Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, the question on everybody's mind right now, Joe Buleg, did you meditate?

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Why do we start on this one?

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This one's down the list always here and you jumped.

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People want to know.

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I did.

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The list in QIP, I don't think, is in order of importance.

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Okay.

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So can we start with ratings and author style then and work our way backwards?

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Sounds like you didn't have so much success with this one this time.

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So this week's follow up with Joe is like complete dumpster fire to pull out an old term.

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It did not go well.

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Like not at all.

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I'm looking at this list.

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I don't think I did any of these.

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I have five of them here.

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Okay.

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Yeah, let's just run through these real quick for people who are following along at home.

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But we don't need to belabor each one of these if you, if the paint is too great.

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Yeah, so number one on this list, using an hourly awareness chime of some sort.

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Idea being something goes off every hour and I reevaluate whether or not I'm doing the thing I

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should be doing at that time.

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This didn't happen.

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Number two, distraction blocker on my Mac and iPhone.

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Thinking about using screen time.

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I tried using screen time on my phone when I initially installed iOS, the latest iOS and have

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all but turned it off.

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I have nothing on my Mac at the moment.

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So failure there.

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Don't use email as a to do list.

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Nothing changed here.

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Like nothing like I.

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So not worse, but not better.

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I don't think it's worse.

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I hope it's not worse.

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Sounds like you need a arbitrator to rule it one way or the other on this one.

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Yeah, I.

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I needed to sketch out my workspace and like figure out the best way to lay it out.

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I know that it's still not correct because I had to mess with the way all my cables and

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stuff work whenever I sat down to record here.

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So that has not happened.

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And that was a carryover from the last one.

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So that's when gets carried over again.

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And then there's meditation on here and to be completely honest, I didn't even do it once.

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I didn't even attempt to do it once.

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I'll be honest.

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So this is just not happening for Joe Buellig.

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To pull out some of my old accent and such, it just ain't happening this time.

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Like it just didn't work.

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Didn't work.

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Don't know what it was.

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You know, I well, I shouldn't say that.

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I know what it was.

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It had to do with like if anyone's listened to the free agents episode that I did with

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Mike and with David Sparks, I've got a lot moving from like a job stance right now.

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And I don't need to go into all the details of what that entails with specifics, but

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there's a lot going on in Joe's life right now.

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So like action items and some of these follow up, like especially today,

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I'm just trying to keep life moving right now, trying to do like improvement pieces is rough.

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I didn't even like this is even the second time.

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This is how bad it is.

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Okay.

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So this is even the second scheduled time for this book.

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Like we had to move it because I didn't get the book read.

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So obviously there won't be a gap book from Joe this time.

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So yes, this is this is a rough round for me.

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Sorry to hear that, Joe, but we won't.

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We don't need to pick on you every time, by the way, if you if you want to take stuff off the list,

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feel free.

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I know, you know, we don't take it into details, but I know you're going through stuff.

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And I definitely recommend people go listen to that episode.

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We've gotten David and I have gotten some great feedback on that episode.

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Sweet.

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People were really encouraged by your story.

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So that was that was really cool.

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It turned out better than I honestly had hoped.

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I was the one who posted that one.

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So I went back and re listened to the whole thing.

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Sure.

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Added all the chapter markers, stuff like that.

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But I was really happy with the way that one turned out.

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And I know you and I were talking offline about how like this is something that people need to hear.

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That it isn't always roses and rainbows.

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Right.

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How do you deal with with difficulty? I feel like the way that you presented your attitude and your

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perspective with things on that was really healthy. And I think that and we've gotten some

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feedback that people were really encouraged by that.

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Sure.

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I just want to say publicly, thank you for coming on.

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That was fun. It is weird. It's like, okay, for those who haven't listened to it.

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So I'm leaving free agency to go join a company.

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And we talked about all the why behind that on free agents,

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because it's counter to what everybody thinks you should be doing.

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Because everybody's quote unquote dream job.

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Some people don't even like it when I say quote unquote.

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Sorry.

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That's true. That was in our iTunes review last time.

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I apologize for Joe.

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Totally did it intentionally because of that review.

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I'm sorry.

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So whenever you're making that move away from this dream world of free agency,

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everybody kind of like, wait, what?

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Why would you do that?

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So yeah.

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Don't you want to stick it to the man hustle and get to the, I don't know,

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your ideal future?

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That's kind of the picture everybody gets, you know, as like the Gary V's.

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You know, you just got to just got to push through, man.

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Yeah.

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And then all of a sudden things are going to be great.

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That's fine and dandy, but there's a fair amount of risk involved with that.

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And when you've got a lot of little kids at home, it makes it harder to take that

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amount of risk.

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Yeah.

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And success is never that straight line that everybody thinks it is.

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It's true.

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Twisting turns along the way.

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So it's true.

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So yes, life with Joe has been crazy lately.

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So that means that Joe's action items have been not great.

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I will say my Omni focus has gotten a lot more full lately.

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And yet I didn't get this done.

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So I guess that's good.

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I don't know.

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I've been now granted, I detailed things out quite a bit more than some folks, especially you.

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Yes, you do.

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So for example, it is almost two o'clock in the afternoon as we record this.

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And I'm just going to look as what we've got here.

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I have a clicky keyboard.

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I just remembered that.

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I bought one, Mike.

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Oh, yeah.

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Follow up.

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I have checked off 212 items today.

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What?

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That's not even possible.

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It is possible.

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I'm looking at it.

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Holy cow.

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So all right.

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Well, I've got some stuff happening too, which we'll talk about maybe a little bit later.

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But stick opinion that for now.

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I'll go through my my follow up here.

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I've got only got two items.

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The one that I did not really do was start writing emails with five sentences or less.

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I didn't really send a whole lot of emails on the last couple of weeks.

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You hate email.

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I do hate email.

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So this is something that I don't think is going to be done.

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Necessarily, but I do like the idea.

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And I think it's one of those things that I'll just try to keep in mind as I'm trying to spend

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as little time and email as humanly possible, which goes along with the idea here.

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So common theme.

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I think that that will work long term.

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The other thing, oh, just real quickly, the emails of five sentences or less, the real value in

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this for me is the mental model where I go into the email approaching it where I'm going to try

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to keep this under five sentences.

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So from that perspective, I would say this has been a success and we could check that one off.

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Did I actually do it?

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I don't know.

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The second one was to take social media off of my phone and in parentheses,

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consider how I use devices.

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So I did this.

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I took Twitter and Instagram off of my phone.

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And I was more addicted than I realized.

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I was messaging you.

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I think the day after or two days after.

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And I said, I've accidentally launched day one, which is the app that I replaced in my doc,

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where Twitterific used to be.

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I've messaged you.

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I've accidentally opened day one like three times today.

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Because my thumb just naturally goes there and presses that spot on my glass.

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I don't know.

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Not a keyboard, whatever.

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It's just muscle memory.

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And that was really eye opening to me that I'm doing this without even thinking about it.

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But ever since I'd say the second day, it really hasn't been an issue.

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And it's been a good experience because I've recognized that when I can't physically get to

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Twitter on my phone, which yes, I can.

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If I go log into Safari, whatever, I can go to the Twitter app and I can log into my account and I can

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see stuff.

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But that's just too much hassle for it to be worth it.

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Kind of like we talked about the happiness advantage, taking the batteries out of the

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remote was enough resistance for it not to happen.

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That's totally what it's been for me.

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Oh sure.

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But I've also noticed that not logging into Twitter and Instagram too, I don't miss these at all.

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Like I thought I would.

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Yeah, I had an addiction to it apparently because my thumb kept going to open it.

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But once I got over the fact that I can't launch this on my phone, I didn't really,

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I didn't really care to go to my Mac or dig up my iPad where I still have Twitter if it

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installed and scroll through the timelines.

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Sure.

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So that's been a good thing.

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I would say I don't feel like I've missed out on anything from not being able to keep up with

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those feeds.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Maybe I have, I guess.

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I won't really know unless I go comb through everything.

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But at this point, ignorance is bliss.

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I'm not pretty happy.

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Joe Mo, joy of missing out.

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Yeah.

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So I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to stick with this.

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Sure.

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Because I know whenever you posted the, like when you messaged me and said,

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I've opened day one five times by accident, my question was, did you log anything?

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If you're launching day one, you might as well log how you feel about no social media.

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True.

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That was my thinking.

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Yeah, I didn't really do that.

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I use day one for some specific use cases.

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I've got a notebook where I just have my daily reflections.

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I have a notebook, which has a whole bunch of like sermon notes and things.

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It's called Bible.

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I've got one called photos, which takes an IFTTT recipe.

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So everything that I would post to Instagram automatically gets logged here,

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which since Instagram's no longer on my phone, there's nothing new being added there.

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I've got a shortcut set up for recording quotes.

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And then I've got just like some links, jokes, song ideas, stuff like that.

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Oh, I did create one the other day.

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Are you familiar with the app mood notes?

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Mood notes.

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Is that where it's got like the facial deals, like happy, sad, neutral sort of thing?

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So how are you?

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And it's got the straight face and then you can swipe up or you can swipe down,

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you know, numerous times to show how happy or sad you're feeling.

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And then it just gives you like a quick log.

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Okay.

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And you can set different reminders.

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So it reminds you like specific times.

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I figured out how to recreate that pretty simply using emoji and shortcuts.

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Oh, there you go.

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And start it into day one.

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It's the interface obviously isn't nearly as nice as mood notes,

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which I already have, but I do have a mood notes journal now inside of day one,

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where I'm experimenting with this.

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Okay.

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Go for it.

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This is not my wheelhouse at all.

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Maybe it should be.

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Shortcuts is really cool.

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And it's something like workflow I never really got into and shortcuts to do a certain degree.

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I like to dig into it deep enough to understand what's going on,

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but then I'm not the kind of person who's going to sit there and think about the 50 different ways

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that I can utilize this in my day to day stuff.

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But the mood notes thing, I was talking to somebody on Slack and they're like,

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hey, is there any way to get mood notes into day one is like a historical record?

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And I'm like, hmm.

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So I went and looked and there isn't, but then I'm like, well,

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do you even need mood notes?

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Could you go?

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So I built it in like five minutes.

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There you go.

