Bookworm Transcripts

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So one of the things we, of course, need to talk about here is that we officially launched the podcast now.

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So the first four episodes that we've released have been, they were prerecorded before the launch of Bookworm.

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And this is the first time we're recording since the launch of the podcast, which is kind of exciting.

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Very exciting.

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It's gone pretty well, in my opinion.

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Got in a lot of positive feedback and it's cool to see other people chime in and say, "Hey, I never really thought of that before, but you made a good point in whatever episode."

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So.

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Right.

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Right.

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I know Drew Kaufman was one that he wrote.

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We sparked something in him and he wrote like an article about some of the stuff we were talking about, which is it's interesting whenever you make a thing.

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And you think it's going good.

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And you think you're doing good at it.

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And you're not really sure because you're not to a point where your people are giving you feedback.

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And then you have something like that come up.

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So it's kind of exciting to see that.

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But to me, that's kind of like a validation of you get you're actually getting somewhere with something.

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So it's kind of fun to see some of the feedback on Bookworm.

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So if you're listening to this and you have feedback, we're all ears.

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We're interested.

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So to the point where, and I can talk, well, I'll mention this again at the end of the end of the show, but I did go ahead and add a recommend a book function on our website.

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So Bookworm.fm for the listeners.

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If you go out there, there's a button right in the sidebar.

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It says recommend a book, fill that out.

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And I will get that book added to our book list.

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And it goes into the queue for consideration on whether or not we'll read it or not.

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So.

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And I'm excited about some of those ones that are that are coming in.

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I saw somebody recommended brain chains.

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And I actually after after the next follow up point here, Max Stock, where we actually talked to Brett Turpstra.

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He mentioned that he had David Allen on systematic.

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So I went back and I listened to that episode again.

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And I think David Allen talked more about the research behind GTD in that podcast episode than he did in his update, getting things done book.

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But one of the books that he referenced is that brain chains.

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So I definitely want to check that one out.

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Yeah, I'm with you on that one because that was one of the books I've read before we started doing the show was the organized mine by Daniel Leviden.

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And that was one that I've heard David reference before as well.

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So yeah, I when I saw brain chains come through.

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Oh, yeah, I want to I want to read that one as well.

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So that one might make it into the list here pretty quick.

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I may have to bump some of my might have to bump some of the ones I'm interested in up next in order to bring that one in.

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But yeah, that's definitely what I'm interested in.

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So as Mike mentioned, we both were over at Max Stock this past weekend as we're recording.

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And Mike got to present on stage and I couldn't help but like do a little promo of Mike on stage talking about Omni focus.

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You made me proud, Mike.

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Thanks, Joe.

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I was hoping I would not disappoint you seeing as how you wrote a book on Omni focus.

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No pressure, right?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, as I'm demoing stuff that I picked up from Brett Terpstra as he's sitting in the audience.

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Yeah, that was a little nerve wracking.

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But it seemed to go pretty well.

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I got a lot of compliments on the presentation itself.

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So hopefully I convinced a few other people to try out Omni focus.

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Yeah, I know there were a few that had been previous Omni focus users that listened to your talk and then they're interested in getting back into it.

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So it's kind of interesting to see how people can jump from tool to tool.

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And, you know, we do that once in a while with the productivity spaces.

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You got to try out different tools once in a while just to make sure that you understand how to use them and how we like to work with them.

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So I don't know.

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It's interesting, but you did a good job.

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I was very interested in your talk.

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So I thought you did a really good job.

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So well done, Mike.

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Thank you.

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And it's kind of pivoted into.

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I don't really have a good segue here.

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So I'm just going to jump in.

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So the book that we're going to go through today, you're talking about this a little bit ago, how to say this, but essentialism.

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By right, Greg McEwen, right?

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McEwen.

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I think so.

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According to the Google talk YouTube video, I found.

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OK, so Greg McEwen.

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Essentialism.

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This was my pick.

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And part of the reasoning, the rationale I had behind this, Mike, and I know that you voluntarily had had this one on your list as well.

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So I'm interested in your reasoning for why you want to read it.

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But for me, I know there's just a lot of life that just feels really complex.

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We work in this whole technology space and we have a ton of tools and we have a lot of computers and stuff all over the place.

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And it's easy for that to get to be a lot.

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I just had a conversation with my wife about this probably two weeks ago about how we have different pieces of our just everyday life.

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Take, you know, just music in the house.

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It doesn't sound like that big a deal.

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But the way ours is set up in the kitchen is I have a couple speakers up on top of the cabinets that are hooked up to like a Bluetooth receiver.

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So you compare it with whatever your iPad iPhone and then it plays that music through the speakers in the kitchen, which my wife loves.

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But at the same time, anytime your Bluetooth kind of falters, because it's not perfect, it'll disconnect.

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And sometimes you got to reconnect it and it doesn't always work perfectly.

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But I get into my car and it doesn't have Bluetooth and I plug it in and it works every single time.

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So I just feel like there's some of that is because we're techies and it's we think it's cool and it's fun.

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Some of that I think is just pure.

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This is just too complex and it needs to be simplified.

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Does that make any sense, Mike?

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Absolutely. And it makes sense to anybody. I'm sure who's read essentialism.

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Yeah, true.

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True. And that's that that was one of the main reasons that I wanted to pick this up because I feel like I've got a lot of areas in life that.

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I've over complicated without it being necessary.

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And yet I'm not real sure how to simplify.

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At least I wasn't. Now that I've read the book, I have some ideas, which we'll get into.

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And one of the primary areas that I know I know I've struggled with this is nailing down projects to work on because.

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If you look through my email and I right now because of some of the clients and the other stuff I have going on, I'm getting about 300 new emails a day, which is just difficult and no, that's not there's no newsletters in that that's filtered out.

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That's all the spam filtered out.

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That's usually one or you know, it's sometimes you get in group messages, but it's like one person emailing me directly.

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It's not any automated stuff there. I pulled a lot of that out.

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So that's just direct emails. It's a lot.

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And there's a lot of those like project potential stuff in there.

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We should do something new. There's just a lot of that.

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But it's easy to say yes.

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And the next thing you know, you're just completely bogged down.

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Absolutely. And the interesting thing about that is I can definitely appreciate that perspective.

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I found when I read this, because this is the second time I've read this, the first time I got.

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Pretty different takeaways than what I got the second time in between readings of essentialism.

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I wrote a book called Bauchil Hustle.

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So that obviously is going to color my perspective here a little bit. And we can talk about the specific points here in a second.

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But it's been interesting because I've had to reconcile that stuff in my head.

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And yeah, it was just really, really interesting to read through it.

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Again, I caught a lot of things that I didn't catch the first time.

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And I interpreted things maybe a little bit different than I did the first time.

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So as far as writing style goes for Greg, I thought this was really easy to read.

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Just my opinion there. But I thought it was really simple to get through.

