cortex and we talk about podcasting, obviously.

00:09:43

Right.

00:09:44

We get to go off script and do whatever we want, which means that we've now wrapped up our follow-up.

00:09:49

All two points of pseudo follow-up.

00:09:52

What's today's book, Mike?

00:09:54

Today's book is Mindset by Carol Dweck.

00:09:58

And I believe that this was a listener recommendation, but it's a book that has been on my radar for a

00:10:04

long time.

00:10:04

So I was excited to dive into this one.

00:10:06

And at least in my opinion, it did not disappoint.

00:10:11

I found myself.

00:10:12

Okay.

00:10:13

So when I read books, there are two set times, maybe three, when I'll read in a given day.

00:10:21

One is early morning, roughly from seven to seven thirty.

00:10:25

The other is at night before I start getting ready for bed.

00:10:30

So in the midst of my day, I also sometimes have a single point, like before lunch or right

00:10:38

after lunch or something somewhere in there.

00:10:40

I'll sometimes pick it up for about 10 minutes, just as a good transition time between my working

00:10:47

schedule and going up to see my family for lunch.

00:10:49

So I will oftentimes read at those points.

00:10:52

When I have a book that's especially interesting to me, I will sometimes pick it up just at random

00:11:00

times.

00:11:00

Like I'm waiting for the girls to get ready to go out the door.

00:11:04

And I will grab my book and read for those two minutes or something like that.

00:11:07

Well, girl is getting ready to go out the door.

00:11:09

15 minutes.

00:11:10

So with those little tiny bits, I don't often do that, but when I have a good book,

00:11:16

I will do that.

00:11:17

And this is a book that I did do that with.

00:11:19

It's a good book.

00:11:20

I will give it that.

00:11:21

At the same time, this is one where I really wanted to understand the two mindsets that

00:11:28

talks about, which we'll get into here in a few minutes, but I really wanted to know

00:11:32

how do you shift from one to the other?

00:11:36

Or is simple awareness what is at stake here?

00:11:43

Because a lot of times you know this, we go through these books and it's like,

00:11:46

okay, what do I do with this?

00:11:47

I don't know, but it's a good book.

00:11:50

It's a good thing to know.

00:11:51

Maybe just being aware of it is all I need to take away from it.

00:11:54

Like that was a thing that I was wondering with this.

00:11:56

And not sure that I have a set answer on whether or not I got solid action items out of it.

00:12:03

I think I did, but at the same time, it was one that I just really wanted to understand this

00:12:09

as best I could.

00:12:10

So I just kept reading and wanting to pick it up.

00:12:14

So I read it quick.

00:12:14

Yeah, I also read it quick.

00:12:16

I brought it with me to the district conference for Toastmasters.

00:12:20

I left on Friday morning.

00:12:24

I went to Madison, found an extremely hipster coffee shop called Johnson Public House,

00:12:31

sat there all afternoon and read, and then Saturday left the conference for a little while,

00:12:37

went back to the hipster coffee house and read it again.

00:12:40

I finished this book in two days.

00:12:42

Nice.

00:12:43

I personally could not put it down.

00:12:45

If you look at it, if you're going to take an x-ray approach to this book,

00:12:50

it maybe looks a little light on content, but I really liked the approach.

00:12:54

Like the very beginning and the first talking point we've got here is the fixed versus growth

00:12:58

mindsets.

00:12:59

But then the rest of the book, she talks about how to apply fixed versus growth mindsets in

00:13:05

different areas, like parenting or relationships.

00:13:08

She's got a whole bunch of sports examples.

00:13:10

There's business examples.

00:13:12

And I thought that she did a really good job of showing how the fixed versus the growth

00:13:17

mindsets play out in different arenas.

00:13:19

And that's a piece that I can't say I was expecting that.

00:13:23

You look at the front of this.

00:13:24

So the tagline, well, it's got a couple taglines.

00:13:28

The new psychology of success and then how we can learn to fulfill our potential.

00:13:34

But then there's these four points down underneath of the book,

00:13:36

Parenting Business School and Relationships.

00:13:40

In my mind, I was thinking, this is a book that just touches everywhere.

00:13:43

Like that was the point because every book wants to say, this will reach across your entire life.

00:13:48

I get that and I love that it does touch so much of just life in general.

00:13:54

But I can't say I was expecting it to actually go through and talk about teaching and relationships

00:14:01

and how does this apply to business and what happened to Enron.

00:14:05

Like I can't say that that was a thing I expected, but I really appreciated it.

00:14:09

It definitely took this seemingly simple idea and applied it to a bunch of areas

00:14:16

that we all either have been through or going through or will go through at some point most likely.

00:14:22

I just found that fascinating.

00:14:24

And again, it's a simple concept, but at the same time, it can be a bit profound.

00:14:29

So I like the duplicity of the nature of the idea.

00:14:33

Yeah.

00:14:33

And in these individual areas, she has a lot of concrete takeaways.

00:14:38

So I think Sir Ken Robinson, who we covered earlier, should write to Carol Dwecken

00:14:43

ask for tips on writing action items for his books.

00:14:46

Because that was another one where it's just like, let's talk about all this stuff at a high level

00:14:50

and not give you anything concrete to hold on to.

00:14:52

And while the teaching aspect of this particular book didn't really impact me because of my situation,

00:15:00

a lot of it was just like, how do you take a bunch of struggling students and make them care

00:15:04

about learning and get them invested in developing this growth mindset?

00:15:08

So there's a lot of stuff for working with a group of kids and stuff like that.

00:15:12

That didn't necessarily speak to me, but when I was reading that section,

00:15:14

I noticed the prescriptive formula that she was giving.

00:15:18

And I was like, wow, that's actually really good.

00:15:20

A lot of people could benefit from that sort of thing.

00:15:24

So let's jump into what these two mindsets are.

00:15:27

Because I think the rest of this conversation, it's probably going to be a little bit different

00:15:31

than we normally do for Bookworm since I kind of filled it out.

00:15:36

And well, did I do all these? I did do all these.

00:15:39

You did. So I saw your talking points here.

00:15:42

That's not how I took notes on the book at all.

00:15:45

I have the different areas broken out, but I liked your approach.

00:15:48

And so I didn't want to add a bunch of things.

00:15:51

I basically want to go off of what you've got there and see where it goes.

00:15:54

Okay.

00:15:55

And that's why I say it might be a little bit different because, well, let's just jump in.

00:15:59

It'll make more sense once we get going, but this might feel different

00:16:02

from what we normally do for Bookworm.

00:16:05

Yeah. All right. So fixed versus growth mindsets.

00:16:08

Go ahead. You jump in.

00:16:09

Okay. Well, the definitions that I wrote down in the whole first section of the book

00:16:14

is just elaborating on these two.

00:16:16

But I think a good summary is the fixed mindset is saying, I am who I am,

00:16:22

and I can't change. They are a non-learner versus a growth mindset says,

00:16:27

I have the ability to become who I want to be.

00:16:30

And they are a learner.

00:16:32

So if you like to learn new things, you probably have embraced a growth mindset.

00:16:37

If you resist learning new things and you want to stay where things are comfortable,

00:16:41

then you probably have a fixed mindset.

00:16:44

And that whole idea, I know if you're listening to this, maybe that makes you feel uncomfortable.

00:16:50

It made me feel uncomfortable as well because I like to have things very

00:16:54

systematized and I like to know what to expect. But the truth is that the struggle or the puzzle,

00:17:01

the problem that you're trying to solve, that does a lot of good.

00:17:04

And it creates the growth mindset because it makes you think outside the box,

00:17:09

it makes you expand your approach and your mental toolbox and how you tackle these things.

00:17:15

And then the process leaves you better.

00:17:18

It's kind of like the obstacles the way by Ryan Holly.

00:17:21

I thought about that book a lot when I was reading this one.

00:17:23

That's a fair point. I hadn't thought of that one, that particular book when I was going through this.

