Bookworm Transcripts

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I'm still tired, Mike.

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Yeah.

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Coming from Max-Tock?

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I am in a pretty severe way, too.

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Well, you had quite a drive.

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Yeah.

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Well, all right.

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So buddy of mine, Justin, drove down.

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It was three hours for him to drive down.

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He stayed at my place Thursday night and had a great time.

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We got a chance to spend a little bit of time just the two of us just talking through.

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He does some work for me.

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So it's kind of a fun deal there.

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But then we drove to pick up Josh, another friend, which is an hour 15-minute drive.

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And then from his place to Max-Tock, I want to say it was six hours, six and a half hours

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somewhere in there.

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Then we had Max-Tock, of course.

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But then you flip and repeat it coming back.

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And as of this morning, I am finally recovered from this past weekend.

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And it's been quite the deal.

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Partially because my schedule was so thrown off, I got a migraine yesterday and fought

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it all day.

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So the joys of doing fun events.

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And I knew I was going to have to pay for things a little bit.

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Anytime I go out of my normal routines, I always have to deal with something.

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But I would gladly do it again.

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It was well worth the trip.

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I think anyone should go.

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So next year, 2019, I got the dates.

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I got them out of mic.

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Did he announce those dates at the end of?

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Because I didn't get to stay till the whole thing.

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I'll tell you the truth.

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I'm not sure.

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I spent most of Sunday afternoon chatting with people.

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And then I took off before the love notes to Newton.

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We were hanging out with JF and we went to Woodstock, just walked around and then got

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dinner with Don McAllister, David Sparks, Kelly Gamont, Gene McDonald, and a few other

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folks before we headed back Sunday night.

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But we had about a three hour drive.

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So a lot shorter than yours, but I was still spent by the end.

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I've noticed that the further I can spread out those long drives, the better, which is

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part of the reason that my wife and I go down there early.

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Although we think we're going to flip that next year.

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We're going to just stay later.

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Because if I'm, well, I mean, this year I was presenting and I did a pretty good job

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of compartmentalizing that and getting all my stuff done before we got down there.

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But still you're thinking about, well, I have to present twice on Saturday.

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So you can't really relax.

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By the time it was over, then I finally feel like I can relax.

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Plus you're taking in so much information.

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You learn from all these really smart people.

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And it's a lot just to process it all.

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And by the time the event's over, which it's only two days, you feel like you've been drinking

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from the fire hose and it's a little overwhelming.

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But it's a ton of fun.

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It was great to see you again.

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It was fun to meet a friend of the podcast, Justin and friend of the podcast, Josh.

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And a whole bunch of other people.

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So it was really cool.

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Yeah, for sure.

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No, I gladly do it again.

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And I just looked it up.

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So dates for 2019.

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All right.

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So if you're listening to this, you need to go, you know, put this on your calendar

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because you should come see us next year.

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July 27 and 28 is when they have it in 2019.

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And I should put a disclaimer out here.

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Like this is why I was interested in getting this because next year, July 18 is my wife

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and I is anniversary.

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Becky and I next year will be our 10 year anniversary.

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So we're planning like this one week, get away from the kids and go up in the mountains

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and go hiking and stuff.

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So we've been trying to figure out when to do that, but Mac stock is always like right

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on the line of where our anniversary lands.

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So I'm always on this delicate balance of can I go or not depending on if it hits our

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anniversary.

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So that's why I was trying to figure out.

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Okay, well, when is this and then we'll plan our week depending on when Mac stock is.

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So my anniversary trip for our 10 year is being moved dependent on Mac stock for next

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year.

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Nice.

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You should get Becky to come with.

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There's no mountains to hike down in Woodstock, Illinois.

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True.

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Rachel comes and she has a blast.

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She's definitely not an Uber Mac nerd.

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I know.

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I know.

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I told her she should come and then, you know, her and Rachel can hang out though.

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I'm not sure how I feel about that.

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I don't know if that's a good thing to encourage or not.

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Actually, if Josh is involved.

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That's true.

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Fun time.

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So yes, join us for Mac stock next year.

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Definitely.

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Another point of follow up here.

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We had bookworm shirts that have gone to print as this is published.

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We've still got about 24 hours left as we're recording this, but they've gone really well.

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We've sold 37 so far.

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I'm hoping to get to 50, but that's already better than Austin Clian, which I said last

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episode.

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That's the one I wanted to beat.

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Sorry, Austin.

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Well, he's sold more lifetime than we had.

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No, don't bring this up.

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Uh-uh.

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No, we beat him.

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Okay, fine.

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We beat him.

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No hard feelings.

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But yeah, these are sweet.

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There's T-shirts and sweatshirts.

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So thank you to everybody who supported the podcast and bought a shirt.

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You're going to get bookmarks and stickers too.

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But this was a fun thing to do and I can't wait to get my swag.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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And I have a whole bunch of bookmarks and stickers here thanks to you.

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Todd, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

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I meant to give you a whole other thing of bookmarks before you left, but I forgot.

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See?

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I got lucky.

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I kid you not.

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I came home with those and my wife was like, "Well, I guess you could put some in all the

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kids' books and stuff where we have."

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Because I'm reading the Chronicles in Narnia grouping of books for my girls, but we just

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had like a note card or something in there.

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So I pulled the note card out and put a bookworm bookmark in there.

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And then I realized, "Oh, wait.

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I usually have two different places in my Bible that I'm maintaining at one place, but

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I only have one of the ribbon bookmarks in my Bible."

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I was like, "Well, perfect.

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I'll put one of these bookworm bookmarks in that as well."

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And then my wife was like, "Well, you guys will swap it out in the book that I'm reading."

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So I swapped hers out at the same time.

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And then they're also reading a book for our oldest for her school.

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They read a long form book as well.

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So I went and swapped that bookmark out too.

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So bookworm bookmarks all over the Beelock household right now.

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And now I'm still looking for people to give them to.

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So if you need one and you're in my area, come see me.

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Mike has loaded me up.

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Yes.

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We have many, many bookmarks.

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Well, when you run out, let me know.

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I've got more.

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All right, should we get to action items from the last episode?

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Yes.

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All right.

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So I've got three of them.

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And I think we can go through these fairly quickly.

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My first one is consider how I can redesign my work.

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And that's kind of general and vague.

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But the basic idea from the previous book we did, "Great at Work" by Morton Hanson,

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was to figure out the things that you can do that really hit the mark.

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That's my synopsis of it anyways.

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And so when I was thinking about how can I redesign my work that kind of ties into the

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next action item here, which is to make a list of things I shouldn't be doing, there's

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a lot of stuff that I do pertaining to the work that I do.

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And I recognize that the things that I'm really good at, the things that are kind of in line

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with my unique ability are the content creation things.

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And so a lot of the admin type stuff, that's things that I really shouldn't be doing.

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And I've got a running list of things I shouldn't be doing.

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I keep adding to it.

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It's actually kind of fun.

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And then the challenge there is, okay, so if I shouldn't be doing this thing, it still

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needs to get done.

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How can I figure out a way that this can get done?

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Do I delegate it to somebody else?

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If I'm going to do that, I have to create a whole process for it to make sure that they

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can do it successfully.

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Yadda yadda yadda.

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But this has been a really cool action item.

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I don't seem myself stopping doing this anytime soon.

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This is kind of in line, by the way, with the questions I mentioned regarding the personal

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retreat, the thinking day.

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What should I start doing?

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What should I stop doing?

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What should I keep doing?

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This is what should I stop doing, in my opinion?

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And this is also part of the thing that my wife and I do whenever we have our family

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meetings every week, we ask those same questions.

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And so it's kind of always at the front of my mind is like, what should I not be doing?

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And then taking action and stopping doing those things, that's actually really fun

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and exciting.

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Interesting.

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As you're talking, I was creating a new list in OmniFocus called Stop Doing.

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I'm going to try this.

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There you go.

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That's right.

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You're back on OmniFocus.

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You enjoying your OmniFocus mug that I brought you?

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I am.

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So Mike bought me an OmniFocus coffee mug and I used it yesterday morning and my wife

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goes, what is that?

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It's like it's my OmniFocus mug that Mike got me.

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She's like, of course you have an OmniFocus mug now.

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Absolutely.

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Yep.

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Very much appreciated.

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Love that mug.

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It's one of my favorites now.

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Nice.

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I'm not sure if this is like an open ended thing.

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I found that on societysix.com, they've got a couple things that they are doing.

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Like the Omni Group themselves has a campaign that does it.

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And society six is kind of like Cotton Bureau, except it's always open and you can do different

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artsy things.

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Like some stickers or templates, just things like that as well.

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But I saw the mug and I was like, oh, this is perfect.

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I got to get this for Joe.

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I appreciate it.

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I have one as well.

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Hey, I figured you did.

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My last action item here is to ask open ended questions.

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And this is something that I have done.

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And it's something that I will continue to try to do.

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But I've noticed this myself just in like the meetings that I've been involved in since

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we read that book, asking these and just waiting for people to come up with an answer.

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And at first, there's always some awkward silence because people don't like being put

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on the spot, especially like some of the team meetings that I've been involved in.

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They tend to be led/dominated by a couple of personalities a lot of times.

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And it's really easy for people to show up, like not even say hi because that's just

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not the way that they do it, even though it's a Skype call, like that's kind of standard

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protocol.

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Everybody says hi at the beginning.

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But there are literally people in some of these meetings that will show up and not say

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a single word and then sign off at the end.

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And so I've been trying to flip the tables a little bit and ask these questions and even

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call out people who I know haven't contributed in a while and be like, hey, so Brian, what

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do you think about this?

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What's your opinion?

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What should we do to solve this problem?

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And I just think that that's providing value on so many levels.

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And that kind of ties into one of the gap books that I had read recently, which is No

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Film Meetings, I think, by Michael Hyatt.

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Short little book, but it talked to this as well.

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So these open-ended questions, that's one place that I've been asking them.

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And then also I'm asking them to know myself when I do like the personal retreat, thinking

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day, asking those questions, what should I start doing, stop doing, keep doing.

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Those are kind of open-ended questions.

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I mean, they're very specific.

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It's not the same type of question necessarily that you get in those meetings.

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But I'm just looking for as many opportunities as I can to do this sort of thing.

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And just in my mind, when I say open-ended questions, there is no right or wrong answer.

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It's not a simple process.

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It's just like, throw this out there.

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And then whatever comes back is acceptable responses sort of a thing.

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Yeah, I like this.

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I read the book, maybe we should do this for the show at some point, Mike.

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I read the book Quiet by Susan Kane, which is all about introverts.

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And one of the aspects of that was with meetings asking questions and then requiring everyone

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to answer them, which some introverts, I'm sure, whenever I said that just kind of cringe,

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like, no, don't do that.

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That might be your reaction.

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But honestly, that's probably one of the best things you can do is pinpoint people and

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say, hey, what do you think about this?

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Because most of the time, you know, someone has an opinion.

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They're just a little nervous about saying it.

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Yep, totally.

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All right.

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So you got some action items?

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I do.

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And I've actually gotten worse on the first one.

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That's not good.

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Go figure.

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The first one here is never be the bottleneck.

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And the intent here is that I'm not the one holding up the work being done in my business

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since I have other people who are doing things for me.

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And thanks to Max Doc, though, I love it.

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I am now quite behind.

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And now quite the bottleneck.

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So I'm trying to catch up with them and trying to get back on top of things there.

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And it's not actually going to get better for a little while because I'm leaving tomorrow

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on a camping trip and won't be back until Monday.

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So it's way ghosts.

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So I think, you know, if anything, this has been a good time for me to do this because

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I think it's taught me a lot about, you know, I really do need to figure this out.

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Like I need to get my act together on this, if you will, just because I know that I shouldn't

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be the one that's holding things up.

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And yet it seems like I always am.

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So I'm still working on it.

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You got this, Joe.

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You got this.

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Thanks.

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Thanks for the thanks to the rally cry there.

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Number two, measure project time start to finish.

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I built the systems for this to help track it.

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I don't have anything to report on it at the moment other than the logging systems are

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now completely automatic such that I know when things start, I know when they finish

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and then it creates reports automatically to tell me how did it work out.

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But I've only had like three projects finish up in that amount of time.

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So I don't really know, like is, you know, it's not enough to tell me, are we in a good

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place or are we in a bad place?

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Is it getting shorter?

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Is it getting longer?

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Like I don't know any of that.

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I just know raw data at this moment.

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So it's in place.

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So I'm measuring it.

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So I'm going to say that's quote unquote done, but the analysis of it needs to be done

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yet.

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Yeah, I was going to say, what's the goal here just to evaluate whether this project was

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successful unsuccessful?

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Well, the intent was because the thing that I know is with my business, the key is starting

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projects and finishing them.

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And it's pretty easy for me to get projects started.

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But once they're started, it's always this dance of trying to get information and trying

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to get, you know, all the code written and getting deployments done and making sure all

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the little tiny details are completed.

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Like that gets to be and can be like months long.

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And the hope is to get this down to where it's like three to four weeks start to finish

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on most projects.

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Like that's the goal.

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But I don't really know what my baseline is right now.

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Are we talking about we're taking three months down to three weeks?

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Like that seems ridiculous to try to do that.

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But you know, that's that's kind of what I'm trying to do.

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Gotcha.

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So that's number two.