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I feel like he didn't he didn't belabor topics, but he covered them really well.

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But at the same time, it's a pretty quick read, I think.

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Yes, I agree. I will say that the first part of the book, I think I enjoyed a little bit better.

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Towards the end of the book, he gets into specific strategies.

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And I think I'm in a different place in terms of the articles that I've read, the books that I've read, the amount of information that I have

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acquired since I read this the first time. Because a lot of those bullet lists regarding a specific topic could be a book in itself.

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Like he has a book or he has a five page section or something like that on sleep.

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He's got another short section on play. There are entire books devoted to those topics.

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So when he gives you the quick bullet points, it's great if you just want a quick win and you're

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just entering into that particular area. But if you have researched some of those, I have sleep in particular,

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then it's kind of like that's just like scratching the surface.

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Not necessarily a bad thing, but I just am saying I think I got more out of the core ideas of the essentialist lifestyle that he talks about

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at the beginning of the book more so than the specific strategies towards the end.

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So that would be so Greg breaks it off into four sections with the first being essence. So if I go through those quick, so

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essence, explore, eliminate, and execute. The first of those, what you're talking about, the way I summarized it was within his phrase that he uses to

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define essentialism, which is less but better. And is that the part you're talking about that whole

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where you got the most out of it was the essence piece?

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Yeah, he talks about the way of the essentialist and he spends quite a bit of time defining that, which is really good.

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And that the key takeaway there or the key idea there, I think, is to ask yourself constantly, am I investing in the right activities?

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He talks about creating the space to evaluate whether the things that you're doing are the right things rather than just going through the motions.

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But what's also interesting about this, and I kind of cheated because I was editing a podcast episode where we interviewed Greg on a productivity show

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literally today before we did this. And in the interview, he talks about how he didn't write a book called Noism.

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So, essentialism is not just saying no to things, but he wrote a book called essentialism. The key there is that you have to create the space to determine what is essential.

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Yeah, that's interesting. And I'm really interested in this podcast that you're referencing on the productivity show by Asian efficiency.

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So, I'm definitely going to come back and edit the show notes after that releases because that'll come out after this, correct?

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I believe so. It might come out right before, but either way, I'll get you the link so that we can link to it in the show notes.

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Perfect. Perfect.

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Yeah. No, the first part of this book, for me as well, it was the one that impacted me the most.

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And the part of it, the first piece of it that really struck me, and this is something we all deal with, especially in the productivity space.

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We talk about this a lot with put your stuff first.

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I don't know why, but for some reason going through this book, it made me really stop and think about that a little bit more because, you know, I have clients, I have people I consult with, I have a lot of these other, you know, as part of the reason I get so much email.

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I have a lot of that stuff coming in. So, it's very difficult for me to say that, yes, this new website that I want to do for myself, that could potentially get me to a point where I don't need to take on clients, which would be awesome.

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If my clients are listening, I'm sorry.

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But if I'm going to make those websites real, if I'm going to make them into something big, then I really got to put them first.

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I have to get those things done before I step into the client work. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen.

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And that's what I was talking about at the beginning.

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He talks about so much of this, the making decision process.

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And that was one of the notes I wrote down, Mike, was the book is really about

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a decision framework from my standpoint, it was how to make good decisions about yes or no.

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And he had a quote that I thought was really interesting. He said, "If it isn't a clear yes,

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then it's a clear no." Which is really, and we hear people say, you know, if it's not an absolute

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definite, you're super excited, this is going to be amazing. Yes, then say no. And I think there's

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something to that that I've not considered in the past. So I'm glad I said yes to this podcast,

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because it's been a lot of fun. But there's just a lot of those projects that come up for me that

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I want to say yes, or I feel like I should say yes, but I really want to say no.

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So if it's not clear, I just need to let it go. But that's been a struggle of mine for a long time.

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Yeah, so this is the interesting thing about reading this book now, because when I read it the

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first time, I was in the, it was actually pre my transition to Asian efficiency working from home,

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basically getting the future that I've been dreaming about for a long time.

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And at that point, it made total sense. Yeah, I got to say no to this, this, this, and this.

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But the way that my story has played out, it was because at one point, I decided that this thing

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was essential. And I did say yes to both for a period. Now you can't stay there. You'll burn

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out if you keep trying to do that for so long. But you can, I believe, say yes to things as long

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as they're important. See, that's the thing. He says, you can't say yes to both. And I would

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agree with that in theory, because you can't physically be in two places at one time. It's kind of his

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point. But you can manage your time so that you can fit more of what is important into your schedule.

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So there are trade offs, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean no to one thing just because it's,

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you said yes to another thing, especially if it's in the same category. I think there's a lot of

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synergy between like this podcast and my work at Asian efficiency, which is what allows me

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to pull this off, if that makes sense. But there will be sacrifices involved when you take that

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strategy. And you just have to take into account what the costs are. You have to make sure that

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those sacrifices are worth making. And you have to consciously choose what to do. I don't think

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that it is a straddled strategy like he calls it to make a choice that your basket will be filled

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with some of A and some of B instead of 100% of A or 100% of B. What you can't do is say I'm all in

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on A and then try to do B because you don't have any more capacity. Something has to give in that

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regard. But the big thing for me when I read it this time was not saying no to everything except

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the one thing, so to speak, but just saying no to the essential things and recognizing that there

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may be more than one essential thing. But you have to realize that it's a balancing act and you have

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to make sure that everything that you've said yes to was a conscious decision to say yes to that

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thing because it is an essential part of who you're supposed to be, what you're doing in the big

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picture. I think about, because I get the question a lot about how to get started in an online business.

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I don't know if you get this question or not. Maybe you get it through Asian efficiency, but

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I get a number of emails about how do you get started with a blog and online and how much do you make

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off of it? I get a lot of those. It really doesn't matter because what they're really getting at is

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can I quit my day job, do that full time, and then make enough money for my family off of that?

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Well, if you don't have a blog right now, the answer is no. I'll just answer that right now.

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You cannot do that. And the reason for that is that you really have to be doing both your day job

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and that, both of them basically full time, so that you can get the latter of the two up to a point

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where it's successful enough to support your income or to support your family.

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If you come from my standpoint, then even then, the online business doesn't even get close

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to supporting the family. It's just the way it works. That's why I do all the consulting.

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That's why I do all the web development. That's where the vast majority of my income comes from.

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That's where if you follow Cortex at all, Gray talks about his spreadsheets. He's got all his

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spreadsheets that he uses to figure out if things are, if they're worth his time or not,

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which I would be really interested in some of those actual numbers, even though I know he will

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never make those available. But I do run a few of those scenarios as well, just to figure it out.

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And of course, it's what you would expect. If I have a client that comes up and they need a website,

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there's a 95% chance everything else will get dropped in order to do that simply because that's

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where the vast majority of my income will come from and it's the higher payoff in the long run.

