Bookworm Transcripts

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and bought another keyboard, Mike.

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- You did?

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- I did.

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- The DOS keyboard wasn't cutting it for you anymore,

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or what's the deal here?

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- I bought another one.

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(laughs)

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- Of course, 'cause you always need more keyboards.

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- Hey, you can never have too many keyboards.

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(laughs)

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- All right, so what'd you get?

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- I bought another DOS.

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It's the Professional, the S series.

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- Okay.

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- So it's got the little hub on the side of it.

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It doesn't have the little dial in the top, right?

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To me, that seems a bit excessive for what I'm doing,

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but I needed a mechanical for the job I took.

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So yes, I was not about to work

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on those old membrane keyboards.

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(laughs)

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I forget this.

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Totally buying a computer or a keyboard,

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even though they should probably buy it,

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but they wouldn't buy that sort of thing.

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So I bought it, bought some new keycaps coming for it

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since I'm Devorac all the way.

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(laughs)

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- That's right.

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Oh man, so this is quite an investment

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for a mechanical keyboard for what kind of computer

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are you hooking this up to?

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(laughs)

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- I don't even know what it is.

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It's an HP something.

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I know that it's slow.

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Welcome back to the PC world, Joe.

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That's kind of how this goes.

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(laughs)

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That's the big downside of the whole thing.

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So yes, I am working in the PC world.

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I will say Microsoft has made some pretty good changes

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from the last nine to 12 months, I would say.

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- Yeah.

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- They're starting to come around,

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so I've been pretty happy with what I'm seeing out of them,

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but it's still a PC.

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It's still Windows.

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(laughs)

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- Does it have all the extra stuff on it

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that makes it run half as fast?

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- Totally, totally.

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I even had a thumb drive

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that I was gonna boot a Linux system off of,

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and I plugged it into it and booted it off of that thumb drive,

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and it freaked out.

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It was not happy, and it reported me to IT for doing it.

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So, yes, I got in trouble for that one, but you know.

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- Yeah, I think if you could clean that sort of stuff

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off of the majority of PCs, they would be

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pretty decent computers, but they come with all

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of that factory junk, and most people just never bothered

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to clean it out, and so you end up with a severely

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governed/crippled machine, in my opinion.

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- Yeah, I know when I've built PCs for the church,

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one of the first things I do with a brand new computer

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right out of the box is go in and do a factory restore on it,

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and it strips a lot of the extra stuff off of it.

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It doesn't, depending on where you got it,

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it doesn't always get all of it,

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but people always look at me funny,

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and it's like, you just turned it on,

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why are you destroying it?

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It's like, I'm starting over to get rid of all the cruft,

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and like one scenario, and then I'll stop talking about this,

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but in one scenario I did that,

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and I was checking the hard drive space

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to see how much space I gain from doing that,

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and it had, I think it was a 512 SSD,

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and it had almost 60 gigs taken up,

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straight from the factory.

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I did the factory reset, and it was at 20,

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so it had 40 gigs worth of bloatware on this thing.

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- Jeez.

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- Ugh, I don't understand that, but they do it,

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and it's all in the name of making it faster.

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(laughing)

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- Well, real briefly, since we're talking tech stuff,

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I also got some new gear,

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which I shared the picture with you

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before we hit the big red button,

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but I am recording this from a Mac Mini.

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I got sick of my microphone disconnecting

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from my Thunderbolt 3 dock

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that my MacBook was plugged into

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when I was recording podcasts.

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So this is a pretty awesome machine.

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I like it way better than I thought I would.

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I kind of viewed it as something that would get me by

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when I'm recording at my house,

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and I wouldn't have to ever touch it,

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wouldn't have to ever change anything.

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It would just kind of sit here,

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and I would use it when I needed to record something,

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but otherwise I would be running off my MacBook,

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which I still have in my iPad, but I love this thing.

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It's awesome,

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and it's really fast.

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I also got a Synology because I've been needing

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some cold storage for a long time,

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and this seemed like the right time to get it.

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So this is a really expensive justification

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for not fixing my Thunderbolt 3 dock.

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(laughing)

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But that was kind of the option I had was like,

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I could spend 300 or 400 bucks on a new Thunderbolt 3 dock,

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or I could get this Mac Mini,

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which they just revamped them.

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Who knows if they'll ever update them ever again?

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Plus it looks so cool.

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(laughing)

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Not, so yeah, I really like it though.

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I find it, it's weird, like it's the same operating system.

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It's, a lot of it is the same setup,

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it's the same keyboard, same mouse that I had been using,

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but it just feels so much snappier,

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and I find myself wanting to go down to my desk to work more.

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Maybe that's just 'cause it's shiny and new.

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- It's new, yeah.

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But you did the ram upgrade on it though, right?

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And that what you told me?

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- I did, yep.

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So I got the nicer stock option.

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I didn't custom order anything

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because I needed something like tomorrow

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when I went to the store to look at them.

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And they had in the store the Core 4

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and the 4 Core and the 6 Core.

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So I just bought the 6 Core, it's the i5,

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I kinda wish it was the i7,

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but like I said, I couldn't wait for a custom order.

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And then I ordered the 32 gigabyte OWC ram upgrade,

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which was I think 300 bucks roughly instead of 600,

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which it would have been from Apple.

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I went on the internet, saw that it's user upgradable,

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and I used to build systems for a living.

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This is not average user upgradable for sure.

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It took me about an hour and I didn't have any issues,

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but there's so much stuff that's crammed inside

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that little box and it's really crazy.

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All the different special tools you need and everything.

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I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a lot of people,

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but it is possible.

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And so yeah, I've got it with a more ram than double the ram

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actually that my Macbook had.

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And this is a pretty screaming little machine

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for what I use it for.

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- Nice, nice.

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But you saved 300 bucks, got the same results,

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sounds like.

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- Yep, yep.

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Didn't have any issues once I turned it on.

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That's always the moment where I hold my breath.

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But yeah, it's working great.

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- Hit the power button and hold your fingers crossed.

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(laughs)

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I hope it boots.

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- Yeah, but 2018 Mac Mini, two thumbs up from Mike Schmitt's.

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- Awesome, I'm jealous, I want one of these.

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But alas, I have a two year old PC.

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- Woo hoo.

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- Well, teach each their own.

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(laughs)

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- So we got some follow up items here.

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- Yeah.

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- And really the only action item to follow up on is,

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did you have the talk?

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- Well, depending on the type of talk we're talking about,

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the talk, no, we did not have the talk.

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Kids are a little too small for that.

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But I did start the conversations with my parents

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and my in-laws and this, okay.

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So this goes back to last book of being mortal,

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starting the conversation about what happens

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when we get to end of life scenarios.

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And of course, as you would expect, Mike,

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that's not necessarily a fun conversation

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to open up right away.

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And I wouldn't say that we had the formal conversation

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around it, but we at least talked around it

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so that people would start thinking about it.

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And I think that's the first step here.

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So we'll see my folks over the next few months again.

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And then we'll see my in-laws,

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I think towards the end of this month.

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So we're recording this New Year's Day.

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So Happy New Year's.

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So we'll see my in-laws here later in the month.

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And goal is to talk through it more formally with them

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at that point from both sides.

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We're both aware of that.

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So it has begun.

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I don't have any answers on how it went.

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I'm not even sure I should share answers on how it goes,

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but it's at least in progress.

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Yeah, that'd be kind of weird, wouldn't it?

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Yeah.

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Well, kudos to you for even attempting this

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because I am not going to for quite a while.

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(laughs)

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We did get some cool feedback though on that episode

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from a couple of people.

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One person said, "I appreciate you covering this book

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"that was outside your comfort zone.

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"Your uncomfortableness was evident,

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"but you both covered the book well as always."

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So appreciate that.

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P.F. Robbins, Stephen Lowry also had some nice comments

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about it.

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And it sounds like this book kind of spoke to Stephen,

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but yeah, I was really nervous when we recorded it.

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I was really nervous when I hit the publish button.

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And it seems like it's being fairly well received.

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So that's a little bit of a sigh of relief from me

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because it's something that,

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when we covered this in when we recorded the episode,

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that we don't really feel like we're qualified

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to give advice on this particular topic

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or don't have enough experience to really even speak to it.

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Right.

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But so far so good.

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And I do think that there's a lot of value

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in having the conversation.

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And not just the conversation with your elderly parents,

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like what does the end of life scenario look like

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if you do find yourself in that situation,

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but really just conversation amongst the community.

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So selfless plug here for the Bookworm Club.

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I mean, if you wanna get around other people

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who are going through the same sort of things.

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And that was really the surprising thing for me

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when I guess when we published this episode

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is like you had a really strong reaction to the book.

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And for you, you said it was kind of the right thing

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at the right time.