00:17:27

But it makes a lot of sense for sure.

00:17:29

And I just think it's interesting that it's simple.

00:17:32

You either think you can get better or you don't.

00:17:34

That's, there's a gross summarization of the book.

00:17:39

Can you get better or not?

00:17:41

And my sense is that most bookworm listeners probably fall for the majority part into the latter

00:17:48

camp where we think we can get better. And that's the mindset that we have of being able to always grow.

00:17:55

That's just my sense because that's kind of the point with bookworm.

00:17:59

Just trying to find, you know, we go through books in an effort to learn

00:18:03

and then try to take something away from that that helps us improve some area of life

00:18:09

or develop an idea in more fully in our minds.

00:18:13

That's a lot of what we do on bookworm.

00:18:16

And I have a feeling that a lot of people who listen to us tend to fall into that same camp

00:18:21

simply because, you know, like-minded folks tend to gravitate towards each other.

00:18:25

So welcome aboard listeners.

00:18:27

And it's something that if you start to pay attention to other people that you interact with,

00:18:34

it's kind of uncanny how you can pick up which mindset people are operating from.

00:18:40

And very quickly, did you notice this? Like just from having conversations, you know,

00:18:44

even with some of the youth at our church who volunteer, like just having conversations with

00:18:48

them, you can very quickly pick up which mindset people have a tendency to come from.

00:18:52

Oh yeah, for sure. And even the people who are listening to bookworm,

00:18:57

well, I think you're generally correct that they fall into the growth mindset category.

00:19:01

There are definitely areas of your life where even if you have embraced a growth mindset,

00:19:05

even if you are looking to develop personally, there are areas where you've just closed down

00:19:10

and accepted a fixed mindset. The fixed mindset, one of the other points I wrote down here is that

00:19:16

they don't admit or correct their deficiencies. So think about all the things that you don't do

00:19:21

and why you don't do them. For example, have you ever tried to learn an instrument or have you ever

00:19:27

tried to draw or paint or do anything quote unquote artistic? You know, for a long time,

00:19:32

I didn't. I was just like, ah, my brain doesn't work that way. It's not the way I'm wired. It's

00:19:37

just not my thing. And Carol Duck would say that it is your thing. You just haven't chosen to make

00:19:44

it your thing yet. And it's pretty astounding when you do make that mental switch to say,

00:19:49

I am going to get good at this thing. And I'm going to apply myself. I'm going to push past the

00:19:54

obstacle. I'm going to push past the barriers. I'm going to figure this thing out. No matter

00:19:58

what area that happens happens to be in, one of those areas may be athletics. I think there's

00:20:03

probably no better area that people are just like, Oh, they're born with talent or they're not

00:20:07

born with it, which is the fixed mindset. Exactly. But a lot of the athletes that she shared their

00:20:15

profiles in here, they didn't start off as the prototypical. This guy's going to be amazing. In

00:20:22

fact, she shared a story about Billy Bean, the baseball player and how he had all the physical

00:20:28

tools he was supposed to be, the most amazing baseball player. And that pressure got to him where

00:20:33

he just eventually couldn't handle it anymore. He was never as successful as people thought he

00:20:39

was supposed to be and how or as successful as he thought he was supposed to be because he

00:20:43

bought all that hype. He listened to all that stuff. And that's an important point. You have to

00:20:47

decide for yourself. You can't let other people set the set the bar for you. But on the opposite side

00:20:52

of Billy Bean is somebody like Lenny Dykstra who just you look at this guy and you're like,

00:20:56

there's no way he's a baseball player. But he ended up being really, really good.

00:20:59

And so the mindset, the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset, that's the key to going one

00:21:07

way or the other. And I thought that sports was a really interesting application of that.

00:21:11

Yeah. And it's an easy one to correlate it with for sure. Because we all seem to think,

00:21:16

Oh, they're natural. Well, probably not. And if they are, if they don't work at it,

00:21:22

they're not going to stay at the top of the competitive side of the league. Like you're just not going

00:21:29

to stay there and your attitude with it will kill you in the end too, which is where, what was his

00:21:35

name? McInroe, the tennis player? She talked about him quite a bit. That's John, John McInroe.

00:21:40

And I grew, I was a tennis player in college. So I knew exactly who he was. And she described

00:21:45

him very accurately. But for those who don't know, world class tennis player won multiple

00:21:52

championships, but was less than pleasant to work with, I'll say, and was very full of himself and

00:22:02

saw himself as Prince, if you will, of tennis. And if anything caused him to lose a tennis match,

00:22:11

his, you know, the sun got in his eyes or the ref made a bad call on it or, you know, there was

00:22:18

music playing over on the side and it distracted me. Like there was always a reason for the failure

00:22:23

where, you know, where that comes in. And this is a big point that comes up quite a bit. If you

00:22:28

have a fixed mindset and you're thinking like that, you're thinking in a way where you're blaming

00:22:34

exterior external circumstances for a failure and you're fixating on that, that's where you're

00:22:42

definitely in the fixed mindset. The growth mindset would come at that from a different stance and

00:22:47

say, okay, this is a thing that's going on. How do I overcome that? How do I beat this thing? How

00:22:53

do I get better because of this? It doesn't have to necessarily be a thing that you can control.

00:22:59

That's a thing that is brought up in the book, Make Your Bed by a Navy Seal.

00:23:05

Admiral William McCraven.

00:23:07

Yep. He talks about that where sometimes things are terrible to you. You know, life comes at you

00:23:14

and terrible things happen and it's not your fault, but fixating on it and just being stuck on it

00:23:19

isn't going to get you anywhere. So you have to learn to deal with it and move on. That's, I think,

00:23:24

a lot of what she talks about with moving from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset

00:23:29

and how do you do that in a way so that you can think about difficulties from a stance of getting

00:23:37

better, which I think is why you mentioned The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.

00:23:41

That book talks exactly about that. It's all about these difficulties. That's what you need to

00:23:49

struggle through and what you need to overcome.

00:23:52

Yeah. It's not focusing on why am I losing, but it's focusing on what can I gain and grow from

00:24:02

in this experience. That's where John McRiner had a fixed mindset. It wasn't that his fixed mindset

00:24:07

necessarily limited his "success." He was very successful, but every time that he lost, he wasn't

00:24:14

able to benefit from the loss because it was always somebody else's fault. He never took

00:24:19

responsibility for the outcome, and so he could never get any better. That in a nutshell is

00:24:24

the fixed mindset. One of the things that I found astonishing about this is she talked a lot about

00:24:30

how people have a fixed mindset, even if they are really good at something, they tend to shy away

00:24:35

from exerting the effort because exerting effort in a particular area, especially if you think

00:24:40

you're good at it, is risky because if you don't get the outcome that you want, which is what happened

00:24:45

with John McEnroe, it creates doubt about your abilities. His response to dealing with the doubt

00:24:51

about his abilities was to just fly off the handle and yell at everybody and everything that contributed

00:24:57

in any way, shape, or form to the result. Even a lot of times, not, but he just was completely

00:25:03

emotional. He admits in this book, not a lot of fun to be around. When you put forth the effort,

00:25:11

though, and you say, "This is the best I can do, maybe I don't measure up right now," what that does

00:25:15

is it removes all of the excuses. I know a lot of people who will come up to me and say, "Hey,

00:25:20

I've got a great idea for an app. I've got a great idea for a business. What do you think about this?"

00:25:24

And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, it sounds pretty cool, but I know that they're never going to do anything

00:25:28

with it," because the moment that they put forth any effort and they might fail, they've eliminated

00:25:33

the excuse, "Well, I could do that someday." As long as they don't take action on it,

00:25:38

that's in some ways comforting, because it's like, "Well, I could always choose to pursue this thing

00:25:43

at some point, but once you do actually put forth a little bit of effort, you've either got a

00:25:48

sink or swim. There's no middle ground there." And then you're not always going to swim. Sometimes

00:25:54

you are going to sink, and the growth mindset allows you to look at the situation and say, "Oh,

00:25:57

I could do this a little bit better or that a little bit better. I could change this approach."

