Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

I'm excited about today's book. Can I say that? Sure. Okay. I'm excited about today's book.

00:00:04

I feel like we have a lot of ground to cover before we can get to it though.

00:00:07

Yes, yes we do. We have a plethora of follow-up items. You want to go first?

00:00:12

Do I have to? I think so since I already did my five brand words and you were going to do that

00:00:17

for this time and that's one of your items. So that should be number one, in my opinion.

00:00:22

So I didn't do it. Come on, Joe. I know. Want to know what your brand words are.

00:00:28

I know. And here's why. This is not a thing where I forgot about it at all.

00:00:32

This is a situation where I ended up, since our last recording, I've ended up taking part of my

00:00:41

web development business and segmenting it off to where I've technically got two

00:00:45

businesses I'm running. And as a result of that, I don't want to say I'm in a crisis of sorts,

00:00:50

but it has me reevaluating pretty much everything right now. So I'm not really sure. I spent a

00:00:57

lot of time on this trying to figure it out. And I didn't come up with anything that I am ready

00:01:02

to commit to at the moment. So the TLDR is that you were too busy to do the homework from busy.

00:01:09

I think this has to do with, because busy is kind of at fault. Like the book itself is kind of at

00:01:16

fault. Right. Between that and the gap book that I read between those two, it had me rethinking

00:01:23

how I do things from a web development business stance. So therefore I ended up changing how a

00:01:30

lot of it operates, which means a lot more work right now. But given about a month's time,

00:01:38

the amount of work that I'll have on my plate drops significantly and has, I can already see

00:01:45

that trajectory starting even now. So I'm on the path to be much less busy. So I'm going to blame

00:01:53

busy for a little bit extra busy right now. Okay, I guess I'll allow that. Okay.

00:02:00

Because I think you're hitting the the intention of the book anyways. I think sometimes there are

00:02:04

seasons where you just have to push through some stuff. But as long as you are intentional

00:02:09

moving in the right direction, then it's going to provide the long term gains that you're looking

00:02:12

for. It sounds like you've kind of thought through all that stuff, which is really what the five

00:02:15

brand words exercise was getting at in my opinion, is giving you that clarity. So if you kind of got

00:02:20

that clarity already and it's influencing decisions that you make, I don't think that's a bad thing.

00:02:24

No, I don't think it's bad. I mean, in some of the realm that these brand words are landing on

00:02:31

are things like stability, some white space, you know, family time and quality time with my

00:02:38

not quality time, but quantity time with my girls like it's floating around those concepts.

00:02:45

But I've not been able to fully nail it down because I'm sitting on like 12 to 15 areas that I feel

00:02:54

like I are important, but that's too many. So I'm working towards that narrow down bit, but I'm not

00:03:02

done with that process. Okay. Okay. So over one, what about the next one? What about listing your

00:03:09

15 closest friends? I have 12 down. Okay. I'm gonna run with that one for now. I think

00:03:15

the problem I'm running into is like, trying to get to that 15, I feel like I've met the purpose

00:03:21

of this action item, but I'm not fully to the number that I wrote down. So I'm hesitant to say

00:03:26

check when I'm at 12, because I feel like to go to, I almost feel like I'm going to another

00:03:34

circle of friends like stepping outside that realm of 12, which then means it's not necessarily

00:03:40

three to fill in. It's like another eight to 10 that tend to fall into that circle. So

00:03:46

yes, made progress, but I'm not at that number. If it was up to me, and maybe we need some

00:03:53

arbitrator who is really going to keep score and decide what's allowed and what's not, but if it

00:03:58

was up to me, I'd say that you completed that one because I had the same experience where it's like,

00:04:03

okay, I've got my immediate family, the five people I'm closest to. The next one, next circle, you know,

00:04:08

is these 15 closest friends. And I had the same experience where it's like, you get to 10 or 12,

00:04:14

and it's like, I don't know if I want to put anybody else in here based on the relationship right now,

00:04:19

right, which is why for mine, I got to my 15, but my action item on this was a little bit different.

00:04:25

And I think that gave me the context to complete it was I had the additional question, how can I

00:04:31

give to my 15? So these aren't necessarily people that I'm close to right now that I would put into

00:04:38

the group of 15 right now, there's probably a few people in that second or third circle,

00:04:42

you know, you're talking about the eight to 10 more, that they're kind of like on the fence.

00:04:46

And maybe you want one of those relationships to be a little bit better. And so that question,

00:04:51

then of how can I give to them, that's the thing that can kind of push them up into that

00:04:54

second tier, in my opinion. So I think maybe that additional context for me is what allowed me to

00:05:00

get to that number, just an interesting observation here in you talk about yours.

00:05:04

Yeah, it was an interesting exercise. And it felt really weird. I will say that

00:05:10

here, let me take my friends and borderline rank them. So that's about what it felt like.

00:05:17

And that is not a thing I will share at all. So there we go. I was even hesitant to write it down

00:05:27

at all. I was like, I think I could just memorize this. And then I don't ever have to externalize it

00:05:32

at all. So I did externalize it. However, it is behind like four passwords and encrypted. So,

00:05:39

yes. I wrote mine down, but it's an unencrypted plain text. So anybody wants to hack into my

00:05:45

envy. You can see if you made the cut. I don't really feel bad about that, by the way. Maybe I

00:05:50

should, but I'm getting to the point where it's like, it is what it is. We can either both agree

00:05:56

that maybe it's not where it's supposed to be and we can work to improve it. But I'm not going to

00:06:00

put an effort if you're not going to be there. So that's fair. That's fair point.

00:06:06

The last one you've got here, stop saying I'm busy and say I've decided not to be busy.

00:06:10

Yeah, I've been doing this one. I can't say I'm 100% on it. It's still, I think habit takes over on

00:06:16

this. So I have a number of scenarios where I have simply said I've decided not to be busy.

00:06:24

And I'm learning what that means. I've kind of added to that phrase a little bit because when I

00:06:30

just say I've decided not to be busy, people tend to look at you with this blank look like,

00:06:34

wait, that's not the expected response. What is wrong with you? Almost like, that's not an option.

00:06:39

Yeah, like you're supposed to say I'm good or, you know, busy. Like those are the things you're

00:06:43

supposed to say. If you say anything other than that, you're like an alien with a third eye. Like,

00:06:48

what is wrong with you? So yes, I have been altering that one a little bit. So typically,

00:06:54

it's like, I've decided not to be busy and I'm learning what that means for me. So, you know,

00:06:59

and that usually jump starts a conversation. I'm very aware of the scenarios when I say this

00:07:06

and making sure that I have time to expand on it a little bit because it naturally leads to,

00:07:13

what does that mean? Tell me more, like it immediately begs that question. So folks tend to ask that

00:07:20

question. So you kind of have to be aware of if you have time to expand on it or not.

00:07:25

Yeah, I kind of wish I was a fly on the wall for a couple of these because I kind of think that

00:07:29

as you explain it, you get one of two reactions. Either people are just like in shock and awe that

00:07:34

you're able to achieve that or they're just ticked at you and they want to murder you because

00:07:39

they're jealous. Yes. I've had a couple of the ladders. So, like, okay, Joe, you're doing this thing

00:07:49

again where you're making me feel bad about myself. Like, I don't mean to do that. Like,

00:07:53

that's not my intent, but it's really hard to not come across that way. It's just painful sometimes.

00:08:00

Interesting. All right. So my turn, I guess. Yes. You did your 15. I did my 15. Yep. Okay.

00:08:08

Did you stop saying wait a minute to your kids? Kind of. Turns out this is impossible

00:08:13

because my kids have no filter. So it doesn't matter what I'm doing. There are times when I know

00:08:21

that I don't want to say wait a minute, but I find myself having to say wait a minute because

00:08:25

I'm literally in the middle of something that I can't stop doing. Right. But I am more intentional

00:08:31

about it and I do find myself not doing it because I'm looking at my phone or whatever. Like, if I'm

00:08:37

doing something that's not a high value activity, like, I've decided I should be doing this right now.

00:08:42

For example, I've got my office finished. So I work from home. Like, they'll just

00:08:45

barge in in the middle of me doing something and be like, hey, look at this. Like, immediately.

00:08:49

And I can't right now, guys, like the doors closed. You know that. So I'm in work mode. Like,

00:08:54

in that instance, I'll say, wait a minute. I'll finish up, you know, what I'm working on and then

00:08:59

go see what they've got. But yeah, it's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

00:09:04

I am running a table saw. You need to wait a minute. Definitely need to wait a minute.

00:09:07

Exactly. So there are times, you know, when that happens. Next one, make time to help people. I think

00:09:14

I mentioned I was going to try and work this into my schedule. I don't have this explicitly done.

00:09:20

It kind of goes along with write out my own rules of engagement. I have this sort of done.

00:09:25

I don't think it's to the point yet where I'm happy with it. But I do have a document in Ulysses

00:09:32

now, which has the different types of requests that I will get. So like, can we get lunch? Can we get

00:09:38

coffee? Can you come into church for a staff meeting, whatever? And it really occurred to me

00:09:43

that I could use Calendly or something like that to just share my availability. But I would have to

00:09:49

clearly define what my availability is for these things. So for coffee, for example, I've got Mondays

00:09:55

at 7 a.m. or Fridays at two lunch, Tuesdays at 12 p.m. So like, those are my time slots set aside

00:10:00

for those sorts of things. And it's a little bit of trial and error, you know, finding stuff that

00:10:05

is going to work consistently. But I've at least started with that. And I think that a lot of that

00:10:09

stuff overlaps with the make time to help people. But I don't have like, a helping people time block

00:10:15

on my calendar yet. Nice, nice. Did you, so you were talking about your rules of engagement?

00:10:21

Yep. Did you write those out technically? Kind of. So they're not done yet. I would say this one is

00:10:27

probably not completed. I've got the availability. But next I want to put in context of like,

00:10:32

these are the places and the rules around. Okay, so we're going to meet for coffee. Like,

00:10:37

these are the available options. We can go here or here, you know? And what are the expectations?

00:10:42

I mentioned kind of made this mindset shift that like, I'm going to meet somebody for coffee. I'm

00:10:46

just going to buy them coffee. It cost me a couple bucks, build some goodwill. Like, those are the

00:10:50

kinds of things that I want to put in a formal document that don't exist yet. Right now, it's

00:10:54

just the availability. Nice. So it's a step in the right direction, but it's definitely not done.

00:10:59

I feel like that could be really helpful. Like, just to know, if we're going to do x, y, and z,

00:11:04

these are the boundaries I need to put around it. And this is very plain. I use it all the time.

00:11:11

It's borderline protocol. Like, that's, I feel like that would be very freeing in some way or

00:11:16

another. Yeah, I kind of think so as well, which is why I'm doing it. Speaking of boundaries,

00:11:23

my wife found this book and I think she submitted it as a recommendation. It's actually called

00:11:27

Boundaries. And it's one of the books that Dave Ramsey refers to all the time. I don't have it in

00:11:31

front of me, but it came today. I bought it because it looks really interesting. It's basically like,

00:11:36

here's how you set up those boundaries, the firm boundaries around when you can say yes and how

00:11:41

to say no sort of a thing. I have read this book. Have you? Okay. I have. I feel like that will

00:11:46

help a lot. Yeah. So I want to want to read that. Those guys are because I think it's co-authored,

00:11:52

right? There's two authors on it. Yes. They like their lists. So you'll get along with them well.