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Me, not so much, but there are obviously people

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like the people who have posted in the Bookworm Club here

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who are in the same shoes as you were Joe.

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And I think it's really interesting,

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maybe interesting about the right word,

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but it's cool to see how people in those similar situations

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like you get around other people

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who are going through the same thing.

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And it's not just like the echo chamber type thing,

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but there's without even explicitly offering encouragement

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to other people who are going through that thing,

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the fact that there's a group of people

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who are going through this tough thing together,

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that's encouraging to somebody who is in that situation.

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It makes you feel less alone,

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or it makes you feel that there is hope

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because other people are going through this,

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other people have gone through it

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and they've come out okay on the other side.

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Like it gives you hope that you will get through

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it and you'll be able to navigate it successfully

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or probably do a terrible job of explaining this analogy.

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But you get the drift, I hope,

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that like there are other people out there

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and just by sharing something,

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you don't know who that's going to impact.

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- I remember when we,

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before we really even got through like some of the small talk

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that we tend to do before we start recording,

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I remember you telling me

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that you were not looking forward to recording today,

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like that.

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(laughing)

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- Nope, I was not.

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And we both knew it was going to be kind of a hard episode

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to record.

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I am happy with the way it turned out.

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I'm glad it kind of comes across as,

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you know, we're kind of nervous about how this was going to go.

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So I'm kind of glad it came across that way.

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Hopefully people don't get too offense-offended by it,

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but you know, it's a tough topic.

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It's not talked about enough, I don't think so.

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- Yep.

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- Glad to contribute in some small way.

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That actually leads to a somewhat related point

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that has really kind of been driven home for me recently

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because David Sparks and I recently rebranded

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Free Agents 2, so now it's called Focused

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and it's more of a productivity podcast.

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And this short story behind that is that

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we were talking a lot about productivity stuff

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'cause that's who I am.

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That's what comes out much to the chagrin

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of some of the listeners of Bookworm

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who wish we would cover more diverse books.

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(laughing)

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- Whoops.

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- Yeah, and we're going through the forums for Free Agents

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and there's a ton of people in there who are like,

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hey, great episode, really like your approach to this topic.

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And then they would always end it with something like,

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I'm not a free agent or I have no desire to be a free agent,

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happy working for the man, whatever.

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Like they would phrase it however they want

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in their own words, but basically they felt kind of bad.

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Like they were apologizing for listening

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and getting something out of the episode

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even though they weren't a quote unquote free agent.

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And we were like, whoa, this is like half of our audience

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who is not a free agent.

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And then also there were a bunch of people

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who like I talked to you about the show.

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I'm like, oh, I'm not an independent worker.

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So I guess that show's not for me.

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And I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, it is.

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The stuff that we talk about, you can totally apply

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to just about any situation.

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So we want to make it a little bit more general.

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But anyways, David and I in our last episode

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talked about some of the struggles

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that we've gone through in our own free agent journeys

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and there was somebody who had commented in the forum

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about depression related to free agency.

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And so we kind of tackled that as a topic.

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And again, same thing, like we're apologizing left and right,

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but we're not the ones who should be offering

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this sort of advice on this sort of thing.

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We haven't gone through it to the degree that other people have.

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And there was some really positive response to that too.

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Something somebody said in that forum though really hit me

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was the fact that like you don't have to be an expert

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in this stuff in order to talk about it.

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You just need to share your experience

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and that makes you qualified.

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And I'm doing a terrible job again, paraphrasing

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what they said, but it was encouraging because it's like,

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well, just because you haven't gone through this

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to the degree somebody else does,

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the fact that you're talking about it is a positive thing.

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And there's a lot of people who will benefit from this.

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And more people need to be talking

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about these difficult things.

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And so that's kind of the goal with the new show.

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As it pertains to this conversation though,

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it's like talking about the failures,

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talking about the fact that you don't have it all figured out

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and sharing from your mistakes.

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I really want to just encourage everybody

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who happens to be listening to this,

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who feels in that position,

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'cause I've been there and it can be difficult to,

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fortunately we've got, this is episode 60,

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so a bunch of episodes under our belt.

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And there was no doubt that eventually

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we were going to hop on the mic and talk about it.

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But I think for a lot of people,

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maybe they find that they're in that spot

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and they're not sure whether to hit publish

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on the blog post that they wrote or not.

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Share your thing, share your experience

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because you don't know who's out there

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who can benefit from it.

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And for somebody who finds that

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and reads that or listens to that or watches that,

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it's gonna be the right thing at the right time

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and you don't know who you're gonna be able to help.

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- Exactly.

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There's still, like there are other podcasts out there

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of people who read books.

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- Yep.

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- And this, so this is not a unique concept.

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We're possibly unique in the way that we go about it,

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but the concept of, like the idea itself is not new.

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- Right.

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- Obviously that has not stopped us.

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(laughs)

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We don't think about it that way.

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It's all about making sure that,

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if you have something that you wanna say,

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your voice is going to be different

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than a lot of people who are out there currently.

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- Yep.

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- Most likely.

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So everyone will resonate with a different personality

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in some varying degree.

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So you're better off publishing it,

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even just as an experiment to see what happens.

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- Right.

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- And see what comes of it.

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That's what I tell people is just,

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if you don't know if you should do it or not,

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try it and find out.

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(laughs)

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That's the easy way to try it on.

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- Go make your thing.

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And to be honest, if I would have had a picture

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of what Bookworm would become now,

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and the approach that I take to reading books now,

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I probably wouldn't have published the first one.

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(laughs)

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If I were to go back and look at my approach to that book

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and the way that we covered it,

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and just like how we put together the outlines

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and all that stuff, it's like, ugh, you need it.

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- Yeah.

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But you learn, and it's still out there.

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I don't care, people can go back and hear me rail

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against getting things done,

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but like the value is in the journey

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as you figure these things out.

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And I think as you progress on your own journey,

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that tendency can be to look back at all the mistakes

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that you made, and my initial reaction

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because I'm a bit of a perfectionist is,

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oh, I wish I could go back and erase that,

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or change that or fix that, whatever.

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But I don't know, I mean, there's a lot of value

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in recognizing this is where I was,

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and this is where I am now.

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So that whole idea of like the gap versus the gain,

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you can see the growth when you compare

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where you were to where you are now,

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and that can be encouraging as opposed to just saying,

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oh, I wish I was there.

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I wish I had a podcast with as many downloads

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as Mac power users or whatever.

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You know, so success is kind of relative, I guess.

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You can't judge your success by what somebody else has done.

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But also like the real definition of success,

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I think is the fact that you're embarking

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on the journey and you're doing it consistently,

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and you've applied the growth mindset,

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and you continue to get 1% better every time that you do it.

00:17:20

- You can't change the past,

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and you can't get to Mac power users level unless you've done it

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for nine and a half years.

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(laughs)

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- What are they, 464 episodes now or something?

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And as we're recording this,

00:17:31

Katie Floyd just recorded her last episode,

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which is kind of sad.

00:17:35

- Yep, sad day.

00:17:38

But Stephen's stepping in.

00:17:40

- Yep, if there is one person who was qualified

00:17:43

to speak to all of Apple history past and present,

00:17:48

it's Stephen Hackett.

00:17:49

- No kidding.

00:17:51

- So I'm looking forward to what they come up with.

00:17:53

All right, should we talk about today's book?

00:17:56

- Yep, I'm expecting a lot of good things out of you today.

00:17:59

- Hopefully I can deliver.

00:18:00

(laughs)

00:18:01

A little bit under the weather,

00:18:03

you can probably hear it in my voice,

00:18:05

but we'll bring it.

00:18:07

- All right.

00:18:07

Today's book is The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Popisan,

00:18:12

which side note here,

00:18:13

this is another one of those books with two authors,

00:18:16

but when you're reading this, he's saying,

00:18:18

"I, me," like it's very singular in the way that it's written,

00:18:23

so I found that a little bit confusing

00:18:25

when I read it this time.

00:18:26

But whatever.

00:18:27

- And even Gary signed it at the very end,

00:18:29

and Jay did not.

00:18:31

- So let's assume that this is Gary Keller

00:18:33

because I tend to refer to the author as a single person

00:18:37

in the episode Anyways,

00:18:38

but it really fits with this book

00:18:40

because it seems like Anyways, Gary talking.

00:18:44

- Yes.

00:18:44

- So, but this was the book that I picked,

00:18:48

I believe number one, when we did our draft,

00:18:52

the 2018 Bookworm Draft for episode 50,

00:18:56

as my favorite book of all time.

00:18:58

It was also one that my wife read recently,

00:19:02

and she recommended that I go through again

00:19:04

based on the current season of my life,

00:19:05

which not to get into all the details again,

00:19:09

but I'm no longer working with Asian deficiency.