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And then the last one here is build better segmentation in my day.

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And the intent here is to it's kind of like the batching thing where I'm batching the

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types of work and the areas that I'm working on.

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So I'll have things that I'm doing for say the productivity guild or I'm working on things

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for whims at work or bookworm like the podcasts or I'm doing stuff for pro course my business.

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Like I've got these different areas, but I have a tendency to like sprinkle the work

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around on each of those and, you know, work on the podcast and then shift over to pro

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course and then come back to the guild for a little while.

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Like I have a tendency to jump back and forth.

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So I've been trying to like block the whole time blocking thing on when am I going to

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work on different pieces.

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It's been going okay.

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Like it's it's getting there.

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I think my habits are in a bad place.

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There's there's your segue for today's book nicely done.

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I feel like my routines I was even trying.

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I was just kind of happened.

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Whoops.

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You know, I feel like I've got these, you know, routines that put me in a bad place without

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even realizing it, which is partly why I chose today's book.

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So, you know, I'll just I'll just take the segue.

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I'll just take it.

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You know, it's it's sitting right there.

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Do it.

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Today's book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig.

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This is one that's been on my list, Mike, for probably about two years now, I think.

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I don't even know when it came out.

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I'm 14.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, three years old.

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So it's been out for a little while, but not super long, but I know it's been one that

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I've been wanting to go through for a long time because I refer to my habits a lot.

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And I know that so much of what I do is habit driven that I just wanted to understand it

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more.

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People talk about this book.

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It's a New York Times bestseller.

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People rave about it.

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I can see why.

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But it's one that I really enjoyed.

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I'm glad we read it and I have a lot of habits.

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I feel like I want to tweak now.

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All right, me too.

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So let's let's jump in here.

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All right.

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Part the book is broken down into three different parts, which I'm sure we'll we'll talk about

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these.

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Part one is the habits of individuals.

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Part two is the habits of successful organizations.

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And part three is the habits of society.

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There's a couple chapters in each one of these sections.

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The part that you were talking about, which was my initial draw to the book as well in

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terms of like, okay, so this is going to tell me how habits work.

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It's going to tell me how I can implement habits in my own life to be more successful,

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achieve my goals, whatever, fill in the blank.

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Okay, cool.

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Yes.

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You know, you read section or part one and you're like, yeah, this is this is speaking

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right to me.

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And then they kind of lost me in part two and part three.

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Now I also want to say that it's hard.

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It was really hard for me to follow this book because Charles Duhigg is obviously a very

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smart guy, but there are so many stories in here and they are all interwoven and he's

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jumping back and forth between the different ones.

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And I found myself like getting them mixed up and getting lost in them.

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So each one of these chapters, for example, chapter one, he's got these Roman numerals,

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which will show like the different sections within that chapter.

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And sometimes he'll have a sentence which transitions from one story to the next.

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Other times he'll just jump from them and then he tries to like bring them all together

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to a crescendo and makes like one encompassing statement at the end.

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Sometimes that worked in my brain.

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Sometimes it didn't.

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Did you have the same response?

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Yeah, I was going through the stories and I love the stories.

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Like the stories themselves were kind of cool.

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Yeah.

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Save target.

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We'll get there later.

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Target is creepy.

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Oh, but don't at me.

00:19:05

But the stories were helpful in understanding, I think, each of those concepts, but trying

00:19:12

to get a grasp on what the concept was, each time kind of got messy for me.

00:19:18

Yeah.

00:19:19

And I also felt like there were some cases like I remember one, the story took I think

00:19:24

eight pages to get through the single story to illustrate a point that he didn't summarize.

00:19:32

And I should, I don't know where it was now, that would be helpful to know, Mike, but I

00:19:36

can't place it.

00:19:39

But it was a long story even for a longer book's stance.

00:19:44

But I'm with you.

00:19:46

It was tough to follow sometimes.

00:19:49

I think part one, I believe I finished part one in about one evening just because I was

00:19:57

so fascinated by it.

00:20:00

But I'm with you when part two and part three came around, okay.

00:20:04

Can you go back to me individually now?

00:20:08

And I'm sure part of that is our perspective as quote unquote, independent knowledge workers.

00:20:15

We're not part of a huge organization and there's a bunch of people above us on the

00:20:20

food chain and we're trying to figure out how to affect the change we want in the organization

00:20:24

by manipulating the habits of the people above us.

00:20:28

So I can see how that might be useful information.

00:20:32

But yeah, I had the same reaction.

00:20:33

So there's in chapter one, he explains the habit loop, which is the cue, the routine

00:20:39

and the reward.

00:20:40

And I'm not sure.

00:20:41

Do you want to dive into that right now?

00:20:43

Sure.

00:20:44

I mean, the concept here is there's three aspects to a habit that Mike just explained.

00:20:49

So the cue, what triggers the habit, the routine, the habit itself and the reward, the positive

00:20:56

feeling or thing that you receive as a result of having done the habit.

00:21:02

Now I'm trying to think of a good example.

00:21:04

Let's call it breakfast.

00:21:06

So for me, you know, here's here's my habit.

00:21:09

I come downstairs in the morning after having taken a shower and gotten dressed for the

00:21:13

day.

00:21:14

I come down the stairs and my instant cue is I'm now downstairs in the kitchen.

00:21:19

So my cue tells me that, okay, well, now I need to start the tea kettle for the water

00:21:25

for my coffee.

00:21:26

And then I start my egg pan.

00:21:28

And then once I've done that, I have this whole series of things that I do to make sure

00:21:33

I made coffee and I've made my eggs for the morning.

00:21:35

And then I get to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee with my eggs.

00:21:38

That's the reward piece.

00:21:39

So the cue there is me coming down the stairs into the kitchen, the routine being making

00:21:45

my breakfast and coffee and then the reward being able to enjoy that meal.

00:21:49

So you kind of get that now.

00:21:50

That's a very dumb down version, I think.

00:21:52

Like that's a very simple.

00:21:54

I mean, they can get pretty intense and very subtle with what the reward itself is.

00:22:01

Even with some detrimental things, I'm probably not a good one to talk about some of the addictive

00:22:07

behaviors that have quote unquote positive feelings, those rewards, things like smoking

00:22:14

cigarettes and doing drugs and stuff.

00:22:15

Like those do have positive feelings to them.

00:22:18

And that's why people continue down those addictive habit trails.

00:22:23

But that's the process, is that cue routine and reward process.

00:22:26

Yeah.

00:22:27

And the interesting part that he lays out at the beginning of this book and really carries

00:22:31

it through to the end is that without these habit loops, your brain would essentially

00:22:36

shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of your day to day life.

00:22:40

In fact, in a Duke university study, he mentions at the very beginning 40% of our actions

00:22:44

aren't actual decisions as we go about our day, but they're habits that we've created.

00:22:49

And so by understanding this habit loop and learning to observe the cues and the rewards,

00:22:58

we can change and manipulate the routine so that they're positive instead of negative.

00:23:02

And so like you had mentioned, smoking and drinking, like this is what Alcoholics Anonymous

00:23:06

is built off of is this cue routine reward.

00:23:11

And he gets into this in chapter three.

00:23:14

But all they're doing is they are substituting the routine of going to the bar and having

00:23:18

a drink and still maintaining the same cue and the reward.

00:23:22

And so he's got this little graphic of the habit loop that he introduces in chapter one.

00:23:26

He uses different versions of this to explain the different stories that he shares over

00:23:29

and over and over again.

00:23:31

But if you understand this simple mental model, like you can kind of plug this in and apply

00:23:36

it to a lot of different situations like you said in your life.

00:23:40

What's interesting about this is, and he starts the book off really strongly by telling the

00:23:44

story of Eugene who had major brain damage and his memory was completely gone based on

00:23:51

the part of the brain that he had lost.

00:23:54

But he could still perform his daily habits and even establish new habits like going for

00:23:59

a walk, which was crazy because according to the physiology, you know, he shouldn't be

00:24:03

able to do any of this stuff.

00:24:05

But he's he's managing to do it anyways, like he's cooking himself breakfast.

00:24:09

He's going for a walk.

00:24:11

He's got like his whole day to day routine and basically the doctors are like, how in

00:24:16

the world is he doing this?

00:24:17

Like the part of the brain that he would use to do these sorts of things isn't there.

00:24:21

And really what they identified was that it's the power of these habits that have been

00:24:27

ingrained.

00:24:28

And also in this section, he talks a little bit about chunking, which we learned about

00:24:33

in in peak.

00:24:34

This is an interesting idea because chunking is the process in which the brain converts

00:24:38

a sequence of actions into an automatic routine.

00:24:41

So even though his I forget what part of the brain it was that he had removed, but like

00:24:47

even though he didn't have that part of his brain anymore, his brain was still able to

00:24:51

apply this idea of chunking to create these new habits.

00:24:56

And this is applicable to everybody because these habits are what allow our brain the

00:25:02

basically your brain is always looking for ways to save energy.

00:25:06

And so it's going to flip into these habit loops whenever it can.

00:25:10

And he's got examples of like the rats in the maze who are trying to get the chocolate

00:25:14

and the monkeys who are trying to get the grape juice and they're measuring their mental

00:25:18

activity.

00:25:19

And what they're recognizing is that it spikes when they are anticipating the reward, but

00:25:26

the routine itself, that doesn't consume a whole lot of mental energy.

00:25:30

And so if you're going to get like one thing out of this book, it's that and then you can

00:25:35

figure out how to apply that to your your own life.

00:25:37

You don't need to read part two or part three.

00:25:39

I thought Eugene's story was interesting because they would ask him like, can you tell me where

00:25:46

the kitchen is?

00:25:47

I was like, well, they had moved to a different house.

00:25:49

He was like, no, I don't, I don't know where the kitchen is.

00:25:52

And just a couple minutes later, they would ask him, are you hungry?

00:25:55

Like, why don't you go get a snack?

00:25:57

And he would walk straight to the kitchen, open the cupboard and grab a can of nuts for

00:26:02

a snack.

00:26:03

It's like, well, he didn't even know where the kitchen was, let alone snacks in the kitchen.

00:26:08

Like, he didn't even, yeah, it was so interesting to see like, okay, well, he knows these habits.

00:26:13

Like, he knows his way there, but he can't tell you his way there.

00:26:17

Yep.

00:26:18

But they had a bunch of tests like that where they would ask him, do you know how you're

00:26:21

doing this?

00:26:22

No, it's weird.

00:26:23

I'm just guessing and it's coming out right all the time.

00:26:27

Well, you know this by building habits.

00:26:30

Like, it's just happened over and over and over again.

00:26:33

Yeah.

00:26:34

And so you don't have to be Eugene trying to survive.

00:26:36

You can be Joe or Mike or anybody else just trying to figure out how to manipulate your

00:26:42

systems of your life so that it's a little bit easier, a little bit more efficient.

00:26:46

You don't have to do the things that you don't want to do.

00:26:48

You know, you're, you have more in the tank for the things that you do want to do.

00:26:52

And that's kind of where chapter two comes in, the craving brain, because habits are formed

00:26:57

when your brain anticipates the reward.

00:27:00

So with Eugene's example, what's triggering that, maybe it's the doctor or whoever's saying,

00:27:06

are you hungry, but I could just be an ad that he sees on TV or the fact that the radio's

00:27:12

pulling in the background.

00:27:13

Like these, these things could all be cues.

00:27:16

And then your brain is anticipating that reward.

00:27:19

That creates the craving, which is what drives the habits.

00:27:22

And so if you want to quote, unquote, hack your habits, what you need to do is figure

00:27:25

out how to spark those cravings, which makes creating the habits even easier.

00:27:30

And you can do this personally, but there are people and companies that do this on a

00:27:35

large scale too.

00:27:37

In this chapter two, he shares a couple different stories of Pepsadint and Febreze.

00:27:43

So Pepsadint was the toothpaste.

00:27:46

And really what they, what they did is they created this toothpaste, but it, it, the thing

00:27:53

that made it stick, the thing that caused homes with toothpaste to rise from 7% to 65%

00:27:58

with Pepsadint was this trigger by a cue.

00:28:02

So what they did is they put like, I'm not sure what exactly it was, but it, it, it,

00:28:08

it caused your, the toothpaste to like tingle on your teeth.

00:28:11

It's a little bit of a reaction that your teeth have and has nothing to do with the

00:28:15

toothpaste ability to actually clean the teeth.

00:28:18

But that feeling is the thing that people anticipated and they, that's what they wanted, was that,

00:28:25

that was their reward.

00:28:26

The feeling that their teeth were clean, even whether they were clean or not.

00:28:29

And then that's the thing that got it to stick.

00:28:31

And made it feel clean.

00:28:33

Febreze too.

00:28:34

I mean, they, they had this awesome product, which they tested with this person and they're

00:28:39

like, oh my gosh, this changed my life because she was like a ranger and she was working

00:28:44

outside with animals and skunks and stuff.

00:28:47

And she was like, I just want to have a normal life.

00:28:49

I want to date somebody.

00:28:51

But they, they come back to my place.

00:28:52

They can smell the skunks and they, they bail.

00:28:54

So she's like in tears saying like this, the spray that they made to eliminate odors.

00:29:00

This is going to change my entire life, but they couldn't get other people to adopt it.

00:29:04

And really what they had to do was change the way that it was perceived.