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I can put a link to that shortcut in the show notes for people who want to want to do this,

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because then you just tap on it and you install it and you can use it.

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You don't have to build it yourself.

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Oh, yeah.

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Right.

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I sometimes I forget that you can do that.

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Well, can we get off a follow up now?

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Because mine didn't work.

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Yeah, let's talk about today's book, which is predictably irrational by Dan O'Reilly.

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I think I got his last name right.

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Dan's had a rough life, at least he had a season that was very rough.

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We'll get into that.

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But the tagline on this is the hidden forces that shape our decisions.

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And this is an interesting book.

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I have some fairly strong opinions on the book itself.

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As do I.

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So we'll see if that comes out before we get to the end of this.

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I loved and hated this book.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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It's a very bittersweet book to me.

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Sometimes in the same chapter.

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So this is an interesting one.

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And it has a lot to do with how as humans we make a lot of decisions that a lot of times

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don't make sense.

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Like we'll get into some specifics here, but there are just a lot of times we make choices.

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And when you stop to think through them rationally and take the time to go through them,

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it makes zero logic happen at all.

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It just doesn't work.

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Yep.

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So he goes through explaining some of these processes that lead us to those decisions

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and why our brains work that way and gives tons of research behind how they determine these things.

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And in some cases, not all he offers some ways to help or utilize those irrationalities,

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which I thought was helpful.

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Not all the time.

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But in some cases, I'm like, okay, this was silly.

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Yeah.

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So the author has kind of a crazy lead in as to how he headed down this path.

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Do you want to tell this story?

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I don't really want to tell this story.

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Sure.

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And I'm going to mess up some of the specifics because I didn't write everything down.

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But the short version is that he grew up, I think, in Israel.

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And when he was 17, he burned 70% of his body by a magnesium flare.

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So he was in the hospital for a long time.

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And he kind of frames the book through this experience while he was there because

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as part of the daily routine, the nurses would come and they would have to change the bandages

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because a whole bunch of his body was wrapped in bandages.

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But the nurses tended to just rip the bandades off, which is the common belief, I would say,

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for limiting the pain for an individual patient.

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I mean, I've got five kids at home who are constantly hurting themselves.

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So they're always asking for bandades.

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So do you go through a lot of bandades, Mike?

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We do go through a lot of bandades.

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And I completely agree.

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Just like rip it off, get it over with.

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But again, their whole body isn't being bandaged.

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They bumped their finger or their arm or whatever.

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It was like barely even a scratch, but they think they need a bandage.

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Whatever.

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You just get it done with as quick as you can.

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So I understand that perspective, but his theory as the one that is being bandaged was that

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maybe it's not true that taking the band, just ripping the bandades off really does minimize

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the amount of pain that the patient experiences.

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And he went back after he left there, did a bunch of research and brought like a study to the

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nurses and is like, hey, look, see, it's actually less painful if you take them off carefully than

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if you just rip them off.

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And the nurses responded by saying, well, yeah, but there's also the emotional trauma for us

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because we don't like causing the pain to people.

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So this way, you get it over with and you deal with the reactions and you move on.

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And he's like, oh, yeah, good point.

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I never really thought about it from that perspective.

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And so that really just sets the table for all of the other chapters that he's going to talk about.

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And he kind of dissects like one common, I don't know what the term would be idiom.

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I don't know.

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Like one common commonly held belief around a specific area, like the first chapter talks

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about the truth about reality.

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The second one is the fallacy of supply and demand.

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It will go through some of these, but there's 13.

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I don't think we need to talk about all of them.

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But really, he just like shares a really traumatic emotional story at the beginning

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and uses a personal experience to say, you know, maybe what you've always believed is a little

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bit wrong.

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And it's a really strong, really strong intro to the material that's in this book, in my opinion, anyways.

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Yeah, it was a very captivating story to begin with.

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It had me very curious as to the rest of the book, like, okay, if you're going to start off with this,

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I better hold on to my seat because this is going to be quite a ride.

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Yeah, exactly.

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He's been doing research ever since.

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Yep.

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Yes.

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Oh, has he?

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All right.

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Let's go into the first one, the truth about reality.

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And there's a couple pieces of this that he spells out.

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One is comparisons, like how we compare different objects or people to each other

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and make decisions based on those.

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And kind of a side note that follows that is this about anchoring.

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You've seen this to some extent.

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I do this with my clients all the time.

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Like, you know, if I mention a particular piece of custom development that costs $10,000,

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it's easier for me to get $6,000 or $7,000 for the project we're talking about.

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Whereas if I mentioned $3,000 project and then try to sell them a $6,000 or $7,000 project,

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it's a lot harder to get a yes out of them.

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So you can reverse this.

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It does go both ways.

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But that's the whole concept he goes through here.

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Yeah.

00:19:09

This one is interesting, especially as someone who makes stuff for the interwebs.

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You see this all over the place.

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And when you read this, you feel a little bit, I don't know.

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It felt weird when I read this.

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It felt like, OK, I can't trust anybody anymore.

00:19:27

Yes.

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Because it literally is everywhere.

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He mentions that we like to make decisions based on comparisons.

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And by introducing a third option near one of the other options,

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then you can influence the person's decision.

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And you initially, you're like, I don't want to believe that people can be manipulated that easily,

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but he basically lays out a pretty strong case for it.

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Yep, it's true.

00:19:51

Yeah.

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One example that he used in this section was the economist,

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which at the time that he wrote this had an internet only subscription, which was $59.

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And then a print only subscription, which was $129.

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And then you could get both for $129.

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So the print only at $129 being the exact same price as getting both for $129 was completely a decoy.

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Just to drive people into subscribing for both, even if they had no desire for the print subscription.

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And he shared a bunch of statistics because again, he's a researcher and he shares so many research

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studies, too many research studies, in my opinion, in this book.

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But if you really liked research, then you'd probably love some of this stuff.

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And a lot of the research, by the way, it's stuff that he did.

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He's not citing something else that somebody else did.

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Like Chris Bailey, for example, talks a lot about research and hyper focus,

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but that's because he combed through all the research.

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It's not that he did all of the studies himself.

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Dan O'Reilly likes to do all the studies himself and then say, "This is what we saw."

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Which this pros and cons to that, but it got a little bit old as you went through this book,

00:21:02

in my opinion.

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As we're talking about this first chapter, though, the truth about reality, he shares some statistics on,

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like, when we position this thing here, we can get 80% of the people to choose this thing.

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So there's a lot of solid numbers around this, but as is the case with most of the research studies

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in this book, I kind of think that a lot of the findings, the specific findings,

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like the actual numbers don't really matter.

00:21:27

Really, all you need to know is that a lot of times there are these three options,

00:21:32

and people are going to gravitate towards the one in the middle.

00:21:35

And if you position that more or less towards one end of the spectrum,

00:21:39

towards one of the extremes, then you can get people to take that option.

00:21:42

Chris Bounds Yeah, it seemed like it was more of a lesson

00:21:45

in marketing than it was anything.

00:21:46

Dan O'Reilly Yeah, exactly.

00:21:49

I kept, as I was going through this chapter, the only thing I could process

00:21:55

whenever I read each of the findings was, "Okay, how do I apply this to my business?

00:22:00

Okay, now, if I sell things this way, I could do that.

00:22:03

If I sell them that way, that would lead to, wait, why am I always thinking about marketing here?"

00:22:09

Chris Bounds Like this.

00:22:10

Dan O'Reilly It's totally my perception.

00:22:12

Chris Bounds Which is also the natural reaction, though,

00:22:16

to this first chapter, because it totally is about marketing.

00:22:20

And I think internet marketing, even though he didn't specifically talk to that,

00:22:25

because I think it's a little bit older than the version that I read anyways.

00:22:28

But it's basically speaking directly to internet marketing,

00:22:32

which was kind of weird, in my opinion, that he starts this whole book with a chapter

00:22:38

that is so tied to marketing, which I would argue a lot of people are going to have

00:22:43

strong reactions towards.

00:22:45

I know I had a fairly strong negative reaction to reading this first chapter.

00:22:49

Dan O'Reilly Yeah.

00:22:49

Chris Bounds I feel like he could have picked one of the

00:22:52

other chapters to start this off, and it would have been a lot better.

00:22:56

I don't know exactly which one I was thinking about that.

00:22:59

As I was going through my Mind Node file, maybe the cost of zero cost,

00:23:04

which is chapter number three.

00:23:06

But I didn't feel like this really set the tone for the rest of the book very well.

00:23:12

Or maybe it did, I don't know, but it doesn't set a positive tone for the rest of the book.

00:23:16

Dan O'Reilly Right.

00:23:17

So chapter two, the fallacy of supply and demand.

00:23:22

Chris Bounds Yeah.

00:23:24

So this, and I should say, as we get into this chapter, he starts with a really cool story.

00:23:29

He does have a lot of cool stories in this book.

00:23:32

They're just drowned out by the crazy number of research studies that he did.

00:23:36

Dan O'Reilly I think we're getting the hint here that

00:23:38

Mike doesn't like all these research studies.

00:23:40

Chris Bounds Not these research studies, because like I said, he was more fascinated on the methods

00:23:46

that he used to get the numbers, which sometimes supported the story that he was telling.

00:23:51

He was more proud of the fact that he did the research, what the research actually said it felt

00:23:56

like. My interpretation of this.

00:23:58

Dan O'Reilly No, I think that's fair, because he does do a lot of deep explanations into the

00:24:04

backside of it. So much so that there was even a point, and I forget which chapter it is, but

00:24:11

he had an entire page and a half talking about the history of the number zero.

00:24:17

Dan O'Reilly Yeah.

00:24:18

Why is this here?

00:24:20

Like I had no, I was so dumbfounded. I was like, why did we just have a page and a half on this?

00:24:26

Dan O'Reilly Mm-hmm.

00:24:26

Dan O'Reilly I have no clue.

00:24:28

Anyway, side note. Chris Bounds Yep. And a lot of it was me and this person, or grammatically correct,

00:24:35

this person and I did this study, and then we had this thought, what if we did this? So we did

00:24:39

this, and this is what we found. And then we had this thought, what if we did this? Like,

00:24:42

I don't care about the entire process. No offense. I know you had a traumatic experience at the

00:24:50

beginning, but that doesn't mean that that's not enough goodwill for me to put up with the rest of

00:24:54

the book just because you told that cool story and I felt sorry for you. And that sounds harsh,

00:25:00

but we read a lot of these books and we learn a lot of stuff from these books, but I also think

00:25:06

that there's a lot of people who believe that when they start a book, they have to finish it.