00:11:57

They have a good framework for helping you identify that and it's something that my

00:12:01

wife and I tend to refer to quite a bit. It's like, I can't change their actions, but I can

00:12:05

change my response to their actions. And that, I think, has been extremely helpful for us

00:12:11

with a handful of family situations that we needed to navigate and still need to navigate.

00:12:16

So I do recommend that book. That's a good one to help you work through some of that.

00:12:22

Cool. All right. The other ones I've got here create a monthly plan template and identify the

00:12:26

four things from my balance scorecard. So I did these and I kind of went overboard.

00:12:31

I sent you a picture of something that I had designed and printed off which combines both of

00:12:41

these. So the monthly plan template, if you go online and you search for either weekly or monthly

00:12:48

templates, planning templates, you'll find a bunch of them. But I didn't really like any of them.

00:12:53

And as I was looking at those and recognizing that I had already designed my daily template

00:12:59

and I'm using that and I really like it, it's helping out a lot, I'm like, well,

00:13:03

maybe I should do the same thing with the monthly template. And then from there, obviously, it's

00:13:08

well, what's going to go on here? And so the idea behind the four things from my balance scorecard,

00:13:14

at least the way I remember it, is that I want to make sure that I'm doing the things that are

00:13:20

moving the needle and helping me achieve the goals that are important to me. So if you think

00:13:25

about that from the 12 week year framework, you've got like your goals for the quarter,

00:13:30

which I'm already writing down every day. And then from there, the idea is that you're

00:13:34

developing habits, you're doing the things consistently that are going to help you achieve

00:13:39

those goals. And so when I'm thinking about what do I want to plan or what do I want to execute on

00:13:46

in a given month, it kind of occurred to me that I should probably incorporate that sort of stuff

00:13:51

into the monthly template. So I've got this like one page thing, which has on the top third, I guess,

00:14:00

like the five, five weeks, and you can fill in the boxes for the days and it's seven days a week,

00:14:06

the weekends are shaded at slightly different color. And I use that to write down the major

00:14:12

deadlines that I have for that particular month. And there's not a lot of space on there because

00:14:17

I don't want to stack a whole bunch of things that I have to deliver at the same time. I want

00:14:21

to be able to see the things I'm committed to, like they're kind of spread out, if that makes

00:14:25

sense. Yep, makes sense to me. Okay. And then at the bottom of every day, there are three small

00:14:30

circles, which you're probably like, what the heck? That's exactly what I was thinking. Like,

00:14:34

what is this? Okay. Are we sharing this in the show notes?

00:14:37

Yeah, I guess you can. At least the picture. I'm not going to share the PDF yet.

00:14:43

Okay, I'm just asking because there's like logos and stuff on this that I don't know.

00:14:47

Yeah, maybe you can wipe that out or something like that. Okay. But I'll share it. If nothing else

00:14:54

to give people some ideas. And then I've got my life theme, which I mentioned, that's actually a

00:14:59

result of one of the books that we've read for Bookworm. I can't remember which one specifically,

00:15:03

because I feel like it was a culmination of a couple different ones. But again, I want to make

00:15:07

sure that everything that I'm planning is in line with what I consider my individual purpose. And then

00:15:14

I've got goal number one, goal number two, goal number three. So these are my up to three quarterly

00:15:20

goals. And underneath that on the left half of each. So you've got goal one that goes like all

00:15:25

the way across the page. And then on the left half of that, you've got progress goals. So one,

00:15:29

two, and three, these are kind of like the major milestones that would happen for this particular

00:15:34

goal. And then to the right of that, tasks and habits one, two, three, and then three small circles

00:15:40

to the right of that. The idea here being that you would identify the habits that you want to

00:15:46

do consistently, and you would color code those. And then when you complete those, you would color

00:15:53

in the dot on the day under the the master your month is the name of it like the on the actual calendar.

00:15:59

So you're not doing, you know, three habits for goal number one, three habits for goal number two,

00:16:03

and three habits for goal number three every day. But you want to make sure that you are moving

00:16:08

things in the right direction. So maybe all of your goals for all of the tasks and habits under

00:16:14

goal number one are shaded red, you know, and then you just want to make sure that you've got enough

00:16:17

red dots on your your month. So it's kind of like planning your month plus a habit tracker at the

00:16:22

same time. Nice. It looks cool. Thanks. I feel like this is something that would work really well

00:16:29

for you. I think this would be overkill for me. Probably. And to be honest, I don't know that

00:16:34

it's going to work really well for me. But it's an experiment based off of the follow up items here.

00:16:40

So as I was thinking about it, I'm like, well, you know, I just got to be a more efficient way to

00:16:45

combine these things. They seem like they're kind of related. And so putting them on this document,

00:16:50

I guess, we can follow up again and see how it goes. The problem being for me anyways, I kind of did

00:16:57

my 12 week year wrong for quite a while. And I have as one of my goals this quarter to run a half

00:17:04

marathon. But I've actually been training for that for the last year. So the half marathon as we

00:17:08

record this is Saturday. So my 12 week year goal then is done at that point. And so all of the

00:17:14

stuff that would have been the habits like the going for a run, like that's no longer going to appear.

00:17:18

I got it. So I guess I should have that as a goal, you know, when I was actually implementing the

00:17:25

habits retro, respectively, I guess like that's that's a mistake that I made. But the other two,

00:17:30

I can definitely track on here. Makes sense. This is very intriguing to me. Like I do a thing

00:17:36

for my week. Like we talked about that a little bit last time. And I know you've got one similar

00:17:41

to this and you mentioned it earlier that it's on a weekly basis. But this is intriguing like to

00:17:45

try to do some form of tracking or overview on a monthly basis. It's borderline like monthly review

00:17:51

sort of thing, but you're using it on a daily basis to keep yourself in alignment. So I think

00:17:56

it's interesting. Yeah, kind of. So this is kind of the sweet spot, I think, with the daily plan that

00:18:03

I do and then just having this also like I know there are a lot of people who will write out their

00:18:07

entire week. But when I was thinking about planning out my month versus planning out my week,

00:18:12

every week, it just seemed like a lot of physical paper. Maybe if I were to combine all these things

00:18:18

into one notebook, like the self journal or something, then that it makes more sense. But I

00:18:22

didn't want to have to keep track of all these different things. And when I do my weekly review,

00:18:26

typically what I'm doing is I'm looking at the calendar and I'm identifying, you know, when am I

00:18:30

going to have a big time block here for focused writing or deep work or whatever, when am I going

00:18:36

to record podcasts, those sorts of things. And those don't change a whole lot. My at least work

00:18:43

schedule is pretty steady, I guess. There's not a whole lot of variation there. Now that I've got my

00:18:49

my home office, that helps a lot. So this was more valuable, I thought, than doing it every single

00:18:56

week. I kind of feel like I can see the benefit of doing it every single day. And I know that I can

00:19:01

look through my calendar for the week ahead on a Sunday, but it felt like I wasn't going to get

00:19:07

as much benefit from physically writing all of that out every single week than it would have been

00:19:11

to just think about the whole month in advance. You're skipping ahead. Kind of, I'm trying to

00:19:16

minimize the amount of manual effort I have to put into this. Yeah, work the plan, don't spend all

00:19:21

your time planning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I know that there's some people, you know, like the weekly

00:19:26

plan is the thing that's really going to stick for them. So yeah, I think you're right that this is

00:19:30

going to be probably tailored to the way that I work. But I don't know, maybe it'll work for

00:19:36

other people too. Yeah, because I know if I if I try to do something on a monthly basis, and I've

00:19:39

tried this a handful of times, and the problem I have is one week can drastically change what I'm

00:19:45

going to do the following week. And in the tech world, things just move too fast. For example,

00:19:50

I had a client email this morning and led to a phone call early the afternoon. And now I'm possibly

00:20:00

traveling for work, which is not a thing I've done in my web development business at all outside of

00:20:04

like local businesses, this would be out of the country. So that's completely different. But it

00:20:09

would mean like next week would be completely shot if that goes through. So the whole concept of

00:20:15

planning that whole thing ahead of time, like it's going to fall apart every single time. And it ends

00:20:21

up being a, I wouldn't say it's a waste of time, but the amount of value I get out of doing it is

00:20:26

very small in comparison to the effort required to put it into it. But given your work environment

00:20:33

and how you do things, I could see how you know weeks ahead of time when certain projects should

00:20:39

be wrapping up and the work that it takes to get to those points. Like you know that months ahead

00:20:45

of time sometimes. So I could easily see like this being extremely helpful in that scenario.

00:20:51

Yeah, and a lot of the projects that I'm balancing, they're kind of like side stuff. Like I'll just

00:20:57

use screencast online as an example. Like I'm not working on screencast online modules every single

00:21:02

day. When I do those, it's extra effort, but I do it because I love it. And it's a lot of fun.

00:21:08

Yeah. And I've got the schedule. I know exactly when my modules are supposed to be delivered for

00:21:15

Don typically does it like in six month increments. So I think through June. And so I've got those

00:21:19

deadlines and I want to know when I'm planning my month when that's going to be because that

00:21:24

means like about a week to two weeks before that, I really have to get serious about trying to carve

00:21:29

out that extra time. And you know, there's other things that I've been working on, which is why

00:21:35

you're gonna have to blot out that logo. But uh, super secret project alert. Yeah. It's basically

00:21:44

the, uh, gets to borrow a term from Eric Fisher and Jim Woods when they wrote one of those books

00:21:51

that I read a long time ago. They talked about hustling in the margins. You know, that really

00:21:54

resonated with me. It's like finding those little pockets of time that you can use to move the needle

00:21:59

on these things, which aren't going to be part of the daily cadence. So I think that's kind of the

00:22:04

sweet spot here is like, I've got certain deadlines that I need to plan around. And then I have certain

00:22:09

habits that I want to establish, which are going to move the needle on those other projects. So

00:22:13

yeah, this, uh, should be anyways, the ideal template for me.

00:22:17

So the theory is that with some of this structure and with some of these outlines,

00:22:24

it makes you less frantic, right? Is that the idea? Which then keeps you from bleeding over the

00:22:29

franticness with your family? You see what I did there? That's a very nice segue, Joe Buellig.

00:22:33

Well done. Yes. So our book today, as I've been itching to kind of get to, I guess,

00:22:39

the three big questions for a frantic family by Patrick Lincioni. And this was my choice of a book.

00:22:46

And I chose it primarily because it was recommended by Mrs. Rachel Schmitz. So

00:22:52

I'm hoping Mike doesn't squirm too much today. And I'm hoping you've done some of this,

00:22:58

given your wife wanted us to go through it. Yeah, this could be an uncomfortable episode.