00:26:01

That's where you start to really get the results that you're looking for. As it applies to athletics,

00:26:08

that's why you can't just put in effort. You have to put in the right effort. You have to practice

00:26:12

the right way. And one of the things that she talks about is that the love of practice is a

00:26:18

growth mindset. And if you practice the right way and you're looking for those things that you can

00:26:23

improve instead of just looking to pad your ego and say, "Oh, yep, look, you were right. You're really

00:26:29

good." Then you're going to develop your skills to the point where you are able to elevate them when

00:26:35

you need to be. And that's her definition of a champion, is someone who can raise their level

00:26:39

of play when they need to. So let's step into the different part of bookworm today.

00:26:45

I've got a couple questions here. One is, "When do we show the fixed mindset?" The other obvious

00:26:51

one that follows that is, "When do we show the growth mindset?" And then the third piece here,

00:26:56

areas where we've moved from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset, because you can change,

00:27:02

not that that's an easy thing to do, but it is a thing that you can do. And I've got these three

00:27:06

here because I think it would be interesting, Mike, to, I guess, spell out a very personal way

00:27:12

of how these things play out and what do these things look like in the real world.

00:27:16

Because you can go through the book and you can understand it. I think this is one that we would

00:27:19

recommend that people read. And although a lot of people I have learned listen to bookworms so that

00:27:26

they don't have to read the book, this was a case where don't do that. Go read this one.

00:27:31

And this is one that I do really appreciate, but I think it would have more teeth if we show

00:27:38

some of these from our own experiences. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. Well, one area in particular

00:27:44

where I've shown a fixed mindset I noticed after reading this book and I'm trying to change that

00:27:52

to a growth mindset is in how we parent. One of the things that really hit me was at the end of the

00:27:59

book, she's talking to people about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And they're trying to

00:28:05

encapsulate her whole thing into like one little phrase and they say something like,

00:28:10

praise the effort, not the outcome. And she's like, no, no, no, no, that's not right. What you

00:28:16

need to do is you need to praise the effort in light of the outcome. Like you have to take the

00:28:21

outcome into consideration when you are praising the effort. And so there's kind of two levels of

00:28:27

revelation here for me. Number one, you definitely do not want to say, wow, you're really good at that

00:28:34

because even though you're trying to be encouraging as a parent, that may be enough to say like,

00:28:39

oh, I'm really good at that. My parents, I'm really good at that. I better not try that again,

00:28:42

because I might let them down. They might see through me. They might see that it's all, it's all

00:28:46

hoax. You know, I'm really not as great as they think I am. And then the other level is that you

00:28:50

also just can't praise the effort. You have to take it to the next level and teach them that,

00:28:57

you know, your effort that you put forth this time, maybe it wasn't good enough to get the

00:29:01

result that you were looking for. So we're not going to necessarily praise that effort at that

00:29:06

moment. If it's the best that you can do, that's fine. But then how do we grow from here? How do we

00:29:12

change what we did so that we get the result that we're looking for? And I haven't really

00:29:18

synthesized exactly how to determine, you know, because I think there's some danger here, whereas

00:29:23

a parent, you could be like, well, here's the goal that we're shooting for. And the kids like,

00:29:26

nah, I don't want to do that. So there's got to be some collaboration and agreement and unity in

00:29:33

defining this. But I do think that when it comes to, you know, we talked about it with

00:29:40

grit and Angela Duckworth, like having the hard things that our kids are doing, praising them for

00:29:44

trying the hard things, but also bringing the angles like, how could you do that even better

00:29:48

next time? I think that's a real important piece. Yeah, absolutely. This is one that I don't know

00:29:52

that this is a thing that I'm bad at, but I know I'm not good at it either, because I want to praise

00:29:59

them. Like, it's the thing that we've been told, you know, build up their self esteem and self

00:30:04

confidence, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, she shows how that does have a fair amount of

00:30:10

negatives that come with it, for sure. And that's what you don't want. And I've caught myself,

00:30:15

oh, you're really smart. Like, I've said that probably more than I should. But it's something that I know

00:30:22

praising our kids is something you want to do. But at the same time, it's the effort that goes into

00:30:28

it. One of the stories that I think it was her husband was telling their daughter, if I got that

00:30:34

right, Elizabeth, I think was the name. Maybe I misunderstood the relationship. Anyway, there's a

00:30:38

gal named Elizabeth, who I think it was in gymnastics. And she didn't win the meet that they were doing.

00:30:45

And she was kind of upset about it. And the dad, as opposed to trying to build her up and say,

00:30:51

you know, you did a really good job. And, you know, they scored you wrong, you should have won.

00:30:56

Like, instead of doing anything like that, he simply said that, you know, the other girls

00:31:00

worked harder than you. They were better than you out there. Like, if you want to do this for fun,

00:31:04

that's fine. But if you want to win, you're going to have to work harder than that. Exactly.

00:31:07

Which is a really hard thing as a parent to say, like, I don't want to tell my girls that.

00:31:12

Like, that's not a thing I want to say. Yeah, it sounds so mean. It does. It's like, how cruel are

00:31:18

you? But that's exactly what she needed in that instance, because she went on to then win

00:31:25

competitions left and right after that, because she realized it's the hard work that gets me to

00:31:30

that point. And if I want that thing, if I want that trophy, if I want to win this competition,

00:31:35

I'm going to have to work my tail off to get it. And she got that and ran with it. But

00:31:40

being willing to say those words as a parent is not a thing I think I'm good at at all.

00:31:46

And I don't think that's something that you can say, just like, if you were to read this book and

00:31:50

say, okay, I'm going to embrace growth mindset with my kids, and I'm going to do everything the way

00:31:54

that Carol Duch did it in the book. Like, you can't just go from 0 to 60. You've got to work up to

00:31:58

that. Right. So this is her kid, I believe. And there's obviously, we're obviously joining a story

00:32:04

in progress here. And so I think that how those words get interpreted makes a huge difference.

00:32:12

I don't think that you like I said, you start there. But I think that's awesome to have that sort

00:32:17

of relationship with your kids like to develop it to that point. And it doesn't have to be your

00:32:21

kids. It could be literally anybody that you work with or anybody that you interact with.

00:32:25

To have the kind of platform where you can be honest like that and have them receive it in

00:32:30

the right way. I think that's that's a relationship goal that everybody has.

00:32:35

So an area that I feel like I've struggled with and have this fixed mindset that I'm not sure,

00:32:42

like, I may have been aware of this prior. But I can't say that I fully understood it

00:32:51

until I picked this up. But it's definitely in the world of my business.

00:32:57

And so much of what I do with my clients is just trying to speed things up and trying to help them

00:33:07

get their thing done and out the door quicker. And it didn't go well when I did that. Because

00:33:15

I had this mentality that I'm not good at client relationships. And I'm not always the best at

00:33:24

responding in a timely manner. And I'm not always the best at getting things to them when they need

00:33:30

them. So because of that, I've always just felt like I'm just not good at client work. And that

00:33:36

led me down quite a path of potentially trying to find another place to work. So to join a company

00:33:42

of sorts. And I've kind of thought through that quite a bit. This book, when I picked it up,

00:33:47

helped me see some of this in a different light such that this is an area I need to stop.

00:33:55

Stop thinking I'm terrible at client work or stop thinking I'm bad at client relationships.

00:34:01

It doesn't necessarily mean I'm stuck this way. But I just haven't thought about it in that sense

00:34:06

that I can get better at this. This is a thing I can improve on. I don't know that it's an

00:34:12

enjoyment factor in there. We've talked about client work a number of times on this show.

00:34:18

And I know I've talked about it a lot in other venues. But this is a thing that I know

00:34:23

I've fought. Client work is not for everyone, for sure. But at the same time, thinking that I'm

00:34:31

terrible at it doesn't really help me improve on it. And it doesn't help my business as a whole

00:34:37

improve either. So it's a thing I need to change, Mike. Yeah. Client work is like,

00:34:44

clients are kind of like kids. It takes a lot of patience.