00:25:11

And we do because we have to talk about it for a book where...

00:25:14

Dan O'Reilly Yes.

00:25:15

Dan O'Reilly But I would argue that in general, life is too short to finish a book you don't like.

00:25:19

Dan O'Reilly Yeah.

00:25:19

Dan O'Reilly Unless you're really getting something from it,

00:25:22

and you know that this stuff is going to stick with you. Sometimes you got to eat your vegetables.

00:25:26

But when it comes to these personal growth, self-development, business type books,

00:25:31

I like reading these for the most part. There are definitely parts of this though where it's like,

00:25:36

okay, I get it. And some of the content that's in here is really good. So you got to spit out

00:25:43

the sticks sometimes. But the whole tone, I guess, of how he is so proud of all the research that

00:25:52

he did, which again, kudos to him. I'm sure that is very, very, very hard. And in the right circles

00:25:57

is very, very, very impressive. But it doesn't really mean very much to me. I don't really care

00:26:03

to hear all of that stuff. I just want to know how this is going to apply to me specifically.

00:26:07

And some of this stuff, by the way, that's the other thing here. There's... Some of these chapters

00:26:10

we'll get into. He draws some conclusions from here, which I don't necessarily agree with. But

00:26:16

stick a pin in that one. Coming back to the fallacy of supply and demand. There's a story at the

00:26:22

beginning of this, which is way better than any of the research about this guy that they called

00:26:26

the Pearl King. James, a sale? Is that how you say his name? Sure. Okay. So this guy made a fortune

00:26:34

off of selling these pearls. And one day, this guy at the shipyard comes over and he's like,

00:26:39

hey, I know where we can get black pearls. And he's like, cool, let's sell these. And when they got them,

00:26:46

no one wanted them. Even though they were really rare, they had to position it in

00:26:54

marketing. And the way they did this is they had a full-page ad and they put these black pearls

00:26:59

among some rubies and diamonds and things like that. Other very valuable jewels and stones and

00:27:07

stuff like that to communicate that these things were really valuable. And that's when they started

00:27:12

to take off the fact that they were rare wasn't enough for people to want to buy them, which is

00:27:18

kind of contrary to the whole idea of supply and demand. And you would think that like black

00:27:24

pearls specifically, since there was a market for these other things, which were valuable,

00:27:29

these pearls, that's something that's like that, that is kind of a known commodity already.

00:27:34

But there is scarcity applied to it. That would be pretty easy to sell. But really,

00:27:38

the lesson here is that not necessarily. Yeah, because that kind of falls counter to

00:27:43

I've heard people refer to the diamond industry before. Diamonds really aren't that rare. They're

00:27:52

not. But the whole of our kind of, I don't even know if it's international, but especially in the

00:28:00

US culture, there's such a value placed on them because of the period that we give them to each

00:28:07

other. Because of that, it drives the price up. Doesn't having to do with supply, it's purely a

00:28:14

factor of how we view it. And I think that's what he's getting at here is supply and demand.

00:28:19

Maybe there's a little bit involved there, but there's a lot more on the marketing side of it.

00:28:24

Yes.

00:28:24

And then there is on the actual availability of a product. Yep. And so this is kind of where

00:28:32

price anchoring comes up again. And specifically in this chapter, the example that he uses is the

00:28:41

MSRP, which is, I think, a really great example. So you go buy a car, they will say, the MSRP on this

00:28:50

is, let's just say, $30,000. But it's only $24,000. Like you immediately think, oh, I am getting a

00:28:58

good deal here because that dot is a little bit more towards the middle of the MSRP, which could

00:29:04

be completely arbitrary, but they've used it as a price anchor. And that's kind of what they did

00:29:10

when they did the marketing, and they positioned these black pearls amongst the rubies and the

00:29:15

diamonds and things like that. So the idea being here that since people want what they can't have,

00:29:22

a Mark Twain said in this, he mentions it in this chapter, in order to make a man

00:29:28

covet a thing, it's only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

00:29:31

Since the then his main takeaway from this is like, since people are going to act irrationally

00:29:37

like this, then we should maybe have some measures in place to keep people from acting completely

00:29:43

irrationally. And that's where my first disagreement comes in. Because he doesn't say this explicitly,

00:29:52

I don't think, I didn't go back and reread it. But he does kind of say that governments need to

00:29:59

intervene and regulate for this irrationality, which sounds good on the surface. But what if

00:30:05

the governments are irrational? Now you've just magnified the problem. And so I don't want to get

00:30:12

into a political debate here, but I kind of you can kind of see what perspective he's taking on a

00:30:18

lot of this stuff. And in my opinion, doesn't really consider the other side as we'll get into

00:30:24

in a couple in a couple chapters. He has a couple, a couple three places where he mentions how he

00:30:30

wants governments to regulate something. And in every case, my only thought was that you're referring

00:30:37

to irrationality in humans and saying that that is the nature of humans, then how do you expect

00:30:44

humans to create rules to prevent humans from being irrational? Like exactly, you've got cyclical

00:30:50

reasoning here, it doesn't work that way. So, yeah, right before we take everybody off, though.

00:30:56

Yeah, let's move on to the next one. Yeah, the cost of zero cost, you wrote down Amazon gift cards.

00:31:03

I love Amazon gift cards, Mike. Why would Amazon gift cards be bad for me?

00:31:08

Because, well, that's the study that he uses here. Backing up just a moment for the cost of zero

00:31:15

cost, the main idea is that the presence of a free option can cause you to make bad decisions.

00:31:22

Okay, so free can be viewed as a great option when it's viewed in isolation, but it can also

00:31:28

cause you to choose the wrong thing when viewed as an either or. All right, now the thought process,

00:31:33

I think that is behind this is that I can get something of value without giving anything up.

00:31:38

And he calls that out explicitly a little bit a little bit later. All right, so now we come back

00:31:45

to the Amazon gift cards. And on page 58, he asked people, would you rather have a $10 Amazon gift

00:31:50

card for free or a $20 one for $7? All right, so the $10 gift card, you're getting for free

00:31:58

and you're getting plus $10 of value. The $20 gift card, you're paying $7 for it. So you have to

00:32:04

pay something, but you're getting $13 of value. Now, he's saying, obviously, the $20 gift card

00:32:12

is the better deal. But I disagree with that a little bit because I think it depends on if you

00:32:18

were going to spend more than $10 on Amazon in the first place, which I would argue with and say,

00:32:24

I'm always going to be spending money on Amazon. So this is a math problem. This is not an emotional

00:32:31

problem. Correct. It's better on the 20. And I knew I know that's the follow up argument. It's

00:32:35

like, well, you're going to spend more than $10 on Amazon anyways. But insert name of whatever budget

00:32:42

item you weren't going to spend beyond a certain point in and then consider whether justifying a

00:32:51

great deal in that category that gets you to spend more than you had budgeted is the right decision.

00:32:56

That's kind of the thought process here. So you can say, well, I was only going to spend $500

00:33:04

on something. As we're recording this, there's an Apple event tomorrow. So maybe let's just say,

00:33:10

there's a new MacBook coming out. And you're going to you set aside $1,200. The cost of the

00:33:15

cost of a don't know, no, no, no, no, no, don't don't make me think about this. I don't.

00:33:21

Well, I think this is this is an example where this could totally play out. Okay. So the bottom

00:33:26

end of the Mac lineup, I think I heard somebody say is something like $1,200 roughly. Yeah, somewhere

00:33:32

there. Okay. So you go into a store with $1,200. You want the low end Apple laptop. And then you

00:33:38

see the brand new hotness that they just announced as we're recording this tomorrow. Okay. And it's

00:33:43

only $1,800 and it's got XYZ in the other thing. Okay. Now you were just going to buy a laptop so

00:33:50

that you could check email, surf the web, but you wanted an Apple Apple product. Okay. Now that

00:33:55

other one though, has the super ultra retina screen and it has brand new keyboard and it's got,

00:34:00

you know, all these other features, which are great. It's a it's a great deal. Okay. But you

00:34:06

went in and you spent $600 more than you were going to. Is is that a good deal? Like maybe,

00:34:14

but if money is tight and you've set aside this much money to budget, like that's money is coming

00:34:21

from somewhere. So it's not just the Apple computer category that's getting impacted here,

00:34:27

just like it's not the Amazon only category that's getting impacted when you decide to spend a

00:34:32

measly $7 to get $20 worth of value. You have to look at it in terms of the whole

00:34:39

and it's easy to compartmentalize it and say, Oh yeah, this is a great deal. I'm saving $13

00:34:43

on this $20 gift card when maybe all you need is $10 worth of whatever. And in that case,

00:34:51

I would argue, yeah, the free one is better. $7 is $7, even if the price is $10,000.

00:34:56

That was the note I wrote down about this whole section.

00:35:01

It's like, yeah, every dollar does matter. It's a math issue here. And we apply emotion to it,

00:35:08

like to go back to your gift card thing. You know, if if if it was a $10 gift card to in my case,

00:35:15

let's be specific here, if it was a $10 gift card to Walmart and it was free, I would take that

00:35:23

over spending $7 to get a $20 gift card to Walmart. The reason being,

00:35:30

I don't go to Walmart. Like we don't we don't shop there like ever.

00:35:35

Exactly. The only time we go there is when there's something there that we can't get elsewhere and

00:35:39

we have to. Yeah, you changed the context and it's a different story.