00:23:05

Okay, sure. I will say, you know, first impressions of this, my initial thought was, number one,

00:23:12

I'm not sure I need this book because I don't feel like our family is frantic. I don't feel like

00:23:18

we're running around a lot. I see a lot of families who, you know, we talked about this last time with

00:23:23

busy, like families have a lot going on in today's world. That's just kind of the cultural norm right

00:23:28

now. And I can't say that our family really fits that mold too well. We are very protective of

00:23:37

spending a lot of time together and making sure that every night of the week is not booked and

00:23:42

that we don't have more than one thing going on on a night. Like we're very protective of that.

00:23:48

So first impression on this was, okay, this will be a fun book. It'll make for some good topics to

00:23:53

talk about, but I don't really see this as something that applies to our family and our lives together.

00:24:02

So having read it, I can tell you that is a wrong assumption. So I did really enjoy this,

00:24:08

but I'm interested. What was your initial take on this, Mike? Well, I really like Patrick

00:24:13

Lencioni. In fact, I'm going to hear him speak when I go to the Entre Leadership Summit as we

00:24:18

record this in a couple of weeks in San Antonio. My initial response to this was it's a business

00:24:26

book that's been repurposed. And I think that's pretty accurate. Yes, which is a little bit

00:24:32

a little bit strange, I guess. But there's lots of good stuff in here. At the very beginning,

00:24:40

when he's talking about part one and the problem, he shares the schedule that these people have.

00:24:45

And it's very close to ours. Okay. So I didn't have the response that you did, like, oh, our

00:24:51

family isn't frantic. Like, I am resigned to the fact that we are a frantic family, but I also

00:24:58

think that unless you were to move to the middle of the woods somewhere, you don't really have an

00:25:02

option. What you can control, though, is what you are frantic about and what you choose to allow in.

00:25:09

And if you aren't intentional about that, then you're going to get other people who are going to

00:25:13

sign you up for all the stuff. You're going to be over committed to all these things that you

00:25:16

don't really want to do. And that's when you feel frantic. But just walking through the schedule

00:25:21

here, and maybe this is because your kids are a little bit younger and you don't have a Monday

00:25:25

swim practice and piano twins. And I will say that our oldest is now going into formal homeschooling.

00:25:33

And there's one or two outside classes and lessons per week that we're talking about. So I feel like,

00:25:42

although right now we don't fit that mold, I think that's purely a factor of the age of our

00:25:49

children. Yeah, you're on the precipice. So yeah, my Mondays, for example, we've had to figure this

00:25:55

out. And that's the thing is like, you can solve it. You can figure it out. But like, our Mondays,

00:26:00

I've got a couple different meetings. We record the productivity show live on Monday afternoons. And

00:26:06

so we've got three kids in piano on Monday afternoons. So my wife will typically bring them to the

00:26:12

music. It's a music store that does lessons like in the second floor. So, and it happens to be like

00:26:18

a couple blocks from the co-working space. So she'll take them there. I will meet her there when I'm

00:26:24

done recording the podcast. And then she will leave and I will stay. And then I'll bring her left home.

00:26:29

Like, that's just the kind of thing where if you've never done it before, you're like, oh my gosh,

00:26:34

this is way too much work. But then after you get in the rhythm, it's just like, but it is what it

00:26:38

is. Like, it's not that bad. We can plan around that. And then you mentioned in the book, you know,

00:26:42

Tuesday's soccer practice for all the girls, one of the parents coaches on Wednesdays, swimming

00:26:47

in Girl Scouts. The wife has a Bible study Thursday. She volunteers in the classroom. They're soccer,

00:26:53

Friday. There's usually a sleepover, a birthday party, Saturday, swim meets. We just got done with

00:26:58

soccer at the Y. We were at the Y from like 8.30 in the morning till one in the afternoon because we had

00:27:03

so many kids in soccer, one right after the other. So like, I feel, I feel their pain, I guess.

00:27:09

But if you view it through the lens of we've chosen to do all these things, it's completely

00:27:13

different than like, oh my gosh, look at all these things that we have to do. And I resent every

00:27:17

single thing because I haven't taken the time to identify the ones that we really want to do.

00:27:21

It kind of sounds like a nightmare to me, but okay.

00:27:24

It's not that bad. I mean, and I don't want to just make an excuse for being busy with a family.

00:27:31

Like you don't have to even have a family. You can be busy with a whole bunch of things.

00:27:35

And you can be in the same situation and feeling the exact same thing is like, oh my gosh,

00:27:40

how do I escape this? I just want to move somewhere where no one knows me. And I don't have any

00:27:46

commitments and I can just live in my cabin by the woods, you know. And some people do that.

00:27:51

Some people will just pick up and move and get a fresh start, whether they have a family or not.

00:27:56

So I understand the process there. But really, like if you recognize that what you have right now

00:28:02

is the result of the choices that you've made previously, you're in complete control.

00:28:06

Like we've talked about the whole idea of responsibility. Like take responsibility for your

00:28:10

own schedule and recognize that you have the power to change it. You're not going to just snap

00:28:14

your fingers and all the stuff is going to be gone tomorrow. But you can start making decisions

00:28:18

right away, which are going to move you in the direction that you want. If you're rallying cry,

00:28:21

which we'll get to in a little bit is I want to be less busy. I want a more minimalist schedule.

00:28:28

Like you have the ability to craft the life that you want. But if you don't craft the life,

00:28:33

if you don't, if you're not intentional about crafting the life that you want, then you'll get

00:28:37

stuck just doing what everybody else wants you to do. I want to share this quote. So Patrick

00:28:42

Lencioni, when he writes a book, he writes a fable. And it's usually three-fourths of the book,

00:28:48

where he's telling a story. Like it's a fiction story to portray the concepts and the ideas that

00:28:54

he is trying to get across. And that's one of the reasons I think we love his books, at least I do.

00:29:00

And I've read this is the third book of his that I've been through now. And I've loved all of them.

00:29:06

Like I just love him as an author. He does a great job trying to get those things across. I will

00:29:11

say though, he is a corporate guy. So he's using terms and phrases.

00:29:15

That comes across. Yeah, it's like, okay, dude, like sure, rallying cry. Yeah, I've heard that in

00:29:21

corporate terms quite a bit. Basically, what's the most important thing we should be doing the

00:29:26

next few months like that? Okay, great. Let's let's bring it down to real world terminology. Like,

00:29:32

I have a thing against that, but that aside, I really like the way he writes. And within this

00:29:38

story, he's chronicling the journey of a husband and wife, primarily the wife, who is just overwhelmed

00:29:47

with all the stuff that's going on in life. And the rest of the story is the process that they go

00:29:53

through to help her get to the point where she's not overwhelmed. And the family is able to set a

00:29:59

path to move forward. And the whole journey starts when the husband in the mix makes a comment,

00:30:07

because he's a consultant, and he consults companies on how to run their businesses and how to achieve

00:30:14

the goals and the missions of their company. And he makes the statement, if my clients ran

00:30:20

their companies the way we run this family, they'd be out of business. I may or may not have said

00:30:25

something similar in the past. Okay, nice. Did it go over well? No, it went over about as well as

00:30:32

it did in this book. Yes, it didn't go well, obviously. It's just a fascinating journey that

00:30:40

that whole quote goes through throughout the book. Yeah, I have a couple of issues with the framing

00:30:48

with this question. And Patrick Glencione tries to be very careful to make the husband appear

00:30:55

sympathetic. Like he's trying to justify I didn't say you I said we, you know, but the thing that

00:31:00

really bothered me about this is the the flippancy with the way that he he said it. And his whole

00:31:08

attitude is like, why can control what happens at work? But I can't control what happens with my

00:31:13

family. And I guess this is just me personally, because I've been there, and I've gotten that

00:31:19

revelation that like you can control what happens in your family. And I personally believe that as

00:31:25

the the father here, like you're responsible for this. Like it's, if I if you were to rephrase this,

00:31:33

you should say, if my clients ran their companies the way that I have allowed this family to operate,

00:31:40

they'd be out of business. And I know it's not just it's not just the man's responsibility. The

00:31:45

husband and wife, like you are a team. But like everything we've talked about in terms of

00:31:50

responsibility, you can't control what the other person is going to do. You can only control what

00:31:56

you do. And you can take responsibility for the outcome. And you can try to improve it. And by

00:32:03

phrasing it this way, it's kind of like the way I read it anyways is is well, it is what it is.

00:32:08

And there's nothing I can do about it. Did you have the same reaction? Or am I just overthinking this?

00:32:13

I didn't go down this path at all with this. Okay. Well, I found myself getting a little bit

00:32:18

mad at you, the guy. All right. And Teresa, like the whole story is about how she's doing all this

00:32:24

research and she's understanding this like this guy knows this. He teaches this system to his

00:32:29

clients every day when he never bothered to explain it to his wife like, Hey, we should try to do

00:32:33

this. And I know like there's different scenarios when you can do that when you can't do that. But

00:32:38

I mean, if you've got the answer, then you should look for ways to cast that vision. You

00:32:46

shouldn't just be resigned to the fact that like, well, I can't control my wife. I can't control my

00:32:50

kids. My family's out of control that we're frantic. Like there's nothing we can do until they change.

00:32:54

That's kind of the narrative that isn't explicitly told. But kind of what I got is like the wife,

00:33:00

Teresa, she's the one who's seeking out and trying to understand all this and she's getting excited

00:33:04

about it and telling everybody. And Jude's just like sitting on his hands and he's along for the

00:33:08

ride. You know, she figures this stuff out. She has some questions and he does it every day. So

00:33:13

she's like, Hey, can you kind of help me clarify this? And I just like, dude, if you had taken

00:33:18

responsibility for this, I never would have gotten here. I also don't know like there may be a part

00:33:24

of Teresa's personality that he's aware of that we're not to. And I hesitate to get onto him

00:33:30

for this because, and this is partly because my wife and I somewhat operate in the same way,

00:33:38

in that if I came out and said, you know, here's the way this should work. And this is the way

00:33:42

this should operate. I'm going to get some resistance right away. And it's because she hasn't had time

00:33:47

to process the whole situation. And one of the action items that I'm going to talk about a little

00:33:52

bit later in more detail is that I wanted to go through these three questions, which we'll get to

00:33:57

also later. And my wife did not read this. So she doesn't have the background on it. But at the same

00:34:05

time, I know that the best way that she's going to process this is if I let her know,

00:34:11

this is a crazy idea that I want to work through. And these are the questions I want to try to

00:34:16

answer as a couple and for our family and letting her know that one or two days before the actual

00:34:22

conversation is going to happen. Like I have to do that for her sake. And whenever I see like what

00:34:30

Jude is doing in the story with Teresa, there's a lot of this where he knows how things operate in

00:34:37

the companies that he works with. He tries to share that from time to time. And yet Teresa does

00:34:44

continue to stay up all night to work through this, even though he had already explained how the

00:34:51

process works, or you know, in this case, his business partner ended up doing some of it too.