00:29:09

So yeah, it got rid of the, the stink in a room, but really what they, what they did

00:29:12

is they showed people spraying it after they had cleaned their room.

00:29:16

So it wasn't the fact that the, the room stunk and they needed the spray.

00:29:20

They just used it as a reward for, okay, now my room is clean and people felt good about

00:29:24

that.

00:29:25

And that's what caused it to, to catch on.

00:29:26

It's, it's kind of crazy when you think about it because it has nothing to do with the quote

00:29:31

unquote value proposition of the product itself.

00:29:33

They had to position it a totally different way, kind of like a frivolous thing in order

00:29:37

to get people to buy it.

00:29:39

Yeah.

00:29:40

And this, this plays in a little bit to like how to change a habit.

00:29:45

Which I think is interesting.

00:29:46

You know, if, if you're doing something and you want to, you want to break a habit or

00:29:51

you want to change it, what they tell you is to take the cue, you know, the thing that

00:29:57

triggers that routine, leave the cue the same, change the routine and try to maintain your

00:30:05

reward.

00:30:06

So the only thing that changes is that middle piece.

00:30:10

And when you're talking about this in your personal life, like that makes a lot of sense

00:30:15

and it can be fairly easy.

00:30:16

Like if I want to change it, my morning routine, like I could change it to where when I come

00:30:19

downstairs into the kitchen, I go for a run and then I come back and enjoy the feeling

00:30:25

of having gone for a run.

00:30:26

Like I could say that that would be the change there as opposed to doing breakfast.

00:30:31

That sounds like a horrible idea to me.

00:30:33

But, you know, that's, that's something that you could do.

00:30:36

But with these companies, what they were doing, and we'll probably talk about this a little

00:30:40

bit later because companies do it on a larger scale, but what they're doing is trying to

00:30:46

play into an existing habit or create an exist, a new habit that revolves around a reward

00:30:53

that's very strongly desired and trying to capitalize on it.

00:30:58

We'll talk about targets.

00:30:59

We're going to, I think we're going to keep alluding to target because target is creepy.

00:31:06

We have justification for that statement, but if any, I've actually, anybody who reads

00:31:12

this is going to say, come to the same conclusion that, oh, that's kind of creepy based on some

00:31:17

mistakes that they made.

00:31:19

But in reality, just about every online retailer is doing the same thing now.

00:31:24

Yeah.

00:31:25

We're getting back to exactly what you were just describing about the morning routines

00:31:30

and kind of hacking these things.

00:31:31

After three, there's a couple concepts which kind of tie into one of my action items here.

00:31:37

And that is awareness training.

00:31:39

So this is something that AA does with the people who, who come to them because they want

00:31:46

them to be able to recognize when that Q is happening so that they can substitute the

00:31:52

routine and it doesn't, they don't just go to the bar automatically.

00:31:56

But awareness training is basically asking the patient to describe what triggers their

00:32:01

habitual behavior.

00:32:02

And so a lot of this stuff is so automatic that you never really think about it.

00:32:06

I want to think about my habits and I guess, you know, apply awareness training to myself.

00:32:13

And then apply habit reversal therapy, which he talks about in this chapter, which is

00:32:17

recreating habits based off of those cues and rewards and putting in what he defines

00:32:22

as a competing response, a different routine to focus on when you feel that impulse or

00:32:27

craving.

00:32:28

There's a couple examples they used in this chapter of like the person who was biting

00:32:31

their nails to show that you really can do this.

00:32:35

But you have to identify these pieces if you want to kind of swap them in and out plug

00:32:38

and play sort of sort of thing.

00:32:40

So that's something that I want to do.

00:32:42

I want to evaluate and it may take a while, you know, all of the different routines and

00:32:46

habits that maybe I'm not even aware of.

00:32:48

Obviously, I've got my morning routine, like that's something that we've talked about previously

00:32:52

in action items.

00:32:53

I've got my set things that I do every morning, but really 40% of my day, that's a good chunk

00:33:00

of my day that I'm defaulting to these habits.

00:33:02

So I want to recognize what's really going on.

00:33:04

Do you have any specific habits that you feel like you already know about that you want

00:33:09

to change?

00:33:11

Hmm.

00:33:12

Well, putting me on the spot, I think that I win.

00:33:18

Yes.

00:33:19

I think that I have a little bit of trouble disconnecting at the end of my day.

00:33:25

I know we've talked about like a shutdown routine or something like that.

00:33:27

I don't think I have one of those.

00:33:29

So my brain just kind of stays in work mode if I don't do that.

00:33:33

That's probably one example of a negative routine.

00:33:37

And again, I'm going to have to do some some thought about, you know, what are the cues

00:33:41

and the rewards with that.

00:33:44

I also think that at the end of the day, my bedtime routine specifically, there's room

00:33:54

for improvement there because the cue obviously is, I'm tired.

00:33:57

The kids are finally in bed.

00:34:00

So what am I going to do?

00:34:02

And lately, it's been sit down and watch a baseball game or an old movie.

00:34:08

Like my wife is really into me too.

00:34:10

You know, the Thin Man series of like 1920s, black and white murder mysteries.

00:34:14

All right.

00:34:16

So that's not a real productive use of the last hour or two of my day.

00:34:22

Although there's a lot of good things too, like the I get a notification at 945 that

00:34:28

it's time to journal and you know, and I launched my reflection routine.

00:34:32

So I don't know.

00:34:34

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

00:34:36

So if I'm aware of how I'm spending my time during my work day, there's probably a lot

00:34:40

of other stuff that I could improve.

00:34:42

Fair point.

00:34:43

I only ask is this is one.

00:34:45

This is an action item I have as well.

00:34:47

I saw that you wrote it down here and it's kind of what I had on my own list, but you

00:34:52

wrote it better of identifying the current routines and habits.

00:34:56

And I know that like whenever it comes to that shutdown ritual that with that, like I

00:35:04

have one, but I don't always stick to it.

00:35:08

And that's a problem.

00:35:09

And it's partly because I am just not ready to be done doing the thing I'm doing at the

00:35:14

time when I need to stop.

00:35:16

And I feel like I can just work on this a little bit longer instead of doing this routine.

00:35:21

And I shouldn't do that.

00:35:24

So I need to, I need to think through that habit or the lack thereof and figure out how

00:35:31

to cement that.

00:35:33

That's one in particular.

00:35:35

That's just one example there.

00:35:36

But I feel like there are a lot of these that I'm not even aware of yet to your point.

00:35:41

So that's what I want to look for.

00:35:43

Because I know there are some like the evening thing like for me, that one's already locked

00:35:48

in like I know exactly.

00:35:50

You tell me it's bedtime and I have this whole series of maybe 50 things that happen

00:35:54

that I don't even realize what I'm doing.

00:35:56

It just is automatic.

00:35:58

So there is a lot of that that I already do.

00:36:00

The morning is the same way but midday I feel like is kind of just fluid.

00:36:06

Yeah.

00:36:07

Another one for me kind of related though is they talk about how fast food is engineered

00:36:14

that makes it sound really gross.

00:36:17

And I'm sure it is.

00:36:19

But fast foods engineered to trigger the habit loop.

00:36:21

And this is something that I struggle with specifically on days when I'm super busy.

00:36:26

Like Thursdays for example, I've got a discipleship group of guys at my church.

00:36:31

And we meet every Thursday at like 5.30.

00:36:33

And then after that at 7 we've got worship team practice.

00:36:37

So I don't get home till late on Thursday.

00:36:40

And there are other times too where it's like I'm going when it would be a convenient

00:36:46

meal time.

00:36:48

And I maybe stayed up to late the night before.

00:36:52

So I'm not prepared the night before.

00:36:55

And it's like lunchtime and I don't have a lunch ready.

00:37:00

And so it's like I'm going to go get some food.

00:37:02

And my weakness is Culver's.

00:37:04

Do they have Culver's in Minneapolis?

00:37:06

I'm pretty sure they do.

00:37:07

It's like a Midwestern thing, right?

00:37:08

I have one less than a mile from my house.

00:37:11

Yeah, as Butterburgers and cheese curds.

00:37:14

So good.

00:37:17

But I eat them too often.

00:37:19

So definitely a habit I need to break.

00:37:23

I am not a fan of fast food.

00:37:25

I am convinced that part of my difficulty with transitioning back from having gone to

00:37:34

max stock was partly because of diet and such.

00:37:38

So yeah, I get it.

00:37:41

I do.

00:37:42

I need to not do.

00:37:45

My wife is very particular about what we eat.

00:37:49

And as a result, anytime I deviate from that diet heavily, I'm going to pay for it.

00:37:55

And I just know it.

00:37:56

So I'm not real good about sticking with it when I'm not with her.

00:38:00

[laughs]

00:38:01

All it is, that sounds.

00:38:04

So yes, I need to improve that as well.

00:38:05

But I don't really have a thing for fast food.

00:38:08

Like that particular is not something that has appealed to me for quite some time.

00:38:13

So I can't say that that's the thing I struggle with.

00:38:15

Sorry.

00:38:16

Well Culver's is kind of borderline fast food.

00:38:18

I think it's still classified as fast food, but it's not like been sitting under a heat

00:38:22

lamp forever.

00:38:23

It's part of the reason why I justify it.

00:38:25

It tastes so good and it's healthier than McDonald's or whatever.

00:38:29

Okay.

00:38:30

No, whatever you need to tell yourself, Mike.

00:38:32

No, I'm saying I got to break that.

00:38:34

I got to plan ahead and I got to eat good food.

00:38:37

Okay.

00:38:38

Go for it.

00:38:39

Where are we at on this outline?

00:38:41

Part two.

00:38:42

Part two.

00:38:43

Okay.

00:38:44

The habits of successful organizations.

00:38:45

In chapter four, this part really doesn't have to do anything with successful organizations.

00:38:49

This is kind of, it could be classified in the previous section in my opinion.

00:38:53

This is the whole idea of Keystone habits.

00:38:55

I get why they classify it here.

00:38:56

They tell the story of Paul O'Neill, who completely turned around a company by focusing

00:39:02

on a Keystone habit, which in his case was safety.

00:39:06

And in fact, when he took over, people thought it was kind of crazy for emphasizing this when

00:39:11

the company was going under, but you know, he was successful.

00:39:16

The story I really liked in this section though was the Michael Phelps story.

00:39:22

And I've heard different versions of this, which actually that's another point I should

00:39:26

classify or point out about this book is that a lot of these stories I have heard before

00:39:30

in different contexts.

00:39:32

And so when he told these stories, he has a really good way of telling just the pieces

00:39:38

he wants to tell to support his point, which I get.

00:39:43

But also when I, when you tell like part of a story that you already know, you're kind

00:39:49

of left with this impression that, well, that was kind of spun, you know, like it's not

00:39:54

the whole truth.

00:39:55

That's kind of how I felt about this Michael Phelps story, but this is such a cool story.

00:40:01

So are you familiar with this?

00:40:03

I've heard this.

00:40:04

I don't know how many times.

00:40:05

So yes, I'm very familiar with it.

00:40:07

Well, I'll just recap it really, really briefly then for the three listeners that haven't

00:40:12

heard this.

00:40:14

But Michael Phelps has a Keystone habit.

00:40:16

And again, these Keystone habits, these are the ones that kind of kick off the whole process.

00:40:20

So some habits matter more than others.

00:40:22

That's really the idea here.

00:40:23

And you can apply this to an organization, but you can also apply this to an individual

00:40:27

level, which is what Michael Phelps is doing.

00:40:30

So Michael Phelps is the most successful swimmer in the history of the world, but he's, he

00:40:36

wasn't always and he dealt with some stuff that his coach kind of had to get him into

00:40:41

these Keystone habits of visualization and relaxation.

00:40:46

And the really cool story that they tell in the book that's kind of the manifestation

00:40:50

of this is in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics season, I think it's a hundred meter butterfly

00:40:55

finals and his goggles break.

00:40:58

So he can't see at the end of the race.

00:41:03

And at the end of the race, he's stretching out.

00:41:04

He wins by like a hundredth of a second, you know, because he didn't take another another

00:41:08

stroke and the guy next to him did.

00:41:11

Now that can go back though to this Keystone habit that he and his coach have created

00:41:17

of visualizing himself swimming this race over and over and over again.

00:41:21

In fact, when Michael Phelps jumps up on the platform, his coach has the trigger phrase

00:41:26

that the cue, you know, put in the videotape.

00:41:28

And that's Michael Phelps's cue to play through the entire race.

00:41:31

So he stays calm.

00:41:33

He wins the gold medal anyway with a world record time and they're interviewing him after

00:41:37

the race and like, what was it like to swim blind?

00:41:40

Because people can't wrap their head around like, how is he able to stay calm during this?

00:41:43

And he says, it felt like I imagined it would.

00:41:46

He had swam that race so many times in his head that the physical manifestation of that

00:41:51

was just like, oh, no big deal.

00:41:53

And I think that's a really powerful concept.

00:41:55

It's just another day in the pool.

00:41:57

Yep, exactly.

00:41:59

Just the way it goes.

00:42:00

I think it's really interesting how that played such a big part in just how he swims or

00:42:07

swam, I guess he doesn't compete anymore, does he?

00:42:09

I think he's done.

00:42:11

I think so, but I don't know that for sure.

00:42:14

I mean, he doesn't need to.