00:35:42

Yeah, it's very different. Whereas if I've got a free $10, I'm more inclined to use it in those

00:35:50

one-off cases where if I've spent money on it, I get the sense that I'm intending to use it

00:35:57

in a way to pay for something I was already going to buy, like to your point, which is kind of counter

00:36:03

to I think what he's getting at because technically you're getting more money, but I'm not like I'm

00:36:10

not planning to spend that money as it is. Exactly. It's not intended. So yep, yep. So on page 62,

00:36:16

he kind of summarizes this argument by saying zero is not just another discount. Zero is a

00:36:22

different place. The difference between two cents and one cent is small, but the difference between

00:36:27

one cent and zero is huge. So I understand that from the perspective of if this person is going to

00:36:32

spend money on Amazon anyways to influence which decision they're going to make, they're going to

00:36:38

naturally gravitate towards the free one and maybe they shouldn't think about it in that context and

00:36:44

they should take the $20 gift card for $7 instead because they're going to save more money in the

00:36:48

in the long run. But I also think that there's lots of different ways that you could apply this

00:36:54

where you weren't going to spend all that money in the first place. And in that case,

00:36:58

taking the zero option is not succumbing to a lesser deal. It's viewing it the right way. It's

00:37:10

being wise and or conservative, whatever frugal about the limited resources that you have.

00:37:18

Because I mean, you could really you could really go down a rabbit hole with this this whole

00:37:24

money thing, which I don't really want to do on this podcast. But just as a as a thought experiment,

00:37:30

one of the books on my bookshelf is called your money or your life, basic idea being that you

00:37:35

are trading your time at a job to get money, you are trading your life for money. So every

00:37:42

dollar that you are going to spend is a representation of some, some portion of your life that you are

00:37:49

trading for the thing that you're going to buy with that money. And so if you're viewing this

00:37:54

as I'm going to trade some money to get a better deal on something that I didn't really want in

00:38:03

the first place, then that's not a good transaction. Oh, money so complicated.

00:38:09

Well, let's talk about something a little bit more simple, like social norms.

00:38:12

Segue of the year. The cost of social norms chapter four, you have lots of thoughts on this one.

00:38:20

I know. I do. So just real quickly, the idea with these social norms here, there's a couple

00:38:30

different analogies that he uses here. The first one and the one I like the least is the example of

00:38:37

sex, because he uses the social context and the market context as free or paid. And the key idea

00:38:46

here is to keep relationships out of market norms, which is a powerful example. If you break it down,

00:38:54

I think it's a little bit more complicated than that, but I'll give them that one. I'm willing to

00:39:00

give them that one. Yeah. And just to clarify that, this, because this is probably one of the

00:39:06

sections that, and there were pieces of it that I really didn't like, but I resonated probably the

00:39:13

most with this in the concept of social social norms versus market, market norms, whereas in the

00:39:19

markets, it's easy to compare things because there's a cost involved and you can compare that to the

00:39:24

value of something in order to determine, did it work out the way that you wanted it to? Like,

00:39:29

it's pretty, pretty straightforward. Social norms, on the other hand,

00:39:34

involve relationships with other human beings. And if you have been alive on this earth for more

00:39:40

than six seconds, you probably know that social interactions are not always simple, which means

00:39:46

that relationships can be complicated and messy. And it really gets messy when you try to mix these

00:39:52

two norms. So if you're trying to mix relational pieces along with market pieces, take, for example,

00:39:59

the example he uses Thanksgiving dinner. Say you go to Thanksgiving dinner and it's your in-laws

00:40:05

place and your mother-in-law puts together a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. It would be appropriate

00:40:11

to bring, say, a bottle of wine to that particular dinner and offer that as kind of a housewarming

00:40:18

gift of sorts. It would not be acceptable to show up and offer $40 to your mother-in-law for that

00:40:26

dinner, even though the bottle of wine you brought may have cost $40. I'm not a $40 bottle of wine

00:40:33

person, but some people are. So those are two very different scenarios. One puts you square in the

00:40:40

middle of social norms. The other puts you square in the middle of market norms. But when you mix

00:40:46

those two in the case of Thanksgiving dinner, you create very angry people. You're not supposed to

00:40:53

do that. Right. Even people who want to help other people out, like on page 71, he uses an example

00:41:02

of the lawyers who were working for AARP. They weren't willing to offer discounted rates, but they

00:41:08

were willing to work for free, which I kind of understand, especially after the Thanksgiving dinner

00:41:13

story. Sean McCabe at one point in his book Overlap talks about how you should only ever work for

00:41:22

full price or free. I get it a little bit better after reading this chapter.

00:41:28

As a personal example of this, I do this with websites. It's what I do. I build websites.

00:41:35

I tend to either put people through my normal client project scoping quoting process,

00:41:43

which is full price, or I do it for free. That's the way it goes, because if you do anything in the

00:41:50

middle, you're either discounting quality work and then the person expects more because they

00:41:56

are paying for it, or you're discounting your own work. They either expect more or you feel like

00:42:03

you should have done more. It just messes things up. Yeah, totally. I definitely understand that

00:42:09

after reading this chapter, the next context that he uses in here is the complicated relationship

00:42:19

of businesses and customers and also businesses and employees. The idea behind this is that

00:42:25

market norms tend to destroy social norms if you were to offer to pay your mother-in-law for

00:42:31

Thanksgiving dinner. You're not getting invited back next year. But businesses like to try and

00:42:39

impose these social norms on their customers, and I would also argue on their employees

00:42:45

all the time. Yes. So as it pertains to customers, it's easy to use language where

00:42:56

it's easy to use language where you're projecting this social contract instead of a market contract.

00:43:05

But then as soon as there's any sort of difficulty, the customer feels betrayed, which is obviously

00:43:14

not a good thing. So from the businesses and customers perspective, it's kind of a warning.

00:43:19

But the thing that really resonates with me, especially as I read my gapbook, which was,

00:43:23

it doesn't have to be crazy at work by Jason Freed and I can never pronounce his name, the Ruby

00:43:29

guy. The guy who created Ruby on Rails, or Ruby, I guess, maybe not. Yeah. I saw a lot of overlap

00:43:38

here. So companies also like to impose these social norms on their employees. The most common

00:43:42

way probably that you have heard this is we're like a family. And it doesn't have to be crazy at work.

00:43:50

They kind of rail against that idea because they talk about how when a company says we're like

00:44:00

family here, really what that means is that they expect a bigger commitment from you, but

00:44:06

they will let you go as soon as it's not profitable for them. And in this book, he talks about it

00:44:14

a little bit differently, not quite as strongly as Jason Freed does. But on page 81, he says that

00:44:21

companies must understand their implied long-term commitment. On page 82, it says in a social exchange,

00:44:29

people believe that if something goes awry, the other party will be there for them to protect them

00:44:33

and to help them, these beliefs are not spelled out on a contract, but they are general obligations

00:44:38

to provide care and help in times of need. Now, this is a little bit fresh for me, and I don't want

00:44:45

to project anything negative here, but I read this section and then it turns out that I am no

00:44:53

longer working with Asian efficiency, which was a surprise to me. And as I'm going through all of

00:45:00

this stuff, I realized the emotions that can factor into this situation or this scenario.

00:45:08

And that's not to say that Asian efficiency did anything wrong, but it was a little bit of a surprise

00:45:18

for me, and they're being cool about it. But basically, the company is pivoting in a direction

00:45:28

where my position wasn't a part of the future plans. So there wasn't a transition period

00:45:38

where in two months from now, I'm going to walk out and I'm going to train somebody to do what I

00:45:44

was doing. I found myself like, okay, what am I going to do now? And I can totally see how in a

00:45:53

different situation, if circumstances had been a little bit different, like I would have been

00:45:58

really hurt by this. Like I said, TAN's been great through the whole process. I don't want

00:46:04

to project anything negative about Asian efficiency here. I learned a lot while I was there. I grew a

00:46:09

ton. And I know that the person that I am today, I'm much better suited to handle this sort of

00:46:16

thing than I was when I went in there. But as I'm reading all these books and they keep speaking

00:46:21

to this situation, I also am finding myself right in the middle of this. So I get it. And

00:46:29

it's something that I don't have any immediate plans to go run a company. But having been on the

00:46:38

other end of this, I have a new appreciation for what somebody goes through when they find

00:46:45

themselves in this situation. And it's something that if I find myself in a position where I am

00:46:53

managing employees and they're working for me, I'm going to have to really think through

00:46:59

the terms of the contract. It's not going to be a social contract. It's going to be a market

00:47:06

contractor and get paid for the work that you do here. And if you stop doing work of good quality,

00:47:11

like it's going to be clear that this is no longer a good fit. And that sounds really simple. I know

00:47:16

that there's people like Josh who's probably listening to this and is like, that's not how it

00:47:20

works. And I know that it's more complicated. Reading that the Basecamp book, I'll just call it,

00:47:28

you know, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. They haven't picked that up, but I really want it.

00:47:31

It's good. Some colorful language in there. But a lot of great ideas. And they talk through their

00:47:39

experience and how when people leave the company, whether no matter whose decision it is, there's

00:47:45

like a goodbye letter that they write. And it's usually written by the person. Sometimes they don't

00:47:51

want to write it. And so their manager writes it. But it's displayed for the week before they go.

00:47:56

And everybody gets a chance to say their goodbyes and all that stuff. I just think that there's

00:48:02

there's other ways to handle these situations than the stereotypical stuff that everybody

00:48:08

thinks of. And it's challenging to me because having gone through it, it's not fun. So how do I

00:48:17

make sure that if I'm ever on the other end of this, that it doesn't suck so much for the people

00:48:23

I'm dealing with? Sure. It's kind of a rambling train of thought there. But that's kind of what's

00:48:28

going through my head here. And also, as I'm reading this, it's pretty pointed and emotional for me,

00:48:34

too, because I'm in the middle of this. Yeah. And I know, I mean, obviously, you and I have talked

00:48:42

about this before. So this is, of course, not a shock to me. But it might be to the listeners.