00:34:56

So there's there's a lot of this where he's helping. But I don't know if he is restraining himself

00:35:05

because he's tired of talking about this and just can't do it anymore because he's been doing it all

00:35:10

day. Or if he understands how his wife operates and is trying to meet her where she is and trying

00:35:17

to let her work through it in her own ways, because that's the better way for her to learn

00:35:21

in that process. I get that. But I just think it's an example of not this story specifically,

00:35:28

but where the story starts is an example of failed leadership. I mean, the story starts with her

00:35:34

being ticked at him because of something he said. In the words of Julius, remember the Titans,

00:35:40

attitude reflect leadership, Captain. Yes. So regardless of where you locate yourself in terms

00:35:48

of roles and responsibilities within the marriage, and I don't really care. I don't think it's really

00:35:54

relevant. What is relevant, I guess, is my perspective on like personal leadership and how I always want

00:36:02

to be working on myself and become a better leader. And I just look at Jude and I'm like,

00:36:07

he doesn't have it. Yeah. At least not right now and made me a little bit mad because it's not

00:36:13

just him. It affects his wife and it affects his kids. And fortunately, the wife steps up.

00:36:19

Otherwise, like, how long do they have to deal with this? Yes. And I don't want to

00:36:24

come across as saying Jude's not in the wrong here because I would agree with you that it does

00:36:30

start off with failed leadership for sure. And I would also pin that on him as well. So don't get

00:36:37

me wrong. I'm not saying he's correct in the way he handled it. I'm just asking the question because

00:36:42

I'm not sure that I want to be one that says he did this incorrectly when he obviously is going to

00:36:49

know his wife better than we do just from reading this short story about her and her journey through

00:36:55

this. So I don't want to say that he's wrong, but at the same time, I don't want to say that he's

00:36:59

completely right either because obviously there's a problem. And you and I would say that he is the

00:37:05

leader of that family and their marriage. So obviously it is his responsibility to do something

00:37:12

about this. And even after the situation has come up and he is aware of the problem, even then

00:37:20

it's borderline on whether or not you can say that he took the leadership on that or not. And in most

00:37:26

cases, the answer is he didn't. He didn't fully step up to that situation. So again, like I have

00:37:32

kind of conflicting interests on this one simply because I feel like he's going to know how to help

00:37:37

his wife understand this to a better degree than we will. And at the same time, given what we know,

00:37:44

I would hope that he would get more involved in the process to be more of a help to his wife in

00:37:51

that situation. Yeah, well, I'll go out on the limb and say he messed up. But I don't think it has

00:37:57

anything to do with the traditional view of like the man is leader of the family either. I just think

00:38:02

that in this scenario, you see the growth mindset displayed by the wife, but not the husband. And

00:38:08

that just kind of ticks me off. Yeah. The next section in part two business school, I wrote down,

00:38:14

I don't know if this was a question that they actually posed, or if this was just my own musing,

00:38:19

but why is a family not viewed as an organization? It really is. And if you think about it, for

00:38:24

marriages that end in divorce, you know, that the marriage has failed, the family has failed.

00:38:30

And in that sense, like the CEO is getting fired regardless of who you define as the CEO or co-CEOs

00:38:37

or whatever. But you see this everywhere. I mean, professional sports, if a team doesn't meet

00:38:43

expectations, the head coach gets fired. Now, that's the place that everybody wants to get to.

00:38:48

Everybody who's coaching, they want to be the head coach because they get paid the most. They

00:38:52

get all the glory, you know, but you have to qualify yourself. And the way you do that is by taking

00:38:58

responsibility for the outcome, not by sitting on the fringes and letting the other person

00:39:04

figure it out. And so I think that for me, you know, this book, the three big questions for a

00:39:11

frantic family, it's a business book adapted to a family context. And I kind of was like,

00:39:19

why do we have to have a book which shows that you can do that? I feel like I've done that with

00:39:25

several of the books that we've read. And it just was like shocking to me in a sense that, well,

00:39:30

wait, people don't view a family as an organization? Like, there's a lot of parallels here. It's

00:39:35

pretty plain to me to see the connections here in the, and a lot of the similarities. But obviously,

00:39:42

I'm unique, I guess, in that view because he mentioned at the outro of this book, I think that

00:39:47

that's one of the things he got asked all the time was, well, how do I apply this to a family

00:39:52

context? So I understand it from that perspective. Yeah, I think you're weird. I guess.

00:39:57

Well, you know, this is the way it's phrased. Why is a family not viewed as an organization?

00:40:04

I think that is possibly a new concept to a lot of people. I'm hesitant to say most,

00:40:10

just because I feel like this is something that does come up a lot. But I don't know where,

00:40:15

like, I have no reference points to say percentage wise, like 73% of people are going to think,

00:40:21

like, I don't, I don't have anything like that. But this is a question that was brought up in the

00:40:25

book, by the way. So I do recall this question being asked when Teresa asked Jude, well, why don't

00:40:31

people view families as an organization? He didn't have an answer for that. I was like, well, I suppose

00:40:36

it works. Like, you know, he's trying to translate it. But that's exactly what I'm talking about.

00:40:40

Yeah. Really buddy? You can't connect these dots.

00:40:44

I can say that I could probably resonate with folks who don't always see it that way,

00:40:53

simply because like, I know that there are some of these things you should do as a family, like,

00:40:57

you should be putting together a family mission statement and working on goals together as a

00:41:01

family. But making that jump from that point to saying my family is like an organization or a

00:41:07

company and some sorts and it needs to operate that way, like, that's almost too far to me.

00:41:12

Company, I'd agree. That is too far. Yeah, like, that's, that's, and I, that was the impression I

00:41:16

got whenever this question came up in the book. Like, okay, you want me to, to think of this as the

00:41:20

way that I run my business, like, that's way different. Like, that's not, that doesn't work. But

00:41:26

at the same time, like, a business or company that's more formal than what they're referring to when

00:41:32

they say organization. So I just wanted to clarify that a little bit. So I don't think that viewing

00:41:38

your family as an organization is bad or wrong and it's probably a good thing. It's just not something

00:41:44

I have explicitly considered or thought through in the past. Yeah. I mean, really, what it comes

00:41:50

down to is what is a family? Like, how do you answer that question? And you have to answer it at some

00:41:57

point, I feel. And if you do answer it, you'll be able, it's not too much of a stretch to say that,

00:42:03

well, yeah, it's basically an organization. The company analogy, I don't like because I feel like

00:42:09

with companies specifically with the work culture today, like you don't work for the same company

00:42:14

for the rest of your life. You have a job until you find a better job or, you know, there really

00:42:21

isn't that that loyalty built in anymore in a freelance sense. Like, if you're working on a

00:42:26

projection, it's not profitable, you kill the project. Well, you're not going to axe your kids

00:42:30

well, pins. So there's, there's definitely limits to that analogy. But an organization, I feel like

00:42:39

that's broad enough that it makes sense. And yeah, maybe we should get into the six questions here

00:42:46

for the organizational clarity. Because I think that this kind of, it illustrates my point of like,

00:42:51

how you can apply these to a family context without needing an interpreter to dumb it down

00:42:58

into three specific questions. And this right here, this is a great example of how

00:43:03

Patrick Lencioni is the business mind. And he's trying to adapt this to a family context.

00:43:08

Yes. I think honestly, if the fable had been changed, and it was just these six questions,

00:43:14

I would have liked the book more. Because I want to figure it out how to apply it to my family.

00:43:20

I appreciate the fable and the model that he puts forth for people who need a little bit

00:43:25

more, more support in that. And maybe that's also just to clarify partly based on my position right

00:43:32

now. We talked about the syntopical reading in episode 42, how to read a book, how you balance

00:43:39

what you're reading now against everything else that you've ever read. Well, I've got a lot more

00:43:42

context now when I'm going through this book, then I would have had I read this two years earlier,

00:43:47

for example. But the six clarifying questions, what is the ultimate reason you are in business,

00:43:52

which is your core purpose? Number two, what are the essential characteristics inherent in

00:43:56

your organization that you could never knowingly violate? These are your core values. Number three,

00:44:02

what specifically does your company do and for whom, which is your business definition? Number four,

00:44:07

how do you go about doing what you do in a way that differentiates you from your competitors

00:44:12

and gives you an advantage? That's your strategy. Number five, what is your biggest priority and

00:44:17

what do you need to accomplish it? Those are your goals. And number six, I wrote this down wrong.

00:44:21

Maybe you can help me out. I have what has to do and what to achieve your goal. What do you have

00:44:25

to do? What has to happen? What has to happen to achieve your goals, which is your roles and

00:44:29

responsibilities? Where do you want to go with this? Because these, I appreciate the dumb down

00:44:34

version that we get to later. Because to me, these six questions, like Teresa in the book tries to

00:44:40

answer all of these for their family and she goes through it. She feels like it's a great thing

00:44:44

that she's able to answer these and gets so excited about it that she invites some friends

00:44:49

over and takes them through it. And then what was it? Like two weeks go by and she hasn't really

00:44:54

heard anything from her friends at all, like good or bad. So she reaches out to them and no one has

00:45:01

done the six questions. Like they're like, oh, it's too much work. It's too much to do. So like,

00:45:06

I can resonate with the friends like, are you kidding me? Like this is a lot of work to work through.

00:45:10

Like this is a lot to do. Yeah, and I can understand that as well. And I think that a couple of things

00:45:18

that I wrote down here, which is kind of like the 80/20 of this. So I naturally did, I guess, what

00:45:24

he does in the rest of the fable when I read these. Like number four, how do you go about doing what

00:45:30

you do in a way that differentiates you from your competitors and gives you an advantage? So what

00:45:34

makes you different? I think that's a lot easier to answer than the question that he put forth. But

00:45:40

ultimately, that's what it's asking. And that's something that you can apply on so many levels. You

00:45:46

know, it's not just the organization and it's not just the family context. You could do this on an

00:45:52

individual basis as well. And I guess maybe that comes back to my life theme. You know, I want to

00:45:59

help people discover their purpose. I want to help them connect to their calling, to do what they

00:46:06

were created to do. And so maybe I just am coming to this with the pump already primed, so to speak.

00:46:13

But it wasn't much of a leap for me to reword that, I guess. Does that make sense?

00:46:19

Yes, but you're one of these weird people that can do that really easily.

00:46:22

Okay. Well, another example, what specifically does your company do and for whom? There's only

00:46:29

one word you need to change there. Yeah. So what specifically does your family do and for whom?

00:46:36

And then really, if you were to boil that down, make it even simpler, it's like a one-sentence

00:46:41

definition of what it is that you do. To be honest, like a lot of these questions,

00:46:47

the real value is just in asking the question. There's not a right or wrong answer, so to speak.

00:46:53

It's just that most people will never sit down and ask themselves that question. I mentioned

00:46:58

I've got my life theme. I don't have a one-sentence definition for my family yet. We'll get to action

00:47:03

items in a little bit here. So that's that one. And then there's another section here on the

00:47:08

core values. And again, I hate the way he phrases because it's so much more complicated than it

00:47:13

needs to be, even in a business context. This is ridiculous. What are the essential characteristics

00:47:18

inherent in your organization that you could never knowingly violate? How about just something

00:47:23

like, what makes you you? What are your core values? And he does define a couple different

00:47:30

types of core values here. So do you want to go through these real quick?

00:47:33

Sure. That'll help set the stage for some of the stuff I want to talk about later.