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Well, that's okay if it's a conscious choice. He talks about how the way of the

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essentialist means living your life by design, not by default. So you can be in one thing and

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by default, you would stay in that one thing. But if by design, you decide that this thing over

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here is the essential thing, you can't just all of a sudden just switch. You have to, like you said,

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you have to hustle in the margins. You have to start that side business, start that blog,

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show up every day, and then you can make that transition.

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Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you want to jump to the end, he starts to talk about routines and

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habits and making this whole process effortless. That's what you end up doing here is you pick

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which ones are important to you. If you use the whole important, what is it, the Eisenhower Matrix,

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is that the name of for it? I don't know why I always wanted to talk about something.

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The Eisenhower box, I teach that in almost every single webinar that I do for Asian officials

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because I love it so much. Yeah, no, it just makes a lot of sense. And if you think about the

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important projects, we're so used to hearing that in the space we work in. And it feels like if you

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think about picking the important projects versus picking the essential projects,

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there's a likely difference there, but it's slight because the important projects may be the

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ones that pay the bills, but in your mind, the essential ones could be the ones that drive you

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towards your core mission. I have base there. It just seems like there's a difference between the two

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that's important. Yeah, I don't think you're off base, but I maybe would define it a little bit

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different. I think a lot of people would classify the things that pay the bills as urgent. You may

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have things that are important and urgent. So bringing home the bacon is both important and urgent.

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Right. Not makes sense. But we need to escape, as Sean Blanc would put it,

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we need to escape the tyranny of the urgent. So if you have that matrix, what you have is four boxes,

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things that are important and urgent, things that are important, but not urgent, things that are

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urgent, but not important. And then things that are neither important nor urgent. The urgent stuff

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is all on the left side of the box. And maybe I can, I could put a picture of this in the show notes

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so people have a frame of reference. But that's where you get stuck. You know, going back to

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getting things done, that's emergency scan modality. That's looking for the next fire to put out.

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And when you do that, you don't, if you're not intentional, if you're not an essentialist,

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you neglect the things that are not important, but are urgent. Those are the little things he

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talks in here about the little things, doing them over and over and over again and producing

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that compound effect that produces the big results that I've seen that work in my own life. I know

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that that principle does indeed work. And that's where a lot of people, I think, miss it, is you can

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do it once and you don't see anything from it. But if you do it again and again and again and again

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and again and again and again and again, then you start to get the results. But you don't see it

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at first, even though you're putting things into motion that are going to snowball and you're

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going to build up momentum like a steam engine. If you don't, if you don't take that first step,

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if you don't step out there, if you don't create any motion, you'll never get to that point.

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Yeah, I mean, how many times have we talked about the benefit of doing just a little bit each day,

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journaling or take the blog example? You may not be able to write a blog post in a morning,

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you know, you probably, when you're first starting off, you probably aren't going to sit down and

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write a blog post in 20 to 30 minutes. Whereas right now, I've done it so much that I can write

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about a thousand word blog post in about 25 minutes. Like, I just know that and it doesn't take a

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whole lot of work. But that's, that is a habit and a, you know, to go clear back to the willpower

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instinct. That's something that's been built up of the self control piece has been built up over

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time. And you get to a point where if you're writing just a little bit every morning or you can write

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a blog post that quick and you can start to chip away at it and you build a full repository and it

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just grows over time, then before long, you've got something big and it's the little tiny add-ons

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that eventually get to a point where it's something massive. And he does get into that in this book

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a little bit. I don't think he spends a ton of time at it. But the one that, the one piece here

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that I wanted to bring up Mike was that he does talk about the trade-offs piece quite a bit,

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where if something comes up, and this is why I keep saying it's like a decision framework,

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because it's just a way of thinking in a way of processing decisions. And I think about our,

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our oldest daughter, who she always has a lot of toys out. It drives me bonkers that there's

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so many toys laid all over the floor. I'm sure you've got four boys. You know what I'm talking

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about. But toys can get strung out all over the house. It drives me crazy. One of the things we did

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early on with her was give her a certain number of toys that were allowed to be out at one time.

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And if you're a parent, I highly recommend this, at least for us, it was amazing. But

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if you give her a certain number and say, if you want something different, that's fine. But you need

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to give me one of the toys that you have currently out in order to get a different one. And we don't

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allow this to happen but once a week. So once a week, she's allowed to basically trade in her

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toys for different ones, if she wants. And then we've got boxes up in their closet where all the

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toys that aren't in action are hidden. And that works extremely well with her because it teaches

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her to, you know, if I wanted, if I want something different, if I want to do something different,

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I have to say no to something else. It's that trade off mentality of if I want to say yes to

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a new project, I have to say no to a different one or a complete one so that I'm not working on it

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at all. Something has to free up to allow me to say yes to that.

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I think you should talk to Greg about writing a follow up book raising an essentialist child.

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There you go. I'll send him a note. We'll see what he says.

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I really like that point though, where you if you're going to say yes to this one thing,

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you have to say no to another thing. But another thing that I added to it the second time,

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I read this, you know, I mentioned that I kind of viewed it through a different lens this time,

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is he says, once you sufficiently explored your options, you need to ask yourself what you should

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say no to. And then my question is, how do you know if you like he says, is this exactly what I'm

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looking for? How do you know if it's what you're looking for if you never try it? Because I never

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pictured myself as a writer, yet I started writing and that has led to every opportunity that I am

00:25:02

I'm pursuing right now. Right. So I would not have gotten that without stepping out there and trying

00:25:09

something different. And I think it's really easy if you read this, you say, yeah, I'm over

00:25:15

committed. I'm doing too much. I got to say no to a bunch of things to just say, this is my box.

00:25:20

And I've got to say no to everything else that doesn't fit in this box. But I think a lot of

00:25:26

people maybe haven't explored and they haven't found that thing that they really were made to do.

00:25:32

I forget who said it, but somebody said, there's two important days in your life. The day you were

00:25:37

born and the day you find out why. And I thought I knew why. But in the last couple of years,

00:25:44

that's been a redefine for me. And honestly, I think it's going to be redefined a couple times.

00:25:48

I think this is going to be an evolution or a journey. And my story is not completely written yet.

00:25:55

So yeah, you have to ask yourself, what are the things that aren't contributing to

00:25:58

where I'm supposed to go? But I also think it's important to just step out there and try some

00:26:05

stuff, even if you don't think it might be essential. You know, say no to some things, but don't be

00:26:11

afraid to try something, even if it sounds completely off the wall. I'm going to jump ahead on you

00:26:15

here, because one of those action items that you wrote down is find more time to play. And I almost

00:26:20

wrote that one down too. Because that's the explore piece, that second part of the book.

00:26:26

And the main thing that he has there is making time to escape, basically giving yourself a buffer

00:26:34

zone to focus, and then using that time to play and explore and find some of those things.