00:19:11

I find myself as a free agent for reals,

00:19:13

and this is kind of uncharted waters for me,

00:19:17

and it's led to, like we talked about last episode,

00:19:20

my omni-focus getting out of hand,

00:19:22

my email getting out of hand,

00:19:23

like everything that I've known seems to be wrong.

00:19:26

(laughing)

00:19:27

She just, she said, you really need to go back

00:19:30

and revisit this whole idea of the focusing question

00:19:33

and the one thing, yeah, you're probably right.

00:19:35

(laughing)

00:19:37

So, that's why I picked it for this episode,

00:19:42

and you, I'm gonna get this out of the way

00:19:45

because no one else is gonna see this hopefully,

00:19:47

but you actually have in the outline that we have here,

00:19:50

a rating of .5, and I asked you before we started recording

00:19:53

if you were trolling me,

00:19:54

or if you really thought it was that bad.

00:19:56

You assured me that you were trolling me,

00:19:58

so hopefully we'll have some good conversation

00:20:00

about this book.

00:20:01

- Yes.

00:20:02

And just to clarify, it was your number one pick

00:20:05

on the draft, I did just double check that,

00:20:08

and yes, I knew that this was gonna be a book

00:20:13

that Mike really would enjoy,

00:20:15

especially if he has it as his number one,

00:20:17

so I knew and know that you have a lot of good things

00:20:20

to say about this book.

00:20:21

So, knowing that, it was the perfect time for me

00:20:24

to just drop, 'cause we never put our ratings in

00:20:26

until we get to the end of it.

00:20:28

- Yep.

00:20:29

- So we don't know what each other has rated it

00:20:31

until we're done and we're at that point,

00:20:35

and it's only then that we'll do that actual reveal,

00:20:37

even to each other.

00:20:39

So, yes, I put in a .5 in the outline, so yes,

00:20:44

I'm just trolling you, Mike.

00:20:46

You're okay.

00:20:47

- So the book itself, I wanna preface this

00:20:51

with the subtitle here, because I think this sets the tone

00:20:56

for the whole book, so the title is the one thing,

00:20:58

the subtitle is the surprisingly simple truth

00:21:01

behind extraordinary results.

00:21:04

And I think that is important because this is a book

00:21:08

that technically has three parts,

00:21:11

although I would say the most important takeaway

00:21:14

from the book happens before the first part

00:21:16

in the introduction.

00:21:18

- Yeah.

00:21:18

- And this is really the thing that I remembered

00:21:21

when I did the draft episode was the profound impact

00:21:26

that this single idea had in my life,

00:21:30

and that is the domino effect.

00:21:33

And this is not something that is originated

00:21:36

from Gary Keller, by the way,

00:21:38

he gives credit where credit is due,

00:21:39

so more credit than Charles Dewitt gave the MIT professors

00:21:44

who came up with the Qroutine reward thing.

00:21:46

(laughing)

00:21:47

He says, "In 1983, Lauren Whitehead wrote

00:21:50

in the American Journal of Physics

00:21:51

that a single domino can topple another domino

00:21:54

up to 50% larger."

00:21:57

And this is a really powerful idea

00:21:59

because, and he extrapolates on this,

00:22:01

he gives very real examples.

00:22:04

So if you start with a normal two-inch domino,

00:22:07

the tenth domino you would knock over

00:22:08

if you assumed that progression through each domino.

00:22:11

And there's actually a YouTube video that I saw at one point,

00:22:14

I couldn't find it again when I was prepping for this,

00:22:17

but someone did this with like big wooden blocks.

00:22:20

And they only did like the first several,

00:22:22

but you can kind of see the effect that it has.

00:22:25

So if you started with one domino,

00:22:27

and the next one was 50% bigger,

00:22:28

and the next one was 50% bigger,

00:22:30

and you continued that chain.

00:22:32

You start with a two-inch domino,

00:22:33

the tenth domino, he says is gonna be almost as tall

00:22:35

as Peyton Manning.

00:22:37

The 18th is gonna rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa,

00:22:39

the 23rd domino is gonna be taller than the Eiffel Tower,

00:22:42

the 31st domino is gonna be 3000 feet taller than Mount Everest,

00:22:46

and the 57th domino would almost go

00:22:48

from the earth to the moon.

00:22:50

So that is, that's a really, to me anyways,

00:22:54

a very powerful picture because you can think about

00:22:58

the big results that you wanna achieve.

00:23:00

And it's really interesting, I think,

00:23:01

that we're covering this book and we're recording this

00:23:03

on January 1st.

00:23:05

So this is the time of the year when people are gonna

00:23:08

set their goals and they're gonna have their new year's

00:23:10

resolutions and I'm gonna lose 30 pounds this year, whatever.

00:23:14

Well, the way to do that is not to focus on the big goal

00:23:19

that you want to achieve,

00:23:20

but what is that one thing, that first domino

00:23:23

that you can knock down?

00:23:25

And that's the idea that he comes back to

00:23:27

throughout the rest of the book.

00:23:29

I think it's interesting you picked this book

00:23:30

at this time of the year.

00:23:31

I don't think you intended that.

00:23:33

I didn't. (laughs)

00:23:34

But it's oddly a good one.

00:23:37

Yep. So, yeah.

00:23:39

So what was your impression of this domino idea?

00:23:43

Did you have the same, like, oh my gosh,

00:23:45

that's amazing reaction that I had when I first read it?

00:23:48

Or were you kinda like, yeah, I understand that already

00:23:51

'cause we've read enough of these books now?

00:23:54

I got you nervous with that .5 rating, didn't I?

00:23:56

Like, you're itching. (laughs)

00:23:58

Well, no, I just wanna, I'm not even necessarily looking

00:24:01

for like validation or anything, but I do,

00:24:05

I'm kinda curious, like, what sort of reaction

00:24:08

did you have to this?

00:24:09

Because I had a very strong positive reaction

00:24:12

when I read it the first time.

00:24:14

We talk about this all the time.

00:24:15

These productivity books tend to be longer than they could be.

00:24:17

This one, I think, we'll get into this in the other parts.

00:24:21

Like, there's a lot in here.

00:24:22

But if you were just gonna take away this one thing,

00:24:24

like, you get the main idea from the one thing

00:24:26

in the first 20 pages, so.

00:24:28

- Right. - Is it like, okay,

00:24:29

we've heard this over and over again?

00:24:30

Are you like, yeah, that's a really powerful idea.

00:24:33

- Yeah, I would say he does a very good job

00:24:35

of explaining the concept in the very beginning.

00:24:38

And then post beginning, like post the intro,

00:24:42

he kinda, he goes through things that would derail you

00:24:47

from it and then ways to set yourself up for success

00:24:51

with that question of what is the one thing.

00:24:55

And I don't think it's too long.

00:24:58

Like, and I don't think it's too short either.

00:25:01

I feel like he did a pretty good job

00:25:02

of setting the density on the book.

00:25:05

So that's a piece that I was very appreciative of.

00:25:08

The intro, with the domino effect,

00:25:10

I can't say that I had a guttural reaction like that, Mike.

00:25:14

But I, it was one of those that, okay,

00:25:16

this is an interesting concept.

00:25:17

I understand it.

00:25:19

It's one that helps me understand

00:25:21

the consequential process of if I knock down one task,

00:25:26

no matter how small, as long as it's pointed

00:25:32

in the direction that I need to go,

00:25:35

it can set me up to knock down a domino

00:25:37

that's bigger than the one I originally knocked down.

00:25:39

Like that, that I understand,

00:25:41

but I can't say that it was profound to me.

00:25:45

- Okay.

00:25:46

Yeah, and that's fair.

00:25:48

Really the thing to get from this first section,

00:25:52

which completely rocked my world the first time I read it,

00:25:56

was that on page 10, he says,

00:25:58

"You need to be doing fewer things for more effect

00:26:00

"instead of doing more things with side effects."

00:26:03

So you can apply that to your own situation

00:26:07

when I read that, it was like,

00:26:09

"Oh my gosh, I'm doing all of these different things

00:26:12

"and I don't have time for this thing

00:26:14

"which I know is most important."

00:26:17

And I need to cut out all this other stuff that I'm doing,

00:26:22

which if you listen to any sort of productivity podcast,

00:26:26

like you'll hear that sort of advice over and over again,

00:26:31

but it really is that important.

00:26:35

Like everything that you do during your day,

00:26:39

why are you doing it?

00:26:41

What is it accomplishing?

00:26:43

What is the end result of that chain of dominoes

00:26:47

from you knocking that thing over?

00:26:49

And a lot of people, and this is where I was

00:26:51

when I read this the first time,

00:26:53

it's like, "Well, I have to do this thing

00:26:54

"and I have to do that thing and I have to do that thing."