00:34:47

Like one of the things that she mentions in the parenting section is that a normal

00:34:52

child misbehaves every three minutes. Oh, wow. And I was like, whoa. Yeah. I mean,

00:34:57

to think that you're going to have that many opportunities to respond incorrectly and to

00:35:03

trying respond the right way every single time, like that's a lot of pressure.

00:35:07

But yeah, that's the cool thing about this book though, is that you can apply it to a lot of

00:35:11

those different areas. And I definitely thought of the same thing regarding business. And fortunately,

00:35:18

I don't have to deal with clients on a regular basis because I'm not good at it. Maybe I should

00:35:23

maybe I should develop my growth mindset in that particular area. But it's just one of those things

00:35:28

that I do not like to do. There you go, Mike. You could you could freelance with me. Yeah,

00:35:34

definitely challenging for sure. But I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of

00:35:41

embracing this growth mindset. Do you think that it's the kind of thing where every opportunity you

00:35:48

get, you should be saying yourself over and over again, growth mindset growth mindset growth mindset.

00:35:53

Or should you be picking like one of these areas that you want to develop this growth mindset and

00:35:58

work on that and then move to another one? Yeah, that's a good question. I know that for me,

00:36:02

when it comes to client work specifically, I can do the work in a specified time frame. That's not

00:36:11

an issue. It's the communication side in particular that I sometimes struggle with it.

00:36:17

And it's because I get a lot of email and I don't want to do more email. So I know the general rule

00:36:24

of thumb, the more email you send, the more email you get. So sending more email is not a thing I

00:36:31

feel inclined to do. I tend to want to operate in a way that tells me that to the client,

00:36:37

if I'm not talking to you, I'm working on your thing. But that's completely opposite of the way

00:36:42

that they think like everyone assumes, if I'm not talking to you, I'm not doing anything.

00:36:46

And that's a fair assessment from their standpoint. But when it comes to me and how I do that,

00:36:53

I need to change that. That's a thing that I need to be better about communicating. I've been trying

00:36:58

to, since I started this book, I've been trying to find ways to make sure that I'm like, sending

00:37:02

end of day updates every single day on all the projects that I worked on, which is painful.

00:37:08

It takes 30 minutes or better out of my day to do that. But at the same time, it does help a lot.

00:37:15

And in the long run means I can charge more. We'll leave that where it lies. But at the same time,

00:37:20

this is a thing that I know I can improve on. I've always struggled with it. I've always just

00:37:25

thought of it as a thing that I'm, that's just the way I am. But it doesn't have to be.

00:37:30

Right. Exactly. Now you mentioned communication, and that got me thinking because a lot of the

00:37:35

stuff that she outlines in the book, parenting business school relationships specifically,

00:37:42

that's all interpersonal communication. I get these terms mixed up. But in

00:37:48

truck personal, I believe is the one where you're communicating with yourself. Yes.

00:37:52

And as I'm reflecting on the areas that I have a growth mindset and the areas that I've

00:37:58

finding myself leaning even occasionally towards a fixed mindset, I realize that when it comes to

00:38:04

the intra personal stuff where I just have to take care of my own stuff, I do pretty well in that

00:38:11

regard. That's where Bookworm was born out of. And we've talked about that a lot, so we don't

00:38:15

revisit it. But it was just a recognition of the fact that I want to read more. And so who can I

00:38:20

get to read more with me and hold me accountable? Hey, Joe, hi Mike. Even that like it's not dependent

00:38:26

on you saying yes, for my focus to be on how do I develop myself personally. But all the other

00:38:32

stuff, I feel like there's definitely areas for me to grow. The other area here that really kind of

00:38:40

stood out to me was this whole idea of relationships. And she kind of talks about it specifically between

00:38:47

like yourself and a significant other. So that was my lens as I approached this. But the thing that

00:38:54

she said here that I really want to point out is that they worked happily ever after comes before

00:39:01

they lived happily ever after. And when I think back to all the times where my wife and I have

00:39:06

struggled for any sort of length of time, it's because we have not been diligent about making

00:39:14

sure that we communicate. And she says again, in that section, mind reading instead of communicating

00:39:21

inevitably backfires. Yes. So that was like one area where it was crystal clear to me. Like there

00:39:28

are definitely times when I'm focusing on a serifix mindset. When you view your relationship

00:39:33

as having the potential for growth, that is a pretty radical paradigm, especially with the way that

00:39:43

the current culture is, where I kind of feel like, and I know this is a generalization, but I kind of

00:39:49

feel like we're at this point where people are kind of just like, well, what's the what's the point

00:39:54

with with marriage? Because at some point, like it's not it's just not going to work anymore. And I

00:39:59

think that that is a fixed mindset approach to the whole idea of marriage, that people, you know,

00:40:06

for right right or wrong, you can you can get on board with the idea, I think if you have a growth

00:40:12

mindset of I'm going to marry this person and be with them the rest of my life. I think that's a

00:40:16

very radical idea in today's culture. But if you have a growth mindset, I don't see why it should be.

00:40:22

Because yeah, you're you're going to change. Hopefully you're both changing for the better. If you have

00:40:28

any sort of intentionality and how you're changing, it will be for the better. She talks about how

00:40:32

you can embrace fixed versus growth mindset in three different areas. You can you can look at your

00:40:37

quality, your partner's quality, and the relationships quality. And so if you really want to have an

00:40:42

awesome relationship with your significant other focus on how are you getting better? How are you

00:40:47

helping your significant other get better? And then how is the relationship getting better?

00:40:52

And as long as you pay attention to that stuff, I really don't see how this is that hard.

00:40:57

Like it's one of those things where in terms of understanding the mechanics, it seems pretty

00:41:02

straightforward to me. Now, obviously there's a lot it's a lot easier to say it than to do it. I

00:41:08

think that that's where there's the potential for failure. But I just look at this and I'm like,

00:41:13

as long as I'm careful, like we shouldn't have to go through that stuff. And now I know that

00:41:19

there's going to be people who are even listening to this who like they've been through that stuff.

00:41:23

And sometimes it's not it's not your fault. There's nothing you can do about it. But I guess from

00:41:28

where I am right now, I am completely okay with assuming the responsibility for whether this

00:41:35

relationship works out myself. Because I know from the 10 years plus that my wife and I have

00:41:42

invested that if she's got an issue a lot of times, it's because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to

00:41:49

be doing. And if I look at that and fix it, then the relationship benefits. Does that make sense?

00:41:54

Yes. Because you both have the mindset of working at it and sticking with it.

00:41:58

Yeah. And I guess you don't even have to have the mindset of when I say I do it's forever.

00:42:05

But just having that mindset of the relationship that you have, it's not either.

00:42:09

Okay. So this is the kind of like in direct contrast to the book that we read by Amanda Palmer.

00:42:16

Like she talks about her different relationships. And how you love that book. I loved it. Yeah.

00:42:20

You're right. Listeners don't buy that. Go listen to that episode. Yeah. Yeah. But in that book,

00:42:27

she talks about a lot of her relationships. And she even talks about how they'll start off great

00:42:32

and then they'll turn sour and then like she leaves and she finds somebody else. And that's the

00:42:37

reason why she had so much trouble accepting the relationship that she had with Neil, I think it

00:42:42

was at the end. And I think that that is a fixed mindset. I think that with every single relationship,

00:42:51

you could look at it not as like either this fits or it doesn't. But either I put in the

00:42:55

attention and the effort to make this thing grow or I didn't. I think the relationships piece was

00:43:00

one I wasn't expecting in this book. It's right on the front. I should know this even, you know,

00:43:04

it's big words there, but I still didn't really expect it for some reason. But at the same point,

00:43:10

I get it. I mean, my wife and I spend a lot of time talking through struggles, things were

00:43:15

fighting through personally, you know, some of our own mental battles that we're fighting right

00:43:21

now. We talk about those things and it's not a venting sort of conversation. It's not a

00:43:28

let me just air my dirty laundry right now. It's not that at all. It's a lot more. Here's the thing

00:43:35

I'm working through. Let me just put this out there. If you have any ideas, help me out. Like,

00:43:42

we do that sort of thing. And those are always very, they're difficult conversation to have.