00:26:42

I think that's what you're talking about is, how do I give myself the freedom to go explore things

00:26:48

and find something different? Because I think about, you know, I'm a web developer and

00:26:53

when we were at Max talk, somebody asked me this question of how many computer languages I know,

00:26:58

so I had to tally it up and it was 26. So I have worked in within the last two to three years,

00:27:07

I've worked in about 26 different computer languages in some form or another, which is crazy.

00:27:12

You stop and think about it. But the only reason that I've picked those up, and the only reason I

00:27:18

know those, and for the web developers out there, there's a good chance that if you pick one of those,

00:27:23

and you ask me to build a full on really sophisticated application in that, I would fail horribly,

00:27:28

just to throw that out there. It's like, that doesn't mean I'm 100% proficient in all of them.

00:27:32

It simply means I've built something in them. But the only reason I've picked those up, and the

00:27:37

only way I've picked them up is through kind of a small project to begin with, and then just being

00:27:44

given the freedom to play with it, and just to see if it'll work. And I personally make sure that

00:27:51

I give myself time to do that quite a bit. You've seen some of the scripts and stuff that I write.

00:27:57

I make sure that I've got time every week to just work on systems and work on the productivity

00:28:03

tools and the apps, and all the Apple scripts and such. I specifically set time aside

00:28:08

each week to work on that stuff, just because I know that if I give myself that freedom,

00:28:16

you were talking about the opportunities that come whenever you started writing,

00:28:22

and how that's opened up a lot of doors. For me, a lot of that has come through writing scripts,

00:28:28

and just giving some of the small program type stuff away. And that stuff was built by playing

00:28:34

around with things just to see how they work and see what I can figure out with them.

00:28:39

Yeah, so here's a really important distinction though, because you could look at that a couple

00:28:43

different ways. You could look at writing those scripts as work instead of play. But I would

00:28:49

argue, like you're saying, that that is actually play. And if you viewed it as work,

00:28:55

yeah, exactly. You have to kind of define for yourself what play looks like. It's not always

00:29:00

busting out the Legos or fill in the blank. There are things that bring me joy that other people

00:29:06

would classify as work. And I absolutely love to do them. This podcast would probably be one of

00:29:11

those things where every time that we get on the mic, I end up getting a different perspective,

00:29:16

and I'll learn a lot. That to me is play. But you could also look at your situation in particular.

00:29:23

You know, 28 different languages. Well, he talks in the book about being a mile wide and an inch

00:29:29

deep or an inch wide and a mile deep. So some of those languages, you don't know as well as others.

00:29:37

Oh, absolutely. If you were to try to maintain that through the lens of work, you're like, well,

00:29:42

this is a lot of maintenance effort in order to even be able to do basic projects with this.

00:29:49

But when you're playing, there's no requirements on it. There's no definition of done, so to speak.

00:29:54

You can just enjoy the experience. And I think that is the key difference. And then you need to be

00:30:02

able to not feel bad about liking to do these things that wouldn't normally be classified

00:30:10

by other people through the lens of play. Like a lot of the people, especially where I live in

00:30:15

Wisconsin, I tell them I work on a remote team. They look at me like I've got a third eye.

00:30:19

You don't actually work. Right. Sure, you do. Mike, you have a job, do you?

00:30:24

Right. So I'm already the oddball. And I've just learned to embrace it. My kids actually,

00:30:31

if you tell them you're a nerd, they go, thank you. But yeah, you don't have to do it the way

00:30:40

everybody else does it. It's okay to play with some of those things. And then eventually,

00:30:46

like you said, you'll kind of discover, yeah, this is something right here. This is going to

00:30:51

become my one thing. That is a very pivotal point when you discover something and then you decide

00:30:56

that, yes, this is the thing I want to go a mile deep on. You can't really do that. I would argue

00:31:02

if you don't have the play element, like you said. Absolutely. I know that with, you know, we're

00:31:07

going through this whole languages thing. For me, if you want to go down that now,

00:31:12

every web developer, if you don't know HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you should not be a web developer.

00:31:17

Like those are just you have to know those. And for me, whenever it gets into the server side of

00:31:23

things, and we're getting all technical here, but I know that even though they're the 26 languages,

00:31:28

I know that if I stay within PHP and Ruby, Ruby and Rails, if I stay in those two, those are my

00:31:36

wheelhouse. And I know that if projects come up and they're based on those, easy, like those are

00:31:42

simple, simple systems to take on. But if someone comes up with Python, or they want to do something

00:31:48

on Django, which I know I'm way over some people's heads here, whenever those projects come up,

00:31:55

it's one that I know, and I've built stuff on that, but it's not one I see every day. So it's not one

00:32:01

that I'm super deep on, and it's not a priority. So honestly, whenever those come up, my rate goes up

00:32:07

simply because I know that it's going to take me longer, and it's going to be more complicated

00:32:12

for me just because it's not something that I work in every single day. And there have been

00:32:17

some cases where those come up, and I just say no to them, just because they want something

00:32:21

done really quick and really easy, they don't want to spend a lot of money on it. I don't know

00:32:25

it well enough to do it in that amount of time. So it's not worth moving forward. So welcome to

00:32:30

essentialism. No, I'm not going to do that.

00:32:32

Right now, here's here's an important distinction, though, I think, because your one thing might be

00:32:40

to be a Ruby developer. But you may not discover that that one thing is to be a Ruby developer,

00:32:46

unless you try out some of those other languages, and sorry for the code examples, but you can kind

00:32:51

of fill in the blanks here, he has a phrase in there, he says, five different jobs in five different

00:32:56

industries do not add up to a forward moving career. I think the key phrase there is the five

00:33:02

different industries, because what I've found is that one thing can lead to another thing, can lead

00:33:06

to another thing, can lead to another thing. And yeah, you're making small adjustments in your

00:33:11

direction or your course as you go, you're kind of course correcting, but you're not deciding to

00:33:16

all of a sudden move in a completely opposite and different direction. I think there is some synergy

00:33:22

there when you take that approach. So you can try out a few different things if they're somewhat

00:33:28

related like that, they're under the same general topic heading. And then you have a much better

00:33:33

chance, I would argue, by taking that approach, then just saying, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try

00:33:37

that, I'm gonna try that just randomly picking occupations off a list, and trying to go all in

00:33:43

with those things. I think that is the approach that leads to what Greg would say, you're being a

00:33:49

mile wide and inch deep. He has a chapter in here that I really loved, and I really hated.

00:33:55

Chapter five called escape. The tagline of this is the perks of being unavailable.

00:34:02

Contrast that to my 300 emails a day. And I have some work to do, Mike. It's just not good.

00:34:13

I read that and it makes a lot of sense of separating to give yourself time to reflect,

00:34:22

focus, think through what all of your decisions need to be. Because I don't remember where I read

00:34:28

this. If somebody's listening to this and you know where this stat is, I would love to know where this

00:34:33

is. But at one point, I read the stat that said if you receive 100 emails in a day directed to

00:34:43

you, then email is your full-time job. As in, that's where you spend all of your time is in

00:34:49

reading and responding to emails. Which, you know, I've worked with some corporate executives.