00:26:56

And then maybe by the end of the day,

00:26:58

when I've got a little bit left over,

00:27:00

I'll figure out what's my one thing left?

00:27:04

Like what's the one thing with the resources

00:27:05

that I have left available to me?

00:27:07

The problem with that approach though,

00:27:08

is that like you get to the end of the day

00:27:10

and you're exhausted and you don't do the thing

00:27:12

that you say is most important,

00:27:14

whether you're trying to start a side business

00:27:17

or write a book or whatever your New Year's resolution

00:27:20

happens to be this year.

00:27:22

Like that's why they fail is you've got all the things

00:27:26

that you have to do and then you try to add this one thing

00:27:28

on top of it, I'll just talk about New Year's resolutions

00:27:30

for a minute because a lot of them are like,

00:27:32

I'm gonna eat healthier, I'm gonna save more money,

00:27:34

I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna exercise more.

00:27:37

All of those things are probably the most important thing

00:27:42

that you could be doing.

00:27:43

Like if you don't protect the golden goose,

00:27:45

if you don't take care of your health,

00:27:47

it doesn't really matter how much work you're able to get done,

00:27:50

it's not gonna be sustainable and you're gonna burn out

00:27:53

and it's gonna have probably long-term effects on your health.

00:27:56

Ultimately you're going to live a shorter life

00:28:00

and that's just the natural progression of that thought process

00:28:03

but people don't typically go there.

00:28:04

So let's assume that we aren't living a healthy lifestyle.

00:28:08

So the number one thing we can do is figure out

00:28:11

how to make a healthy lifestyle

00:28:13

but most people won't take exercise

00:28:16

or getting to the gym as the single most important thing

00:28:19

in their day.

00:28:20

I'm not arguing that everybody should

00:28:22

but seeing it from that perspective

00:28:25

is kind of a game changer because then instead of trying

00:28:28

to fit one more thing into your jar,

00:28:30

you're kind of dumping out your entire jar

00:28:33

and you're putting that thing in first

00:28:34

and then everything else can kind of fit in around it.

00:28:37

The first thing's first analogy from Stephen Covey

00:28:41

but when you do it that way,

00:28:44

surprisingly it works.

00:28:46

Like the things that you quote-unquote had to do,

00:28:48

you still figure out a way to get those things done

00:28:51

but when you put the things that are important

00:28:53

but not urgent, scrambling all of the productivity metaphors

00:28:56

in this one story.

00:28:58

- Good job.

00:28:58

- Hopefully you're getting the point that I'm making here

00:29:01

is like you can't just say I'm gonna do this one additional thing.

00:29:04

You have to rethink how you've constructed your life currently

00:29:09

if you want to make this thing the most important thing

00:29:12

and that's the message that I think the one thing

00:29:15

does a really good job with.

00:29:17

- I will say this is good timing for me right now.

00:29:22

I mentioned like the PC and going to work for a company.

00:29:26

I have started going back to, I'm now a corporate monkey.

00:29:31

Whoo, but in that process of joining a company,

00:29:36

I have to cut back on all the little things

00:29:40

that I've had going on.

00:29:42

Bookworm's not going anywhere, just gonna say that.

00:29:46

So no worries there.

00:29:48

So I have had to be particular with what is it

00:29:53

that drives me to my mission?

00:29:55

And this book is, it's perfect timing for me

00:29:58

because it forces me to work through

00:30:01

all those pieces of what is the most important thing

00:30:03

I should be working towards.

00:30:04

Is it the corporate job?

00:30:06

Is it the side gig?

00:30:07

Do those work together towards one mission?

00:30:10

Like those are the questions I need to answer.

00:30:12

And this book I feel like is perfectly suited for that.

00:30:16

It does work through that.

00:30:17

So it's, again, it's hitting me at exactly the right moment.

00:30:22

- Nice.

00:30:23

Last thing I'll say about the introduction here

00:30:25

before we get into the three different parts.

00:30:28

There's a ton of chapters in here.

00:30:29

I think there's like 18 different chapters.

00:30:32

Let's see.

00:30:33

- Yes, 18.

00:30:35

- So we're not gonna cover all of the chapters in depth.

00:30:38

I kind of picked out a couple key ideas from each section

00:30:41

except where there were lists,

00:30:42

which we can go through kind of quickly.

00:30:44

But in chapter three, which is still part of the intro,

00:30:47

it's called Success Leaves Clues.

00:30:49

And so this whole idea here is that there are other people

00:30:52

who have succeeded and if you do what they did,

00:30:54

you can get the results that they got.

00:30:57

Obviously every situation's gonna be a little bit different.

00:31:00

But he talks about the most successful companies

00:31:03

are known for one thing.

00:31:05

He talks about how on page 24,

00:31:07

the unintended consequence of abundance

00:31:08

is that we are bombarded with more information

00:31:10

and choices in a day than our ancestors received in a lifetime.

00:31:13

I really do think like that's a contributing factor.

00:31:15

If we can just cut out all the noise

00:31:17

and figure out what is the one thing,

00:31:18

regardless of how big it is

00:31:20

and how much effort it takes to knock down that first domino,

00:31:23

like it doesn't have to be a lot.

00:31:24

But if we can select the right things and work on them,

00:31:27

then once you start going down that path,

00:31:30

the results will come maybe quicker than you realized.

00:31:33

But there's a key idea here which really impacted me.

00:31:36

No one succeeds alone.

00:31:37

On page 20, he says, "Everyone has one person

00:31:40

"who either means the most to them

00:31:41

"or was the first to influence, train, or manage them."

00:31:45

And when I read that, I wrote down one of my action items

00:31:49

is who can you be that one person for?

00:31:52

And it's kind of an interesting situation

00:31:56

because I never really considered bookworm,

00:32:00

like a big podcast.

00:32:02

I really haven't considered anything that I've done

00:32:04

to be like really out there

00:32:08

in terms of like, this thing is really impressive.

00:32:10

But I've had people approach me

00:32:13

and say that about different things that I've done.

00:32:17

And obviously when that happens, it feels good personally

00:32:21

because it's kind of like validation

00:32:23

that this thing that I created is actually,

00:32:26

it does actually have some value,

00:32:27

other people see value in it.

00:32:29

But when I see those situations now,

00:32:33

after reading this section in the book,

00:32:35

I want to apply a little bit more intentionality

00:32:40

in my response to those, if that makes sense.

00:32:44

So when someone reaches out and says,

00:32:47

"Hey, I loved that last episode of bookworm

00:32:49

"that you recorded on this particular topic."

00:32:52

Instead of just saying,

00:32:53

"Hey, thanks, appreciate the kind of words."

00:32:57

Dig a little bit deeper,

00:32:58

find out what that person is wanting to do.

00:33:03

Maybe they haven't a goal to start a podcast or something.

00:33:07

Well, I know how to start a podcast.

00:33:09

I know the process there.

00:33:11

So maybe I can be that person

00:33:15

who is the first to influence train or manage them

00:33:18

and get them going down the path of success.

00:33:21

Like they start their podcast

00:33:23

and it turns into something big.

00:33:25

And they can look back and be like,

00:33:26

"Yeah, really the tipping point for me was

00:33:29

"when Mike helped me do X.

00:33:32

"Like I want to look for those opportunities."

00:33:35

And this is a classic bike action item

00:33:37

and that I have no idea how you're going to be able

00:33:39

to hold me accountable to this.

00:33:41

But the real acid test, I think,

00:33:44

of this action item is like the,

00:33:46

what is that?

00:33:47

Stephen Covey's second habit, I think,

00:33:50

begin with the end in mind.

00:33:51

One of the exercises in there

00:33:52

is like to think about your own funeral

00:33:55

and who's going to show up and speak

00:33:57

at your eulogy sort of thing.

00:33:58

Like I want a huge line of people saying,

00:34:00

"Yeah, Mike helped me do this."

00:34:03

Not so that I can pat myself on the back or anything,

00:34:06

but I think there's a lot of people

00:34:08

who are kind of on the fence.

00:34:09

They're right at that tipping point

00:34:11

between this thing getting wings and flying

00:34:14

or them just giving up on it.

00:34:16

And I want to be the type of person

00:34:18

who can help push them over the edge

00:34:20

and get that thing airborne.

00:34:22

Which is a very noble thing to do.

00:34:24

Like that's a thing that I feel like I...

00:34:27

There are a lot of people that like to do that.

00:34:30

I don't think there are a ton of people

00:34:32

that are good at it.

00:34:34

I feel like you would be good at it, Mike.

00:34:35

- Hopefully.

00:34:36

I mean, that's the goal behind the workshop

00:34:40

I'm doing this Saturday.

00:34:42

- Oh, Mike.

00:34:43

- But yeah, so I guess after that,

00:34:45

we'll have a little bit more,

00:34:47

larger sample size people can just say,

00:34:49

"Yep, you're good at this," or, "Nope."