00:47:36

Yeah. And to be honest, I don't really like all these different categories. I think it makes it

00:47:42

too complicated. But I understand them. So there's aspirational values. These are values that you

00:47:47

want to be known for. There's permission to play values. So these are like the table stakes. If

00:47:51

you're going to be a part of this family, we're going to do this thing, you know, or part of this

00:47:55

company, part of this organization, this is what we're going to do. And then there's the accidental

00:47:59

values, the ones that kind of happen by default because, you know, fill in the blank, there's a

00:48:04

lot of different reasons. But I kind of think that core values is fine. And it could encompass all

00:48:09

of these. The core values that we have written down for our family, we know that those are

00:48:15

aspirational. And just the fact that we've written them down and put them, I mentioned on the podcast

00:48:21

before, and I'm, I could add an image if you want to see it again. But got our Schmitt's family core

00:48:26

values that a friend of mine did a manifesto type graphic. And it's hanging on our living room wall.

00:48:32

Those are aspirational values, but they're we don't live up to them 100% of the time. But just the

00:48:38

fact that they are printed out and they're up on the wall, we're much more likely to walk those out.

00:48:44

And so it kind of takes care of the accidental values and the permission to play values in my

00:48:48

experience. And just having to identify three different categories instead of, you know, what

00:48:52

are your five core values makes this much less likely that it's going to happen. We have like a

00:48:58

what previously we've called like a family mission statement. And I would, I would argue that that

00:49:03

is probably like an aspirational value in one statement. And I think that's helpful. But the trick

00:49:12

there is like, you got to do something with these. And I think that was the problem in the book was

00:49:18

these six questions. Once you get these answered, it's just going to die unless you do something

00:49:22

with it. Like, unless you have some form of like a weekly meeting or something like you've talked

00:49:26

about this before, Mike, with your family having this weekly get together where you talk about the

00:49:31

stuff. And that that sort of thing, like on a company level is very important. So that's that's

00:49:36

a thing that you have to do. But if you have like an aspirational mission statement or vision,

00:49:41

it's going to die unless you have it front and center and you talk about it a lot and make

00:49:46

decisions based on it. And that's something I think that aspect is probably the more important

00:49:52

piece, but it's the least applied piece in that process.

00:49:57

Yeah, I agree. Kind of jumping around here, but in the very end of the book, he's got some different

00:50:03

examples of families that have implemented this. And there's a quote on page 203, which really

00:50:08

encapsulates, think what you're talking about says we're finally tackling these things now,

00:50:13

because they're part of our focus state of priorities. When something is part of a bigger goal,

00:50:17

but I know we are going to be talking about it every week, it's harder for me to let it get

00:50:20

pushed aside by those pesky tactical and artificially urgent things that distract us from what really

00:50:25

matters. Now I can let some things go that I would have felt guilty about ignoring in the past

00:50:30

when everything was equally important. Now our family has real clarity. And I think you can

00:50:35

achieve that clarity by simply throwing out where you want to go and then talking about it regularly.

00:50:41

I don't think you need a big complicated scorecard and you don't need automated software,

00:50:46

which is going to update all the things. You don't need to make it super complicated.

00:50:52

I think what you hit on having the aspirational values, setting the vision for where we're going,

00:50:59

and then checking in consistently. And yes, there's value in tracking that you're doing the right

00:51:04

things. I mean, I talked at the beginning about how I have created this ridiculous template to

00:51:08

track my habits. So I get it, there's value in doing that. But for a family, I think if you are

00:51:15

coming to this new, the 80/20 here is just identify your aspirational values, your vision of where you

00:51:23

want to go. And then once a week, talk about it. And if you do that, you'll make a lot of progress

00:51:30

whether you implement the rest of it or not. That's fair point. I think the weekly meeting bit is

00:51:34

the primary focus of that whole bit there though. Yep, let's go into part three, which is titled

00:51:42

trial and error. But the big section here is the thematic goal. So that's exactly what we were

00:51:47

just talking about. This is the rallying cry. Now, in the book, he talks about the rallying cry

00:51:54

being surrounded by defining objectives and then standard objectives. There is no way I'm getting

00:52:00

my wife to identify defining objectives and standard objectives by using those terms in our

00:52:06

family meeting. It makes no sense. And these got the visual so you can implement it, you know,

00:52:11

just call the boxes something else if you want. Right. Yeah. This was this was one of my big complaints

00:52:16

in the book is like, okay, the purpose of this section is to take the corporate speak we just

00:52:22

heard in those six questions and redefine it as three questions that we're getting ready to get to.

00:52:31

But to do that in a way that is applicable directly and targeted at a family, like that is your goal

00:52:37

here is to take the six corporate speak questions and redefine them in a way that applies to

00:52:45

the suburban life, I guess, you know, they're in suburban areas. But he doesn't do that. He

00:52:51

continues to use some of the same terminology. Like, sure, great. Let's put together a rallying

00:52:57

cry. But that's a corporate term. Like, let's talk about the most important thing to do in the

00:53:02

next two to six months. And let's not talk about, you know, core objectives or standard objectives.

00:53:08

Let's talk about, you know, the tactics that we need to go through to actually achieve this goal.

00:53:14

Like the things we need to do with day to day to do this. And let's talk about, you know,

00:53:18

do you get what I'm saying? Like, this is the terminology I wanted to change, but he didn't.

00:53:24

And it's like, okay, you had a chance here and you didn't take it.

00:53:27

I could care less if the defining objectives and standard objectives get updated. I want

00:53:33

the meal plan for the week updated. Things that are more important that are going to make a frantic

00:53:40

family situation a lot smoother, in my opinion. I think there's a lot of value in, like I said,

00:53:45

identifying where we want to go and then having the meeting to talk about these things. But this

00:53:50

just seems like unnecessary tracking if you're having trouble, which, I mean, very started this

00:53:57

book. You know, we're in this situation where we don't want to be. And the husband and wife are

00:54:02

talking about, well, maybe we should just move. Like I've had those conversations before.

00:54:07

Yeah. It'd be great if we could just move, you know, and then we could start over.

00:54:11

But that's not an option. Like you can't just run away from the problem. It's still going to be there.

00:54:16

And so I don't know. I mean, if you put yourself in that situation and ask like, what's the best

00:54:23

thing that I could do right now? Going back to the Matt Perman book, What's Best Next?

00:54:27

It's not defining objectives and standard objectives for our family. If you're in that

00:54:33

situation, there's a lot of things that would provide a greater return before that. But the

00:54:37

thematic goal, the rallying cry, I'm completely behind this idea.

00:54:41

Do you want to go through the three questions? We've been alluding to this for the last hour now.

00:54:44

Yeah. And actually, let me just explain a little bit more about this thematic goal and how you

00:54:50

would implement this according to the book. Because I do think that honestly, where we are right now,

00:54:54

this is a cool idea. And this is one of my action items. I want to implement a simpler version of

00:54:58

this. So the thematic goal, the rallying cry, this is really what is important to your family

00:55:02

right now. It doesn't have to be written in stone. It can change. But what is your rallying cry

00:55:08

right now? And if you're in a frantic situation, then maybe the rallying cry is simplicity or margin

00:55:15

or downtime, fill in the blank with whatever you want to achieve. Then from there, you identify

00:55:22

the defining objectives and the standard objectives. I think the best way to describe this is like

00:55:27

the big, if you apply this from a 12 week year perspective, you've got your rallying cry. That's

00:55:33

like the one goal that you're working towards. And then you've got your progress goals. So these

00:55:39

are the things, the milestones that you can hit that are contributing to the big goal. And then as you

00:55:46

go the next level down, you've got the little things, the tasks and the habits, for example,

00:55:50

that you can do consistently to move in the right direction. And he mentions Patrick

00:55:55

Lincioni does in the book, the scorecard in essence is the big goal on the top, the defining

00:56:02

objectives underneath that standard objectives underneath that. And then you've got these circles

00:56:07

underneath each box, which are going to indicate whether you're doing well or not in that particular

00:56:13

area. And he mentions three colors, red, yellow and green, where green is, we're doing good and

00:56:18

red is we're not. And you can, he mentions like if it's in between yellow and green, feel free to

00:56:23

use light green if you want. I think that's complicating it too much. If you've got five different

00:56:27

levels, for example, for these things, don't do that. That's not an option. This is the

00:56:31

listeners to ignore that. That's not an option. It's red, yellow, green, done.

00:56:35

Yeah. Well, I mean, I've mentioned it just because it's in the book. And immediately when I thought

00:56:39

of when he said that was, okay, so now we have to have clarification for this particular objective,

00:56:46

red, orange, yellow, light green and dark green, and multiply that for all of the objectives.

00:56:52

That's ridiculous. And then it's going to be that no one's going to update that, at least in

00:56:57

my family situation. So I like the idea, but I really want to make it simple. And really,

00:57:04

it's got to be something that's just going to allow us to see at a glance, whether we are moving in

00:57:09

the right direction. That's all I want from this exercise is just to know, are we doing the right

00:57:14

things? Because you can either look at the lead measures or the lag measures going back to,

00:57:20

what was it, 40x? Now, the lead measures, these are the things that we know are going to get us

00:57:24

where we want to go. That's what we want to track. Are we doing the right things? For if your goal

00:57:28

is to lose weight, are you getting to the gym? Are you going for a run? And then the lag measures,

00:57:34

that's the stuff after the fact. Do we have more free time? Or in the weight law or the working

00:57:39

out example, have I lost weight? But looking at the lag measures is just going to tell you

00:57:43

whether what you did previously worked or not. And when it comes to really any situation,

00:57:50

but specifically, as we're talking about here, like a frantic family situation,

00:57:53

if you give any amount of thought to this, you can identify the drivers, which are going to

00:57:59

alleviate whatever pain point you're trying to solve. And I will note that, and we're going to go

00:58:04

through these questions, but there are a handful of examples of these systems, like these whole

00:58:11

outlines on people answering these questions, and what does it actually look like? I think that is

00:58:18

one of the more helpful pieces of this book that we haven't really talked about, and that is

00:58:22

at the back. It's part of the appendices in the back. And I found it helpful to read through these.

00:58:27

I don't know if you did this or not, Mike, but going through the three questions and then trying

00:58:31

to determine, "Okay, well, what are the answers to these for our family?" And using these as a

00:58:36

guide to say, "Okay, so we're not crazy when we say XYZ." So I found those extremely helpful.

00:58:43

Yeah, I agree. And this is kind of the thing that's a little bit weird, because he took the six

00:58:48

questions and brought it down to three questions. So it's simplified. And then looking at these

00:58:53

three questions, there is no way that you need the complicated reporting scorecard that he outlined

00:59:00

earlier. Yeah. Like, literally, you could just follow these three questions to the T and get the

00:59:06

majority of the benefit, in my opinion. And I feel like the additional examples that he gave with the

00:59:12

scoring the thematic goal, that just makes it more complicated. It doesn't need to be that

00:59:17

complicated. And we can talk about, maybe when we get to question number three, what my wife and I do,

00:59:22

because we're constantly iterating our family weekly meetings. And I really am happy with what

00:59:28

we've landed on right now. But it's really simple. It's just asking the right questions.