00:34:55

That's their job. Email is their job is to read what other people have going on, make decisions,

00:34:59

and then kick off new decisions about some of the things that are going on. So I get that, but

00:35:04

if I get 300 a day, that means I've got three full-time jobs just in email. And again,

00:35:12

I'm not real sure where I got that number. I wish I could remember where I found it. But

00:35:17

that tells me that one, it's too easy to get ahold of me. And I already have people upset because

00:35:24

I'm hard to get ahold of. So Mike has my cell phone number. That made me a little nervous at first.

00:35:29

I'm not going to lie, Mike. I love you, but man, that giving that number out is not something I do

00:35:36

very regularly. And it's one that I know, and I've never had anybody take advantage of it.

00:35:43

Part of that's because there are very few people that actually have that number. But

00:35:46

when it comes to email, I have not restricted that at all. I've been pretty good with my phone

00:35:52

number, but the email address, I've always just broadcast it out there. And this actually made

00:35:59

me stop and reconsider. Maybe I should pull that off of some things just because I'm getting too

00:36:03

much right now. Because a lot of that's new stuff, new people that are emailing me off of the website.

00:36:08

So I don't know. It just made me rethink it a little bit.

00:36:11

I would argue that if you're getting 300 emails a day, you should do whatever you can to remove

00:36:17

your email. I know as many places as you can. I know. And at this point, I'll need to change

00:36:23

my email address too. So I liked that part, but at the same time, it was very humbling and very

00:36:31

challenging to think about becoming hard to reach and just being someone that's not easy to get a

00:36:38

whole love because in some respects, I know that I'm already hard to get a whole love.

00:36:42

So if you've sent me an email and I haven't gotten back to you, now you know why, because I've

00:36:47

got 300 every day. And I don't check email on the weekends. So that means Monday morning,

00:36:52

there's about five to 600 to go through on Monday morning. So that's just the way it is.

00:36:57

Yeah. And he actually talked a little bit about your specific scenario there in the book. He said,

00:37:03

I'm not sure if you remember this boundaries are very important. If you make an exception,

00:37:06

you'll end up making it many times. Yes, I know. And it's funny because there's a,

00:37:14

I can't think of the author right now. There's a book called boundaries. Are you familiar with this?

00:37:20

I'm not. I want to say Hen and Cloud. Don't quote me on that. I'll also look it up. I'll put it in

00:37:26

the show notes, but I read it at one point and it's about how do you set boundaries with other

00:37:32

people in your life? And he goes through like friends and family. That's kind of his focus.

00:37:39

And the main crux of that book is you can't change what other people do. You can only change

00:37:45

how you react to it. Now let's go back to the obstacle is the way you just take things that come

00:37:50

and you make a decision on how you can respond to it and get to work. Whereas we would normally

00:37:56

just react emotionally and get all upset over it. And you know, that was the premise of it was,

00:38:01

let's not let things get to us and not break those boundaries, but setting those walls in place.

00:38:10

So I should probably set some walls around email. But there's so many good opportunities that

00:38:15

come through email, Mike. It's true. It's true. I would say you definitely need some boundaries

00:38:22

there. Yeah, the whole fear of missing out thing. Yeah, I mean, that's really what it comes down to

00:38:30

is the fear of missing out, which I thought it was great to hear that term in this book too,

00:38:34

because that's something that I preach all the time is like, you have to overcome FOMO.

00:38:40

But really, I would say the tipping point, whether you get three emails a day or 300,

00:38:45

is are you able to keep, as Stephen Covey would say, the main thing, the main thing?

00:38:52

So that's a question that every single person has to answer for themselves. I can give you my

00:38:57

opinion, because I know what I would feel like if I got 300 emails a day. But maybe you have a

00:39:02

system in place where you can handle that efficiently. You know, I haven't seen you handle email,

00:39:07

so I can't answer that. And I think that it's important to recognize that.

00:39:12

A lot of times we will just go along with the flow and we will do things that we've already

00:39:18

committed to. And that was another one of my takeaways was to evaluate everything that I've

00:39:22

been committed to without Greg talks a lot in the book about the sunk cost bias, about how we

00:39:28

overvalue things that we already own. And in particular, we overvalue our commitments to things

00:39:34

that we've already agreed to. So one of my takeaways is I want to list out all the things that I've

00:39:38

agreed to, all the things that I've said, yes, and ask myself at this point, if I wasn't already

00:39:43

doing this, would I start? Because I think when I do that, I'm going to be surprised at how many

00:39:51

knows I see. And I think that's probably a pretty common response. I challenge anybody else who's

00:39:57

listening to this to do the same thing. And we'll kind of go through the process together.

00:40:03

But we need to identify the things that are essential, like he's talking about, you have to say no has

00:40:09

to be the default. It can't be an exception. No has to be the default. And then you frame your

00:40:16

whole life around the things that you've consciously said yes to, as opposed to the things that just

00:40:22

kind of get added on to your plate. And you didn't say yes or no, but you end up having to prioritize

00:40:27

those because somebody else has determined that. He said that if you don't prioritize your life,

00:40:32

somebody else will. And I've seen that. I've seen that in my own life. You have to decide what's

00:40:38

most important for yourself. And then you have to put up those boundaries, like we were just talking

00:40:43

about, to keep out all the other things, all the other commitments that people try to throw on you.

00:40:48

Because every one of those things that you commit to is going to chip away at the amount of time,

00:40:53

the amount of energy, the amount of focus, the amount of margin that you have, in order to actually

00:40:58

do the things that are important well. So you're talking about this whole reevaluate your current

00:41:04

obligations without that sunk cost bias, Mike. And we've talked about max stock this past weekend.

00:41:12

And at max stock, Mike and I actually got to meet each other finally in person, which was awesome.

00:41:17

And Mike was gracious enough to bring his wife along. And so I got to meet her and we had a great

00:41:24

time as well. So whenever you do this reevaluation of current obligations, Mike, I want you to build

00:41:29

on it and get her involved. Yeah, absolutely. I think she wants you to say no more.

00:41:34

Yeah, probably fair enough. So one of the things that I know, because I'm kind of the same,

00:41:43

Mike, I've got too much going on. And part of the reason I say you should do it with your wife is

00:41:48

that's what I did. Because I got done with this and immediately knew I've got a lot going on.

00:41:55

I know that my wife is one of her talents is discernment. She's very good about taking

00:42:02

a lot of options that are in front of you and then making a decision, a really wise decision

00:42:07

about it, which is frustrating at the same time. But she's very good at it. So I always enjoy

00:42:12

getting her perspective on on something. So I just took a lot of the big projects I've got going on

00:42:17

and put it in front of her and just like, let's just talk through this and work through it with

00:42:22

hers. Now, thankfully, she understands my business well enough in order to actually have those

00:42:26

conversations. But I did cut a few projects. It means firing a few clients and moving on.