00:34:51

No, you're not.

00:34:52

Find something else.

00:34:53

- You're gonna share the results?

00:34:55

- Lots of things.

00:34:56

That's kind of what I was talking about

00:34:57

with the action item, like,

00:34:58

"I don't think this is something

00:34:59

that you can hold me accountable to

00:35:00

because you don't really know what impact this has

00:35:03

until the end."

00:35:04

And then you can see everything.

00:35:06

And somebody shows up at your funeral and says,

00:35:08

"Hey, that point when Mike helped me launch my podcast

00:35:11

or encouraged me this way,

00:35:13

like, and that was the thing I needed

00:35:14

to actually do my thing, get my book, publish, whatever."

00:35:17

Like, you don't really know what impact that stuff has

00:35:20

until it's all said and done.

00:35:21

But I don't wanna wait till it's all said and done

00:35:23

to look back and be like, "Oh man, I should've."

00:35:25

Not been such a selfish jerk.

00:35:27

- Yep, yep.

00:35:29

I feel like, I'm just trying to figure out

00:35:33

if we should talk through the question itself

00:35:37

before we get into the lies,

00:35:40

or if you wanna go through the lies first.

00:35:42

- Well, the question itself is actually

00:35:46

the focusing question in part two.

00:35:48

So maybe we'll just leave that for now

00:35:51

and just kinda understand that the idea here

00:35:54

is that you don't need to be doing a ton,

00:35:58

you just need to be doing the right things,

00:36:00

you can start small, that first two inch domino,

00:36:03

and that's gonna create the momentum that you need

00:36:05

to produce the big results.

00:36:07

And then part one gets into the six different lies

00:36:11

that they're called.

00:36:13

And these are different things that we've kinda talked

00:36:16

about and around on Bookworm,

00:36:20

but we can just kinda run through these maybe real quickly.

00:36:24

So the first lie is that everything matters equally.

00:36:29

The second one is multitasking,

00:36:33

and that's just the name of the chapter,

00:36:34

but he basically says, "You can't multitask."

00:36:37

And we've talked about that,

00:36:39

we've talked about Chris Bailey's approach to it.

00:36:41

After reading this section,

00:36:42

I do kinda find myself going back to,

00:36:44

"Yeah, you should probably just stay away

00:36:45

from multitasking."

00:36:46

The third one is a disciplined life.

00:36:52

The fourth one is willpower is always on a will call.

00:36:56

The fifth one is a balanced life,

00:36:58

and then the last one is that big is bad.

00:37:01

So maybe let's start here with everything mattering equally.

00:37:06

I think the key takeaway from this,

00:37:09

if you were to condense everything in this chapter,

00:37:13

would be a concept called Pareto's Principle, the 80/20 rule.

00:37:18

And he kinda shares the story behind this,

00:37:20

which was kinda cool.

00:37:22

I mean, you've probably heard this other places,

00:37:25

but one of the things he does a good job of, in my opinion,

00:37:29

is giving credit where credit is due,

00:37:30

and condensing the stories down

00:37:32

while still making sure that you understand

00:37:34

where they came from.

00:37:36

So this one originated from an Italian economist,

00:37:38

I believe it's Vilfredo Pareto.

00:37:41

In the 19th century, he stated that 80% of the land

00:37:44

was owned by 20% of the people.

00:37:46

And this is a concept that people have applied

00:37:49

to productivity, the basic idea being that 80%

00:37:53

of the results are gonna come from 20% of the effort.

00:37:57

So what you need to do is figure out

00:38:00

what are the things that are gonna produce

00:38:02

the 80% of the results from the 20% of the effort.

00:38:06

Something that's really powerful in this section though,

00:38:09

is what he calls extreme Pareto,

00:38:11

where if you apply that principle to itself,

00:38:15

you can really figure out what is the single thing,

00:38:19

not the 20%, but what is the single thing you can do

00:38:22

that's gonna have the most impact.

00:38:24

So if you take the 20% of the 20% of the 20%,

00:38:29

I figured, I did the math on this,

00:38:30

the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20 is 51.2%

00:38:35

of the value from 0.8% of the effort.

00:38:38

So you get the principle here,

00:38:40

like you can keep following this, he's saying,

00:38:44

and I don't know that this is completely true,

00:38:45

but I kind of feel like it is.

00:38:48

It feels like there is truth to this,

00:38:50

where if you just do the one thing

00:38:52

that is the most important,

00:38:54

kind of the rest is gonna work out.

00:38:57

And that's kind of been my own experience,

00:38:58

but it's kind of hard to quantify that too.

00:39:00

It's kind of hard to say,

00:39:01

this is the one thing looking back

00:39:03

that produced 51.2% of the value.

00:39:08

Right, but I think the principle definitely applies.

00:39:11

Like there's one thing that you can do

00:39:13

at any given moment that is the most important.

00:39:16

And if you can figure out what that is,

00:39:18

you're in real good shape.

00:39:19

I think that concept of doing the 80/20 of the 80/20

00:39:23

of the 80/20, I feel like I've heard someone say that before,

00:39:28

but it didn't trigger with me like it did this time.

00:39:32

And whenever I was reading through it

00:39:36

and thinking about like my task lists

00:39:38

and what I have on my docket,

00:39:41

it struck me that this is really something

00:39:45

that could have a lot of strength behind it.

00:39:48

Like if I work through and get down

00:39:50

to the single most important tasks,

00:39:52

like people talk about your three MITs in a day,

00:39:55

your most important tasks in a day.

00:39:56

Like that's a pretty common thing that you'll see

00:39:58

in the productivity space.

00:39:59

Put together your list of MITs.

00:40:01

Great, but really you're after the one.

00:40:05

Yeah.

00:40:06

And I think if you were able to drive it down that far,

00:40:11

like all of the prioritization

00:40:13

and the decision making process of which one should I do next?

00:40:17

And what should my contexts be?

00:40:19

Well, all of that disappears whenever you're down

00:40:22

on the single task because it's not a matter

00:40:24

of doing the task when you're in a context.

00:40:27

It's the matter of putting yourself in a context

00:40:29

to do the task and doing it the other way around.

00:40:32

Like that, all of that hit me.

00:40:35

Just by working through this 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20.

00:40:38

So I really like that part.

00:40:40

Yeah, I think, I don't know this for sure,

00:40:44

but trying to think back to previous me,

00:40:49

I think maybe the impact that this book had on me

00:40:53

had to do with this concept of you don't need to worry

00:40:57

about the three MITs or the five MITs

00:41:00

or whatever productivity system you happen to use.

00:41:03

They kind of are all built that same way

00:41:06

where it's like, these are gonna make sure,

00:41:08

these are gonna put you in the best possible position

00:41:10

to win your day, okay?

00:41:12

But the one thing is kind of like,

00:41:14

you don't have to worry about the whole day.

00:41:16

All you've got to worry about is what do you do next?

00:41:19

And that feels a lot more approachable, I think.

00:41:23

Right.

00:41:24

Where you don't have to have the whole thing figured out,

00:41:27

you just need to figure out what's the two inch domino

00:41:30

I need to knock over right now.

00:41:32

And then once you start doing the one thing

00:41:36

and you knock over a couple of dominoes

00:41:38

and you get some momentum,

00:41:40

I kind of think that at that point,

00:41:42

you've got a little bit more clarity

00:41:44

on the direction that you're heading.

00:41:46

And that's what creates the momentum

00:41:48

to knock over the bigger dominoes.

00:41:51

But for somebody who's just completely overwhelmed

00:41:53

and stressed out and they're trying to figure out

00:41:56

what's best next, like this is the approach

00:41:59

that you should take.

00:42:00

Yeah, 'cause the main point of this chapter,

00:42:03

chapter four, everything matters equally

00:42:06

is that they don't, you know, that is the lie.

00:42:09

And if the one most important thing drives,

00:42:13

would you say 53 point something something percent?

00:42:16

51.2, yeah.

00:42:18

Yeah.

00:42:18

So if it drives that amount of the value,

00:42:20

then it's pretty obvious it's not all the same.

00:42:24

Like me helping a coworker with

00:42:28

how to sort an Excel file versus driving together

00:42:33

the real time live database reporting.

00:42:35

(laughing)

00:42:37

Completely made up examples there.

00:42:38

But that's the concept.

00:42:41

Those two things are not the same.

00:42:43

And I think everybody knows that intuitively.

00:42:46

Yep.

00:42:47

But not everyone's willing to say it out loud.

00:42:49

Right.

00:42:50

You also can't do those two things at the same time.

00:42:53

Oh, nice segue into multitasking.

00:42:55

(laughing)

00:42:56

So we've talked a lot about multitasking on this podcast

00:43:01

because it comes up in a lot of the books that we've read.