00:59:32

So jumping into the three questions, the first one, what makes your family unique? Do you want to

00:59:39

do all of them right now and then talk about them or just do them one at a time? Let's go through all

00:59:42

three of them and then come back and work our way back through them. Okay, so number one, what

00:59:46

makes your family unique? Number two, what is your family's rally and cry right now? Question three,

00:59:51

then, is how do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? That's it. Yeah, super simple.

00:59:56

But anybody who reads that should feel like they have enough direction to get started, I would think.

01:00:02

But also not too much structure or detail where they're going to be paralyzed by, oh my gosh,

01:00:07

this is just way too hard. Just leave it, leave it there, Patrick. Just stop right there. Yeah.

01:00:12

Let me tell a story here just for fun, because last night, so as we're recording this last night,

01:00:19

my wife and I booked a babysitter and we went on a date and we answered this stuff and we did this

01:00:24

and I was the one leading it and working our way through it and trying to, I guess,

01:00:31

decorporatize a lot of this even after it's simplified and taking these questions and trying to help

01:00:39

our family and help my wife and I work through, you know, what is the most important thing we

01:00:46

should be working on right now? And this is why I keep using some of these phrases and changing

01:00:50

some of the terms, because whenever I'm conveying this to Becky, like this is not something that

01:00:57

I'm going to use the term, like I'm not going to use the same terms he does, because my wife

01:01:02

and I have a thing against terminology like that. So, you know, when I ask the question, like,

01:01:07

what makes your family unique? Like, what makes us different? And again, remember what I said

01:01:12

earlier, I had to ask these questions at least 24 hours ahead of time, so that whenever we get

01:01:19

on our date and we start to have this conversation, she has had her time to process this sort of

01:01:24

thing, I can do it on the fly, like, I think on my feet a lot of times. So, you know, you ask me a

01:01:29

question like this and I can usually come up with the answer for it that I agree with and in holy,

01:01:35

but she needs that time to process. So, I asked her these questions ahead of time and then we started

01:01:41

to work through those. And with the first one, it's like, what makes your family unique? And if you

01:01:46

read the examples in the back, they're like three and four sentence paragraphs. And that doesn't

01:01:53

really work for us. And we ended up with a one sentence, almost a directive of sorts. And I'll

01:02:00

share these, the answers to this stuff later when it makes more sense. But we ended up doing a single

01:02:05

sentence because for us, that makes more sense. But it was more about what is the guiding direction

01:02:13

that we are on and ended up being different than what I thought it would be. But I didn't see it as

01:02:18

let's put together this paragraph of all these different aspects that make us differently. No,

01:02:24

there's really one, maybe two aspects here that really apply. So, I simplified it quite a bit. So,

01:02:31

I hope that's okay, Mike. I simplified the simplification.

01:02:34

Yeah, and that's exactly it. Like, he talks about in the first part the different values,

01:02:40

the aspirational values, the permission to play values, the accidental values. None of that really

01:02:44

matters. Just pick the one sentence thing and make sure you're moving in the right direction.

01:02:49

Right. From there, you can pick the additional values that are going to support your vision,

01:02:56

but it doesn't need to be a big formal process. Now, he does say that there are two things that

01:03:01

can help you identify your uniqueness. And I agree with these, they are the values and then also

01:03:06

your strategy. Now, I think with the family context, the values are more important than the strategy.

01:03:12

I really can't think of an outcome that we would want to achieve and tactically develop a strategy

01:03:20

to achieve that goal, where we could say like, yes, now we've won sort of a thing. Like, you can do

01:03:25

that in business pretty easy. Like, our goal is to increase revenue, you know, to this point or

01:03:31

launch this product or whatever. I think that those opportunities in a family setting are not

01:03:35

nearly as consistent more so it's just the guiding principles. And we're going to use those to define,

01:03:42

you know, are we moving in the right direction? So yeah, I think that your approach is actually the

01:03:47

better approach. Yes, I win. Question number two, what is your family's rallying cry right now?

01:03:54

Now rallying cry, that's a term I've heard quite a bit in corporate scenarios. And we used it a

01:03:59

lot when I worked corporate. And I knew whenever my wife and I were holding this conversation that

01:04:05

this is not a term she was going to be familiar with. So I didn't ask this question, you know,

01:04:11

verbatim, what I ended up saying was, okay, this summer, what is the most important thing for us to

01:04:17

be working on? It doesn't have to apply to the answer to the first question. But given that this

01:04:23

is the first time we're going through this, I'm going to guess that it probably will just because

01:04:28

we haven't done this process before. So in our case, it did apply. And again, I want to get to

01:04:34

that later because I want to tie it all up with a nice pretty bow and hand it out whenever I'm

01:04:40

done with all this. But you know, this is the thing where, okay, this next summer, what's the most

01:04:44

important thing we need to do? And what ends up happening? There is in the book, he then says,

01:04:50

okay, this is the thing you should be doing. And then you need to break that down into defining

01:04:56

objectives and then have your standard objectives. I think those were the terms he used core objectives.

01:05:01

Yep. I am even getting them wrong now, Mike.

01:05:03

That's because it's way too complicated. It doesn't need to be that complicated. In fact,

01:05:07

I read this book after I had read another book. And I don't know if I mentioned this is a gap

01:05:12

book or not. But I recently read based on a recommendation of Lucas Smith, who's somebody that

01:05:18

I met locally here recently, who has actually done scrum training with Jeff Sutherland,

01:05:22

kind of like the scrum Godfather. So he knows this stuff. And he mentioned this book,

01:05:27

Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Filer-Feeler. And he talks in there, there's a lot to this book.

01:05:34

It's broken down into I think 10 different chapters. Each one tackles a different angle.

01:05:39

The first one is really the reason why I got it. He talks about family scrums. So Bruce also has a

01:05:44

TED talk on Agile programming for your family, which is really interesting. And he talks about,

01:05:49

in the first couple chapters of this book, I can't remember specifically if it's the Agile family

01:05:53

chapter or not, but he uses a lot of, he talked to these families who have figured this out,

01:06:00

and then he shares his experience applying it to his own family. And so they get to this section

01:06:05

about values. And without defining all the different types of different values and the multiple levels

01:06:11

of objectives, he's looking at this family who's defined these values. They've applied values to

01:06:16

their own family. And they realize that, you know, really, these are not resonating with people.

01:06:20

They don't really feel good about them. So they change them a little bit. You know, really,

01:06:23

the secret is they just sit down and talk about it like, okay, so these aren't really working. What

01:06:27

should we change? You don't need to understand all these different definitions, just what really

01:06:32

works for you. And they landed on something that like everybody was super excited about,

01:06:37

and you know, and took one additional meeting for that to happen. And I kind of feel like that's

01:06:42

all that's required. And it's just the consistency of the meeting, like, don't try to figure this

01:06:46

all out ahead of time, because whatever you figure out is going to be wrong, whether it's right

01:06:50

right now, it's going to be wrong in a week or two. So it just adapt and overcome.

01:06:55

Yeah. So I think with these two different sets of objectives, when we did it, you know, we define,

01:07:03

okay, what's the thing that's most important for us to work on this summer? Here it is.

01:07:07

Now, what is it we need to do to hit that, you know, to use some of the David Allen stuff?

01:07:12

Okay, what's the next action? Like, what are the things we have to accomplish

01:07:16

to in order to say that that was a success? And we ended up coming up with three things

01:07:22

that we needed to do. And that's it. Like, stop there. Like, we didn't do this whole

01:07:28

standard objective thing where, you know, these are things we need to keep in mind so that they

01:07:32

don't fall off the radar, like finances in our marriage. And, you know, time with our kids,

01:07:36

like, sure, we could say that stuff. But for us, it doesn't help. Like, that's not a helpful aspect

01:07:43

of this. And I didn't really push this piece at all because I know that it's not like the most

01:07:48

important thing for us is, you know, what is the thing that makes us unique? What's the most

01:07:52

important thing we need to be working on this summer? And how does that actually accomplish

01:07:56

itself? Like, how do we do that? That's it. Like, stop there. Like, don't, don't ever complicate

01:08:01

this. Like, those are the pieces that are, to me, to simplify it again, the simplified version.

01:08:06

Like, that was the piece right there. Like, okay, here's the goal. Here are the three things we need

01:08:11

to do to do that, to accomplish it and say it's done. Go. Like, that's it. Like, that's as far as it

01:08:18

went. Yep. And so one of the notes that I wrote down here regarding question number two and

01:08:23

specifically the standard objectives, because again, a reason that the score card kind of bugs

01:08:29

me is like, oh, we need to do all the things. We need to check all the boxes. No, standard

01:08:33

objectives equals the wheel of life in my opinion. And if you're following the 12 week year concept,

01:08:37

the whole idea is that you'll never check all the boxes. You'll never be able to concentrate on

01:08:42

all the different areas of your life at a time. You're going to pick one or two and you're going

01:08:46

to work on those for the next couple months. And that is going to become your rallying cry for

01:08:50

right now. And you can totally apply that to a family context as well. All right. So question

01:08:54

number three, how do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? And I did not ask

01:09:01

this question last night. That's because you did it. Yes. Like, here's the thing. There's no

01:09:05

definition of done required for this. Correct. Just talk. Correct. Because here's the thing,

01:09:11

you know, my wife and I share breakfast together every morning. We have almost every single meal of

01:09:17

the week together with our girls. And I work from home. She's a stay at home mom. We're around

01:09:24

each other a lot. And if we take the answers to questions one and two and write them down.

01:09:32

And we have a whiteboard at sitting next to our kitchen table because of the homeschooling stuff

01:09:36

we're doing. Like, I can put those two things there on that whiteboard and it immediately becomes a

01:09:42

talking point every time we have a meal or something that's going on. So I don't really need to answer

01:09:48

question number three here. Like, how do you talk about this and use these answers? Well,

01:09:51

it's going to be right in front of us all the time. And we're both excited enough about the goal

01:09:56

that we're working on that it's not it's a non issue. Like, this is not a thing that we're

01:10:01

going to struggle with to talk about. We've already talked about it once today. And this was last

01:10:06

night that this was decided. Yep. So I could break this down into, you know, two questions almost

01:10:12

and then take question two and split it in half. Like, that's I'm going to use one and a half

01:10:18

questions here and accomplish what I think is the most important piece for our family.

01:10:24

Totally agree. And we've got more questions, but they're not related to standard and defining

01:10:30

objectives. We also had our date night last night and we've got a Google Doc that we set up for this

01:10:38

because we want to have a record. But we're not tracking all of this stuff. We're just documenting

01:10:43

it so that we can go back later if we want. If I feel like, feel like we've talked about this

01:10:47

before, then I go back and I see the same thing written down, you know, four or five times,

01:10:51

then, okay, this is now becoming more of a priority. We need to figure out the system to solve this.