00:43:47

But at the same time, they're extremely valuable. But they're also not something you're going to do

00:43:53

regularly, like at least for us, just because there's a lot of pieces to that that can make it.

00:44:00

There's a lot of potential for scarring with that, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

00:44:05

And at the same time, these are things that I know that we value these times

00:44:11

because we know we come out better. If there's a thing that my wife is doing and it's just driving

00:44:16

me up the wall, I am better off mentioning it to her, which is, you know, not fun.

00:44:23

Like, I am better off starting that conversation so that we can work through it rather than just

00:44:29

sitting on it. You know, it's the classic don't go to bed angry thing. If there's a thing that we

00:44:34

need to work through, I need to get it out there. And she does the same. And if we have this

00:44:38

understanding that we're both going to do this, the relationship can't help but get stronger and

00:44:43

better in the long run. Exactly. And to bring it back to like the very beginning of the book,

00:44:48

she talks about the kids that were doing those puzzles. And you could tell which ones had the

00:44:52

fixed mindset because they're like, this is impossible. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm

00:44:55

going to go back to the one that I know how to do. And the ones that the growth mindset,

00:44:59

they're like, hey, mom, dad, go buy me this puzzle because it was really hard. I want to get

00:45:03

better at it. Like a relationship is a puzzle. It's not impossible. You just have to put in the

00:45:09

effort to figure out how all the pieces work. And I firmly believe that with any relationship

00:45:13

that you have, some are going to be easier than others. And there's a lot of different factors

00:45:17

that contribute to that. But I think that to just say, you know, this isn't this is impossible. We're

00:45:21

incompatible. Like, that's the fixed mindset, easy button approach to just blowing the whole

00:45:27

thing up. And I think that after reading this, it really it impacted me in a way I didn't expect

00:45:33

it to, because I've got a good relationship with my wife. I like where we are. But looking,

00:45:38

reading through this, the section, I realized that, you know, as great as things are, they could be

00:45:43

even better if I'm a little bit more intentional about embracing the growth mindset in this particular

00:45:48

area. All right, let's get off the negative side of this. Go over to the positive side.

00:45:53

When do we show the growth mindset? And I think for me, in this case, I have always had the mindset

00:46:02

that I can get better at doing coding and development work. This is where the actual rubber hits the

00:46:09

road for my business, because you know, writing code is what keeps it going. But ever since I got

00:46:14

into it, I've continually had the mindset that I can get better at it. At the same time, there's

00:46:20

a few areas where I've had the fixed mindset that changed over, but I'll get to that a little bit

00:46:24

later. But I have always had this mentality that if I don't know how to do a thing, if I don't know

00:46:31

how to connect Ember to Rails, sorry, that went over a lot of people's heads. I don't know how to

00:46:36

connect Ember to Rails. I can figure that out. I can nail down how that works. I don't know how to

00:46:41

do it now. That doesn't mean I'm a bad developer. It just means that I am still growing in that

00:46:48

area and I want to continue to get better at it. This is an idea that I try to share with as many

00:46:54

students as I can who are going into computer programming or computer science of any form.

00:47:01

I tell them all the time, if you're going to school for this, start now. Get in, get your hands dirty

00:47:08

with building something online or if it's an app. It doesn't matter what it is. If you're going

00:47:14

into an area that's got code involved, get started right away building a thing. I don't care if you're

00:47:19

in school or not for it. If you want to do it, get your hands on it and start getting

00:47:23

something built and figure it out. This is not hard, but you have to know that you can get better

00:47:31

at this and you can always grow at it. If you don't, you're just going to say, "I'm a bad coder

00:47:35

and walk away. You'll never touch it again." If you want to do it, do it. Keep going.

00:47:41

This is a thing that I've always felt. If you have an area that you feel like you've always had

00:47:47

the growth mindset, it's hard to imagine not having it in that area. Take the programming thing.

00:47:53

I've always felt like I can get better at this. When someone says, "Oh, I'm just not a good developer."

00:47:57

What do you mean you're not a good developer? You haven't tried. You haven't done anything.

00:48:00

You're not building anything right now. Why aren't you?

00:48:02

All right. Soapbox, I'm going to step off now. There's my growth mindset.

00:48:06

Well, I mentioned already the trends that I saw in myself where the areas where I need to

00:48:12

consistently develop the growth mindset are the areas where I'm working with other people.

00:48:17

Though areas that I am focusing on myself, I do a pretty good job. I almost do it without

00:48:25

even trying. That could be both good or bad because, let me give you an example. My 12-week

00:48:29

year tends to get blown up every single time because in the middle of it, I'll find something

00:48:34

where I'm like, "Yes, that's the thing. That's going to push me outside my comfort zone and I'm

00:48:39

going to chase that thing." For me, the last couple months, that has been this humorous speech

00:48:43

contest. That was never on my 12-week year. It ended up being something that I spent a lot of time

00:48:50

investing in though because I knew that that was stretching me and it was forcing me to develop a

00:48:55

growth mindset. The whole reason why I joined Toastmasters was that I knew it was going to make me

00:49:00

uncomfortable but I knew it was going to make me better and it was going to develop confidence,

00:49:03

which it definitely has done. Another recent example is I've always hated running, but the

00:49:09

summer I'm just like, "I'm going to train for a half marathon." No big deal. If anybody knew me,

00:49:14

they'd be like, "What? What caused Mike to do that?" Part of it was a little bit of peer pressure.

00:49:20

The majority of it was that for me, this is the ultimate test of mind over matter because I hate

00:49:28

just running. I've always played sports. I've played basketball, played tennis, played soccer.

00:49:34

I enjoy competing, but just exercise for this exercise, which is what a lot of running is

00:49:40

unless you're doing a race. That's just extremely, extremely boring for me. It's going to get even

00:49:45

tougher now because as we're recording this, it's 28 degrees outside and it started snowing.

00:49:51

Welcome to the north. I'm going to start running indoors on the treadmill, which is the epitome of

00:49:59

boring in my opinion. These are all things that all of a sudden it became clear to me that this

00:50:06

is the next challenge. I have no trouble finding areas to challenge myself personally and doing

00:50:15

things that I didn't think that I could do. Also, I think that there's definitely areas where I don't

00:50:21

want to chase that. You mentioned the clients thing, and even when I was saying that, I'm like,

00:50:26

well, maybe that's one area where I really need to grow. I'm just like, nah, I don't want to.

00:50:30

I don't want to focus my attention in that specific area right now. Why would I do that?

00:50:36

Exactly. That's why I asked the question. Do you think that this is the kind of thing where you're

00:50:42

either all growth mindset all the time or do you pick individual areas that you need to work on?

00:50:49

Because what I've been doing, I noticed if I'm doing my own personal retrospective,

00:50:55

is that I've got these different areas of my life. It's similar to the Wheel of Life exercise,

00:50:59

if you're familiar with that, where you rate yourself in the different areas. Then you pick the one

00:51:03

where maybe it's not quite where you want it to be. You find a challenge in that particular area.

00:51:08

That's what I've been doing. In terms of myself personally, there's a lot of things that I do

00:51:17

now that I never pictured myself doing. I like to think that there really isn't anything that is

00:51:24

off limits per se that if I were to see something and be like, oh yeah, that's the next challenge.

00:51:28

I wouldn't have the resistance like, oh no, I definitely am not wanting to do that. I'm not

00:51:33

going to do that. I feel like at least recently I've done a fairly decent job of just being like,

00:51:39

well, let's try it. Let's see what happens. So far, the results have been pretty positive.