00:43:05

The most recent revelation, I guess, I've gotten on this

00:43:08

was when we did Hyper Focus, or no, yeah,

00:43:12

Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey.

00:43:14

And he kind of explained it in a way

00:43:17

that at the time seemed really profound to me.

00:43:20

And I think going back and rereading the one thing

00:43:23

that Gary Keller kind of says it in the same way,

00:43:26

I think that Chris Bailey has a better visual

00:43:28

to help you understand this.

00:43:30

But he basically says in the one thing,

00:43:33

since that's the book we're covering today,

00:43:35

that you can do two things at once,

00:43:37

but you can't focus on two things at once.

00:43:39

Which sounds super simple and obvious.

00:43:41

But we're stupid and we try to do a bunch of stuff

00:43:44

at the same time anyways.

00:43:46

When we multitask and we're trying to focus on two things

00:43:50

at the same time, we end up going back and forth really fast.

00:43:53

We contact Switch and what's interesting in this book

00:43:57

is how multitasking even came about.

00:44:00

He tells the story that it came from the 1960s

00:44:04

and it was used to describe

00:44:06

alternately sharing a resource, like a CPU in a computer.

00:44:10

And in time, it's come to mean multiple tasks being done

00:44:14

simultaneously by one resource for a person.

00:44:19

And when you think about it that way,

00:44:21

especially in the 1960s where computers

00:44:23

were not the 2018 Mac mini that I've got running on my desktop here right now,

00:44:29

with the six cores all firing at the same time,

00:44:31

like you've got, I don't know, 10 megahertz or whatever,

00:44:35

megahertz is probably too much for back then.

00:44:38

But like even in that time,

00:44:41

like you have all of this computing power,

00:44:44

this is an insanely powerful machine,

00:44:47

but it can only do one thing at a time.

00:44:49

And so the fact that it's switching back and forth so fast,

00:44:53

it seems like things are being done at the same time.

00:44:55

That's where multitasking comes from.

00:44:59

And there's just a whole bunch of stuff he shares in here,

00:45:02

a whole bunch of research.

00:45:03

The one that really I liked was a 2009 study by Richard Nasse

00:45:08

with 262 people and the big takeaway was that,

00:45:11

quote, "Multitaskers were just lousy at everything," unquote.

00:45:16

I love that.

00:45:18

Yeah, another one was multitaskers experience more,

00:45:22

his words, "Life reducing happiness squelching stress."

00:45:26

So those two statements in particular really just articulate

00:45:31

to me the profound negative impact

00:45:34

that multitasking can have.

00:45:36

And when you read Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey,

00:45:39

you're like, "Oh, I think that there's a way around this.

00:45:41

"I could make this work."

00:45:42

But when I went back and I read the one thing,

00:45:44

it's like, "I'm not even gonna try it.

00:45:46

"I don't wanna take a chance

00:45:47

"and sign up for life-reducing happiness

00:45:49

"squelching stress."

00:45:51

You know, it's like, "Take me away from this stuff."

00:45:53

I don't remember what bucket was now,

00:45:56

but there's the example of you write the numbers,

00:46:01

I think it's one through 10.

00:46:03

Yeah, I remember we did that exercise.

00:46:05

I forget what episode that was.

00:46:07

Yeah, you write the numbers one through 10

00:46:09

and then you write multitask.

00:46:11

Is it multitask or multitasking?

00:46:13

Maybe it's 12 and you do multitasking.

00:46:16

However many letters are multitasking,

00:46:18

I'm not gonna count them right now.

00:46:19

So the idea is that you write the M and then one,

00:46:24

the U and then two, L and then three,

00:46:26

and you go back and forth and you time yourself

00:46:28

when you do this until you're done.

00:46:30

And then you turn around and you do it again,

00:46:33

you time yourself and you write the word multitasking

00:46:36

and then you write the numbers one through 12,

00:46:40

I think it's 12, and then you check your time

00:46:42

and see what the difference is between there.

00:46:44

That's the difference that multitasking causes

00:46:48

in just from a sure time stance

00:46:52

and even in a task that small,

00:46:54

it's quite a bit different.

00:46:56

So if you want an example, go do that.

00:46:58

Anyway, I have people do that on occasion.

00:47:01

I've yet to bring this up in the office I'm in now.

00:47:03

I don't know that I will for a while.

00:47:06

It sounds like a conversation that may be less fun

00:47:08

than the one that you're having with your in-laws.

00:47:11

Yeah, I'll talk to my in-laws about end of life care

00:47:15

before I'll talk about multitasking in the office.

00:47:19

(laughs)

00:47:20

Yeah.

00:47:21

Yes.

00:47:22

People get it.

00:47:24

You can't do two things at once.

00:47:25

You can't focus on two things at once.

00:47:27

Yes, you can accomplish chewing gum

00:47:28

and listening to a podcast at the same time,

00:47:31

but that's not a multi-focusing scenario.

00:47:33

It's just habits taking over.

00:47:35

So I think people get it.

00:47:38

Right, another thing that stood out to me

00:47:40

in this section specifically because we just got done

00:47:43

reading "Being Mortal" by Tool Gawande

00:47:46

is he says, I forget what page it was,

00:47:49

but he says we expect pilots and surgeons not to multitask,

00:47:53

which Tool Gawande is a surgeon

00:47:54

in the checklist manifesto.

00:47:56

He specifically spoke to pilots and checklists

00:47:58

and things like that too.

00:47:59

Right.

00:48:00

Those two specific people groups,

00:48:04

we expect them not to multitask.

00:48:06

So why is it okay if we do it?

00:48:08

Why should we ever tolerate multitasking

00:48:10

when doing our own most important work?

00:48:14

So maybe somebody's life isn't held in the balance

00:48:18

whether you try to do two things at once

00:48:20

during your work day, okay?

00:48:23

But the point he's making is that it's still not okay.

00:48:28

Just because no one's gonna die

00:48:30

doesn't mean that you should be doing it this way.

00:48:34

And it kind of makes it seem more,

00:48:37

I don't wanna say more serious

00:48:38

because it really, in my opinion, it is a serious thing.

00:48:41

One of the things that got me going down

00:48:43

is this faith-based productivity thing

00:48:44

is this whole idea of stewardship.

00:48:46

And I believe that we are gonna be held responsible

00:48:51

for what we do or don't do in this life.

00:48:54

It's not just you're gonna feel more fulfilled

00:48:57

if you're quote-unquote more productive.

00:49:00

Dang it, I said quote-unquote.

00:49:01

Did you do it on purpose?

00:49:02

I do it on purpose.

00:49:03

I didn't, I didn't.

00:49:04

But the fact of the matter is like regardless

00:49:10

of your religious belief system,

00:49:12

you have so much time on this earth.

00:49:15

And Gary Keller is basically saying

00:49:17

that it is a crime to limit your effectiveness

00:49:22

and to make things take longer, take more effort,

00:49:26

like waste is a crime basically.

00:49:28

And the way to eliminate that is simple.

00:49:33

Just don't try to do two things at the same time.

00:49:36

- Right.

00:49:37

- I think like when you explain it this way

00:49:40

of like pilots and surgeons,

00:49:41

yeah, they shouldn't be able to multitask.

00:49:42

But then it's also like, well, they're more high functioning.

00:49:45

Why should you feel that way?

00:49:46

Like why should they be held to a higher standard

00:49:50

than you would hold yourself?

00:49:52

I really believe like a lot of productivity

00:49:54

and a lot of being effective, a lot of goal accomplishment

00:49:59

is just simply holding yourself accountable

00:50:02

to what you say you're going to do.

00:50:03

Personal responsibility if you wanna call it that.

00:50:06

Where if you make a promise to yourself

00:50:08

that you're gonna do this thing,

00:50:09

regardless of somebody's holding your feet to the fire or not,

00:50:12

sometimes that's helpful.

00:50:13

You know, we'll talk about that in a little bit I believe.

00:50:15

But that's not always necessary

00:50:19

if you can just simply make a promise to yourself

00:50:23

and then fulfill it like you can do a lot.

00:50:27

And it's kind of limit, it's a limiting belief I think

00:50:31

to say, well, oh yeah, well, pilots and surgeons,

00:50:33

obviously like they shouldn't do this.

00:50:36

But willingly accepting that standard for yourself

00:50:40

is how you get to that level.

00:50:41

Yeah, I don't really understand why,

00:50:44

especially like I think about people in meetings.

00:50:47

They're definitely distracted.

00:50:49

And there's a lot of meetings where very big decisions

00:50:51

are being made that impact entire industries

00:50:54

or entire countries or the entire world.

00:50:58

And they're on their phone while they're listening

00:51:00

to the presentation that they're gonna use

00:51:02

to make those decisions.