00:48:48

And I think it is interesting how your experience, because you did a lot of awesome work for

00:48:56

Asian efficiency, let's be honest. And I'm really excited to see what you

00:49:01

are planning to do moving forward. But as far as it applies to predictably irrational here,

00:49:09

and we're talking about this social norms versus market norms and how companies use those back

00:49:15

and forth because it's kind of a catch thing today where companies want to build families and we're

00:49:22

going to get together as a family and work together to serve our customers and build towards our

00:49:29

mission together. But you're still getting paid by them. And that all sounds great until you have

00:49:37

to make a tough decision. And then all the social norms go out the window. Yeah. And I see this time

00:49:43

and time again, even with clients where I do have clients that come up and say, can you get behind

00:49:49

us on our mission and help us build towards our goal? Like, yes, but let's get the finances figured

00:49:55

out first. Like, I would love to do that. But for price, like that's the way it goes. So

00:50:02

when you're talking about employment for towards with a company versus, you know, serving their

00:50:10

mission, like, yes, that's great. But at the end of the day, when you stop and work through all the

00:50:17

details, it's still a market contract. Like that that's just the way it is. And as much as we like

00:50:26

or don't like that, it is tough to get on board with the mission of a company. And in some cases,

00:50:31

you may not be, you know, I've I've been working through this whole job search thing right now,

00:50:36

too. And part of that is that it's very obvious that I will most likely join a company that I am

00:50:42

not 100% on board with their overarching mission or even their methods. But that's okay, because

00:50:51

there are teams within those companies or there are ways of working within those scenarios

00:50:56

that you can still thrive in those situations. Like that's still fine, even if your direct

00:51:02

manager's not on board with like, you can still do that. But it's not always the case, like,

00:51:08

you're not always doing it. Sometimes you're on board with their mission. But at the end of

00:51:11

the day, it's still the company paying you for a job to be done. And it's up to you to be the one

00:51:18

that decides how well you do that job. You're not going to be able to change the way the company

00:51:23

views your work. No matter which set of these norms that they tend to operate on, some companies

00:51:28

I know mark solely on market norms. And I just don't know how people working companies that are 100%

00:51:36

that way, because although I understand it logistically, I, and the ones that I've worked with, they just

00:51:43

don't seem to be very happy. It just doesn't seem super enjoyable. But it seems like if you can come

00:51:49

across one that does have some version of social norms at play, yes, you still have to stop and

00:51:57

look at the market side of it. But there is still a little bit of this somewhat of a family feel.

00:52:06

It's got to be a mix, I think. So I think it's interesting that you're kind of working through

00:52:11

that exact thing when we just finish this. It's kind of nuts the timing there.

00:52:18

Well, at the end of the day, really, the only thing that matters is the market norm when it comes to

00:52:26

your work in your company relationship. That's the thing really that I'm realizing. And that's

00:52:32

not a bad thing. You just have to keep that in mind when you are working for somebody else.

00:52:39

And there's definitely some advantages to working that way, by the way. I've, for a long time, done

00:52:49

work with a family business. And it's been really difficult working with family members, because

00:52:55

you can't just say like, Hey, you didn't do this well enough. Like you have to be careful.

00:53:00

And I've never really liked that. But at the same time, it was easy for me to get

00:53:07

completely invested in what I was doing with agent efficiency. So not agent efficiencies fault.

00:53:14

But I changed the terms of the contract and made it a social norm because I was in line with the

00:53:20

core values. And I viewed the work that I was doing there as fulfilling my purpose. And then

00:53:25

all of a sudden when it again, like, Tans been great. But at the end of the day, he's got to do

00:53:32

what's best for the business. I get that. And when what's best for the business isn't necessarily

00:53:38

what's best for me personally, like, you have to recognize that those opportunities,

00:53:44

there's opportunities for those situations where you have the different forces or different

00:53:49

perspectives, and they can be at odds with each other. So really what it's what it's shown me is that

00:53:58

it's great to work with people. It's great to do work that is in line with your your purpose. But

00:54:07

at the end of the day, you have to take ownership control responsibility for what you're doing.

00:54:17

And it's forced me to take a step back and focus. I had it pretty good for quite a while, you know,

00:54:22

like, I could just show up and create awesome stuff and get paid for it.

00:54:25

We're talking about before like, all I want to do is create stuff and people pay me for it.

00:54:29

Right. So that's a that's a hard, it turns out, yeah, yeah, it is. There's a lot of things that

00:54:36

that have to be in line in order for that to work. And I guess, you know, that the lesson for me through

00:54:42

all of this is to take control of of the process, which is kind of what I'm doing right now. So

00:54:50

I don't want to make this all about me. I will just throw out there though that I will be doing a

00:54:58

couple things. One of them is the the faith-based productivity stuff, which I've kind of hinted

00:55:04

at in the past. Well, this has given me the opportunity to go hard on that. So I'm going to be building

00:55:09

that out. I've also going to be, I told you before we started recording today, I wrote my first

00:55:16

newsletter in forever. So if people want to know like what I'm up to and see some of the stuff that

00:55:23

I'm working on, head over to Mike Schmitz.me, sign up for the newsletter. And I'll send you all that

00:55:29

stuff. I also, by the way, with that, the one that I wrote today, I think I'm going to start giving

00:55:34

away all of the Mind Map files that I create for these books to people who sign up for the

00:55:40

newsletter. So I'm not sure if people would like that sort of thing, but I don't know. If you want

00:55:45

to get them the Mind Map files, and I'll just have links as PDFs for all the books that we're

00:55:51

covering for Bookworm, go sign up for the newsletter. It's my little freebie, I guess.

00:55:57

Cool, cool. Well, I'm excited. All right, let's quit talking about me. Let's go on to

00:56:02

chat. I'm not done yet because I know like one of the things we've talked about in some of our books

00:56:08

is how, and this isn't necessarily a crisis per se, but times of big change are the best times to

00:56:16

implement small change as well. So with something like a big change in job or like this would be a

00:56:25

changing job, I wouldn't say it's a changing career, but changing job would lead to the opportunity to

00:56:31

change a lot of little things too, which I'm sure you're thinking about like daily habits,

00:56:35

your routines, like all of that stuff can be molded easier right now for you than it would be

00:56:42

in three months, four months. So yeah, I'm excited to see how this all pans out for you.

00:56:48

Okay, I'll be done with that. So all right, let's keep going in the book. All right, chapter five,

00:56:52

the influence of arousal and everybody says sex cells, which is kind of true. It is, but I have

00:57:02

a feeling that you have very strong feelings on this particular art mic. Not really sure why that

00:57:08

is. Okay, so the basis for this chapter is the study that they did where I'm not going to get

00:57:16

into the specifics. It's too gross, but yeah, it's a point of graphic. People got excited and then

00:57:22

they influenced the decisions that they made. And I hate this chapter for so many reasons,

00:57:28

but the big one I feel is that it's not just sex that changes your perspective and influences

00:57:36

you to make bad decisions. So he talks about how we've got these two natures inside of us,

00:57:43

good and evil. We under predict the impact that passion has on our ability to think rationally,

00:57:50

totally agree with that. But again, sex isn't the only thing that that influences that.

00:57:57

So I guess I'll just get into my rant here. I cleared the runway for you.

00:58:03

You did, you did. Okay, so we are driven by two things, the avoidance of pain or the pursuit of

00:58:11

pleasure and obviously sex and arousal, like that's going to be the pursuit of pleasure. Now,

00:58:18

you could argue that this is wired back to a survival mechanism because back in the day,

00:58:26

you didn't reproduce, like that's how you carried on your line that everybody else died off. Okay,

00:58:33

so you could make that argument, but I don't even want to make that argument. I want to say that

00:58:39

this is just the tip of the iceberg. And again, the real solution to this is not just figuring out

00:58:45

how to control your emotions when you get excited, but the real solution to this is emotional

00:58:50

intelligence. So when you just go back to like the avoidance of pain or the pursuit of pleasure,

00:58:56

scientifically speaking, when you're close to either one of these, your emotions or your

00:59:02

amygdala, and I may be mispronouncing that term, but that the emotion center in your brain,

00:59:07

that's going to kick in. I did a little bit of research because I was so mad when I was reading

00:59:12

this chapter. And in psychology today, they say the stimuli comes in from the eyes or ears and

00:59:19

goes immediately to the thalamus. And it then goes right to the amygdala before a signal reaches

00:59:24

the neocortex. Okay, so if you read this chapter and you recognize that the study where they are

00:59:29

literally looking at pornographic images and then asking them to make decisions, like that's what's

00:59:35

going on right there, that process that describes the study. Okay, now in psychology today, again,

00:59:41

continuing on this survival mechanism, lets us react to things before the rational brain has

00:59:46

time to mull things over. The trigger, the hair trigger and amygdala, though, can be sloppy and

00:59:53

distort things in this quick reaction. So this is a process known as emotional hijacking. And this

01:00:00

is not just pertaining to sex. If you find yourself getting angry and making a bad decision, if you

01:00:07

find yourself, you can, you can fill it the blank here with a lot of different stuff. And if you

01:00:16

understand this concept of emotional hijacking, there's basically when it happens, it's almost

01:00:20

like there's nothing you can do, which is the exact findings of this study. And I really think

01:00:26

that this ties in more to how pleasure works than how the arousal process works. So yes,

01:00:34

that is one avenue that this could play out in, but there's so much more here. Because when you are

01:00:43

pursuing pleasure, the nucleus, a cumbons, it's called releases dopamine, which is the pleasure

01:00:49

chemical, the hippocampus lays down memories of the rapid sense of satisfaction. So you kind of are

01:00:55

envisioning the ideal outcome for this state, like that you get a picture of you following through

01:01:03

and doing the thing that you want to do. And at that point, your amygdala kicks in and hijacks

01:01:09

the situation. Now, over time, it's going to take more and more dopamine to get that same high.

01:01:14

This is why addictions almost always get worse. But you can recognize this process in your four-year

01:01:19

old as well. And they know nothing about the birds and the bees. They get so fixated on,

01:01:24

I want this thing and like, they can't, they can't think rationally. So I don't know. I mean,

01:01:30

this is just such the way it's presented in this chapter, even the title of the chapter. Maybe this

01:01:36

is like print clickbait. I don't know. Like he's trying to get you to keep reading at this point.

01:01:42

And that's why he titles at the influence of arousal. But I feel like this just pigeon holes it so much.

01:01:47

And the solutions that he gives at the end of this are just ridiculous. The solution is not like,

01:01:53

figure out how to what to do when you get excited. The solution is learn some self control for crying

01:01:58

Oh, wow. Yeah, because one of the solutions he posed was we need to have condoms freely available

01:02:06

everywhere. Yeah, that's not going to solve it, buddy. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. Anyway,

01:02:12

there are politics there pretty quick. But I, one of the things I really wanted him to do,

01:02:18

this, this to me was the weak point of the book by a long shot. I wanted him to name this the

01:02:22

influence of heightened emotions instead of arousal. Because this is where sleep on it before you

01:02:29

make a decision or try to try to get more options available to you before you decide something.