00:42:16

That's for sure.

00:42:17

I think he had like 22 gold medals in the guy and second place had nine or something

00:42:20

like that.

00:42:21

Right.

00:42:22

So he's proven himself.

00:42:23

He doesn't doesn't need to compete anymore.

00:42:25

Yep, he can win.

00:42:26

It's okay.

00:42:27

Good luck trying to beat him.

00:42:28

No, I like that this is a keystone habit here.

00:42:32

And he goes through a number of what these habits are in the book.

00:42:37

He does talk about these in the individual life as well, one of which was if I can recall

00:42:42

was exercise, I think.

00:42:44

Yep.

00:42:45

Like if you built the habit of exercise, other areas of your life tended to come into order

00:42:51

as well.

00:42:52

And it became like a crux that everything folded around.

00:42:57

So I think that's an interesting point and it's one that I know like I've talked about

00:43:05

my morning routine before, but this particular section struck me with, you know, I have had

00:43:12

a few bad habits in the morning of things like, and I've mentioned this on the show before,

00:43:18

like checking my email right away to make sure nothing fell apart overnight.

00:43:21

Like that sort of thing has been something I've struggled with for a long time.

00:43:24

Well, not long ago, I put myself in a position where I was putting my phone downstairs.

00:43:30

It was in my office, my home office whenever I'd go to bed, which means it's not even in

00:43:35

the bedroom.

00:43:37

And although that is terrifying for some people and, you know, something that kind of

00:43:44

makes me nervous once in a while, so what if somebody, you know, what if there's an

00:43:48

emergency and I need to, you know, act on it, like, well, I suppose maybe there's an

00:43:54

I don't know, but the chances that are being an emergency in the night that I need to act

00:43:59

on that can't wait for four hours, like that seems pretty rare to me.

00:44:05

I feel like it would be okay, you know, but, you know, that that's that side of things

00:44:11

us, you know, out the window here, like I keep my phone downstairs.

00:44:14

That's the important part here.

00:44:16

Part of the reason for that is because I don't want to start my day with that bad jump like

00:44:24

that kickstart to the day.

00:44:26

So having it downstairs means it's not even an option.

00:44:29

Like I go through my morning routine without it entirely because it's not even an option

00:44:34

for me to pick up because it's in my office.

00:44:36

So I guess I could go get it, but it seems silly to me to go out of my way to go get

00:44:41

a distracting device.

00:44:43

Like that seems silly and I can't bring myself to actually follow through on that.

00:44:48

So it works out pretty good in that sense.

00:44:50

But what I have found in the week or so that I've been doing this week and a half or so

00:44:56

is that that actually has a lot of impacts around device usage that I wasn't aware of.

00:45:02

I think this might be a Keystone habit that I'm not I'm not I'm not sure on this mic.

00:45:08

So I think what has been going on because I found myself leaving my phone places more

00:45:14

and more often.

00:45:15

I don't know if that's good or bad.

00:45:18

Hopefully I don't leave it behind somewhere.

00:45:21

But I have found that I I I have zero problems just leaving it across the room and it's not

00:45:27

even like it's not within arms reach like right now I don't even or it's at it's somewhere

00:45:31

over on that.

00:45:34

I don't know.

00:45:35

It's somewhere behind me at the moment.

00:45:37

But it's not on my desk.

00:45:39

It's not within arms reach right now.

00:45:41

And that sort of thing is interesting because I've found that over the last week and a half

00:45:47

I've gotten to where my tendencies to want to go pick it up and do those just checks

00:45:51

those quick just tell me what's going on in the world.

00:45:55

What would that be like a FOMO?

00:45:56

Yep.

00:45:57

Piece like fear of missing out relief of sorts.

00:46:01

I don't really do that right now.

00:46:03

Like I still feel that urge but it's not one that strikes me near as much as it used to.

00:46:11

And I think that's derived from you know this the shift in how I've been hailing my

00:46:18

phone at night.

00:46:19

So I don't know.

00:46:20

I think I would recommend it.

00:46:22

I don't know if I would recommend it for everyone.

00:46:24

But it's at least something that's been interesting to me.

00:46:28

Yeah.

00:46:29

So that's what's analyzed Joe Buellig for a moment here.

00:46:31

Okay.

00:46:32

So cycle analysis begin.

00:46:34

Your cue is the FOMO.

00:46:37

The feeling that I need to see what's going on.

00:46:42

And then the reward that you're looking for is ultimately peace of mind.

00:46:48

Okay.

00:46:49

So the routine, you substituted pulling out your phone, checking your email for leaving

00:46:54

it downstairs.

00:46:57

And I would argue that the real reward that you're after that peace of mind like you

00:47:00

get that with this new routine.

00:47:04

Is that fair?

00:47:05

I think that's fair.

00:47:06

Yeah.

00:47:07

I think that's a really cool example of how you can look at the cues and say okay this

00:47:11

is the thing that my monkey brain wants to respond to automatically.

00:47:16

What can I do which is going to steer it in the direction that I want it to go and in

00:47:21

your case and a lot of people's case physically removing the temptation is the way to go.

00:47:26

I think that's a great idea.

00:47:27

And I would argue that it is something everybody should at least think about.

00:47:31

I use my phone because I use sleep cycle.

00:47:34

It's right next to my bed and it's tracking my sleep patterns for the microphone.

00:47:39

But that's a trade off I'm willing to make.

00:47:42

I totally get the rationale behind what you do and I think it's a great example.

00:47:47

So yeah, I would say that that is a keystone habit because whether you reach for your phone

00:47:52

or not, that's going to trigger a whole bunch of other things.

00:47:55

So maybe it's just email.

00:47:57

Maybe it's email and social media.

00:47:59

Maybe there's a huge list of things that you go check every time you pull your phone

00:48:03

out of your pocket.

00:48:05

So that's the keystone habit that you want to change.

00:48:08

Yes, to all the things.

00:48:11

That was a good psychoanalysis.

00:48:13

Well done, Mike.

00:48:14

Just call me Dr. Mike.

00:48:16

Alright, Doc.

00:48:17

Alright, so let's go to the next section here which is chapter five, Starbucks and the

00:48:23

habit of success.

00:48:24

So this chapter I have a little bit of an issue with, not rant worthy, I don't think,

00:48:29

but maybe we'll see.

00:48:31

Okay.

00:48:32

Alright, so he talks a lot in this particular chapter about the idea of willpower, which

00:48:38

peak, you know, kind of spoke to willpower not being as important as motivation.

00:48:43

I think I kind of am in that camp.

00:48:48

But the thing that really bugged me about this is he uses the example of Starbucks,

00:48:52

which completely changes the one guy's life.

00:48:57

And they say in page 131 that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for

00:49:00

individual success.

00:49:02

Share some stats.

00:49:03

I think these stats are deceiving though, because I have seen lots of stats like this

00:49:09

that point to soft skills or emotional intelligence.

00:49:13

And that's really what Starbucks is teaching.

00:49:15

It is not just willpower.

00:49:18

So this kind of backs up my thought that he tells these stories, but he tells part of

00:49:23

the story.

00:49:25

And I didn't really like that in this particular part because yeah, willpower is maybe a soft

00:49:31

skill, but there's a huge list of other things that contribute to an individual's success

00:49:35

as well.

00:49:36

And really like there's the encompassing term for all of these soft skills is emotional

00:49:40

intelligence.

00:49:42

So it's not just your academic intelligence, your hard skills, the ability to do the math

00:49:46

and things like that, but the examples they share like, what do you do when you have an

00:49:51

upset customer and then they role play like, why might this customer be upset?

00:49:54

How can you show empathy to this person?

00:49:56

Like in the examples, they show so many different soft skills at work, but they kind of lump

00:50:02

it all in this book and in this story under willpower.

00:50:05

And I didn't, I don't really like that.

00:50:07

Do you think so willpower being a soft skill?

00:50:10

Do you think in order to work on willpower itself, you have to also work on other soft

00:50:15

skills in order to get there?

00:50:17

Or do you feel like it's a single thing that you can work on on your own?

00:50:20

Like just individually.

00:50:22

I think you could work on willpower alone.

00:50:25

Willpower they talk about in this chapter that it's like a muscle more than a skill.

00:50:29

Like it's tired, like the cookie radish experiment, you know, the cookie eaters gave up after

00:50:33

19 minutes radish eaters after eight minutes because their willpower was depleted.

00:50:38

So I do think that there's, there's something to that, but I also think that there's a whole

00:50:43

bunch of self regulatory skills that they call, they call them in here.

00:50:48

It's really like self determination, academic and academic career personal success.

00:50:55

Like it's all encompassed in the ability to set and achieve a goal.

00:50:59

And then if you have the emotional intelligence skills that can help you get there.

00:51:03

So some of that is communication.

00:51:04

I mean, you're not going to be working in a vacuum, no matter where you work, you're

00:51:09

going to have to get along with other people.

00:51:11

You're going to have to get along with your customers.

00:51:14

And so those communication skills, like they're talking about that in this section too, but

00:51:18

they lump it under this willpower and they think that, you know, or the way he described

00:51:22

it and I forget the guy's name, I should have wrote it down that the story that they tell,

00:51:25

I think maybe it's Anthony.

00:51:26

I'll just use Anthony as an example.

00:51:29

They think that like what made Anthony successful, even though he had all this stuff going on,

00:51:34

you know, his mom and dad are dying from drug overdose, but he's able to turn his life

00:51:37

around because of willpower.

00:51:39

Kind of, but willpower is just the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.

00:51:42

There's a whole bunch of other stuff that you can develop.

00:51:45

You can work these things.

00:51:47

You can increase your capacity.

00:51:50

So if you wanted to view it like a muscle, you could.

00:51:53

But I also think that, I mean, I used to work for a family business and we had assessments

00:51:59

and skill building systems which identified where you were with these emotional intelligence

00:52:05

skills or these soft skills and then a whole research based skill development process to

00:52:10

develop these skills.

00:52:12

And some of the research behind like where you were before to where you are after you

00:52:16

do this, like it's astounding how much you can change, both personally and professionally,

00:52:21

how much you can impact your success when you focus on these soft skills.

00:52:25

So again, like Starbucks and the habit of success, I agree with this, you know, Starbucks

00:52:30

is teaching soft skills and that is translating into success, but he kind of spins it in this

00:52:34

chapter and he's like, no, it's willpower.

00:52:36

Just willpower.

00:52:37

Don't worry about any other stuff.

00:52:38

Just get willpower.

00:52:39

Like, nah, not so much.

00:52:40

I looked it up.

00:52:41

His name was Travis.

00:52:42

Wasn't Andy Travis.

00:52:43

Okay.

00:52:44

Thank you.

00:52:45

Travis Leach to be more specific.

00:52:48

I could tell you that this chapter, something was off on it and I couldn't tell you like

00:52:54

when I read it, I was like, okay, this sounds great.

00:52:59

Something's not right here.

00:53:00

Like I had that feeling.

00:53:02

So thank you for calling this out because I think that's maybe what I was concerned

00:53:06

with is that with them focusing on saying this is all about, you know, focusing just

00:53:15

on willpower, like, yeah, I think, and you know, they're teaching a lot of other things

00:53:18

there too.

00:53:19

I'm sure willpower is there, but they're also teaching like conflict resolution.

00:53:25

Like they're all, they're teaching a whole bunch of things, not just.

00:53:29

Exactly.

00:53:30

So maybe, maybe you could argue willpower is the crux of each of those other soft skills

00:53:37

that they're teaching maybe, but I feel like there are, you know, probably another 15 or

00:53:44

20 other skills are teaching at the same time, but they're, they're basically building

00:53:49

a course for their employees on how to deal with people.

00:53:53

So, you know, that's, that's essentially what they're doing, which makes a lot of sense.

00:53:58

You know, how do you, how do you win friends and influence people?

00:54:01

Welcome to Starbucks.

00:54:03

Yeah, exactly.

00:54:05

But it's not just willpower.

00:54:06

Willpower is a part of it.

00:54:07

You know, and I get it, you know, willpower is the probably the key ingredient when you're

00:54:10

talking about establishing new habits.

00:54:14

Like that's going to be the thing that's going to help you to stick with the new routine

00:54:18

that you're creating here.

00:54:19

Right.

00:54:20

But then maybe pick some different stories.

00:54:23

I mean, the Roy Baumas do research, I like that.

00:54:26

I've heard that a bunch of times with the, the cookie eaters and the radish eaters.

00:54:32

But I kind of feel like there's some stories that were shoehorned in here in this particular

00:54:38

chapter.

00:54:39

And even one of the quotes by one of the researchers, Mark Meeravent says, if you want to do something

00:54:43

that requires willpower, like going for a run after work, you have to conserve your willpower

00:54:47

muscle during the day.

00:54:48

And I put in my, my comments or eat your frog, you know, you could do it at the beginning.

00:54:53

And so that's an example of like you can use willpower as a leg measure and say, well,

00:54:58

I didn't get to go, I didn't go from my run this afternoon.

00:55:01

I guess I didn't have enough willpower.

00:55:03

But how does that actually help you in the moment?

00:55:06

Yeah.

00:55:07

You know, I think being able to manufacture the motivation to do the things is, is more

00:55:12

important.

00:55:13

And you could, you could view habit creation that way too, I think.

00:55:17

I think I'm with you.