00:51:03

How is that different?

00:51:05

Like that's--

00:51:06

Yeah.

00:51:07

It's the same.

00:51:08

Like you have a lot of people's lives at stake

00:51:11

in a lot of cases.

00:51:12

No, that's an extreme scenario.

00:51:14

Maybe those meetings don't happen as often as I'm suggesting.

00:51:18

But I would say that they happen more often

00:51:20

than we would like to give credit.

00:51:22

So yes, just don't.

00:51:26

Yeah.

00:51:27

Just don't.

00:51:28

Well, let's make it personal.

00:51:30

Okay.

00:51:31

So maybe you're not having a meeting

00:51:34

and you're making these really important decisions

00:51:37

that are gonna affect the entire company, whatever.

00:51:41

But maybe it's your son or your daughter

00:51:44

who's going through something at school.

00:51:47

And they're trying to talk to you about what's going on,

00:51:51

but you've got your face in your phone

00:51:53

and you're looking at Twitter

00:51:54

and you don't even recognize the moment, okay?

00:51:57

That could kill that relationship.

00:52:00

That one instance could be the tipping point for them

00:52:04

or they just, oh, mom or dad just doesn't really listen.

00:52:06

They don't listen.

00:52:08

You don't know when the defining moment is going to happen.

00:52:12

So pay attention for those things

00:52:15

and don't try to do more than one thing at once

00:52:18

because in that particular moment,

00:52:21

if you can recognize that this is critically important

00:52:25

and I need to give my full attention to this thing,

00:52:28

you have a much better chance of navigating that successfully.

00:52:33

And I firmly believe with parenting specifically,

00:52:37

it's a series of moments like that

00:52:40

that either build or erode the relationship

00:52:44

that you have with your kids.

00:52:45

Again, I'm probably not the person who's qualified

00:52:48

to speak to this because my oldest is 11 years old.

00:52:51

He's not a teenager yet, okay?

00:52:54

But I do know that we've implemented some things

00:52:57

that have allowed us to foster the relationship

00:53:02

that we have with our kids to the point

00:53:05

where I am happy with where we're at

00:53:08

because I've always wanted to have

00:53:11

that sort of relationship with my kids

00:53:13

when they got to be teenagers

00:53:14

where they felt they could be comfortable talking to me

00:53:16

about anything.

00:53:17

You can't wait till they're teenagers and then say,

00:53:19

son, daughter, you can talk to me about anything.

00:53:22

You have to prove it along the way.

00:53:23

So I mean, I've talked about this before

00:53:26

but one of the things we do is we have like the weekly thing

00:53:30

where I'll go do something with one of my kids.

00:53:32

So not doing a one-on-one with each of them every week

00:53:36

but a different one every week.

00:53:38

So it ends up being more like once a month

00:53:40

but you do that consistently enough

00:53:44

and maybe the first couple times

00:53:45

that you do something like that, it's awkward.

00:53:47

I've got a couple of kids who are a little bit shy

00:53:50

and the first time we did it,

00:53:53

it was a little bit awkward

00:53:55

but it's to the point now where they look forward to it

00:53:58

and it creates the intentionality in the space

00:54:02

for the relationship to grow

00:54:04

and a lot of positive stuff has come out of that

00:54:07

but it's been the consistency in doing it

00:54:10

over and over and over again

00:54:10

that has gotten it to the point where it is today.

00:54:13

I wanna keep that going because I want,

00:54:15

by the time they're 18 to say,

00:54:17

yes, we've successfully navigated this season of our life

00:54:22

and I can't say that I've successfully done that yet

00:54:24

but you can do the one thing,

00:54:27

going back to the main idea of this book,

00:54:30

you can do this one thing on Friday morning,

00:54:32

like this is the most important thing

00:54:34

and everything else is gonna go around this

00:54:36

and that can lead you to the results that you're looking for

00:54:40

and I think like those moments happen more often

00:54:43

than we realize.

00:54:44

So for multitasking, we're not even gonna see 'em

00:54:47

the majority of the time.

00:54:48

- Yeah, I think phones get in the way with a lot of this.

00:54:51

When you start thinking about kids,

00:54:54

so anyway, I can belabor that

00:54:56

but I don't think we,

00:54:58

I think you've covered it well, Mike, so good job.

00:55:00

- We've talked about that before.

00:55:02

(laughs)

00:55:03

- Yes.

00:55:03

- Another thing we've talked about,

00:55:04

oh wait, no, that's number seven is willpower

00:55:07

but number six is a discipline life or chapter six.

00:55:11

- Yeah.

00:55:12

- Key idea here that I wanted to talk about

00:55:14

was that life isn't a marathon, it's a series of sprints

00:55:19

and he says on page 55 that success is actually a short race,

00:55:23

it's a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough

00:55:25

for habit to kick in and take over.

00:55:28

So the goal of discipline he says is to build these habits

00:55:31

and he even says that no one is disciplined,

00:55:33

people just train successful habits into their lives

00:55:36

to make them look that way.

00:55:37

This is kind of radical, I think,

00:55:42

based on a lot of the books that we've read

00:55:45

which would talk about how you can build willpower

00:55:47

like a muscle and you're gonna use that

00:55:49

to live a discipline life,

00:55:51

willpower is the next chapter.

00:55:52

So we'll get into that in a little bit here.

00:55:55

But I do think that the main idea here

00:55:57

of creating positive habits is a very powerful one.

00:56:02

I know you've sent me a message about atomic habits

00:56:07

and we're gonna have to cover that one at some point here.

00:56:10

I love that book, I gifted actually,

00:56:11

I think four copies of that for Christmas to people.

00:56:14

- Nice, nice, I have it.

00:56:16

- Yeah, it's so good but the main idea there again

00:56:21

is like the way to implement these big changes

00:56:24

is not to try to accomplish something big

00:56:28

but to create the habits that are gonna take you there.

00:56:31

And I think that for the right person at the right time

00:56:35

this whole idea of I may not be disciplined

00:56:38

and that's okay, it can be really powerful

00:56:40

because then it kind of gives you freedom to,

00:56:45

maybe freedom is not the right word.

00:56:48

It feels, I don't wanna say more approachable again

00:56:50

but it's kind of like you can look at this and say,

00:56:53

well I haven't shown much discipline up until this point

00:56:56

so I guess I'm disqualified.

00:56:58

And he's saying no, you're not disqualified.

00:57:00

In fact, if you look deeper, all of this successful heroes

00:57:03

that you have suck at this too.

00:57:06

But they've just created these habits

00:57:08

and you can do the same thing.

00:57:09

- Yeah, I tell people I suck at discipline

00:57:12

and following through on commitments I make to myself.

00:57:15

Yeah, I'm terrible at it.

00:57:17

So I'm not one that can speak to what a discipline life

00:57:21

really looks like.

00:57:22

I feel like I'm breaking my own rules all the time

00:57:25

but there's back on page 55

00:57:29

which I have a side note here.

00:57:30

He does underline, like the book itself

00:57:32

has underlining printed into it.

00:57:35

- Yeah, that's weird.

00:57:36

- I didn't like that.

00:57:38

- The first time I ran across like, wait,

00:57:39

I wanted to underline that.

00:57:41

You can't underline that for me.

00:57:42

And then my underlining are lost to some degree

00:57:46

in the midst of his.

00:57:48

I didn't like that.

00:57:49

- Well, I think the intended effect was

00:57:51

that people are gonna pick up this book

00:57:54

and they're gonna skim through it

00:57:55

and they're not gonna listen to what I'm gonna say.

00:57:57

So I'm gonna underline stuff so it jumps off the page

00:57:59

and really make that stand out.

00:58:01

So I think it does do that well.

00:58:04

But yeah, for people like us who want to go in

00:58:07

and mark them up ourselves,

00:58:08

it was a little bit annoying

00:58:10

because I didn't wanna underline on that section.

00:58:12

I wanted it on the section that came right after that.

00:58:14

And now it looks like they're both underline.

00:58:16

- Right.

00:58:17

It kind of, it bothered me so much.

00:58:19

I was paying attention to the underlining itself

00:58:21

'cause they even make it look like it's a pen

00:58:23

or a pencil or something that's doing the underlining.

00:58:26

And it's the same image that they put on it.

00:58:28

They have the same like, it starts up

00:58:30

and it has a slight hill and then it has a slight dip.

00:58:33

The first time the underline starts it always has that.

00:58:35

It's just longer or shorter.

00:58:37

Like I even noticed it to that degree.

00:58:39

I was so focused on what they underlined

00:58:41

instead of the words that they're underlining.

00:58:43

Like, don't do this.

00:58:46

- No, I'm not gonna do that.

00:58:47

- If you're writing, don't do this.

00:58:49

Please.