00:51:44

So you mentioned the 12-week year blowing up about six weeks in. Have you caught on to

00:51:52

Jocelyn K. Glai? Hurry slowly. Yeah, I love that podcast.

00:51:57

So very first true episode, she had a trailer that came out at the beginning, but Jason Freed

00:52:03

was on there and he was talking about base camp and how at base camp, they do six-week cycles.

00:52:11

And I have seriously considered moving myself over to six-week cycles instead of 12 because at 12,

00:52:17

here's a classic example. As we record this, I'm going to be recording an episode of the

00:52:23

Guild podcast tomorrow. And there's a good chance that depending on how things go tonight,

00:52:29

I'm going to drop two goals and pick one up. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm six weeks in on it right

00:52:36

now. That's about right. So if I make these things a little bit smaller in size and run six-week

00:52:44

cycles instead of 12, it might make more sense to me to do that. I've seriously considered doing

00:52:49

that. I haven't decided if I'm going to do it or not because I haven't thought it through in

00:52:53

its entirety, but it sounded like a thing you might be interested in. Yeah, that's a cool idea.

00:52:57

The thing you lose with that, obviously, is the buffer week. I don't know how you really

00:53:01

account for that. You can take three or four days and do it. But I do think that there's a lot of

00:53:08

value in that approach. And I think that it's important to be willing to modify your goals.

00:53:16

Like if you were to be chasing something and it's just not working, to be willing to kind of shift

00:53:21

or not even not even necessarily completely change direction, although maybe sometimes

00:53:27

you do want to do that. But I think that a lot of times for me anyways, it's just like, well,

00:53:32

this was the idea behind this. The idea is still good, but the execution isn't quite there. So we

00:53:37

need to try a little bit different tactic in order to achieve the result. Fair enough. All right.

00:53:41

So what are some areas where you've moved from fixed mindset to growth mindset? Well, I'd like to

00:53:47

believe that I've made that shift in the parenting mindset. That area hit me really hard when I read

00:53:54

it. Immediately after I talked to my wife about it, and I was like, we can't say this anymore

00:54:00

with this specific kid, because what it's doing is this. She's like, what are you even talking about?

00:54:05

That doesn't make any sense. You're off your rocker. What are you reading?

00:54:08

No, just read this book. Read the first. Read pages one through 70 and then read this section

00:54:14

right here. She's like, okay, okay. And then the other day, we were sitting on the couch at night

00:54:19

and she's like, yeah, I'm beginning to see what you what you mean. And so with parenting specifically,

00:54:25

it can't just be one person's approach. It's got to be a team effort. And so my wife is a critical

00:54:34

piece to the acceptance criteria in that particular area. But I do feel that we have made a shift

00:54:40

in the area of parenting where it's not focusing on who they are or there's the skills that they

00:54:49

they currently have. So not saying, wow, you did a, you know, that was a really great, great job.

00:54:54

You're really good at that specific thing, because we have said that in the past. And also not saying

00:54:59

like, wow, you did a, you know, you put in a good effort. There's still some some figuring of this

00:55:05

out, but we're both consciously aware of how we praise our kids now. And I think that that's

00:55:12

that's good, because good parents, according to the book, you know, they set high standards when they

00:55:17

show their kids how to reach them. That's that's what I want to do. I want to challenge and nurture.

00:55:21

And I think that we're making progress in that direction. Good deal. Yeah, I know one of them,

00:55:26

all of mine are business minded, for some reason. But it might be because I've been

00:55:31

thinking about it a lot. And this book really challenged me from the business side of it.

00:55:36

But one area that I didn't realize I hadn't fixed until, I mean, I probably didn't notice it

00:55:44

until I read this book. But at the same time, I had a bit of a shift in mentality here about

00:55:50

probably four weeks ago, close to a month ago, of, you know, whenever I build websites, when it comes

00:55:57

to my own, I've never considered building something where I manage the hosting. And I put these things

00:56:04

up for you. And I take care of making sure that the software runs for you. I've never gone that

00:56:09

route simply because I don't always like, I don't know how to set up a server hosting system at that

00:56:18

level. Like to get something that scales at that size of a company, you know, it take WordPress,

00:56:24

for example, to sell the hosting for that is not a simple task. And being able to manage it is not

00:56:30

simple. And any form of, you know, take MailChimp, convert kit, any of these software systems that

00:56:36

you subscribe to to do it, the server system behind those are quite complicated. I've never jumped

00:56:42

into any form of big scale, large scale app or web software of that size, because I don't know

00:56:51

what I'm doing at that scale. But about four weeks ago, I finally just admitted to myself, you know

00:56:57

what, I'm never going to learn this if I don't try it. So I need to just start working on doing

00:57:03

something at that scale. Didn't know what that was going to be. I've since had an idea that I'm

00:57:10

going to be working on. I shouldn't say I had an idea. I had an idea shared with me. So this is a

00:57:15

thing that I want to pursue. But it's going to require a lot of large scale systems that I've

00:57:25

never touched before. But I'm willing to move myself from that mentality of, I don't know what I'm

00:57:32

doing. I'm not good at that. Take my own advice and get out there and try it and see how it goes.

00:57:38

Because the other thing too is the nice thing with software and stuff like this,

00:57:42

you can always migrate. All this fails, you write your own migration tools and you move on.

00:57:47

Like you can always move it all over. It might be painful for a little bit, but you'll get it

00:57:50

figured out. Like it's okay to do that. So I am glad that I've made that shift. I think it's

00:57:57

got a lot of potential in what I'm pursuing in the future. Even if this current idea isn't the

00:58:02

right one, I think it has enough learning that can come with it that'll eventually get to a bigger

00:58:08

idea that I think will hit. But that's what I know. I think this is an area where it's been a very

00:58:12

good thing for me to move from the, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good at this to,

00:58:17

I think I can pull this off. I just need to spend some time with it and learn it and be willing

00:58:22

to work through the setbacks. Makes sense. So she actually has in this book, by the way,

00:58:27

the four points for converting from fixed to growth mindsets. I like these. Yeah, I thought

00:58:33

you did, but I was also a little bit confused by your comment at the beginning about not being

00:58:38

actionable. I kind of get that based on what these are. So let's run through these and then

00:58:42

I want to get your input on this. So number one is to embrace your fixed mindset, recognize

00:58:48

that you do struggle against this thing. Number two, become aware of your fixed mindset triggers.

00:58:54

So we've all got these things that are going to set us off and force us back into that fixed mindset.

00:58:58

Number three is give your fixed mindset persona a name. So it's kind of coming outside of the

00:59:05

fixed mindset and saying that guy over there, he has trouble with the fixed mindset, but I don't,

00:59:10

which is a little bit weird when you think of it that way. But kind of fun, but odd. Yeah,

00:59:16

yeah. And then number four is educate your persona and take it with you and take it on the journey.

00:59:21

Now, I can see you why you might say, well, how do I know if this is done? But there was one other

00:59:28

thing that really impacted me in this book. And this kind of summarizes, I would say 80% of my

00:59:36

action items that I've ever had. All right. And she says success equals full preparation and full

00:59:45

effort. And so at that point, you know, especially as you're applying it to these four specific

00:59:51

things and you don't have a very clear quote unquote definition of done, like this is now done.

00:59:56

I have officially converted from fixed to growth. You know, that it's not so cut and dry as that.

01:00:01

I think the real key here and the incentive behind a lot of the action items that I have

01:00:10

is recognizing that this thing is a problem. And then doing as much as I can to fix it,

01:00:17

putting in as much effort as I can. And at that point, being okay with any outcome. And so like,

01:00:25

I definitely don't want to brag. But I've kind of seen this play out just in the toastmasters stuff

01:00:34

and then also the running stuff recently. So I'm training for this half marathon,

01:00:39

half marathon is not till May. I'm like, I got to do something in the meantime, I entered a 10k.