00:55:18

I see this is another reason I like bookworm because although I knew something was

00:55:23

off with this chapter, I couldn't tell you exactly what it was.

00:55:27

And then we sit here and talk about it.

00:55:28

And then Mike tells me what it was.

00:55:29

It was bugging me about it.

00:55:31

So that's, this is another reason I like bookworm Mike.

00:55:33

You can, you tell me what I'm missing on things.

00:55:36

Awesome.

00:55:37

Should we move on to chapter six?

00:55:40

Sure.

00:55:41

All right.

00:55:42

The one we've been waiting for.

00:55:43

No, not the one we've been waiting for.

00:55:44

That's the next one.

00:55:45

I really like chapter six though.

00:55:47

Chapter six is the power of a crisis.

00:55:58

And then the Rhode Island Hospital where the nurses basically were not empowered to act.

00:56:05

So they would call out things.

00:56:07

And I guess maybe because I, I thought of the Atul Gawande book, the checklist manifesto

00:56:12

and how that process was implemented specifically to solve situations like this, like one of

00:56:17

the stories they tell, they operated on the wrong side of the guy's head.

00:56:21

Right.

00:56:22

And he died.

00:56:23

Now quick, quick side note.

00:56:24

Can I interject here?

00:56:25

Yeah.

00:56:26

So because of Atul Gawande's because, you know, checklist manifesto is a book that, you

00:56:30

know, has meant a lot to me.

00:56:32

Thanks, you know, goes into the draft episode.

00:56:36

Whenever, and I'm not going to go into this here, but we were in the hospital.

00:56:40

My wife had to have a surgery and it was unexpected.

00:56:44

And I was like quizzing people.

00:56:46

It's like, okay, do you guys have a checklist for these things?

00:56:48

Have you run through all of this?

00:56:50

Like here I am.

00:56:51

Like I'm asking these questions because I know the importance of this.

00:56:54

Yeah.

00:56:55

And there were a couple of times where like, well, we have one.

00:56:57

We just, we don't usually run it.

00:56:58

Like, would you just do me a favor and run it?

00:57:00

Please.

00:57:01

Just, just for my sake.

00:57:02

And they did.

00:57:03

So it made me, made me happy that they did that.

00:57:06

So thanks to all for making me aware of this.

00:57:08

Yeah.

00:57:09

So this particular book, you know, talking about the Rhode Island Hospital, he tells

00:57:13

one example where a nurse actually called out the correct protocol and the doctor basically

00:57:18

belittled her in the, in the, or the surgeon in the, in the operation room.

00:57:25

He's like, oh, well, you can eff and do the surgery then.

00:57:29

And I was like, man, that this guy died because you're a jerk.

00:57:33

Right.

00:57:34

And, but what's really more important even than the fact that that happened is like,

00:57:39

how they, how they fixed it.

00:57:41

And so it would both like the London underground where there was wooden escalators, which I

00:57:46

thought was kind of weird, but it seems odd to me that they would allow that.

00:57:49

Yeah.

00:57:50

So there were wooden escalators underground and there was a fire and because of all the

00:57:55

different, the different, I don't know, the divisions basically and everybody being like,

00:58:01

well, it's not my job.

00:58:02

I'll get in trouble if I do something about that.

00:58:05

It was this big fire and 30 some people died, which is, is horrible.

00:58:10

But then like the things that happened after that, like they, in the hospital example, they

00:58:15

completely turned the hospital around.

00:58:17

Now it's getting all sorts of awards.

00:58:20

And really the point that stood out to me and the challenge to me is that great leaders

00:58:25

don't let crisis like that go to waste because when you're in an organization or a business

00:58:32

or a firm, you're guided by these long held organizational habits and routines and habits

00:58:39

allow truces to be made.

00:58:41

He called it like a constant civil war.

00:58:44

So there's all these truces that are happening all the time between these potentially warring

00:58:48

groups or individuals within an organization in order to get anything done.

00:58:52

And so the prime time to capitalize on, on not shifting those, those habits or those routines

00:59:00

happens when there is a crisis and everybody's like, oh my gosh, this is unacceptable.

00:59:04

We have to change this.

00:59:06

And so I guess, you know, next time that there is a quote unquote crisis in a team or an organization

00:59:12

that I'm involved with, don't freak out and be like, oh, I can't believe this is happening,

00:59:17

but rise to the occasion and figure out, okay, how can we affect positive change through

00:59:22

this thing that's happened?

00:59:23

I think that crisis is interesting because it comes up a lot with, I don't, how do I

00:59:33

term it, maybe religious organizations.

00:59:37

In Christian circles, it seems to come up a lot because the crisis moments are when people

00:59:41

change, like big things change in those moments.

00:59:46

And any sort of a religious organization tends to see those as opportunities to speak into

00:59:52

somebody's life in some way.

00:59:54

And I would say the same thing, you know, whenever I left my last job and went out on

00:59:58

my own, like that was a borderline crisis situation for me.

01:00:02

It was a major change.

01:00:04

And as a result of that, a lot of my habits changed some for the better, some not so much.

01:00:11

But anytime there's a major shift like that, it can lend itself to some pretty major, it's

01:00:19

a great motivator.

01:00:21

One of the things I do as the IT director at our church is I run sound.

01:00:27

And as someone who runs sound, you end up doing things like funerals and weddings and

01:00:32

and such.

01:00:34

And I don't do a lot of weddings, but I do a lot of funerals.

01:00:38

And it's uncanny the things that people will talk to you about in those moments.

01:00:44

And it's it's not a fun conversation usually, but in those times people are willing to make

01:00:52

some pretty major changes.

01:00:53

They have a lot of questions that they want to ask or get answers to.

01:00:59

But it's just fascinating to me how something relatively small in terms of what happened

01:01:08

can be something extremely major because of what that thing is.

01:01:12

You know, if someone's dying, like it's it's technically it's just another event in life.

01:01:17

Just the last stage here, depending on how you look at that.

01:01:21

But it can have a major view into how you think as well.

01:01:27

So I don't really know where I'm going at it from there, but it has a pretty big impact.

01:01:32

Well, I could take it from there because that's actually a perfect segue into the next chapter

01:01:36

because part of the and this is where we say the target is creepy because target because

01:01:42

they hear it out.

01:01:43

And actually Andrew Poll is the guy in the book.

01:01:46

So not all of target, but Andrew Poll is creepy.

01:01:50

So he identified that customers going through major life events like you mentioned a funeral,

01:01:57

but also in the specific example, having a baby.

01:02:01

They don't notice or care that their buying patterns have changed.

01:02:04

Okay, and I put in parentheses, but retailers like target do because major life changes

01:02:10

make people more vulnerable to intervention from individuals like in your instance, you

01:02:17

know, somebody sitting down with you as you're you're leaving, leaving your one job and

01:02:22

you're going on your on your own.

01:02:23

That's a positive intervention, but marketers can use that for shall we say less than noble

01:02:29

gains.

01:02:32

So you're also vulnerable to intervention from marketers and they talk about how the North

01:02:37

American new baby market is worth $36.3 billion per year.

01:02:41

It's basically the holy grail of marketing these new parents.

01:02:44

And so people came to Andrew Poll and they said, can you help us figure out when people

01:02:50

are pregnant?

01:02:52

And he did.

01:02:53

He cracked the formula.

01:02:54

He identified 25 different products that when analyzed together could tell him what

01:02:58

trimester woman was in and guesstimate her due date.

01:03:02

And there was one story in there where they sent and this is where like they made some

01:03:07

mistakes and they they'd held it back.

01:03:08

But everybody's doing this at some at some level now.

01:03:11

They had sent something to this guy's teenage daughter about like a flyer for diapers or

01:03:18

something and the guy came in and he's all furious and he's like, are you trying to get

01:03:22

my daughter pregnant?

01:03:23

And then like a week later, they call him and they apologize and he's like, actually,

01:03:28

I owe you an apology.

01:03:29

It turns out she is pregnant.

01:03:32

She was pregnant.

01:03:33

Yeah.

01:03:34

Yeah.

01:03:35

So like all they did was identify the cues based off of her other buying habits and they

01:03:38

were right.

01:03:39

You know, and he had no idea even though she's living in living in his house, you know,

01:03:43

not making a moral judgment on that.

01:03:44

But like it's kind of creepy to think that from a from a few purchases, they can they

01:03:50

can tease out that that sort of thing.

01:03:52

So the challenge for retailers is how do you take advantage of people's buying habits

01:03:55

because you want to make more money without being creepy like that?

01:03:59

And I don't know that there's a I'm not sure that we've as a society found a middle ground

01:04:04

for this yet.

01:04:05

I think the debate's still raging.

01:04:07

Well I know that within like so I used to be a data analyst and the types of things

01:04:13

that Andrew Poll was and maybe is still doing for Target.

01:04:19

Like it wasn't to that level, but I did a lot of data analysis for ag companies.

01:04:25

It wasn't over customers, it was over product data, just how do you make the products better.

01:04:31

So I kind I understand what he's doing.

01:04:35

The technicalities in his case are a little bit beyond me, but I do see a lot of what

01:04:43

he's doing as normal, but I know that one of the things that some of the data circles

01:04:48

that I run in tend to talk about with this marketing side of it is that they're trying

01:04:53

to keep things that seem random and yet are targeted.

01:04:59

And I think this is where like they ended up with it saying, you know, we still push

01:05:02

a bunch of ads for expecting moms within like a month of them becoming pregnant and they

01:05:12

will still push those ads, but they will mix them in randomly with other ads for things

01:05:16

they have zero interest in.

01:05:18

Exactly.

01:05:19

Every ad that ends up in your mailbox is specifically targeted to you and your neighbors

01:05:23

got something very different.

01:05:26

And that is what they do.

01:05:27

They are good at it.

01:05:28

And I think that's becoming the norm is make it feel random, but have it be targeted.

01:05:34

And that's kind of weird to me, like the thought of these things coming in and they're specifically

01:05:38

geared towards my purchasing habits.

01:05:41

Although I kind of like that, I'm kind of freaked out by it too.

01:05:46

So target.

01:05:48

Now I will say this is a story I've heard multiple times.

01:05:51

Like this is not a new thing to me.

01:05:52

Had you heard this target story before?

01:05:54

No, I had not.

01:05:55

Okay.

01:05:56

This was I it it's been around.

01:05:59

Maybe it's because I run in these data circles a little bit, but it's in the marketing and

01:06:03

data world, like that is a story that's been told multiple times.

01:06:07

And it's when I've heard a lot of times and I will tell you that he specifically picked

01:06:10

out the pieces on this one as well.

01:06:12

I figured.

01:06:13

Yeah.

01:06:14

There's a lot more to it.

01:06:15

Yeah, again, like that's one of the issues I have with this this book.

01:06:20

But is that a bad thing?

01:06:22

Not necessarily unless you don't don't like the conclusion that he's drawing from the

01:06:28

story, I guess.

01:06:29

Because he's trying to make a point.

01:06:31

Yeah.

01:06:32

And for the most part, I agree with with his points like the supporting story that he tells

01:06:37

in this chapter is about they've got this song that they're sure is going to be a hit.

01:06:41

Yeah, I think it was Haya by El Cast.

01:06:44

And they start playing it, nobody likes it.

01:06:46

They're always changing the station.

01:06:48

They're like, what the heck?

01:06:49

We know this is going to be a popular song, but it's not.

01:06:51

So how do we salvage this?

01:06:53

And basically what they figured out was that people don't change the radio because they

01:06:55

dislike a song, they change it because it's unfamiliar.

01:06:57

So they sandwich it in between two favorites.

01:07:00

And that's the same approach that works for Target when they're targeting or marketing

01:07:04

to new moms.

01:07:05

So they're going to give you the diaper ads, but they're going to put it in between some

01:07:09

other things which are not going to blatantly say, hey, we looked at our data and we know

01:07:12

you're having a baby.

01:07:15

But I do think there's one statement in here which I actually put in the notes.

01:07:19

This is creepy.

01:07:20

You know, soon he says, soon it will be possible for marketers to know our tastes and predict

01:07:25

our habits better than we do ourselves, which man, the, the, what's it called?

01:07:32

Retargeting ads where like you go look at something on Amazon and then all of a sudden

01:07:36

everywhere you go, you see ads for that thing.

01:07:38

Like that's kind of what this is all about.

01:07:42

I guess for me when I, my reaction when I see that stuff is, well, first of all, it's always

01:07:47

like audio gear.

01:07:48

So it's microphones and things.

01:07:51

But also it kind of shows me that like, I think about this a lot.

01:07:56

Maybe it's not as big a deal as I'm making it out to be.

01:08:00

Maybe I should shift my focus a little bit.

01:08:03

But also like I get, you know, that every time they bring that front of you, you know,

01:08:06

you're, you're more likely to follow through and, and buy that thing.

01:08:10

So I don't know.

01:08:12

I don't like the fact that this could be taken to a whole nother level and people know me

01:08:18

better than I know myself.

01:08:20

Like that's just kind of a, a creepy thought just based off of data, but it's, it, I can

01:08:25

totally see how that plays out.

01:08:26

Even though I'm not a data analyst, I've never heard this story before.

01:08:29

I don't work in this world.

01:08:31

I mean, there's a reason that Google gives so much stuff away for free just for some personal

01:08:40

information.