00:42:34

But overall, I mean, it does free you up quite a bit. And at the same time, that gives you a lot

00:42:40

of freedom to go do the play thing. Yeah, that's a really important point that you bring up is the

00:42:47

power of agreement. And at the very end of the book, he talks about essentialism in the context

00:42:54

of a team. But I would argue that there is no more important team than you and your significant

00:42:59

other. And when you are in agreement about the things that are really important, that's when you

00:43:04

can really, as a team, create some momentum and take some action on those particular

00:43:09

projects and accomplish those goals. There's a principle called the two horse rule and the

00:43:16

math behind this can kind of be debated. But the principle definitely applies. If you have

00:43:22

one horse that can pull 300 pounds, a second horse that can pull 150 pounds,

00:43:27

together they can pull not 450 pounds, but something like 800 or 900 pounds. And there is a force

00:43:34

multiplier when you get those things moving in the same direction. And there have been times

00:43:39

where my wife and I were pulling in opposite directions. And we didn't even realize it.

00:43:45

Everything just got super hard. And then eventually, you know, enough,

00:43:49

when pain is sufficient, change will come. We sat down and we're like, why is this so difficult?

00:43:55

And we identified, well, she had been prioritizing this thing. I had been prioritizing that thing.

00:44:00

And when we got on the same page, and we said, as a family, this is the thing that is important

00:44:07

and pursued that together, that made everything so much smoother.

00:44:11

Yeah, the last last bit of the book here, he goes into the execute piece. So you got essence,

00:44:18

the exploration, eliminate, and then execute. For me, I went through this. And the very first

00:44:25

thing I wanted to do is what does my day look like? Because he's all about how do you,

00:44:30

how do you make execution effortless? How do you get it to where the stuff you're trying to work

00:44:37

on just happens automatically? And I think that's, it's awesome. But that's, you know, you and I

00:44:42

write about this all the time habits and how do you trick yourself into getting a lot of stuff done.

00:44:47

You go back to Kelly McGonigal's book and how do you build the willpower to get a lot of things

00:44:54

done in the day, beat your bad habits. It's all the tips and tricks stuff to convince yourself to

00:45:02

get the right essential stuff done. Did you, did that make you want to go through your whole daily

00:45:08

routine? Like, I just want to change everything now, which is a really bad idea. But it just made

00:45:14

me want to rethink everything. Yeah, that was one of my takeaways was to reevaluate my daily routines

00:45:20

and to decide what is actually essential there. But when I read that section, and I heard him talk

00:45:24

about execution, every time I heard the word execute, really what I thought of was systems.

00:45:30

So that's the efficiency mechanism, in my opinion, that makes that all work. And if you build up

00:45:39

the right systems, if you develop the right habits, the right rituals, the right routines,

00:45:44

that allows you to increase your capacity, I would say, not so you can just fill it up with more

00:45:53

stuff. Like I said, the default has to become no. But I would argue that when you have these

00:46:00

systems in place, your ability, the amount of resources that you have at your disposal to

00:46:06

throw at the things that are most essential goes up. And when that happens, you might find something

00:46:14

like this podcast, for example, which helps me synthesize these books that I'm reading,

00:46:20

which is part of my job at Asian efficiency, because the value that I bring to the organization is

00:46:26

when I learn this stuff, I apply it my own life, and then I teach it to other people.

00:46:30

So this is, I would argue that this is kind of like a system that allows me to get more done in

00:46:41

that other, like there's this crossover there, there's synergy there, there's the efforts that I

00:46:45

spend in prepping for this podcast. And I've been upfront with a lot of people who said you do most

00:46:51

of the work, all the editing and all that stuff. But that's the reason why I agreed to do this,

00:46:57

is because that this has benefits across the board, because all of those efforts, while they are

00:47:03

different, there are the clear lines or delineations between them, they are all moving in the same

00:47:10

general direction. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that, because I love this podcast, because

00:47:17

we think about you create a podcast, you kick it out, you try to get people excited about it,

00:47:23

you hope people listen to it, you just kind of wonder if there's a lot of people listening.

00:47:28

And I know there are, but when it really comes down to it, the core benefit that I find, Mike,

00:47:37

through this whole podcast is that you get to read a lot of interesting books,

00:47:41

which in and of itself can be extremely beneficial. There's a lot of benefits and

00:47:47

positives that come out of reading books, especially when you read this many. I mean,

00:47:52

if you're reading one every two weeks, you really, you go through a lot of books very quickly.

00:47:58

And if you're doing that, you're really filling your mind with a lot of awesome information. And

00:48:05

when you sit down to do this podcast and we record it and we're talking through it,

00:48:09

and this is what I got out of it, and this is what I'm thinking about it,

00:48:11

it gives you that secondary perspective on what the text says, which then gives you the ability

00:48:19

to do even more with it. So yeah, I mean, we do a lot with what we learn through, because I know

00:48:24

it's impacted like the blog posts that I write. So I'm sure it's affected your writing in some form.

00:48:30

But I know that as we process and as we think through these things, yes, there are a lot of

00:48:36

business benefits that come out of it, but there's a lot of things that are used and put into effect

00:48:43

simply from a daily life standpoint. I mean, look at what Greg's talking about, put your daily

00:48:49

routine together so that you can get stuff done. I mean, you go through all these books that we've

00:48:54

already been through, and there's a lot about how do you set aside all of the resistance, how you

00:48:59

set aside the difficulties within your own mind or in your environment so that you can focus on

00:49:04

the most important thing and get it done. I mean, what else is there to do in life? I mean, you're

00:49:09

all about setting your mission and let's go after it, and this is the tips and tricks you need to get

00:49:14

it done. Yeah, and I think that getting it done for the sake of getting it done kind of misses the

00:49:22

point. I think that when it comes to my own personal mission is to be better every day,

00:49:31

and I will never complete that project. It is a qualitative project, not a quantitative project,

00:49:40

if you want to define it as a project. If you figure out how to complete that when you let me know.