01:00:43

All right. When I ran the 10k, no big deal, just a 10k. So yeah, 10k is 6.2 miles for

01:00:51

somebody who never ran more than three and a half before this summer. Like, that was a long

01:00:56

ways for me. I'd been training for a while though, and I crushed it. I took second in my age group,

01:01:01

but no, I'm not going to tell you what age group that is. But I did, I did really well. My goal was

01:01:06

not to do really well. My goal was to challenge myself. But turns out, I've done a pretty good job

01:01:14

of that. Same thing with the humor speech contest. You know, I really had no expectations of this

01:01:18

is how far I want to get. I just want to get up on stage and remember the words I was going to say.

01:01:23

And did that and made it all the way to district before I lost to a professional comedian.

01:01:31

So like, I think that this process, I guess my point in saying this though, and the reason why

01:01:37

like I said, I'm not trying to break is that I don't think it's me that is achieving these results.

01:01:43

I think it's this process. I think if you know what you need to do and you put for and you actually

01:01:50

prepare, you practice, you put in the effort, and then when it comes time to perform, you give it

01:01:56

everything that you've got, you kind of don't have to worry about the results. I think we're a lot

01:02:00

of people miss this is they put forth the full effort, but they don't have the full preparation.

01:02:07

They're kind of caught off guard. Now I'm going to run this half marathon and they don't train and

01:02:10

then race day comes and they're dying halfway through. It's like, well, didn't you know how long the

01:02:16

race was? It's 13.1 miles. Like, you've never run more than three. Like, how did you think you were

01:02:23

going to finish this? Oh, my adrenaline was going to carry me or whatever. Like, when you look back,

01:02:28

it becomes very obvious where the lapses and judgment are. But I think that the growth mindset can

01:02:34

kind of see those things, call out those things, and you can prepare ahead of time. And when you do

01:02:39

that, you can just let it rip and you'll get a lot further than maybe you think. You want to go to

01:02:45

action items? Sure. Okay. So I have, well, one of them here is try to move my fixed mindsets to growth,

01:02:52

which I wrote this part way through the book. I didn't actually get it translated to this,

01:02:58

but I wrote this down about halfway through the book before I realized she actually had a method

01:03:02

here. So what I need to do is change that to name my fixed mindset dude and start to make fun of

01:03:11

him. Like, that's where I feel like I need to be on this. So I haven't named him yet, but I'm

01:03:19

going to try to give him a name for the next show and maybe we'll talk about him randomly.

01:03:23

What was that? There was a guy who was in the news during one of the presidential campaigns.

01:03:29

It was like Joe the Plumber. That should be your fixed mindset persona. Joe the Plumber.

01:03:33

But my name is Joe. It's funny. I was talking to one of my clients and he mentioned that he

01:03:41

used to freelance. So he totally understands where I'm coming from on methods and how we do

01:03:46

things and how we work together. He gets all that. And he said that he always struggled with

01:03:50

sending invoices and he hated the process of asking people to pay their invoices. So what he did was he

01:03:58

set up another email account for some random guy named, I think he said Daniel or something like that.

01:04:03

And that was finance. Like that was the finance department. So he would have the conversations with

01:04:08

his client and then refer to Daniel to actually send the invoice and do all the financial follow-up.

01:04:15

But he didn't have to worry about it because his clients thought it was somebody completely

01:04:18

different. So but he could throw Daniel under the bus all he wanted because he didn't exist.

01:04:23

That's hilarious. That's a great idea. I know I've never done this but I totally

01:04:29

understand why someone would. So that was one. I want to try to name this person,

01:04:34

non-person, pseudo-person, this thing. And the second one I've got here is I want to start sending

01:04:41

a note or an email of sorts to every author that I read. And that sounds like a really weird

01:04:47

action item given this book. But it came about because she mentions letters that were sent to her

01:04:53

constantly in this book, which I found I thought it was really interesting because she gets feedback

01:04:58

on this stuff from her lectures and and such as a professor. So I just wanted to send a note to

01:05:05

people. I haven't done it on this one yet but I'm going to send her a note probably later today or

01:05:09

tomorrow and just say thanks for the book. But that's the thing I want to start doing because we read

01:05:14

these books all the time and authors are people too. You know that for sure. But I know from experience

01:05:21

that getting positive feedback on a thing you created is extremely uplifting and not always common.

01:05:29

So going through this I realized I really enjoy when I get these emails. Why don't I send them?

01:05:36

I mean I want to change that. So I'm going to send her a note on this one.

01:05:39

Nice. I think that's a great idea.

01:05:41

That's what I got. All right. So my action items like you right out my fixed mindset persona and in

01:05:47

the book she's got a bunch of different examples of people who have done this. There's like a whole

01:05:50

paragraph describing the person. So I'm going to do that by next time. I'm also hopefully by next time

01:05:57

going to have a good answer for one of the questions that was brought to my attention when I was reading

01:06:04

the relationship section. That is how am I helping my wife develop personally. That kind of gets into

01:06:10

like the three different areas. Your quality, your partner's quality, relationships quality.

01:06:15

Like I said I've done a pretty good job of my quality. I think I've done an okay job at the

01:06:20

relationships quality. One of the things that we do is we have a date night every week and once a

01:06:26

month we try to get away for an overnight. But one area where I could definitely improve is

01:06:32

focusing on how can I help Rachel develop herself. Like not looking to get anything from this.

01:06:37

Just how do I help her become the person that she wants to be. And she's going to listen to this

01:06:41

and she's going to hold me accountable to it. So we'll see how this goes. Yeah. The other one

01:06:47

and this is more of a reminder or a framing of the the tactic. Like I said the two areas

01:06:57

specifically where I've kind of seen growth in this area are toastmasters and the running

01:07:01

where these are not things that I pictured I would be doing at all. So it if I would have said

01:07:06

can I do this I probably would have honestly said at the beginning of either of those no.

01:07:11

But there are other areas that I want to take that same approach and so I want to shift it from

01:07:17

can I do this to how can I do this. And that gets into the definition of success. The full

01:07:22

preparation plus full effort. If I look at something and say how can I do this and I see all the

01:07:27

effort that's required to get the result that I want and just decide you know I don't have

01:07:30

the time or the effort to put forth in this particular area for right now that's completely fine.

01:07:36

But just eliminate the word no from my vocabulary in essence in terms of what am I capable of.

01:07:42

That's a tall task. A good one too. It is and this is not the kind of thing where

01:07:46

like I said this is not something that I'm going to hit 100% every time. But if I'm aware of it and

01:07:53

I'm making an effort to to change this then I'm okay with the results because it's going to mean

01:07:58

that I'm going to think that way less than I would have otherwise. So success in this particular

01:08:03

area is number one becoming aware of this and then doing what I can putting forth the effort

01:08:08

to correct it. But whatever the results are basically I'm okay with this.

01:08:13

Unless you know I wake up tomorrow and I'm just completely negative for the next three months and

01:08:19

I constantly find myself saying can I do this. You know at that point I am going to look at the

01:08:23

the actual results that I'm getting but I don't anticipate that happening. Fair enough. For

01:08:30

author's style my thoughts are that Carol is very good at writing. Enough so that both of us

01:08:36

went through this very quickly and really enjoyed a lot of her story. I'll let you speak for yourself

01:08:42

though. But I did really like this. It's one that there's a lot in here and in seeing this very

01:08:50

simple concept of can you grow or not like at your mentality on it. Seeing that very simple

01:08:56

concept being explained in story after story in arena after arena is extremely helpful because

01:09:04

you just don't see how many aspects of this affects and you can have the fixed mindset in one area

01:09:10

and not in another. Like it's just interesting how all that works but you don't fully

01:09:14

see that until you get to go through all these different areas. All that to say Mike I'm actually

01:09:20

going to give this a five star. Nice. Rating. Because this is one that I feel everyone should

01:09:26

read because I think this can impact a lot of how you do things in life especially as a parent

01:09:33

but also like in my examples anyway as a business owner it makes a huge deal to me and how I

01:09:41

how I interact with things. I think there's a lot here that people could learn from

01:09:45

and cannot recommend this one highly enough. It's a good one. Awesome. The coveted five stars

01:09:52

from Joe B. I know. I know. That's a tough one. I feel like you've had less five stars than me

01:09:58

but I have to go back in the archives to look at that. I think so. I'm pretty picky with them. You

01:10:02

are. I am. Five stars from Joe is no joke. So for me office now I found this book really refreshing

01:10:09

because I think that most books in this genre tend to be here's 20 pages explaining the main idea.