01:08:41

And I mean, depending on your position, maybe you're okay with that trade off.

01:08:45

Maybe you're not.

01:08:46

I mean, there's definitely two camps on that.

01:08:47

And some people just choose to use different services.

01:08:50

That's, that's fine.

01:08:51

Apple takes a very different approach and we don't even have access to your data.

01:08:54

We can't get it.

01:08:55

If the FBI tells us we need to, San Bernardino shooter case, you know, I guess like my personal

01:09:05

reaction to this is I don't like this and I want to do everything I can to limit that.

01:09:11

I wish you all the best.

01:09:12

Yeah, it's not going to happen.

01:09:13

I know.

01:09:14

As somebody who builds websites and knows the data side of it, good luck.

01:09:18

Yeah.

01:09:19

Like I know how some of that stuff is built.

01:09:22

It's tough to keep it clean even with things like ad blockers and stuff.

01:09:27

Yeah, it gets tough.

01:09:30

Basically the only way to do it is stay off the internet entirely.

01:09:33

Yep.

01:09:34

And even then.

01:09:35

Yeah, I know.

01:09:36

Good luck.

01:09:37

You still have a physical address.

01:09:40

You still use a card.

01:09:41

Yeah.

01:09:42

It's one of those things that there probably isn't any recourse for individuals who really

01:09:47

want to keep their data private.

01:09:49

Other than to just use cash for everything.

01:09:52

Yeah.

01:09:53

I never sign up for anything like I said, never use the internet.

01:09:56

But I don't know, still like subconsciously it's it leaves a bad taste in my mouth even

01:10:02

though I know this stuff is happening and I kind of go along with it anyways.

01:10:07

Like I don't like it.

01:10:08

I feel dirty sometimes.

01:10:09

Yeah.

01:10:10

You know, when I see those retargeting ads and like, I have turned down a couple projects

01:10:15

that are specifically geared for this sort of thing.

01:10:18

That might make you feel a little bit better.

01:10:20

There are people fighting back on the development side of things.

01:10:24

But there are a lot of developers out there.

01:10:26

So I'm sure they've got it built anyway.

01:10:28

But I've had two different clients that wanted me to build some tools that were designed

01:10:33

to track information that people haven't provided to them.

01:10:39

And I told them no on that.

01:10:42

So you know, that's something that's it's tough.

01:10:45

You know, those were good projects from a business stance.

01:10:48

You know, it hurts a little bit to pass those up once in a while.

01:10:50

But yeah, I can't bring myself to do it.

01:10:53

I don't like that stuff.

01:10:54

All right.

01:10:55

Should we go to the part three?

01:10:57

Yeah, let's stop talking about.

01:10:59

All right.

01:11:00

So part three is the habits of societies.

01:11:03

And there's a couple chapters here.

01:11:05

Chapter eight is called Saddleback Church and the Montgomery bus boycott.

01:11:10

Really weird to see these two tied together.

01:11:13

Yeah.

01:11:14

I get the points that he's making again, like the Rosa Parks story.

01:11:19

I'm familiar with this story.

01:11:21

I've given a Toastmasters speech on this topic and feel like he got part of the story.

01:11:29

He filled in some blanks actually too with some other details, which was kind of cool.

01:11:34

But also, I don't know, just feel manipulated every time I read this story after the emotional

01:11:41

intelligence thing.

01:11:43

But to summarize this, he says that there's three different pieces in the DNA of a movement.

01:11:49

So number one, it starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between

01:11:53

close acquaintances.

01:11:55

Number two, it grows because of the habits of a community and the weak ties that hold

01:11:58

neighborhoods and clans together.

01:12:00

Let's come back to weak ties in a second.

01:12:02

And then number three, they endure because the movement's leaders give participants new

01:12:05

habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership.

01:12:09

All right.

01:12:10

Weak ties are friends of a friend, people that you don't really know, but they're really

01:12:16

the key piece to keeping a movement going.

01:12:20

And so in the example of the Montgomery bus boycott, the thing happened to Rosa Parks

01:12:27

and he kind of tells how like Martin Luther King Jr. was reluctantly dragged into this

01:12:33

thing.

01:12:34

And then he became the spokesperson and then it just kind of swept through the community

01:12:37

because it was kind of like, well, I don't know anybody who's going to do this, but everybody's

01:12:41

doing it.

01:12:42

And so everybody boycotted the bus system in Montgomery in the African American community.

01:12:49

And that's kind of what led to the, in his opinion, the paraphrasing the whole chapter,

01:12:55

but that kind of was the first domino in a lot of civil rights stuff.

01:12:58

Yeah, I got lost on some of this.

01:13:01

I'm not going to lie.

01:13:03

I get a lot of what he's trying to say, but I struggled with connecting all of his dots.

01:13:12

I think this has kind of been your point over and over again.

01:13:15

Yep.

01:13:16

You know, that's probably the one tricky part here with this book.

01:13:23

I think it's the story of hearing how things went down in Montgomery.

01:13:30

I think it's interesting and there's a lot of historical background there.

01:13:35

I have a thing for history as well.

01:13:36

So like that side of me is like, yeah, this is really cool.

01:13:40

Let's check this out.

01:13:40

But the other side of it's like, well, okay, I feel like you're trying to force your way

01:13:46

into saying these are habits.

01:13:50

Basically what you're telling me is this whole movement started because of peer pressure.

01:13:53

Yeah, exactly.

01:13:56

That was my take on it.

01:13:57

Well, as peer pressure habit, I don't really feel like it is.

01:14:03

Yeah, yeah.

01:14:04

So unless I'm wrong in that sense, you use the wrong story here.

01:14:11

I don't know.

01:14:12

Right.

01:14:13

Well, that's kind of where the Saddleback piece comes in because Saddleback is.

01:14:19

I think now like the biggest church in the United States, but it started by this guy who

01:14:25

was pouring over research trying to find the place in the country that had the most unchurched

01:14:31

people or something like that.

01:14:33

And then the way that he has Rick Warren, the way that he's grown Saddleback according

01:14:38

to this book is that he's created the whole concept of or really leveraged the whole concept

01:14:44

of these small groups.

01:14:46

And the small groups were really designed to encourage people to build their own habits.

01:14:52

Everybody signs a maturity covenant card.

01:14:54

Which is a social promise, which triggers that peer pressure that you were talking about.

01:14:58

And then from there, like their self, self feeders, in fact, even says page 235, if you

01:15:05

try to scare people into following Christ example, it's not going to work for too long.

01:15:08

The only way you get people to take responsibility for their spiritual maturity is to teach them

01:15:11

habits of faith.

01:15:12

Once that happens, it becomes self feeders.

01:15:14

People follow Christ not because you led them there, but because it's who they are.

01:15:18

And so I get that in that specific example, had trouble applying it to the Montgomery

01:15:25

bus boycott, like you said.

01:15:27

But I do think that there's some cool things that are happening there.

01:15:31

So number one, like you're encouraging people to develop these positive habits.

01:15:36

And then number two, like that maturity covenant card, I really like that idea where everybody

01:15:40

who is involved in this thing, like knows what they've signed up for.

01:15:44

And so there's social expectations that they're going to follow through and do those things.

01:15:48

And a small level, I think that's kind of what we've done with Bookworm, not that we're

01:15:53

a movement, although maybe we've read this.

01:15:55

You need to study the habits of our listeners.

01:15:57

And surely we can change the routine.

01:15:59

Especially we become a movement.

01:16:01

Is Andrew Polville?

01:16:02

Well, you tell me what to analyze and I'll analyze it.

01:16:05

How about that?

01:16:07

No, but we've kind of like, this is off the cuff.

01:16:13

So I may say something really stupid here.

01:16:15

But we've kind of made a social contract that every two weeks we're going to read this

01:16:20

book and we're going to show up and we're going to talk about it.

01:16:23

We're going to have these action items.

01:16:24

We're going to hold each other accountable to doing what we said we're going to do.

01:16:27

And I know that there are some people who listen to this that have done the same sort

01:16:30

of thing.

01:16:31

They have their own action items.

01:16:33

So they've kind of like bought into the social contract, even though there wasn't a formal

01:16:38

process for them to do that.

01:16:40

And there's like the Bookworm Club that people can join to do that too.

01:16:45

The T-Shirt example, like that's another example I think of like a community led initiative.

01:16:53

What's interesting comparing these two is like they're so, well I shouldn't say they're

01:16:59

so different because in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, what Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching

01:17:06

was to combat hate with love.

01:17:11

And so that's interesting to me given our current social situation in the United States

01:17:18

where you have police officers who are documented like there was one even in Milwaukee not too

01:17:26

long ago where they tased a Milwaukee Bucks player because he was in a Walgreens parking

01:17:33

lot.

01:17:34

Sometimes something like that happens, my heart breaks because I find myself kind of caught

01:17:39

in the middle where I don't believe that every police officer is bad and we shouldn't trust

01:17:45

the police.

01:17:46

But on the other hand, I'm not an African American male who is put in that situation.

01:17:51

I can't tell everybody, hey, you know, it's going to be okay.

01:17:55

This is the right response in this situation, which is what Martin Luther King Jr. did.

01:18:00

He was the example, people were throwing stuff through his windows, blew up his porch.

01:18:05

You know, they said in this book, if his family had been in the front room, they would have

01:18:08

died.

01:18:09

But he even told everybody the whole mob that formed, like we're going to get those guys

01:18:14

back.

01:18:15

Like he said, no, you can't do it that way.

01:18:18

And when I read this, like I found myself saying we really need a Martin Luther King

01:18:24

Jr. type character to lead real social change now, we need somebody who can channel the

01:18:30

same strength that he did and create a movement that achieves real results, but without warfare,

01:18:41

you know.

01:18:42

And again, like I really can't directly impact that because I'm not the one right in the

01:18:49

middle of the conflict, but it makes me realize, I guess, hearing the story that they told

01:18:58

and obviously the changes that came about because of that and then looking at our current

01:19:02

situation, it stands up to me like that's the missing piece.

01:19:05

Does that make sense?

01:19:06

Yeah.

01:19:07

I think just one of the things he talks about earlier on, what chapter was that three, when

01:19:14

it was changing, like how to change a habit?

01:19:18

Essentially what's happening is in a movement, you're trying to change a single habit, but

01:19:21

he also mentions that you can only really, you should only focus on one at a time.

01:19:27

Yep.

01:19:28

Because if you try to do too many at one time, it's overwhelming.

01:19:32

It's too much going on.

01:19:34

And one of the things that Martin Luther did with Martin Luther King Jr, they had a single

01:19:42

target that they were after to fight against and everyone united around that one person

01:19:50

leading that movement towards that one goal.

01:19:53

True.

01:19:54

I think part of the problem that we see in a lot of our society today is there's a whole

01:19:57

bunch of different targets that people are trying to hit and there's not a single leader

01:20:01

on them and essentially it's too much at one time.

01:20:06

So it means everybody's frustrated in some way.

01:20:08

A whole bunch of people are angry because they feel like everyone should come together

01:20:13

and unify over this thing.

01:20:15

But the thing that everybody wants is different.

01:20:18

There's a whole bunch of these different targets that people are after, but it can't

01:20:24

be unified because the targets are so different that it can't become one movement.

01:20:29

So you essentially have multiple of them running all at once and then it just doesn't work

01:20:33

because you're trying to change too many things at one time.

01:20:36

Because the civil rights movement, it was so much targeted towards directly one thing

01:20:43

and absolutely everyone got on board with that one target.

01:20:46

So that I think is the thing that's missing in our society today.

01:20:50

I think if they could change that, which I'm not really sure how they would do, I have

01:20:55

no civil rights movement creator here, but to me that's the fundamental flaw in what's

01:21:02

going on today.

01:21:03

Yeah.

01:21:04

Well, there's a couple different things there.

01:21:06

So there's obviously the approach that I shared where Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man,

01:21:13

great example of how you can affect positive change and created a movement.

01:21:17

But also at the very beginning of this book, there's a totally different solution to violence,

01:21:23

which is interesting.

01:21:24

I forget the country that this happened in, but basically there were these two sides

01:21:27

and they would meet every evening in this square in Kigali, K-I-G-A-L-I.

01:21:35

And they would fight.

01:21:38

And every night, there's police there and they're trying to keep the peace and they

01:21:43

can't.

01:21:44

There's always violence, like every single night.

01:21:47

And some guy shows up and he's like, "Oh, I know how to make it stop.

01:21:50

Just remove all of the kebab vendors from the square."

01:21:53

Sure enough.

01:21:54

Like you remove the food and then people just leave because they're hungry and there's

01:21:58

no more violence.

01:22:01

So in essence, they controlled crowds with their habits.

01:22:05

And I'm not saying that this, the Montgomery bus boycott, social situation in the United

01:22:12

States can be solved the same way.

01:22:14

But there are multiple triggers here.

01:22:19

And it's interesting to think that you can affect pretty significant change simply by

01:22:24

changing a simple habit.

01:22:26

Well, we got one more chapter.

01:22:29

One more, chapter nine, the neurology of free will.

01:22:33

In this chapter, I don't know, it talks about all of the different things that are created

01:22:38

by habits that maybe people think of negatively.

01:22:43

So it tells a story about a lady who's addicted to gambling, tells another story about a guy

01:22:49

who murders his wife while sleepwalking.