01:10:56

But a lot of this is just identifying where things are at right now and going back to the

01:11:01

very beginning of this episode. This is where like Jude totally dropped the ball. So our Google Doc

01:11:08

here, first of all, we've got our check in. So we're both busy, but we want to make sure that we

01:11:15

know how the other person is feeling. We don't want to assume certain things. So, you know, I'll have,

01:11:20

you know, how am I feeling about certain things that have happened in the last week, Rachel will

01:11:26

respond, you know, how she feels about certain things that have happened in the last week. And

01:11:30

that's really valuable, just verbalizing your feelings to the other person because a lot of times,

01:11:35

they don't know unless you explicitly say something. And maybe, you know, I can tell based on her

01:11:41

attitude or facial expressions that she's feeling frustrated, but until she actually says like,

01:11:46

Hey, you're doing this and it's really bugging me like, I don't know how to fix it. So that's

01:11:52

really valuable. And then we've got what we call the retrospective. I think I've shared these questions

01:11:57

before, but we have three questions that we ask and we spend quite a bit of time just thinking

01:12:02

about all the possible responses to these. So number one, what should we start doing? Things that we

01:12:09

know we want to do as a family and there are a lot of like tactical habit style things. And it's not,

01:12:16

not all of these are going to be turned into, you know, we're going to make sure that we complete

01:12:20

these tasks or anything. Again, it's just verbalizing the different options that are available and taking

01:12:24

the time to think about these things. So what should we start doing? What should we stop doing?

01:12:29

And what should we keep doing? I can't tell you how much value we've gotten from asking those

01:12:35

questions, because just in talking through the answers, you get a lot more context than you do

01:12:42

by seeing dots colored in on a whiteboard. We can look at, you know, what should we keep doing? And

01:12:49

some of the things that we had written down here from the one that I'm looking at right now,

01:12:53

we have just given up on doing anything else on Sundays other than church stuff. And I think

01:12:59

that that's the right decision for a lot of different reasons. I think we even talked about

01:13:03

that in the Matt Perman episode. But that's working out really well. I'm not feeling

01:13:09

stressed about trying to get all these other things done. Like we are honoring the Sabbath.

01:13:14

And that's something that we want to continue to do. And another thing that I've mentioned on the

01:13:19

podcast here, and we've been implementing pretty consistently. I think I've only missed one or two,

01:13:25

and we've made them up. These one on one days where once a week I am doing something one on one

01:13:31

with one of my kids. So they rotate, you know, each one has their own week. And typically it happens

01:13:37

on Friday morning. Sometimes it's Saturday afternoon, sometimes, you know, it's earlier.

01:13:40

But I've been doing these consistently. And we're seeing a lot of fruit from that intentionality.

01:13:46

So we want to keep doing that. After we answer those three questions, then if there's something

01:13:52

that really we need to make a decision about, those are going to be listed under talking points.

01:13:57

So one of the talking points from this one that I'm looking at right now is toddler ministry for

01:14:02

Rachel question mark because she was asked to do this thing. And we talked about it. We got the

01:14:06

answer. And if we hadn't put it on the list, you know, maybe we would have gone to dinner,

01:14:10

forgot about it. And then she gets asked again. And oh, I guess maybe I should give it a shot,

01:14:15

sort of a thing. Well, we decided because we talked about it that no, this wasn't the right thing.

01:14:19

And that was the right decision, by the way. So I'm really happy that we did talk about that.

01:14:24

She gets asked to do these studies for Kimberly Clark, which is a local company. She's a professional

01:14:30

photographer. So she has to go take pictures for their research studies. And one of the talking

01:14:35

points was the home school workflow when Rachel has these studies, because we want to make sure

01:14:39

that we stay consistent. And especially with with Jonathan, who's the six year old. So again,

01:14:45

we figured out a formula for this because it was on the talking points here. And then I had proposed

01:14:51

this crazy new family meeting format, which really just gets back to the point that I made earlier

01:14:55

that this stuff has to be constant progress. Don't be afraid to iterate. Don't be afraid to say,

01:15:00

well, this didn't work for us. I mean, we're trying this out seems to work really well. But

01:15:04

we talked about what the format should look like. And then at the very end, we've got the gratitude

01:15:09

and happiness. So we specifically asked, and this is totally something I ripped off from Asian

01:15:14

efficiency, what would make you happier this week? And I have to have something specific that I can

01:15:19

put here that Rachel can do to make me happy this week. And she has to have something specific that

01:15:24

I can do this week to make her happy. And just to give you a really ridiculous and maybe kind of

01:15:31

stupid example, I gave her a massage gift card for Christmas. It was a one hour massage, I think,

01:15:36

and then a pedicure or something like that. So it's a pretty big deal. It's like two hours or

01:15:40

something at the at the spa. And she hadn't used it yet. And this was from what I'm looking at

01:15:45

right now. This was in March, I think. And within a week of doing this, we had carved out the time

01:15:52

for her to go to the spa and take advantage of this thing. And this is the, this is, I use this

01:15:57

example, because it's the perfect example for those types of things that you're like, oh, I should

01:16:01

really do that sometime. And you never get around to it. So just creating whatever structure you need

01:16:06

and don't not going overboard, not putting it all on a whiteboard. You know, this is something that

01:16:12

we can just type into on our phones when we're at dinner. And we're not sitting there, like this,

01:16:17

like the typical couple going out to dinner, we have their heads buried in their phones and

01:16:22

they're not talking to each other. We are talking to each other. And we're writing down the outcomes

01:16:26

from this in a Google Doc. And so I've found a ton of value from this. And when I compared this

01:16:33

to the structure that I read about in the three questions for a frantic family, I was just like,

01:16:39

have you even tried this buddy? There's no way this is going to work.

01:16:44

Yeah. Yeah. I want to work through, I'll share the stuff that my wife and I came up with.

01:16:51

Because I think that would be helpful to folks to see an example of what this could look like.

01:16:55

But before I do that, because this is going to transition us into action items and such,

01:17:00

is there anything you want to go through before I do that?

01:17:02

That's basically it. I will mention under the model, and I just wrote this down. I don't know

01:17:08

if this is something he referenced or not, but I put Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. I think

01:17:12

he did write about this. But I think that you should apply that to everything he says.

01:17:17

What is the thing that I can do from this book that will give me 80% of the value for 20% of the

01:17:25

effort? And then also he mentions, don't make perfect the enemy of the good. And that's really

01:17:30

where the scoreboard and stuff, I feel like, at least from my situation, that would be trying to

01:17:37

standardize something. And then as soon as you can't get to it, or you can't do it the way that

01:17:42

you think you should, you're just not going to do it anymore. Figure out the thing that you can do

01:17:46

and do it consistently. Okay, so what my wife and I discovered when we got out of the house,

01:17:53

because we left the house, had a babysitter, went and grabbed some ice cream, and then we went for

01:17:58

a walk through some woods and got outside. It was next to the river in the area. And

01:18:05

just had a good time just going for a walk. And then we went out for dinner afterwards. And

01:18:09

partly because I had forewarned my wife, I was going to bring up a crazy idea and have some

01:18:15

questions to answer. She was able to work through this with me. And what we came up with

01:18:21

for the answer of the first question. So what makes your family unique? We had a

01:18:26

nine word sentence. Our family thrives on white space and the outdoors. And that single

01:18:33

directive sentence, although it does not include a lot of things that we find valuable. Like,

01:18:40

there's some of the paragraphs that are written in the back that have things like we're, we want

01:18:45

to promote hardworking lifestyles for our children. And we want to focus on building our faith. Like,

01:18:52

these are things that I'm not going to disagree with. But whenever we got to talking through this,

01:18:58

like, okay, we thrive when we have white space. And that could mean in a time schedule, it could mean

01:19:04

in our household, we tend to be minimalist of sorts. It could mean my mode of operation when it

01:19:11

comes to how I operate with my clients, like I have a very lean process that I work through on

01:19:15

that and I keep it clean. Like those are all aspects to that. But pieces like our faith,

01:19:22

we like to leave blanks in our schedules so that we can act on our faith, which would mean

01:19:29

time for Bible study in the morning, because we're not rushing out the door. It could mean

01:19:33

stopping to help someone who has a flat tire on the way to who knows where, because we left

01:19:40

ourselves some buffer to get there. Like, things like that can start to come out just because of

01:19:45

that white space bit. Like, there's a lot of aspects where that is important. And we know from

01:19:52

experience that that is something that we have a very high value on and can lead to a lot of the

01:19:59

scenarios that we would want to put in this paragraph, but it's too wordy. Like, we're

01:20:04

minimalist. We like white space. Let's keep it simple. Like, it's, it's a very meta deal there.

01:20:09

The outdoors bit is one that I think my wife and I both grew up being outside a lot. I grew up on

01:20:18

a farm. She grew up with her parents. Her dad was a hunter and was outside a lot. You know, we've

01:20:25

both been outdoors heavily in our past and we want our girls to experience that as well. And we also

01:20:32

know that having white space allows us to be outdoors and we thrive in that scenario. So because

01:20:39

of that and having that in mind, we moved on to the second question of, you know, what's your

01:20:45

family's rallying cry right now, which I didn't ask in that way. It's like, okay, what's the most

01:20:50

important thing we want to do this summer? And one thing, and we've been talking about this a little

01:20:55

bit in that we want to get outside and explore a lot of like the natural woodsy areas in our

01:21:05

general region, because we just haven't. My wife has a thing for foraging for mushrooms or

01:21:12

trying to find wildlife outside to show our girls and such and just exploring. And we haven't been

01:21:18

very good at that. Like, it's not a thing we've succeeded in accomplishing. So we set that as our

01:21:24

goal for the summer. And, you know, it's very easy to just say, well, you don't really have any

01:21:30

action items on that. Well, we're saying that we're going to do this and like, okay, well, how

01:21:37

often and where like those are those are what we end up being the action items off of this is like,

01:21:42

okay, well, we need to make sure that on a weekly basis, we are leaving the house and exploring

01:21:48

either a new place or a new aspect of a place we've already been. So that that would be step one,

01:21:54

too. We have to figure out where these places are, like we're in Minnesota. So there's a bunch of

01:22:00

areas you can go. So we have to make sure we have the time for it. But we on on a weekly basis. And

01:22:06

we also have to make sure that we have the right places that we can go. But it also means that

01:22:11

we don't need to be reliant on weather. Like, we want to make sure that we can get outside. If

01:22:16

it's raining or not, who cares, we're going to go. And we want to make that a thing, which means

01:22:20

there's a fair amount of equipment and like clothing that we don't own that makes this a problem.

01:22:27

So there is a little bit of, I guess, equipment or supplies of sorts that we want to make sure that

01:22:32

we we pick up to enable this. I don't think that my wife and I would have ever reached that conclusion.

01:22:40

Had we not sat down or walked to determine this. So it was very enlightening. And at the same time,

01:22:49

we both came away from this feeling like we had a very solid and energizing plan for our summer.

01:22:56

And we didn't feel like our summer was going to get away from us because we know what it is that

01:23:01

we want to accomplish. And that's exactly what it is that we want to work towards

01:23:06

accomplishing. So for that, I say, thank you, Mr. Lynsey-yoney. And I didn't do all the stuff you

01:23:12

wanted me to do. But I feel like it at least got us on the right path. And we're pretty excited

01:23:17

about where it's going to take us. You mentioned something regarding your one sentence. And I

01:23:22

forget exactly how you set it. But basically the things that allow your family to thrive.