01:02:36

Those are all the same thing, but he picked arousal and sex as his topic. Because he works

01:02:47

at a college and it's convenient. I don't know. I guess that's kind of what I thought. And maybe

01:02:51

that's an unfair characterization, but I don't know. I mean, that's that's immediately what I

01:02:57

buy. I was yeah, maybe frustrated is not the right word. I was very upset with it because I wanted

01:03:04

him to go into how this plays out in other arenas as well, but he really didn't. He kind of stuck on

01:03:14

that one point. But again, I think, you know, heightened emotions would be the better choice

01:03:20

there and then focus your research on emotions even outside of sexual arousal. You know, when

01:03:28

somebody's angry, like you make terrible decisions when you're angry. Right. It's the exact same thing.

01:03:33

It's the same point. Anyway, yeah, which is why the solution is not carry a condom all the time.

01:03:39

The solution is self control, which is an emotional, intelligent skill and it can be learned. It can

01:03:46

be developed. It's not something where you're either born with it or you're not. And I don't

01:03:51

know, just reading this chapter. And then especially when I got to the solutions, it's like, well,

01:03:55

we just got to figure out how to make it safer. He also talked about that with with driving. It's

01:04:00

like, no, just if you can't do it safely, don't just put up some some safeguards, like put up some

01:04:09

supports that are going to keep you from derailing your entire life by making a bad decision when you're

01:04:14

in a state that you know you could make a bad decision. I don't know why this is why this is so

01:04:20

radical, like why that's not even an option. Yeah. I felt like his responses to chapters like this

01:04:30

had a lot to do with putting in safeguards to prevent people from making that decision. Yeah.

01:04:35

To stop people from making a bad decision. And you and I tend to come at it from the stance of

01:04:41

don't put things in place to stop a bad decision, teach someone how to make a good decision. Yes.

01:04:46

Which requires that you view your situation a little bit differently. You have to realize

01:04:52

if you're going to do that, you have to realize that you're in control of your situation. You have

01:04:57

to take responsibility for the outcome and recognize that you have the power to change,

01:05:01

which just about every self-help book that I've read, which talks about like radical transformation,

01:05:07

that's at the heart of it. They don't call it personal responsibility, but that's basically what it is.

01:05:11

Yeah. You know, Tony Robbins, awaken the giant within. Well, you're never going to

01:05:15

awaken the giant if you're waiting for somebody else to be like, hey, you're really great. You can

01:05:20

do amazing things. Like you have to believe that. Yeah. And it's just completely missing from

01:05:26

from this this chapter specifically, but and it just it makes me so mad. I don't understand why,

01:05:33

like, I don't understand why you that's not even an option. Like why that's completely missing from

01:05:41

this this whole section. Like there's no there's no mention of self-control. It's just like, well,

01:05:48

when this happens, you're no longer yourself. Some alien has hijacked your brain and there's

01:05:53

nothing you can do about it. So just go ahead and use a condom and maybe it won't be so bad. You

01:05:58

like, Oh my gosh. Yep. I just I think that's a really a really limiting belief, I guess, is the

01:06:08

the best way to describe my strong reaction to this, because at that point, you are subject to

01:06:14

really yourself, but like you really if you are resigned over to the fact that you will find yourself

01:06:21

in a situation where you have no control over things. That's pretty sad. I maybe it's just

01:06:30

me personally, but I feel like if you view even like one of my action items was it last time,

01:06:38

the time before was to make the two lists like what I can control what I can't control. I'm sure

01:06:42

yeah, two or three times. The list of what you can control is very small. Having something that

01:06:49

you can control is very liberating. And I kind of got the feeling from this chapter and from this

01:06:56

book that you know, government should regulate everything. We can't trust ourselves. Yeah,

01:06:59

yeah, yeah. We're just reaction machines and we make terrible decisions. There's nothing we can do

01:07:04

about it. And I don't know, I disagree with that at a fundamental level. So chapter eight,

01:07:10

keeping doors open. Yeah, let's just let's just go on rip the band right off. Yeah, yep. Let's

01:07:16

just go. Keeping doors open. I had a bit of a qualm with this one. But he all right. So we've

01:07:24

we've had the story before about I don't even I'm even drawing blanks on all names and scenarios

01:07:32

and stuff. But there was a general commander, somebody sailing boats to foreign place. He burned

01:07:38

the boats so that his soldiers were forced to go forward and win the conquest because there was

01:07:46

no retreat option. So this the door was not open for them to go back. So force them to move forward

01:07:53

and not keep any doors open. That is the concept here. He goes through a lot of detail on how that

01:08:03

can be limiting and how it can actually cause some problems to keep a lot of doors open and not

01:08:08

decide, which is fine. I think that's great. I have a little qualm with it here in a minute,

01:08:14

but I know that having too many doors open because I've done this with my business before, if you

01:08:19

have too many things running, it does get to be a problem. So having a lot of opportunities that

01:08:25

you're maintaining all at one time can get to be problematic. Yes, I I agree with that. Now,

01:08:32

the story that he told at the beginning of this again, I thought the story was way more powerful

01:08:38

than the research. But I've also heard this story before. I heard a different version of it with

01:08:44

Cortez, I believe when he was fighting the Aztecs, but the whole idea of burned the boats,

01:08:49

that's something that resonated with me. I actually did a toastmaster speech on this a while back.

01:08:55

So I really under like I really like the idea and I really understand, I feel the motivating aspect

01:09:04

of this. So this is interesting timing for me again, because he talks about on page 150,

01:09:13

doors that just might lead to a new career or to a better job might be hard to close. And I get that.

01:09:21

It's hard for me to picture myself not at Asian efficiency, even if long-term faith-based productivity

01:09:29

blows up and that becomes the main thing. If I could jump 10 years into the future and see how

01:09:36

successful that thing is going to be, maybe it completely dwarfs anything that I would have

01:09:42

been able to do with Asian efficiency. Maybe not, but I don't know that. And so it's hard for me to

01:09:50

picture not creating the courses for the dojo, not being the host of the productivity show.

01:09:56

That was really tough for me the first couple days to process all of that.

01:10:00

But as I'm reading this chapter, I recognize that when you try to keep all those things open,

01:10:06

like you were just saying that that isn't a good thing either. And so my one action item from this

01:10:12

book comes from this chapter, which is to decide which doors I am going to close. And one of my

01:10:19

notes here, the little and my my node file, got different emojis that I use. Like I've got a

01:10:24

talking head for the talking points. I've got a key icon for the key ideas. And then I've got this

01:10:30

little light bulb, which is kind of the stuff that jumps out to me. And I put time to go all in on

01:10:35

your one thing. It's kind of scary as we were talking about before we started recording. But

01:10:41

I recognize that if it's really going to give this an honest shot, that's what I've got to do.

01:10:47

Now my qualm with this is that, and maybe I misunderstood him on this mic, but there are quite

01:10:55

a few pieces of this where I got the impression that keeping doors open, take the job thing, for

01:11:01

example, you know, you're not going all in. So you may not necessarily succeed at it because you

01:11:09

are still holding on the back of your head that if something fails and I don't give it everything

01:11:13

I've got, I still have a lifeline. I don't think that's necessarily true. And I'm pulling at this

01:11:22

because of my current job scenario. I have kept a handful of doors open for the last five years

01:11:29

with some previous employers and people that I've gotten to know. Maybe that's just networking.

01:11:35

But I have maintained quite a bit of that. And that has served as some form of a lifeline. Like

01:11:42

I've not locked anything down. But those doors being left open mean that I have a much easier

01:11:49

chance of getting into a different job scenario than if I was coming at it completely blank and

01:11:55

had burned those bridges. So maybe I maybe I'm misunderstanding or misconstruing that to some degree.

01:12:01

But that that's kind of my issue there is like, okay, if I'm supposed to go all in on one thing,

01:12:06

that's fine. That's great. I understand that. And I feel like I've been doing that. But at the same

01:12:11

time, don't be stupid. Like, yeah, you know, like this, there are times when it's good to maintain

01:12:19

a relationship somewhere or keep an option open, just out of wisdom, like just so you're not being

01:12:26

foolish. Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of nuance to this topic that's going to depend

01:12:32

completely on the situation. I've done the same thing, I would argue, where I've been doing some

01:12:40

things on the side, which the position I'm in right now has been the right decision.

01:12:46

And I think that it's easy to say or easy to paint this very generalistically. But I think

01:12:57

that there is a cap on the number of doors that you can realistically keep open. And you have to

01:13:04

recognize that when you are putting effort towards keeping certain doors open, that it is taking away

01:13:12

from the effort that you can apply towards something else. And for me, I guess what that has shown me

01:13:20

is that the activation energy that I would need to apply to get faith based productivity off the

01:13:25

ground. Like, I've had the idea for years, I've been picking away at it here and there, I recorded

01:13:30

some videos with my brother. It was something that I was quote unquote working on. But who knows when

01:13:37

it actually saw the light of day because it was way down the list. And now when other doors close,

01:13:48

it gives you the opportunity to redirect your focus, redirect your resources, and to apply energy

01:13:54

and effort towards some of these other things. And so if there are doors that you are trying to

01:14:02

keep open, maybe those are the right things because eventually that open door is going to become

01:14:10

something else. But maybe also, like, that should have been the door that you walked through a long

01:14:16

time ago. And you were distracted by keeping the other things open, if that makes sense.

01:14:22

So there's again, so much nuance to this situation. And you could probably justify your action or

01:14:29

lack of it in any, any personal situation within this concept. But I do think it's worth evaluating

01:14:37

and recognizing for any person for your situation right now, what are the doors that you have

01:14:45

consciously kept open? And then why are you keeping those things open in the first place?