01:22:52

And so there's all these different examples of these habits.

01:22:55

And he also shares there's different cases that have been brought against these people.

01:23:01

So in the case of the guy who ended up murdering his wife while he was sleepwalking, he had

01:23:06

no idea that he did it.

01:23:07

He was declared innocent.

01:23:08

But the lady who still has this habit that she "can't control" and she gambled away

01:23:14

all this money and she owes the casino tens of thousands of dollars.

01:23:19

Like she's guilty.

01:23:20

And so the question that he phrases here is, is it fair since habits are so automatic and

01:23:27

they're all kind of constructed the same?

01:23:29

Is it fair to say that the guy who murdered his wife is innocent while this lady who owes

01:23:33

the casino $30,000 or whatever, she's guilty?

01:23:38

I don't really know the easy or correct answer to that.

01:23:44

It does kind of tick me off, I guess, to know that gambling, like the people who deal with

01:23:49

this, they're going and they do go to the casino.

01:23:54

And that is an example of a cue and a routine that they could potentially change.

01:23:59

But it kind of ticks me off that once they get there, everything in there is designed

01:24:04

to manipulate these habits to get them to the point this lady was in where their life

01:24:07

is completely destroyed.

01:24:10

But the big takeaway for me in this section is that your habits are not your destiny.

01:24:17

He kind of ends it on a positive.

01:24:19

You can change your habits if you know how, but you've got to decide to change it and

01:24:22

it's going to take some hard work.

01:24:24

I don't know how I feel about this chapter.

01:24:27

I tend to be one who thinks you should own up to your actions, like own it up to what

01:24:35

you do.

01:24:37

It's the classic, if you're a recovering alcoholic, don't go to a bar.

01:24:42

Yep, exactly.

01:24:43

You're the one that's in control of that.

01:24:45

So saying that she's not responsible for the money that she gambled away, I don't have

01:24:53

a problem with casinos building themselves such that they are designed to help you give

01:25:00

your money away to them.

01:25:02

I don't mind them doing that because you're the one that went in there.

01:25:05

That is their business.

01:25:06

You're the one that walked in.

01:25:07

If that's your problem, don't go in.

01:25:12

What about this lady where she was trying to get clean and they're calling her house

01:25:17

and they're showing up and they're like, "Hey, come on over and we'll pay for everything."

01:25:22

I think there's got to be a line there somewhere.

01:25:23

Where do you think that line is?

01:25:25

I guess my question is why, maybe not why, but how do they know how to get a hold of

01:25:33

her?

01:25:34

She's obviously given her information to them at some point.

01:25:38

That's the response I had to.

01:25:42

It seems like if you don't want that invitation, I don't know very many instances where someone

01:25:52

has the ability to communicate with you that you can't stop it.

01:25:58

I'm sitting here trying to run through my head.

01:26:00

There's people who ignore the do not call list and they will call you even when they're

01:26:04

not supposed to.

01:26:07

People will mail you when you don't want it.

01:26:11

These are things that are easy to just ignore or delete or throw away.

01:26:16

I can't help but think she invited this.

01:26:19

Maybe that's just me being hard.

01:26:22

No, I think you're probably right because again, you've only got part of the story.

01:26:27

But it does kind of tick me off that there are these rules and guidelines in place.

01:26:31

Like you said, there are going to be people who are going to ignore the do not call list.

01:26:35

There are going to be people who are going to send you spam.

01:26:37

There are going to be people who are going to mail you stuff.

01:26:39

Then after you tell them, don't send me anything ever again.

01:26:44

That just seems wrong.

01:26:46

Given what we know about these habits and the fact that they're praying on these people

01:26:49

illegally, "How can they get away with that?"

01:26:56

Not everyone's clean, Mike.

01:26:58

I know.

01:27:00

I wish I had a clean answer but I don't.

01:27:04

Like I said, this chapter is kind of depressing because they share all these stories of people

01:27:09

who have kind of lost everything because of their habits.

01:27:13

It does end positively.

01:27:15

Like I said, because you can change your habits if you want to.

01:27:20

One important point I think they made in this last chapter is that if you believe you can

01:27:22

change, the change can become real if you make it a habit.

01:27:28

It's kind of like things are created twice, first in your mind, then in reality.

01:27:32

If you want to create it in reality, the way to do that is through establishing the habit

01:27:36

that's going to produce the right reward to get you where you want to go.

01:27:39

I like that.

01:27:40

I feel like that's a good place to stop.

01:27:42

All right.

01:27:43

Cool.

01:27:44

But you've got another miscellaneous here.

01:27:46

Yeah.

01:27:47

This actually didn't fit in with anything that he said in this particular book.

01:27:50

But my gap book for this time was Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey, which is not out yet.

01:27:55

It's a good read.

01:27:57

It's a good read.

01:27:59

He talks in there about the different ways that you can focus.

01:28:04

You can focus.

01:28:05

He has this powerful visual of your attentional space.

01:28:08

It's like this circle and then you can fill it different ways.

01:28:11

If you really want to get major progress done on a particular task or project, then you

01:28:17

just focus on that one thing.

01:28:19

He shares all these different scenarios.

01:28:21

One of the things that stood out to me was the fact that you can work on a task intently

01:28:27

and make progress on it while activating an automatic habit in the background.

01:28:33

We've talked about this roughly on other podcast episodes where you listen to a podcast while

01:28:43

you're mowing a lawn or whatever.

01:28:45

That is an example, I think, of how you can effectively, quote-unquote, multitask, but

01:28:53

the only way to do it is through establishing these habits.

01:28:57

I'm not sure I explained that real well.

01:28:59

But an important point, we tend to think, I think, anyways, in the productivity space

01:29:07

where there's so much emphasis on deep work and focus and all that stuff, that you have

01:29:11

to be laser focused on one thing at a time.

01:29:14

Really what Chris Bailey is saying is that now if you create these habits, you can actually

01:29:19

do those alongside one task that you are focusing on.

01:29:24

The challenge to me as I'm reading that other book, Hyper Focus, is what are the things

01:29:30

that I can do that will produce the results I want?

01:29:34

How can I make them habits?

01:29:36

We talked about some of them in this episode, the morning routine, the journaling reflection

01:29:42

at the end of the day.

01:29:44

What I'm thinking is that there's ways to automate some of that stuff.

01:29:50

I want to figure out how to do that using the Qroutine reward that we learned about in

01:29:55

this book.

01:29:56

Let's see if I understand what you're saying here.

01:29:59

I'm going to do this via an example of something I do.

01:30:06

This might explain what you're talking about.

01:30:09

Sometimes when I'm doing development, when I'm building writing code for a website, I'll

01:30:15

sometimes work on two different websites at the same time, which sounds like chaos.

01:30:22

What happens is I'm working on one.

01:30:25

A part of that process is at some points I need to stop the local website that I'm running

01:30:35

and clear the cache or the database and then restart it.

01:30:41

Simple process there.

01:30:42

That research process can sometimes take 30 seconds to 45 seconds depending on the size

01:30:48

of the website.

01:30:50

You're just waiting.

01:30:51

You're just waiting for that to happen.

01:30:54

It's all muscle memory.

01:30:55

I don't even know what the commands are to do all that.

01:30:57

It just happens.

01:31:00

I will run those commands to stop the server and run it again.

01:31:05

As soon as I tell it to run again, I'll switch over and work on the second website while

01:31:08

I'm waiting for that spin up.

01:31:12

I'll do the same thing.

01:31:13

I'll make a couple small tweaks.

01:31:15

I have a pretty good feel for when that other server should be up and running.

01:31:18

Once I feel like it's up and running, I'll quit the second website and go back to the

01:31:22

first one and continue my testing and debugging and stuff from there.

01:31:27

I'm multitasking because I'm working on two things at once, but it's because I have that

01:31:30

delay that I'm waiting on something.

01:31:33

Is that what you're talking about?

01:31:35

I think so.

01:31:36

I think that's a good example.

01:31:37

He talks about three combinations that work with the attentional space that you have available.

01:31:43

First, you can do a few small habitual tasks.

01:31:46

Second, you can do a task that requires most of your focus plus a habitual task.

01:31:50

I believe what you just described falls into that category.

01:31:53

Or you could just do one complex task.

01:31:57

The challenge for me, because we just read the power of habit, he's talking about how

01:32:01

you can create habitual tasks, what are the things that I can create into habitual tasks

01:32:07

that are things that I want to do?

01:32:10

I guess, are there things that I do currently that I view as a complex task that I have to

01:32:16

laser focus on this thing?

01:32:18

Or can I shift those things so that they become habits and institute cues, routines,

01:32:24

and rewards to accomplish the results that that task would give me, but also reduce the

01:32:30

cognitive load to actually do it?

01:32:32

Does that make sense?

01:32:33

It does.

01:32:34

It does.

01:32:35

I think I get what you're saying, I think.

01:32:37

In your example, booting up the other server or whatever, that not complex task that you've

01:32:43

got, you know exactly how to do it and you can do it almost automatically and you can

01:32:47

do something else while that's happening at the same time.

01:32:50

That's an example of a task that probably was a complex task for you at one point, but

01:32:54

you've made it a habitual task.

01:32:56

You can do that while doing something else.

01:32:57

I want to look for those things in the way I work.

01:33:02

That's probably a good example because I went and while you were talking, I pulled up my

01:33:09

command line history for one of those websites where I was doing that and realized it's four

01:33:16

different commands that I'm running, which if you've never done that before, it would

01:33:22

probably take you a little bit to know what order to do that in and when to do that.

01:33:27

But I don't even think about it.

01:33:29

I couldn't really tell you when to do that just because it's second nature at this point.

01:33:35

Yeah, exactly.

01:33:37

Interesting.

01:33:38

I've never thought about that as multitasking, but it is something that I do.

01:33:42

Fun times.

01:33:43

Anything else on the book, Mike?

01:33:44

No, other than I think we're probably agreed, but I'll ask you anyways because you have

01:33:48

one of these questions down.

01:33:50

What did you think was the most impactful part of the book?

01:33:52

For me, it was definitely the first part of this.

01:33:56

By the time we got to the second part, especially once we got to the Starbucks teaching willpower

01:34:00

and that's why everybody was successful, I was kind of tuning out.

01:34:03

Yeah, well, it makes a lot of sense.

01:34:05

I would say what I think is the most impactful point of this book is probably chapter three.

01:34:13

I think understanding how habits work, like the Q-retune reward, that piece is helpful.

01:34:19

But to me, understanding how do you change an existing habit or develop one, just knowing

01:34:26

that process, I feel like could have the biggest payoff.

01:34:30

A close second to that would be Keystone Habits.

01:34:34

I think those two pieces were the ones that really jumped out to me and that I felt like

01:34:38

I read those chapters and kind of wanted them to keep going.

01:34:43

But they were done too quick.

01:34:44

I think that's true.

01:34:45

I would add to that the power of Christ is chapter six and then chapter one, the habit

01:34:50

loop.

01:34:51

This is a really powerful idea.

01:34:52

One thing I forgot to mention, he kind of really briefly talked about how researchers

01:35:00

had come up with this habit loop, but the way he positions it, the rest of the book feels

01:35:05

kind of like he's ripping off their idea and he doesn't give them full credit for it.

01:35:10

Again, this is an example of me knowing the full story as opposed to just the part that

01:35:13

he tells.

01:35:15

Basically, I think it was Massachusetts Institute of Technology and there were a couple researchers

01:35:19

that came up with this key routine reward.

01:35:21

He just briefly mentions like, "Yeah, researchers have identified this and then he kind of runs

01:35:26

with it."

01:35:27

The only visuals in this book are where he plugs in the different pieces for this to

01:35:33

go along with the story that he's telling.

01:35:38

By the end of the book, it's easy to forget that Charles Duhigg isn't the one who came

01:35:42

up with this.

01:35:43

But it's important to clarify that, I think.

01:35:50

Yeah.

01:35:52

What pieces of this book could have been pulled out?

01:35:55

Which ones do you think he should have skipped?

01:35:57

Because it's a pretty long book, page count wise.

01:36:00

What is it, like 270 something?

01:36:01

Yeah.

01:36:02

I just threw stuff all over my desk.

01:36:05

I feel like most books should be around 200.

01:36:09

It's kind of been my working theory lately, which would tell me there's about 75 pages

01:36:16

here that could probably have been pulled out.

01:36:18

Yeah.

01:36:20

So I think all of part one was good.

01:36:25

From part two, chapter four and chapter six, you could probably cut chapter five, chapter

01:36:31

seven, and then part three, I think was definitely the weakest part.

01:36:35

Because again, the question that I had was how do we implement this?

01:36:40

It's great to know based on some historical examples why he thinks Saddleback Church was

01:36:46

successful or the Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful.

01:36:50

But how does that help now?

01:36:53

And I, for a thought experiment, applied it to a current situation and there is no easy

01:36:59

answer.

01:37:00

It's not as simple as just, oh, pick a new routine.

01:37:03

Yeah.

01:37:04

You can't communicate that to millions or billions of people at once and get everybody

01:37:08

to buy into it right away.

01:37:09

So I think from a practical applying what you're reading perspective, that part really

01:37:18

doesn't add a whole lot.

01:37:20

Fair point.

01:37:21

I feel like you could just drop part three.

01:37:23

Like I would be happy with that because if you drop part three, it's at two 12.