01:23:28

And I think that that's very much in line with that other book that I had mentioned by Bruce F.

01:23:34

I think that that's the talk going back to the 80/20. That's the real value right there

01:23:40

is identifying what are the things that allow your family to thrive. And that's really what the

01:23:44

rally and cry is in my opinion. That's my one of my action items is I want to identify our family

01:23:50

rally and cry. And it's like to put my family in a position to thrive in particular this summer.

01:23:57

So we're wrapping up a lot of the things that we'd committed to in the winter and the spring.

01:24:02

And now it's kind of like a blank slate. But that's opportunity and also a danger or threat because

01:24:09

you can easily fill it with a bunch of things that, oh, we should do this. We should sign up for

01:24:13

swimming lessons and we should do all of these things. And if you're not intentional or careful

01:24:17

about it pretty soon, your entire week then is spoken for. So it's kind of a natural or at least

01:24:24

built into the schedule type of a reset button. We want to figure out what are the things that

01:24:28

we really want to do. And I specifically after reading this book, like I want to land on that

01:24:32

one sentence rally and cry, which can just very easily determine whether this thing is a good fit

01:24:38

or not. And I do want to create a scoreboard for our family plan. I just don't want to do it the

01:24:42

way that Patrick wants you. And he does it. So that will require some additional conversation

01:24:47

with my wife. But I do want to follow up on that. We do have actually physically in our

01:24:52

our hallway right by our kitchen right in the middle of our house mounted a whiteboard,

01:24:56

which is perfect for this. But we need to figure out what do we want to put on there. And it's not

01:25:01

going to be three different levels of objectives. Yes, this is the one action I might have because

01:25:06

we've already done the theoretical three questions to one and a half, whatever you want to call it.

01:25:12

We have that, but we're going to put that plan into action, basically right away. I do want to

01:25:17

put together a scoreboard for it. But by scoreboard, I'm just using his terminology. Basically,

01:25:23

what that means is I want to write down this statement, this directive and spell out what our

01:25:29

goal and tasks are. And that could be very, very small and very simple that maybe it's just a piece

01:25:36

of paper that we tack to the whiteboard in the kitchen. That's probably what we're going to do.

01:25:40

But I just need to physically do that. Yep, totally agree.

01:25:44

So that said, author style and rating. Ready to go. All right, Patrick Lencioni,

01:25:50

you know, I love you. You know, I am a huge fan of the five dysfunctions of a team. I am not a

01:25:56

huge fan, I think of this book, but I do really appreciate the fable aspect of it. So if you haven't

01:26:02

read anything, Patrick Lencioni, he's a really, really good storyteller. I didn't feel like this

01:26:06

story was quite as good as the five dysfunctions story, but it's still pretty good. I do like the

01:26:12

three questions. I feel like this book could have been one tenth of the length, because the first

01:26:19

two thirds of it is the fable, and then you finally land on the three questions. In fact,

01:26:24

I don't think the three questions were explicitly stated in the fable, which was kind of weird.

01:26:28

You had to go to the model to get them explicitly stated. I think the third one specifically,

01:26:33

like he doesn't reference in the fable, at least I couldn't find it when I read it. It stood out

01:26:37

to me and I went back and tried to find it and I couldn't. So I don't think this is Patrick Lencioni's

01:26:41

best work. I think that there are better books in terms of like family management, the one that

01:26:47

I mentioned earlier, the secrets of have happy families. I feel like that speaks to this topic

01:26:52

a lot more approachably than this one. There's some good information in here. I'm really kind of

01:26:59

conflicted at what to rate this at. I think I'm going to go with 3.5, because I do think that

01:27:04

there's some really good stuff in here, but I also feel like you really have to dig to get to it,

01:27:10

and it's made more difficult than it needs to be. I feel like this could have been a lot more

01:27:16

approachable and the corporate bias definitely appears. I'll agree with you. I mean, Lencioni's

01:27:22

easy to read. I mean, it's a story. It's tough to say that's complicated to read, and he's a pretty

01:27:28

good writer with it. So that's definitely a vote in his favor. I had a problem with the corporate

01:27:35

speak. I've said that a few times here. I really wish he had changed that up, and I wish even

01:27:40

though he simplified it, I wish he had taken it further, because this whole two levels of objectives

01:27:45

bit like that. I understand what he's doing, but I feel like that's one level too far. So I wish he

01:27:52

would have removed that. That said, having actually followed or attempted to follow the bulk of his

01:27:59

intent, I know the feeling of having followed through on it and can say that that is something

01:28:05

I'm pretty excited about. I'm with you in the conflicted rating concept. Okay, the feeling I've

01:28:12

had after going through this tells me it's definitely a five, but at the same time, like, okay, well,

01:28:16

like the corporate speak bit is a deterrent, so I can't do the five. So I have to deduct like half

01:28:24

a point for that for sure. And then I'll probably deduct another half for not going as far as I

01:28:31

feel like he should have, and it would have been extremely helpful to have gone a little bit further.

01:28:35

So I'm going to put it at a 4.0 for those reasons, but I do think this is a book I will recommend to

01:28:42

a number of folks with some of the disclaimers that I have just mentioned. So I will probably

01:28:48

continue to tell people that this is a book I feel like they should read, but I think I'm also

01:28:53

with you in saying that Limcioni does have some other books that I would say are better, but not

01:28:58

geared towards families. Like he's definitely a leadership writer, and he's good at that. And this

01:29:04

is like his attempt at a family driven book, but he's a leadership writer. So it's hard for him to

01:29:11

let that go like that that was kind of my complaint. Yeah, it feels kind of kind of out of place.

01:29:16

Like even if you had somebody who was struggling in their family situation, I think I'd recommend

01:29:24

the five dysfunctions of a team over the three big questions for a romantic family.

01:29:27

Fair enough. It's just kind of weird, you know, but it is what it is. I just feel like this is a

01:29:33

little bit out of his wheelhouse. All right, upcoming books then next one is My Pick. And this is

01:29:39

interesting because there was somebody who mentioned on the the bookworm club, which I know we'll get

01:29:45

to in a second about reading the classics. And this is one of those that I think classifies as a

01:29:51

self development or productivity classic, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.

01:29:56

So this is my choice. And I picked it specifically because this seems to be very polarizing opinions

01:30:02

of this book. Either it's amazing or people just really dislike the idea. They kind of think it's

01:30:08

about manipulating people. I want to get to the bottom of it. I don't think I don't anticipate

01:30:13

that it's about that at all. But I think that just based off of the title, I can see how people

01:30:17

would interpret it that way. So I want to understand what's really going on here.

01:30:20

The book following that is My Choice, which is Peak by Anders Ericsson. And this is one,

01:30:28

this is a listener recommendation. So I kind of went through some recommendations here a little

01:30:33

while back and was picking ones that I thought seemed interesting. And this one is about developing

01:30:38

your skills and expertise in a given area and like how to improve whether it's an academic goal

01:30:45

or athletic or musical skills or acquiring new skills. Like that's what he's talking about. So

01:30:53

secrets from the new science of expertise. So I think it'll be kind of interesting.

01:30:58

Nice. Yeah, that sounds interesting. For gap books, I'm reading one right now,

01:31:03

which is The Richest Man in Babylon by George Claisen, I believe is how you pronounce this.

01:31:08

This is another quote unquote classic productivity book or financial literacy book, I guess.

01:31:14

If you liked The Monk and the Merchant, you would definitely like this one because it's

01:31:18

written as a narrative and a lot of the principles are distilled throughout the narrative. But it is

01:31:25

specifically regarding principles of wealth building. So I don't know, it's an entertaining

01:31:30

way to learn how to manage your money, I guess. Yeah, which is kind of interesting. It kind of

01:31:35

goes somewhat along with the one I just wrapped up reading this. The million dollar one person

01:31:40

business, this is by Elaine Pofelt. I think I got her name right. Basically, it is about how to

01:31:47

build a business that reaches a million dollars in revenue as a single person, which I am not sure

01:31:55

that's my target, but the concept of building a business that could scale has been of great

01:32:02

interest to me, especially lately. So I did, I just finished this. It's one that I would recommend

01:32:08

if you're interested in building a business of your own. So she does a pretty good job of laying

01:32:14

out a lot of complicated principles in that world. So I don't know, it's kind of interesting. So

01:32:19

if you're interested in building a business on your own as a, not a contractor, but like a single

01:32:24

person, solopreneur sort of thing, it's one I would recommend if you're in that scenario.

01:32:28

Very cool. All right. And if you want to recommend a book, you can do that from the website. If you

01:32:35

go to bookworm.fm/list, you will see a list of the planned books, the ones that we've completed,

01:32:42

and then the list of recommendations is actually now hosted on the Bookworm Club. But on that

01:32:48

list page, there is a button to recommend a book and that will take you right to where you can

01:32:52

recommend a book. My wife literally did this yesterday while we were a for a walk. Awesome.

01:32:58

So that's where you want to go if you want to see what's planned or if you want to influence

01:33:02

what's planned. Yeah, it's kind of fun. I moved all of the recommendations we had on the Bookworm

01:33:08

FM site and put them on the Bookworm Club, which means that you get a couple things whenever you

01:33:13

do that is one, you can actually vote for books now if they've made it onto a recommended,

01:33:18

that recommended list. So if there's one on that list that you want to try to promote to get on

01:33:26

the podcast, that is the way to do it. Because sometimes I get recommendations that come through

01:33:31

and you get them multiple times, but you don't really, we don't haven't had a way to wait those

01:33:36

and rate them or show that weight publicly. So now we have a way to do that. So you can go to that

01:33:43

recommendations category on the Bookworm Club to see that. If you're not a member of the club,

01:33:48

you should become a member of the club. We have one or two things that we're potentially

01:33:51

going to be doing here in the near future that would be exclusive to club members. So

01:33:56

just keep that in mind. But yes, we'd love to see you on the club. It's where we have conversations

01:34:03

about the episodes and people can ask questions, this clarification, that sort of thing. So that's

01:34:08

one way that you can help us out. There's also a lot of Amazon affiliate links there that you can

01:34:12

click on that help us help support the show. And the way that you can promote it is with an iTunes

01:34:18

review, which there's a link in the show notes down below for that that you can click on and

01:34:23

leave us a review there as well. Are we still fighting KCRW? Mike, I don't check out this stuff.

01:34:28

Yes, we are. Okay. So we're still trying to take down KCRW.

01:34:31

Correction. Mike is still trying to take down KCRW as the number one listing when you search

01:34:38

for Bookworm on iTunes. So if you don't mind, help us out, leave us a review there, and someday

01:34:43

we'll take them down. Yeah, and to be honest, I don't think it's an apples-to-apples comparison.

01:34:48

I definitely think that we are more in line with the definition of a podcast book club. So I'm

01:34:55

going to go ahead and say join the Bookworm Club and join the Internet's largest book club.

01:35:01

Unverified. So you can do that at is it club.bookworm.fm? Yes, club.bookworm.fm.

01:35:10

All right, so check out club.bookworm.fm. And if you're reading along, then pick up how to win

01:35:16

friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. And we will talk to you next time.