01:10:17

Now let me re-explain the main idea in the same way using slightly different words for the next 200

01:10:22

pages and she didn't do that at all. She had a bunch of different stories a bunch of different

01:10:28

contexts and it was applied differently in each one of those contexts. So I never got bored reading

01:10:34

this. I felt like everything that she was talking about like it came together really well and it

01:10:42

was very engaging and there was definitely stuff that you could apply from every every single area

01:10:47

of this book. The one area I think this book falls a little bit flat in is the end. The book was so

01:10:54

good up until the end and then she talks about the four steps to going from fixed to growth and

01:11:00

I felt like there wasn't much of a crescendo there and you get done and you're kind of like

01:11:05

well that's kind of impossible. So I don't know I don't even know exactly what I would change

01:11:14

there. Maybe explaining that isn't so simple as just do these things and there is a lot of

01:11:23

variation in here and it's going to be a struggle which she does do that but then

01:11:27

maybe calling out some specific things to look out for. You know like when it comes to

01:11:32

she's talking about educate your persona and take it on the journey with you maybe having like

01:11:39

some specific statements that you can use whenever you recognize your fixed mindset

01:11:45

showing up in this particular area. Does that make sense? It does. I like those phrases though.

01:11:51

So like if you're going through like you were talking about I need I notice I need to work on my

01:11:57

growth mindset in the area of business you've got a bunch of different affirmation statements

01:12:01

specifically related to the area of business that you can use to educate your persona with

01:12:07

something like that and that's just you know an idea off the top of my head but I feel like there

01:12:11

was something a little bit more that she could have done to really make this concrete and feel like

01:12:18

yeah now I know exactly what to do. I felt a little bit like I don't know exactly what to do.

01:12:23

Even though I totally get the idea of a growth mindset this is something we literally teach

01:12:28

growth versus fixed mindset at Asian efficiency all day every day. So like this is right in my

01:12:33

wheelhouse but even for someone like me I felt like I really am not 100 positive what to do here

01:12:40

you know fortunately we've got a podcast where we can talk through all this stuff and synthesize

01:12:44

it but not everybody's going to do that. Whoo hoo start a podcast. Yes the world needs more

01:12:49

podcasts completely serious. Yes if you want help starting a podcast then talk to me because I like

01:12:56

helping people in that particular. I'm not going to do the work for you but I can point in the

01:12:59

right direction. I was going to say are you? No no no but I will help you. I wrote an article on

01:13:07

like how we launched a productivity show and I get occasionally people replying to that and like

01:13:11

wow this is some great information. It's basically everything that I learned through the process

01:13:16

and I feel like it's not as difficult as some people may think and just a little bit of guidance

01:13:21

in a specific direction like that could really make a difference. So exit soapbox back to my rating

01:13:26

I'm going to say 4.5 just for the reasons that I mentioned that the ending felt a little bit flat

01:13:30

but it's a great book and honestly maybe it's just that I enjoyed the beginning of the book so much

01:13:37

that the ending felt a little bit flat. Maybe there's nothing wrong with the ending. Maybe it's just

01:13:41

from beginning to end it was just better than I expected. I don't know but when I think about the

01:13:48

books that I've rated five stars the Deep Work by Kale Newport that Seven Habitat affected people

01:13:53

by Stephen Covey. I felt like this is a really good book and it impacted me a lot but not to that level

01:13:59

so for that reason I'm going to say 4.5. All right we're kind of switching places it usually

01:14:06

goes the other way. I know. It's got to do that once in a while. All right so upcoming books

01:14:12

the next one on the list is my choice. Speaking of Covey. I know the four disciplines of execution

01:14:19

by Chris McChesney, Jim Healing and Sean Covey. This is a good one. I actually have finished

01:14:25

this one already. I'm just itching to record it with you and I'm going to stop there. This is a

01:14:30

popular one that I'm kind of surprised we haven't done yet. Well this will be interesting because I

01:14:35

tried to read this book at one point and couldn't finish it. I know you said this. All right the

01:14:40

one after that is one I actually got from you listening to whims at work. You and you were talking

01:14:46

about the artist's way. I've ordered this and I think it comes today. I'm really intrigued by

01:14:53

this whole idea of the morning pages and I want to dig into this book. I feel like

01:14:59

this book, again I haven't read it and I don't know a whole lot about what the subject matter is

01:15:05

other than what you and Drew had talked about. I feel like this one has the potential to significantly

01:15:10

impact my work though. So I'm excited. Yeah I haven't read this one. I know enough about it to talk

01:15:17

about it and I mentioned that on the show I think I meant to but it's it is an interesting

01:15:22

concept that I don't fully understand. So I'm with you and I think this will be a good one. I saw

01:15:26

that you had it on here like oh yes I'm excited about that one. Between here and there I'm reading

01:15:31

a book that was recommended to me by Josh over on the Guild podcast. Algorithms to Live by Brian

01:15:37

Christensen and Tom Griffiths. Applying math to daily life. That'll be interesting.

01:15:43

A number of folks have recommended this since I've mentioned this on the Guild. So it'll be interesting.

01:15:51

Yeah I'm curious to see what's what this one is all about but yes math as it applies to life.

01:15:56

Cool and my gap book is one that I am rereading at the moment which is Work the System by Sam

01:16:04

Carpenter. This is a book that is directly related to my 12 week year goal. This quarter just throwing

01:16:12

it out there I guess one of the things that I've mentioned is that I want to create for our family

01:16:17

kind of a standard operating procedures manual which sounds terrible when you think about it like

01:16:22

that. I've explained this to my wife she's completely on board. Sounds horrendous. Basically what we

01:16:27

want to do is we want to create a set of guiding principles for how we build our schedule. So

01:16:34

we want to have documented for example that every Tuesday night between this time and this time is

01:16:40

going to be date night and every third Friday is going to be field trip day and you know those

01:16:47

sorts of things and I think that by codifying these and putting them in a document when it comes

01:16:53

time to look at our calendar it will make things a lot a lot better because what I've noticed is that

01:16:59

we typically when it comes to planning family trips and things like that if we look far enough

01:17:06

ahead we're pretty flexible and we can pretty much create whatever time we want for our family but

01:17:13

when it comes time to the execution and the day to day we'll quickly find that if we don't put

01:17:18

that stuff first the big rocks then it doesn't happen and so this is an effort to make sure that

01:17:25

first things remain first. Cool beans. So the book that I have selected for next time 40x as it's

01:17:32

affectionately known is actually a listener recommendation and I've got a number of these that I've

01:17:39

selected for the upcoming shows but those are all brought to us by listeners like you and if you

01:17:46

have one that you would like to hear us go through you can do that over on bookworm.fm/recommend.

01:17:52

You can also check out the existing book list there at slash list links to both these in the

01:17:58

show notes make it easy for you but both of those will show you what we have we gone through what's

01:18:04

on the planned list what have other people recommended and you can get yours on the list there as well.

01:18:10

And if you want to help us take down kcrw we'd love to have you join the revolution just head

01:18:16

on over to iTunes leave us a rating and review it will boost our search engine rankings and iTunes

01:18:24

and it will help other people find out about this awesome show. Go bookworm. So if you're interested

01:18:31

in 40x the four disciplines of execution and you're interested in why Mike is struggling to read

01:18:36

it and why I like it you should check us out next time and we'll go through the four disciplines of

01:18:43

execution.