01:14:50

Maybe it is because you want to go do this thing eventually. But maybe it's just because you've

01:14:57

been doing this thing for a while and you haven't rethought it in quite a while. And maybe that's

01:15:03

a season that that chapter on the book is closed. You need to let that thing go. And that's really

01:15:08

the point he's getting. And I think with this, this chapter is that the natural reaction is,

01:15:12

I just got to keep my options open. I got to go keep that door open. And in the study, they had to

01:15:17

physically click on the door on the screen in order to keep it there. And every time that they did that,

01:15:22

it actually reduced the amount of money that they were able to earn if they had just like

01:15:30

kicked one of the doors and stuck with it. So that's the thing here, I think, is the

01:15:35

it's fine to keep doors open. It's fine to keep options open, but only to the point where they're

01:15:42

not inhibiting you from committing to something. Yeah, I think that's a very valid point and one

01:15:47

that needs to be definitely made here. Chapter 10, the power of rice, I think that's actually

01:15:55

chapter 11, Mike. Power of price, sorry. Price, what did I say? Rice? Oh, you wrote it in the

01:16:01

outline is right. That's why I said that. Totally blaming you for that. I wrote it down. So disclaimer

01:16:07

for people who are going to go join the newsletter and get these, these mind node files, occasionally

01:16:12

there will be typos like this. The power of price. There we go. All right. So this one I put in here

01:16:20

just because he talks in here about placebo surgeries. So they did studies and I cannot believe that

01:16:28

they did these studies where they would, for half of the patients, have the procedure in the other

01:16:35

half tell them they did the procedure, but not do it. And the basic takeaway was that people

01:16:43

believed the procedure had been done and so they saw the same gains. The placebo was just as effective

01:16:49

and obviously some of the surgeons and doctors were not too excited about these findings.

01:16:56

But really the point I made in the outline and it's all caps is like placebo surgeries? Who

01:17:03

okay's that? Yeah. How did they get approved on that?

01:17:06

Yeah, I kept thinking of the checklist manifesto and the people who would die potentially from

01:17:15

administering a placebo instead of doing the actual thing. If I'm going in for surgery,

01:17:21

you better do the surgery. That's not a decision I'm making lightly and I don't want to find out

01:17:26

that you just opened me up and sewed me back together even if my symptoms are gone. You better

01:17:31

transplant that kidney when I go in. That's all I'm saying. Don't fake it.

01:17:35

Exactly. I would like to know, you know, I would be curious as to what some of the details are

01:17:41

on which surgeries they were doing specifically. Like that was the one of the things that I wanted

01:17:47

to know. But anyway, we're not done. There was one in particular I wrote down Dr. Leonard Cobb

01:17:54

and this was, I forget the date, but it was quite a while ago. And the surgery was tied to a belief

01:18:02

that tying up an internal mammary artery would relieve chest pain. So that was one specific

01:18:09

example of that, but there were other studies done in here as well. So that one doesn't sound

01:18:15

too life threatening. Right. But maybe I don't, I'm not a doctor, so I don't know. And all I could

01:18:22

think of was the checklist manifesto and the people who died needlessly and understood like,

01:18:26

man, I wouldn't want to be this guy if something went wrong.

01:18:30

So yes, the power of price, and essentially in that chapter he's talking about how your

01:18:37

expectations based on what you paid for something can influence the way that you see it. Yes. So

01:18:43

if you paid $100 for some tech gadget, you're going to think that it's a much better tech gadget

01:18:52

than a $10 version of that that does the same thing. Even though it wouldn't matter if the $100

01:18:58

gadget was made out of plastic and the $10 one was made out of metal, like your perception would

01:19:03

still be that the $100 one is better purely based on what it's priced at. Yeah. And really,

01:19:09

the story that's at the beginning of this is what's the difference between a one cent aspirin and a

01:19:14

50 cent aspirin. And he says basically it's the effectiveness that you think you are getting from

01:19:23

taking the aspirin. Right. And just the fact that the cheaper aspirin is cheaper, you're not going

01:19:29

to experience the same effects from it, even if it's the exact same exact same thing. So,

01:19:34

and there's an interesting section in here on the history of the word placebo, which I liked.

01:19:40

So placebo means I shall please. And it was originally used in the 14th century to refer to

01:19:47

sham mourners who were hired to wail for the deceased, which I thought was interesting.

01:19:53

So you have people who are attending this funeral and I keep thinking of right or wrong, like the

01:20:02

the Donald Trump picture of like the national mall being full of people and like, look how many

01:20:06

people are here. Right. People who are concerned about that sort of thing, like this is totally

01:20:12

something they would do is like, Oh, look how loved my brother was. He had 10,000 people at this

01:20:16

funeral, well, 9,900 of them were paid. And I don't feel that way about my brothers, by the way.

01:20:24

So if they're listening, but that's kind of the picture I got here is like, who pays

01:20:30

to hire people to cry at a funeral. Yep. But that's where this thing started. And then by 1785,

01:20:38

it started to appear in medicine and it really just runs on the power of suggestion.

01:20:43

Yeah, I would say maybe one of the similar things we see today is like the paid protesters.

01:20:48

Yeah. It's definitely a thing that we see today, where there are quite a few people that are paid

01:20:53

to show up in protest. Like that is what they are there for. Okay, it's designed to create a

01:20:58

perception. Skipping a couple chapters here that I'm kind of glad we're skipping because I don't

01:21:04

even know how to talk about them. Going on. These should have been the ones we're skipping,

01:21:08

by the way, should have been the most interesting chapters in the entire book.

01:21:11

Correct. They should have been the ones we wanted to spend the entire book time talking about.

01:21:17

And yeah, we're going to skip the context of our character and go to beer and free lunches.

01:21:22

Yep. Yeah. Beer and free lunches. So this chapter I only put in here because

01:21:29

I had the same thought earlier in the book. And I forget what chapter I originally wrote this down

01:21:36

from. But they again did a study where the guy dressed up as a waiter at a local pub and was taking

01:21:44

people's beer and wine orders, I believe. And then also they did a similar study where people were

01:21:51

ordering food. And they noticed that when they presented four options and there was a group of

01:21:57

four people that came, the first person would choose the thing that they really wanted. And then

01:22:01

everybody else would need to be unique and select something different. Which is an interesting idea.

01:22:08

And the thing that I wrote down, which I wanted to just ask you about, really is not have a whole

01:22:14

lot of pertinent anything we're talking about here today. But when you go out to eat, do you try

01:22:18

something new or do you stick with the usual? Yeah, this is a tough one because I know,

01:22:23

and we even talked about this at one point. I forget the book because it was like a side

01:22:29

conversation. But it was around like, do you enjoy something you know you will like or do you take

01:22:34

a chance on something you might like? Yes. Like that's really the question being asked here.

01:22:39

And I think that when my wife and I go out on a date and we're going to dinner,

01:22:46

when we do that, we have a number of places that we like that we will go to. But I think for us,

01:22:52

it's kind of a 50/50. Like every other time it seems like we will either try a new place,

01:22:57

or we will go to a place we've been before. And it seems like it's a pretty regular basis that

01:23:02

will find something new that then becomes a regular. But I think it's roughly a 50/50 that we do that.

01:23:08

Which is a lame answer in this case because basically I'm saying we do both. But I think we do like

01:23:16

the idea of we have a few restaurants that we go to that are that we like the atmosphere of them

01:23:22

and we really like the food. And in some cases, we want to be a little bit more adventurous. So

01:23:28

yes to that answer. Okay. Well, I can tell you I am a creature of habit and we're going to

01:23:36

zechtape and I'm ordering Carne asada burritos with no sour cream. You got a branch out dude.

01:23:42

No, it's so good. So good. Now the follow up question to this though is the one that pertains

01:23:48

to the actual study I think is so assuming that you typically order the same thing when you go

01:23:56

somewhere or even if you're going to try something new I guess. But I would think hypothesis being

01:24:02

that if you tend to try new things, the fact that somebody else ordered what you were going to

01:24:08

order doesn't phase you, you're just going to pick something else. For somebody like me

01:24:13

where this is the same thing I get all the time because I really like it. If someone is going to

01:24:19

order that I am going to feel the need to order something else. But I think most of the time I'm

01:24:26

still sticking with what I was going to order. How about you? So most of the time this is me and

01:24:31

my wife and we cheat. We have discussed this. We cheat when we go to restaurants because there

01:24:39

are times when we both decide we want the same thing. But we think that's lame. So one of us will

01:24:46

change to something that we also both considered and then we split them both so that way we both

01:24:53

get both. That is cheating. So we totally cheat the system.

01:24:58

All right. So I guess this episode we're finding out just how different Mike and his wife are than

01:25:04

Joe and his wife because when we go out to eat, I typically will order what I want. She will order

01:25:10

what she wants. It is normally nothing that I am interested in at all. Sure. And then she wants

01:25:15

to share. And I'm like, no, get your hands away from my food. I'm eating my steak.

01:25:25

I don't say it quite like that. But that's what's going through my head. And she knows that.

01:25:28

Just admit it. You say it like that. I like to think I'm a little bit nicer in real life.

01:25:34

Mike's head is a jerk sometimes. Sure. Blame your head. You are your head. My wife has to tell me

01:25:40

that one. All right. So that's basically the idea there. I just thought it was interesting to talk

01:25:44

about because this is something I think that plays out all the time. Sure. Whether we realize it or

01:25:49

not. So kind of a weird slash lame way to end the book. Yep. It is. There was an opportunity to end

01:25:59

this really well, but it didn't happen. It would have been better if the context of our character

01:26:04

parts one and two had been a little bit better. But just real briefly talking about this. The basic

01:26:10

idea here is that people are jerks, which based on our Christian belief system is not a surprise to

01:26:17

us. Right. But basically is saying like people are going to cheat. People are going to be jerks.

01:26:22

And only when there's a convenient rationale, only when you have what did he say, he mentioned the

01:26:27

presence of the 10 commandments, which reduced cheating, which was interesting. But the moral

01:26:31

benchmark, that's what he called it. The moral benchmark in place that it curbs cheating.

01:26:37

One interesting thing from this, these two chapters was that people they found out didn't

01:26:42

cheat when they were signing their names on an honor code. And my college did this St. Norbert.

01:26:46

Every exam that you handed in, you had to sign your name on the back of the blue book,

01:26:51

which now I get why they did that. Yeah. Because it meant that they could reduce the cheating and

01:26:56

they didn't have to monitor it. But yeah, there's not a whole lot here that's surprising. There's

01:27:04

two whole chapters devoted to this same topic, which could have been a really deep conversation.

01:27:09

But the basic idea is that people cheat. Yeah. That said, action items, Mike.