00:49:47

All right, I will. But when I was thinking about that in particular, as it applies to like, why do I

00:49:54

even read these books in the first place? It is because I want to benefit from these books. It's

00:49:59

not just to mark things off on a list. I want this stuff to impact my life, how I deal with

00:50:06

the things that I have to do, how I interact with the people that mean the most to me. I want that

00:50:11

to consistently be moving in the right direction. I don't want that to atrophy. I want it consistently

00:50:16

to be getting better. And I think that there's a very important mindset difference here. If you're

00:50:23

looking at checking things off of a list, I want to be able to do this, this and this, then the

00:50:28

natural solution to any resistance that you could encounter would be to throw more resources at the

00:50:36

problem. Okay, but he says in here, where did it go? He talked about how instead of throwing

00:50:46

resources at the problem, what we should be doing is we should be looking at how do I remove the

00:50:51

obstacle. And that's what I think this podcast has done for me is the goal is how do I synthesize

00:51:01

this material? How do I get the most out of it? Well, if I was just doing this, looking at this

00:51:07

through the lens of checking things off of a list and adding more resources, what I would do is,

00:51:12

I would try to increase the amount of time that I spend reading books. I would read more books. I

00:51:16

would listen to more podcasts, more audio books. But in order to be effective, I knew there needed

00:51:23

to be some synthesis that needed to take place. And the whole idea of a mastermind has been something

00:51:30

that I've been really interested in in a long time. So that's kind of what I view this as is like,

00:51:35

we can get together, we can talk about these things, we can throw things back and forth. I can

00:51:39

have you say, no, Mike, that's a terrible idea. I've done it this way and it doesn't work.

00:51:42

But that is the thing that makes a qualitative difference. And I just hope that that encourages

00:51:52

people who are listening to this. Like, when you are looking at something, don't necessarily look at

00:51:57

how do I overcome this? But how do I remove that obstacle? How do I make the journey?

00:52:02

I don't want to say easier. It's not really easier. It's just how do I decrease the amount of

00:52:07

resistance that I will encounter on this journey as I pursue the essential things.

00:52:12

And it's more rewarding. I think that's what you're getting at is that what the journey be

00:52:17

rewarding and don't just focus on the outcome. Is that what you're trying to say? Awesome.

00:52:21

Yeah, there we go.

00:52:22

Case study. There you go. Right there.

00:52:26

I think we've gone through looking at our notes. I think we've gone through all the action items.

00:52:34

Oh, save one. So on my end, one of the things that I've done, and this sounds bad,

00:52:40

and I'm just going to preface this with, I'm sorry, but there's a number, because I did kind of an

00:52:47

inventory of the people who I interact with and the folks that I associate with just in day-to-day

00:52:53

life and trying to evaluate whether or not people are... It just sounds terrible, Mike,

00:53:02

just talk about it this way. Just say it, just turn it.

00:53:05

Like a bambi. Right off. There you go. But it's one of the things where the people you associate

00:53:11

yourself with are the average of the people you associate with. That's who you become. And

00:53:16

the more I thought about the essentialism mindset of focusing and going deep on certain

00:53:22

friendships instead of trying to spread them all out and just trying to maintain a ton,

00:53:27

I really tried to narrow that down to a smaller group, which means that there are some of my

00:53:32

friends that I'm going to be limiting my time with to focus on some of these deeper relationships.

00:53:38

So I think there is some of that that this can easily spread into a lot of arenas. He talks about

00:53:46

that a lot. This is a mindset. This is a way of making decisions. Why I keep saying that? And

00:53:50

it's a way of thinking and a way of asking questions to bring you to... What's he called?

00:53:57

The highest level of contribution, I think is what he calls it? It's the less but more mindset.

00:54:04

But I think there's a lot of value in that in the long run.

00:54:08

I 100% agree. I kind of thought of it this way. If you were to spend an hour with 10 different

00:54:19

people throughout a week, you're going to get a little bit of benefit from those relationships.

00:54:24

But if you were to identify two people who really you click with and they help you do more and be

00:54:34

better, so to speak. They are the people that challenge you. They're the people that call you out.

00:54:39

They're the people that help you to be better and live more truthfully, live more true to your

00:54:46

calling. I would argue that if you were to spend five hours a week with those two people, it's the

00:54:50

same amount of time on the surface. But the amount of impact that that is going to have is going to

00:54:56

be significantly more just because you've kind of focused everything in the same general direction.

00:55:02

So he talks about the paradox of success, where the clarity of purpose leads to success leads to

00:55:08

new options and opportunities. And you end up doing too much of being spread too thin.

00:55:12

But I think kind of what you're talking about spending the time with the right people is kind

00:55:16

of an example or an to the exception, which is like success stacking, where you're doing

00:55:20

maybe multiple things and you're repurposing those essential few that leads to exponential

00:55:27

increase in results. And it sounds kind of mean to frame that when we're talking about people.

00:55:35

But it is, in my opinion, 100% true. You have to be careful who you're going to allow

00:55:40

speak into your life. I think the quote that you were looking for before was you are the average

00:55:43

of the five people you spend the most time with, which I've heard John Lee Dumas say. I don't know

00:55:47

who originally said it. But yeah, I've had to do that too. I've had to reevaluate who am I going

00:55:52

to let speak into my life? And more and more, it's not who it has traditionally been. And that's why

00:55:59

the reevaluation consistent reevaluation is so important that I think is my big takeaway

00:56:05

is that you can never 100% say, okay, I've got this completely figured out that this is a process.

00:56:12

And that's why I say I'd be happy to reread this book again, because I think what is essential to

00:56:17

me now will be different than what is essential in a year. Maybe it's a little bit more focused.

00:56:22

Maybe it's something completely different. Well, yeah, I mean, you're going to have a lot of

00:56:26

experiences between now and then it just changes the way you look at things. And whenever you come

00:56:31

back and read it again, it's just a different perspective on it. And that's just the way it works. So

00:56:35

Mike, you and I could talk about this thing for a long time, I think. But I'm looking at the clock.

00:56:41

We're going to need to wrap this up. But again, we could talk about this for a long time. It's just

00:56:46

a great book. And it's one that I know I've already recommended it to a couple people who

00:56:52

are struggling to make decisions on what specific projects and what specific things should they

00:56:59

be working on. So I've already recommended it to a couple of people. So for the listeners,

00:57:03

again, we recommend this one, at least I would. And with that, I feel like this one

00:57:10

from a rating standpoint, I'm going to jump into that piece here. But I would put this at a five

00:57:16

because I know that this has had a huge impact on me as far as how I make decisions. There's a

00:57:22

lot of the previous books that we've read, Mike, that can impact the way you think and can give you

00:57:28

a different perspective on things. But for me, this one had significantly more actionable content in

00:57:35

it that I could immediately put into effect. And I think that was something that really had a

00:57:40

big impact on me. I agree. And if I would have read it, if I would have rated it, after I read

00:57:48

it the first time, I would have given it five stars as well. But I'm going to say 4.5. And this is

00:57:53

the only reason why it's not because there is anything in the book that I disagreed with. But

00:57:58

it was because as I read it this second time, I found that I actually had a lot more questions.

00:58:04

And if I could take Greg out for coffee and talk to him for an hour, I'm sure he would be able to

00:58:10

resolve some of these discrepancies that are in my head right now. But I just didn't quite get to

00:58:18

the point where in my mind, all the eyes were dotted, all the teas were crossed. Still a phenomenal book.

00:58:26

Does he answer any of those questions on the Asian efficiency podcast?