01:37:26

Like, okay, just do that.

01:37:28

You know, drop those last two chapters and call it good.

01:37:31

I'd be good with that.

01:37:33

Interestingly, what do you think the impact would be?

01:37:37

You know, this is a New York Times bestselling book.

01:37:39

So we're telling a New York Times bestselling author how they should do it differently.

01:37:45

Because we have the authority to do that, right?

01:37:48

Yeah, yeah.

01:37:49

But what do you think would be the impact if this book was just the two sections?

01:37:55

I mean, I see this a lot in the books that we read that there's like three different

01:38:00

sections.

01:38:01

One more important Hanson book, I think, too, was three different sections.

01:38:05

And I'm sure that there's some, you know, marketing based habit manipulation going on

01:38:12

there where it's like, oh, there's three sections.

01:38:13

They must have really thought this through.

01:38:16

Right.

01:38:17

I also wonder because there's also like there's usually a multiple of three in number of

01:38:26

chapters.

01:38:27

Yep.

01:38:28

This one was 12, right?

01:38:30

And I always think that that's nine.

01:38:32

No, that player knows.

01:38:33

Not in the first part, four in the second, two in the last one.

01:38:36

Right.

01:38:37

And I would imagine they struggled to put four in the second and tried to move one to three.

01:38:44

I would imagine they had a fight over that.

01:38:46

But they, I think you're right.

01:38:49

I think there's something to that.

01:38:51

Most books have three parts.

01:38:52

Like there's, there's something in our mind that, you know, that is the normal way that

01:38:57

people form books.

01:39:00

And I, my sense is that most authors probably don't structure it that way.

01:39:06

They just have, you know, here's my book.

01:39:09

And then publishers want to sell it.

01:39:11

So then they throw a marketing spin on it and then we get three parts.

01:39:17

And if there's not three parts worth in the original, they add one and it's usually that

01:39:21

last one.

01:39:22

And it's the last one that we always feel like we should cut.

01:39:26

So I'm with you.

01:39:29

Yeah.

01:39:30

Well, it's, I think I have a partial answer to this from the Chris Bailey book, which,

01:39:35

you know, I'm not going to quote him exactly because books not out yet and maybe it'll

01:39:41

even change.

01:39:42

But he does talk about how this whole idea of a tensional space, like it's essentially

01:39:48

the ram in your computer's brain and it can only handle so much, which is why chunking

01:39:54

works and stuff like that.

01:39:57

But I think that there's probably patterns and habits that people have established that

01:40:03

like, yeah, readers can wrap their head around the overall message of this book better when

01:40:07

it's broken up into these three different sections.

01:40:09

But I do think it's interesting that a lot of the books that we read, we read the whole

01:40:14

thing and then we're like, yeah, this part really shouldn't even be here.

01:40:19

So I mean, I know they've got reasons for doing it, but I just think it's interesting

01:40:24

how often we have that reaction.

01:40:27

So that said, what else we have here?

01:40:30

Action items?

01:40:31

Yep.

01:40:32

We've talked about them for the most part.

01:40:35

Just want to summarize yours quick.

01:40:36

I'll summarize mine.

01:40:37

Sure.

01:40:38

So the habit loop, the cure routine reward, that's something that I want to apply to all

01:40:43

of my current routines and habits.

01:40:45

I want to identify what they are and then figure out what changes I want to make, change them

01:40:50

one at a time, not a whole bunch of things at once.

01:40:53

And then I want things specifically which we mentioned, the fast food.

01:40:57

I don't want to say like completely cut it out because I don't think that's the right

01:41:03

approach.

01:41:04

The right approach is not just saying, okay, no more fast food.

01:41:06

The right approach is figuring out the cure routine and the reward and figuring out what

01:41:11

I can do to circumvent that when it happens.

01:41:14

But the net result I'm going for is no more fast food.

01:41:17

It's a good one.

01:41:18

I like that one.

01:41:20

Specifically no more culvers.

01:41:21

Little butter burger, cheese curds.

01:41:23

Sorry, culvers.

01:41:25

Sorry, Mike.

01:41:26

That's going to be a tough one.

01:41:28

I'll definitely make sure that's on the list for next time.

01:41:31

And maybe the following and the following and the following.

01:41:36

No, I want to follow you on the identifying what my current routines and habits are.

01:41:41

I think that there's something valuable in that.

01:41:44

And I think that might be a it'll be an ongoing thing.

01:41:49

I think you're always going to be finding more and more of them.

01:41:52

So that was number one too.

01:41:54

I've done this somewhat with moving my phone down to my office and changing it my morning

01:41:58

routine a little bit because of that and getting away from some of those bad habits

01:42:01

as a result.

01:42:03

That was too.

01:42:04

And third one here, I don't think I talked about this earlier, but there are certain points

01:42:08

in my day and I know when they happen they usually involve me finishing up a round of

01:42:12

email.

01:42:14

But those points in the day are a little more stressful than normal.

01:42:18

And because of that stress, I have a tendency to kind of be chaotic with the tasks that I'm

01:42:24

doing and it's hard for me to focus on one and I bounce all over the place.

01:42:28

So because of that, I know that something that calms me down is just take 15 minutes

01:42:33

and read.

01:42:35

So I'm wanting to build in this habit of after finishing up email, like my rounds of email,

01:42:43

taking 15 minutes to read from whatever book I'm reading at the time.

01:42:47

So that's a habit I want to build in.

01:42:49

I like that one.

01:42:50

That should be a good one.

01:42:51

I'm excited about that one.

01:42:52

We'll see how well it actually holds true though.

01:42:55

But that said, author's style and rating.

01:43:00

So on this one, like I'll go first year since it was my choice, but we've talked a lot

01:43:06

about how he wrote this book, I think, probably more so than we normally do.

01:43:10

I think the technicals on him as a writer.

01:43:13

He's a great writer, I think.

01:43:14

I just think his choice of structure is a little bit difficult to stick with.

01:43:21

And I feel like there are some points where that structure inhibits his ways of conveying

01:43:28

the ideas and it makes it a little bit hard to follow once in a while.

01:43:32

So although I love the concept of building habits and how do you change them and such,

01:43:39

I think I resonated a lot more with the individualization side of it more so than the organizational

01:43:44

and societal sides.

01:43:46

So I don't really know where I would want to put it.

01:43:50

So it seems like my de facto, I don't know, rating is four.

01:43:54

So I'm going to put it at 4.0 just because it's definitely not a five.

01:43:58

I feel like three and a half is kind of lame because I feel like it has more of an impact

01:44:02

on me than that.

01:44:03

And four and a half seems too high for that.

01:44:05

So I'm going to land it on four.

01:44:06

All right.

01:44:07

Interesting.

01:44:08

I am going to go 3.5 even though it's lame.

01:44:11

Okay.

01:44:12

Fair enough.

01:44:13

Part of the reason for that is like I said, I was familiar with a lot of these stories

01:44:18

and a lot of these ideas.

01:44:19

I mean, to be fair, the key routine reward, he does a great job of presenting it in this

01:44:24

book.

01:44:25

And if this is the first time you have encountered that idea, it's really powerful.

01:44:28

But I work for a company in Asian deficiency that teaches a rituals course on this stuff.

01:44:33

So I kind of get it and I've been implementing it for a while before we read this.

01:44:39

So take that into consideration.

01:44:42

Also take into consideration my strong reaction to his lack of giving emotional intelligence

01:44:47

credit for Starbucks success.

01:44:50

But I really think that there wasn't that much in this book that really significantly

01:44:57

impacted me.

01:44:58

There's some really cool mental models.

01:45:01

And it's definitely something that I'm going to apply.

01:45:04

But that habit loop idea, which again, wasn't even his original idea.

01:45:10

Like, that's the big takeaway for me.

01:45:13

It's not the societal stuff.

01:45:15

It's not even the organizational stuff.

01:45:17

There is some cool stuff in there, but the book could have been half as long in, in my

01:45:23

opinion.

01:45:24

So I do think it's a good book.

01:45:26

I do think I would recommend it to people.

01:45:28

But in terms of the impact that it had on me and how much I enjoyed it compared to all

01:45:33

of the other books that we've read, I think 3.5 is very fair.

01:45:39

That's fair.

01:45:41

That is fair.

01:45:43

All right.

01:45:44

So what's up next, Mike?

01:45:48

The next book is a listener recommendation, not just my wife, but though she did vote for

01:45:53

it.

01:45:54

And that is Boundaries by Henry Cloud.

01:45:57

This is one that, before we recorded this, you mentioned that you really enjoyed this

01:46:02

the first time that you read it.

01:46:03

So it'll be interesting to hear how that maybe has changed for you.

01:46:06

And I'm excited to dive into it.

01:46:09

I've heard lots of great things about this book.

01:46:11

Yeah.

01:46:12

I'm excited to go through this one.

01:46:13

And this was, this is a, I think this will be a rare case that I'm going to have a bunch

01:46:17

of stories on this one.

01:46:20

Just because I read it nine years ago, and I still recommend it to people.

01:46:26

So yes, I have lots to say about this book.

01:46:31

I'm excited that you picked it.

01:46:32

Interesting.

01:46:33

So it'll be a good one.

01:46:35

Following Boundaries, we'll jump into Work Clean by Dan Charness.

01:46:41

This is also a listener recommendation.

01:46:43

It wasn't the next top voted one, but it was, it was up there.

01:46:48

So I'm not really sure why I was drawn to it, but it's one that I've seen around here

01:46:52

and there.

01:46:53

It's the, yeah, I'm not going to explain it more than that.

01:46:56

But Work Clean by Dan Charness.

01:46:59

That's after Boundaries.

01:47:01

Nice.

01:47:02

I have, I have never heard of this book.

01:47:04

See, I don't know if that's good or bad.

01:47:07

Right.

01:47:09

For gap books, I've got on my desk right here, Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield.

01:47:17

Tap your inner power and create your life's work, which was definitely a big fan of the

01:47:22

War of Art.

01:47:24

This looks like it's written in the same style.

01:47:26

So fairly short, easy read.

01:47:29

Nice.

01:47:30

I don't have a gap book this time.

01:47:32

Kind of lame, I know.

01:47:33

But things have been crazy.

01:47:35

You know, I've had some time off, taking some more time off, which you would think would

01:47:40

lead me to reading more.

01:47:42

But in the first case, like being gone at Max Talk, I'd read almost none.

01:47:48

Max Talk is busy for me.

01:47:52

This upcoming, I think I will, I'll end up having extra books that I will have read.

01:47:57

So I might have multiple gap books next time.

01:48:00

We'll see.

01:48:01

All right.

01:48:02

So if you want to recommend a book, you can do that at the Bookworm Club, which is club.bookworm.fm.

01:48:10

It's a awesome form created by our own Discourse Expert, Joe Buele.

01:48:15

So go join the club.

01:48:17

You can also see a list of all of the books that are upcoming at Bookworm.fm/list.

01:48:25

You also see a list of books that we have covered, as well as some links to Amazon affiliate

01:48:31

links.

01:48:32

So if you want to go back and buy a book and you want to support the show, that gives

01:48:35

us a little bit of a kickback so we can pay Joe to host the files and edit them and everything.

01:48:46

So everybody go go pay Joe and buy some books via Amazon.

01:48:50

Awesome.

01:48:51

Thanks, Mike.

01:48:53

Yes, join the club club.bookworm.fm.

01:48:56

That's where we hang out and talk about some of these books.

01:48:59

I wrote this down a little bit earlier about the club.

01:49:02

I don't know if this is a good idea or not.

01:49:04

You mentioned that some people have their own action items from these books.

01:49:07

I would love to hear those.

01:49:09

Maybe that's weird, but I think that would be cool.

01:49:12

So if you have action items from this book, The Power of Habit, go share them on the episode

01:49:18

link.

01:49:19

I'll make sure that's in the show notes for this episode.

01:49:23

Just click the discuss on the club and then share your action items there.

01:49:27

We can help with the accountability thing, I think.

01:49:30

We'll try it.

01:49:31

See how it goes.

01:49:32

I think that would be kind of cool.

01:49:33

Don't you, Mike?

01:49:34

I think that would be fun.

01:49:35

Yeah, for sure.

01:49:36

So anyway, do that.

01:49:38

Another way you can support the show is on iTunes.

01:49:41

What is, you put something in the show notes here about this?

01:49:45

I did.

01:49:46

This is a review that P Stanash has left us, which says that this podcast has completely

01:49:54

changed the way that I take notes when I read books with ideas I'm trying to master.

01:49:58

I also try to come up with at least three action items from each book.

01:50:02

So P Stanash, you should definitely go share those action items with us.

01:50:05

I've added numerous books to my to read list after listening to this podcast and I've gone

01:50:10

back to read some books over and over again with a new perspective.

01:50:12

If you enjoy reading books on productivity and personal development, strongly recommend

01:50:16

this podcast.

01:50:17

So thank you, P Stanash, for the review and everybody else.

01:50:22

That's a way that you can support the show.

01:50:24

Yes.

01:50:25

So leave us an iTunes review.

01:50:26

Link in the show notes.

01:50:28

That'll make it easy.

01:50:29

All right.

01:50:30

So thanks everybody for joining us.

01:50:32

Next book up is Boundaries by Henry Cloud and we will talk to you next time.