01:27:16

There's one on this list. Just me. Yeah. Just you. And I don't know that there is anything that

01:27:23

I am going to close at the moment, but the action item is to ask myself this question of which

01:27:27

doors am I going to close? Because I would rather close doors than have them closed for me is my

01:27:33

big takeaway here. Sure. Which is very valid. No, I'm obviously, I think, you know, hopefully

01:27:42

the listeners know this, but we do talk when we're not on the podcast. As I've been referring to it

01:27:48

today, we do have conversations when the blinking red circle does not exist. So yes, we're not

01:27:54

just a new friends. Yeah. So I don't have any action items this time, partly because I did such

01:28:00

a wonderful job on my previous list that I felt actually, you saw five action items. I just felt

01:28:07

like I would take a break from being so amazing. So I am not going to add action items this time

01:28:15

for a handful of reasons. One, I really didn't have anything that came out of this that I felt

01:28:20

like I needed change. I don't really know. Yeah. And I should know, because I had this conversation

01:28:25

with a friend, like when we do these action items, like this isn't like, they're mostly experiments

01:28:31

most of the time, like, I'm going to try this. And if it works great, if not, I'm going to drop

01:28:36

it. And I hope that comes across because I've gotten the sense that a few people think that

01:28:40

we go through these action items and we're like trying to change who we are all the time.

01:28:45

I don't think that's the case at all. In some cases, we want to change something about our

01:28:51

personality because we don't like it, which I'm perfectly fine with. But I think in most cases,

01:28:57

correct me if you think I'm wrong, Mike, they're mostly experiments that we're going to try.

01:29:01

Yes. But I would argue that the best books inspire you to make a change.

01:29:08

And I think it is totally fair to say that this book did not inspire you to make a change.

01:29:15

No, it did not. So getting into author style and rating, if you want to go there,

01:29:20

mention this a little bit already, but I was definitely not a fan of all of the research.

01:29:27

And it's not just that I didn't like reading research, but he is so fascinated with the specifics

01:29:34

of the research instead of the big ideas and the takeaways that can inspire change in other people.

01:29:39

I kind of feel like he wrote this as a memoir or like a journal like, hey, I did all this stuff.

01:29:45

In that sense, it's an entertaining journal, but it's not one of the better books that we've

01:29:51

read. There's some cool ideas in here. There's definitely some things that I disagreed with.

01:29:56

And again, I feel some of this stuff, he's viewing it through a lens where it's just focusing on one

01:30:02

aspect of it instead of seeing the bigger picture. And maybe to be fair, he's done research since

01:30:08

then and he's kind of rounded out more of the picture. But I definitely did not like reading this book.

01:30:16

I do think there's some valuable stuff in here though. So I am going to give it three stars

01:30:19

just for some of the ideas. And I do like some of the questions that are posed and some of the

01:30:25

thought processes that lead to the research. I just don't want to hear so much about the research

01:30:31

and I want to know more about how I can actually implement some of this stuff for myself instead of

01:30:36

just knowing about a topic. I felt like I get done with this and I realized that yes, we are

01:30:42

irrational beings. I really don't know what I'm going to do to make any positive change in that

01:30:47

area. But now I know at least I'm irrational. So where do we go from here? That's my

01:30:54

follow-up question. So you put it at 3.5 or did you do three? I'm going to go straight three.

01:30:59

Straight three. I was thinking I heard 3.5. That's why I was asking. So I

01:31:05

haven't really felt this way before, but I kind of feel the need to apologize for selecting this book.

01:31:13

I don't really know why, but I felt like, okay, so this book is 322 pages long,

01:31:22

at least the version I'm looking at, the paper version, the only version you should be using.

01:31:27

False. There are other ways to read books. Just saying. But to go back to last week's episode

01:31:36

when we were talking with Chris, I don't think that Dan Arrily spent much time thinking about

01:31:44

the density of this book. He didn't spend much thought on how much he was giving versus the

01:31:51

number of words he had on the page, which means that he has a ton of reiterations or a lengthy

01:31:58

explanation. Like there was one case, I can't even find it because I didn't write it down because

01:32:02

I was so mad at it, but he had one particular study that he spent close to 10 pages explaining

01:32:09

the study. Yeah. Without getting to any of the results. Yes. Like why? Like I don't understand that.

01:32:19

So I was very frustrated by this book. Are there good points in this book?

01:32:23

Even some of the results just real quickly, like he shares, he draws conclusions from him,

01:32:29

and I found myself at certain points being like, I don't necessarily think that's what the numbers

01:32:34

are saying. Yeah. I had a few of those too. So again, are there good things in this book that

01:32:41

you can take away from it? Yes. Can you learn more about how your brain operates? Yes.

01:32:47

Could you do it another way than this book? Yes. So I...

01:32:53

Should you? Yes. I'm going to put this at a 2.5. I didn't care for this. It's why we're recording

01:33:01

this late. We were going to record this, what was it last Thursday, last Friday, we're recording

01:33:05

it on a Monday. Yep. Because I couldn't get through it. I was trying to, you know, I'm the one that

01:33:10

tends to talk about how I like to stick to books even when I don't care for them. It's been a long

01:33:15

time since I've had one that I wanted to put down this bad. It was tough. Yeah, I echo that for me to

01:33:20

get through this one. So, you know, I'm not going to recommend this. In this particular case, I would

01:33:26

probably recommend like crib notes or, you know, cheat sheets or this episode. Like come listen to

01:33:31

this, don't pick up the book. Like that's my thinking here. If you want a long, very long, me

01:33:36

andering journey and you love reading about science and all the itty bitty gritty details that go

01:33:41

into that, this might be for you. Or you like academia. Yes. That's where he's coming from.

01:33:47

And that's why I give it three stars because for me and the world that I live, this doesn't fit.

01:33:54

But I can see a situation where this is speaking the language to somebody who's reading this.

01:34:01

I do not live in that land, however. Yeah, I don't either. So, there we go. Apologies if you read

01:34:08

them a long maybe you loved it. I don't know. I'm sure some people love it. It's a New York

01:34:13

Times bestseller. Yeah, but I think we have learned that that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

01:34:20

There you go. All right. Upcoming books. Upcoming books. Next was yours. What we doing?

01:34:27

Yeah, we're doing Scrum by Jeff Sutherland, which is the most recommended book in the bookworm club.

01:34:33

And when I picked this out, I'm like, oh, this is going to be great. I can talk about how we use

01:34:37

Scrum at Asian efficiency. I'm no longer at Asian efficiency. I'm a little scared about how I'm going

01:34:43

to take away some and a half from this. But I picked it. I announced it last time. So,

01:34:48

sticking with it. Yeah, I'm very curious about this one because when I'm looking at joining

01:34:55

companies, almost every company that I've looked at it all involves development and some kind,

01:35:00

and almost everybody runs agile. So, I don't like I've not been through the details of agile.

01:35:08

Like, I know how it works and I can jump into teams that are operating on it. So,

01:35:11

maybe you picked this for me. Thanks, Mike. You're welcome.

01:35:15

Now, thank you to the bookworm listeners who recommended this. Yeah, they've been kind of

01:35:21

honest on that one. The book after that, we're going to go to a repeat author. And we're also

01:35:27

going to step outside of like the business self help sort of books into medicine. So, this is a

01:35:37

tool Guandes being mortal tagline medicine and what matters in the end. I think that I'm selecting

01:35:43

this partly because I had kind of an interesting journey with the whole Lyme disease bit. And I'm

01:35:49

fascinated to know Guandes take on some of these things. So, I, and I felt like he was a really good

01:35:57

writer when we read the checklist manifesto, which is also by him. So, I'm curious in this one. So,

01:36:02

maybe we'll step outside the our normal realm for this, Mike. It sounds good. And then, gapbook,

01:36:09

you mentioned you don't have one, which is totally fine. The one I'm going to be reading in between

01:36:14

is a Michael Hyatt book, Your Best Year Ever, which has been on my bookshelf for a little while.

01:36:20

But I kind of feel like it's time to go through this as I'm thinking through the faith-based

01:36:26

productivity stuff. I worked in the productivity space for a long time. I get setting goals,

01:36:32

12-week year, all that sort of stuff. But I've heard a lot of good things about this book.

01:36:38

And even though it's probably not as simple as his five-step plan for achieving your most

01:36:44

important goals, as the subtitle says, I respect Michael Hyatt a lot. And I think that there's

01:36:52

going to be some cool ideas in here. So, cool. That'll do it for this episode. If you want to

01:36:58

recommend a book yourself, you can do so in the Bookworm Club, club.bookworm.fm, which I know you're

01:37:07

going to mention this, but I'll just throw it out there. There's a mechanism to vote for books

01:37:12

that have already been suggested or you can add your own. You can also add your recommendations

01:37:17

from the website. You can go to bookworm.fm/list and you can see a list of the books that we have

01:37:23

covered and there'll be a button there to recommend a book unless you change the website recently.

01:37:27

Yeah, if you click that link, it takes you to the club to recommend a book. So, there's really

01:37:34

one mechanism, just a few ways to get there. Gotcha. There you go. But yes, there's a book list on

01:37:39

the website. But we would like you to join the club. There's some fun conversations that go on

01:37:45

there and conversations about potential books. So, it's kind of interesting to see what you guys

01:37:51

want to hear us cover. Some books I see on that list and think, "Hmm-mm." And some I think, "Oh, duh,

01:37:57

yes, we should totally do that." So, I'm always interested in those recommendations. But a couple

01:38:04

other ways that you can support the show. One is through the typical iTunes review. We talk about

01:38:10

it every time, but those help out tremendously. Sometimes if you mention criticism in there,

01:38:15

I will do the same thing that you told me not to do just to be myself. But it also helps us

01:38:22

understand if we're headed in the right direction as well. So, if you have a review for us,

01:38:26

link in the show notes. But you can also, if you look through the show notes, all of the links to

01:38:32

the books are affiliate links. So, that's also another. They go to Amazon so you can pick up

01:38:38

the books for yourself if you want. So, if you like, predictably irrational, if it sounded like

01:38:43

something you wanted to read, you could go to the links and click on that. However, if you want to

01:38:50

read along with us and being mortal, you could do that as well by clicking the link in the show

01:38:55

notes there as well. There you go. All right. So, thanks everybody for joining us. If you're

01:39:01

reading along, the next book on the list is Scrum by Jeff Sutherland. And we will talk to you all in

01:39:09

a couple of weeks.