00:58:30

Kind of like one of the things that he said there was he has an acronym,

00:58:38

Win, which stands for what's important now. I think if you were to boil down essentialism,

00:58:42

just ask that question that would maybe not fall into the specific mold that he's outlined so

00:58:50

strongly in the book. But I get it. I know who he's writing this book too, because I was that

00:58:55

guy the first time that I read it. But now having read it the second time, I still think that there's

00:59:00

some additional ground to take here. And then another thing that he said, I know he talked a

00:59:05

little bit about it in the book, but he really kind of expounded on it was make the slowest thing

00:59:11

go faster. I think he put it another way as like find the Herbie. He's talking about the Boy Scout

00:59:16

troop. So if you haven't read the book, the basic idea is that there's a if you have a system,

00:59:22

you have a bunch of people who are all moving in the same direction. If you make the slowest

00:59:26

person go faster and spread out the weight amongst the other people who are already moving a little

00:59:31

bit faster than the whole group will accelerate. And that is systems in my opinion. And that just

00:59:37

kind of illustrates the point. And this is why I say if I actually could get coffee with Greg,

00:59:41

I'm sure he would clarify this. But he doesn't explicitly say it in the book.

00:59:46

Kind of my experience though is that it's okay to do more if you have if the if the trip takes

00:59:53

two hours instead of four, because you've created the systems to do these things more

00:59:57

efficiently, then you have more in the tank, you can add more essential items would be my argument.

01:00:04

Now obviously I'm putting words in the mouth of Greg, but I kind of think that he would agree with

01:00:08

that. I think you're getting at the mindset of putting a lot of extra work up front so that you

01:00:14

can do more later. Exactly. Because I know I do that all the time. Where do you think a lot of

01:00:20

my scripts come from? Like I even wrote a script. I should I should link to this mic. I have a script

01:00:24

for reading books. It's awesome. So if you're an omni-focused user, I have a script for you. I'll

01:00:29

link to it in the show notes. You'll like it. So what's coming up, Mike? What's on the list of

01:00:34

what are the next books coming down the pipeline? Well, the next book, and maybe we should have

01:00:41

switched these around a little bit. I think this one's probably going to be very similar,

01:00:45

is The More of Less by Joshua Becker, which is a book that I have heard a lot about.

01:00:50

Joshua Becker has been on the productivity show podcast. I think he spoke at the Think Better,

01:00:54

Live Better event. I've just heard a lot of great things about his work and I'm excited to dive into

01:01:01

that one. Yeah, and then following that, so that one's Mike's pick. The one following that I've

01:01:08

picked up, Deep Work. And this one kind of plays into the focus bit, I think. There's a lot of

01:01:17

people that have read it and it's got a decent amount of hype around it right now. And there's a

01:01:21

lot of that that I'm just curious about. So I'm interested in Cal Newport and how he comes at

01:01:28

that thing. I've recently subscribed to his blog and he has a lot of really good stuff there. So

01:01:31

I'm interested in seeing what his latest book is all about. So Mike, I did a little bit of work

01:01:38

on some stuff on the website. I don't think I told you about some of this. I'm sorry.

01:01:42

But I... You're telling me now? Maybe this is confession. I don't know. But as a developer,

01:01:51

and since I kind of control the bookworm.fm website, I made a list of books on the site. So if you

01:02:01

got a bookworm.fm/list, there is a list of all the books that we've read followed by a list of

01:02:10

the books that we're planning to read, followed by a list of the books that have been recommended.

01:02:15

So there's a way for you to see all three of those and it's without any of the show notes or

01:02:20

anything. It's just the pure list with links on the ones that we've already done. So if that makes

01:02:27

sense, if you can follow me on that. But anyway, it's a list of the books that are important to

01:02:32

bookworm. And as a part of that, we are really interested in your recommendations. So as we were

01:02:39

talking about with the brain chain piece, you know, I think that one probably is going to come up

01:02:43

here pretty quick. So if you have a recommendation, you want to... You've got your favorite book and

01:02:48

you don't see it on that list. Go ahead and hit that button, fill out the form. It'll hit my email,

01:02:52

which don't expect a fast response, but it will get there. And then... You want to add to Joe's

01:03:00

Joe's complex. Go ahead and recommend a book. I think I need to move to forms and just don't

01:03:06

get about the actual address. Maybe that'll help. I don't know. I'll let you handle it. Maybe that

01:03:11

will help me. You may not like that. Anyway, so you can recommend a book out there. The last thing

01:03:18

and then you've got one I think you want to talk about. But I actually made a list of authors on

01:03:23

Twitter. So the whole Twitter list thing. There are a number of the authors that we have read that

01:03:30

are on Twitter. So I just made a public list there. So if you want to follow a subscribe to that list,

01:03:36

you can do that and see what all these authors are currently working on. So I don't know if that's

01:03:42

any of any interest, but it was pretty easy and I thought it would be kind of fun. So there you go.

01:03:46

And then you want to talk about remarks? Sure. So we are going to try something new

01:03:54

for our podcast book club. There's an app called Remarks, the website is remarks.fm.

01:04:01

And the idea is that it is a social podcast player. And you can comment on any of the episodes

01:04:10

and it'll have the time code there. So if you want to join in the discussion,

01:04:15

you can leave a comment on remarks. And then I believe as the host that we can

01:04:22

either log in or we get notified whenever people leave comments so we can respond.

01:04:27

Hopefully it'll be a way that we can interact with our listeners. But it's kind of an experiment.

01:04:34

So we're not, I think it's safe to say we're not really committing to this 100%. But if you

01:04:40

want to check it out, it might be a cool way to work together as we read through these books.

01:04:46

Yeah, I think it's interesting. It's an interesting platform to

01:04:50

basically leave comments on something midstream. So if you're listening to a podcast and

01:04:57

we say something that you think is completely off base, you can argue with us on there.

01:05:02

It's awesome. Yeah, you could call us out right at that exact timestamp. So I think it's interesting.

01:05:09

And I think they've got us as verified hosts of bookworm on their platform. So I think that

01:05:16

that'll be interesting. I'm curious to see how that plays out. So if you're into that kind of

01:05:20

thing, go check out remarks.fm. There's an app on the app store for it as well. I can link to all

01:05:25

this stuff in the show notes, all this the book list, recommend a book list of authors, remarks,

01:05:31

I'll link to all that in the show notes. So it should be interesting. I think there's a lot going

01:05:36

on. I know there's a lot of people starting to interact, especially with us on the Twitter feed.

01:05:41

So it's kind of cool. It's fun to see how people are interacting with it.

01:05:44

Definitely. And one thing that we would really appreciate is if you would go to iTunes and leave

01:05:52

us a review, if you do like the podcast, we love a five star review. But even if you hate the podcast,

01:05:57

let us know what we can do better. We like constructive criticism.

01:06:03

Yeah. Like Mike said, go check out iTunes and we will see you all next time.