00:58:50

So anyway, page 55, what I was getting at,

00:58:54

you don't need to be a disciplined person to be successful.

00:58:56

In fact, you can become successful with less discipline

00:58:59

than you think.

00:59:00

For one simple reason, success is about doing the right thing,

00:59:04

not about doing everything right.

00:59:07

And that is something that I definitely appreciated him saying

00:59:13

because there's so many times you see folks who talk about,

00:59:17

you need to work 70, 80 hours a week

00:59:19

in order to be successful.

00:59:21

We'll leave that one unnamed.

00:59:23

But there's people that talk about things like that.

00:59:25

And then you have to do this 80 hours worth of work

00:59:28

and you have to do it all extremely well

00:59:29

in order to be successful.

00:59:30

That's not actually true.

00:59:32

- It's garbage.

00:59:33

- It's, you know, success is about doing things small.

00:59:37

You know, and I think he says that a few times in here

00:59:39

is like, huge success comes from being tiny.

00:59:41

- Yeah.

00:59:42

- That's essentially what you're after.

00:59:45

And seeing that he had a discipline life

00:59:48

under the lies section kind of made me feel better

00:59:52

about myself.

00:59:53

(laughing)

00:59:54

So thanks for that, Gary.

00:59:56

- Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

00:59:59

I do think there is some truth to leading a discipline life.

01:00:03

- Yes.

01:00:04

- But I understand it's his point.

01:00:05

So I'm willing to leave it for now.

01:00:08

- Yeah.

01:00:09

And no matter how you come at this,

01:00:11

the focusing question that he'll like how you decide

01:00:15

the one thing, he even has a whole routine and stuff

01:00:18

that he'll give us and we'll talk through it later.

01:00:20

But that all requires a fair amount of discipline in itself.

01:00:24

- Yeah, exactly.

01:00:26

- He's, he himself is not saying that you can be

01:00:28

completely undisciplined and still be highly successful.

01:00:32

He's not even saying that.

01:00:33

So it can come across that way with what we just said,

01:00:36

but it's not actually true.

01:00:38

- Printed clickbait.

01:00:40

Also in this, in this chapter,

01:00:42

he mentions a 2009 University College of London study

01:00:45

regarding the habits.

01:00:47

And this is a powerful idea, I think,

01:00:48

because there's a belief that it takes 21 days

01:00:52

to make a habit.

01:00:53

That's not true.

01:00:54

This study found that the average is 66 days,

01:00:57

but the full range was anywhere from 18 to 254 days.

01:01:02

So the key thing here for me is the 254

01:01:05

because when you start to create a habit,

01:01:08

if it takes longer than you think it's going to take,

01:01:11

you start to think like,

01:01:12

well, maybe this just isn't going to work for me.

01:01:14

And really in this section, he's saying that,

01:01:16

no, it is going to work.

01:01:18

It just maybe is going to take a little bit longer

01:01:20

to build that habit than you think.

01:01:22

- I don't know how long it is for me.

01:01:23

I think it depends on what I'm doing.

01:01:25

- Yeah, it depends on the habit.

01:01:26

And whether there's one there,

01:01:27

that's how firmly it's ingrained,

01:01:29

what you're trying to replace.

01:01:30

Like there's a lot of variables there.

01:01:32

But the key thing that I want to point out

01:01:35

is that if you struggle with something,

01:01:37

it doesn't mean you're a failure.

01:01:39

Keep going because once you do get to the point

01:01:41

where this is a habit,

01:01:42

then it is going to be not an autopilot, not automatic,

01:01:47

but it is going to be significantly easier.

01:01:49

All right, the next one, willpower?

01:01:51

- Yeah, we've talked about this one quite a bit.

01:01:53

We even did a whole book on willpower way back

01:01:56

to the beginning of bookworm.

01:01:58

I don't think I want to listen to that one.

01:02:00

(laughs)

01:02:02

That's far back.

01:02:03

I'm not sure how well we did with this.

01:02:04

(laughs)

01:02:08

- The lie here is that willpower is always on will call.

01:02:09

There's a lot of folks who tend to say,

01:02:12

I can will myself to do something.

01:02:14

It's like, that's great,

01:02:15

but when are you doing that?

01:02:17

First thing in the morning, nine o'clock at night,

01:02:20

that chocolate cake looks a lot better at nine o'clock

01:02:23

at night than it does at eight a.m.

01:02:24

So that is not true.

01:02:29

It definitely ebbs and flows, comes and goes

01:02:32

throughout the day.

01:02:33

And I think everybody would agree that morning,

01:02:37

when you first started your day,

01:02:38

is always going to be the time

01:02:39

when you've got the most willpower.

01:02:41

And he definitely calls that out

01:02:42

and then takes advantage of that later on

01:02:44

when he's putting together how you should go

01:02:46

about structuring some of this.

01:02:48

But that is a piece that I think is important.

01:02:51

I think I've operated that way for a long time, Mike.

01:02:53

Like I've always kind of used my mornings

01:02:55

as a special time to try to get my stuff done.

01:02:59

'Cause I know that's when I'm gonna be able

01:03:00

to focus on it more.

01:03:01

And I let people put meetings and stuff on the calendar

01:03:03

in the afternoon.

01:03:04

(laughs)

01:03:05

I'll come talk to you about all this important stuff

01:03:08

when I'm tired.

01:03:09

(laughs)

01:03:10

- Right.

01:03:11

So, yes.

01:03:12

- There's a whole bunch of productivity takeaways

01:03:15

from this chapter, specifically the one story

01:03:18

he shares on the Stanford School of Business Study.

01:03:22

And I'm gonna try and condense this down

01:03:24

and really just make the main points

01:03:26

that he's making here, but there's a ton in here.

01:03:29

So the study, they analyzed a little more than 1100

01:03:33

parole board hearings and they found that the judges

01:03:36

heard the arguments and then they had six minutes

01:03:38

to render a decision.

01:03:40

They only had two breaks during the day,

01:03:42

a morning snack and then a later lunch.

01:03:44

And what they found is that the parolees chances

01:03:46

of being released peaked at about 65% right after the breaks

01:03:50

and then dropped to almost 0% later in the day.

01:03:54

What that shows is that their willpower got depleted.

01:03:59

And one of the points he makes here is that willpower

01:04:02

is limited, but it is a renewable resource.

01:04:04

It can be replenished with downtime.

01:04:08

But also it shows that their default answer

01:04:10

because they're talking about whether to release

01:04:12

this person back into society was no.

01:04:16

Now, this prompted a question for me as I read this

01:04:21

just the way my brain works of what are your default answers?

01:04:28

And I think you could apply this to a lot of different scenarios.

01:04:32

It's going to be different for everybody,

01:04:35

but there's two kinds of willpower he talks about in here.

01:04:38

We covered this in the book, The Willpower Instinct,

01:04:40

but there's willpower, so I want to do something

01:04:42

and it won't power, I want to not do something.

01:04:45

And I think specifically when it comes to these default answers,

01:04:50

it maybe is a worthwhile exercise to figure out

01:04:54

what are the things that you have trouble applying

01:04:56

and it won't power to like Netflix

01:05:00

or eating unhealthy snacks, like a bag of chips

01:05:04

that happens to be in your pantry or whatever.

01:05:07

I didn't actually make a big list to share

01:05:11

on the episode here, but it did get me thinking,

01:05:15

like what are the things that I tend to default to

01:05:19

and then what are the habits that I want to create

01:05:23

to change those default answers?

01:05:27

He says on page 69 that we lose our willpower,

01:05:30

not because we think about it, but because we don't.

01:05:33

So the process for me, at least the way I see it in my head

01:05:38

is to think through these things

01:05:40

that are triggering my default answers

01:05:43

and then create systems or habits around those

01:05:46

to eliminate the negative behaviors

01:05:48

or create the positive behaviors that I want to create

01:05:51

so that I don't have to invest my willpower

01:05:56

in order to do the thing that I want to do.

01:05:58

Does that make sense?

01:06:00

- Yes.

01:06:01

- Okay. - At least to me.

01:06:02

- So I guess maybe this is an action item.

01:06:05

I didn't write it down as an action item per se,

01:06:10

probably because I'm in the middle of revamping

01:06:14

my morning evening routines

01:06:16

and what's my work day gonna look like anyways.

01:06:20

I guess maybe I just didn't think I needed

01:06:21

to be held accountable in this.

01:06:23

- Is that your New Year's resolution?

01:06:24

- It could be, I guess.

01:06:26

We can follow up on this if you want,

01:06:28

but I do want to just throw it out there

01:06:31

to other people too to think about this in their own lives

01:06:34

because I think that identifying these things

01:06:38

is gonna be important.

01:06:40

A lot of times it's simply just recognizing

01:06:44

what is really happening that allows you

01:06:46

to make the change that you want to make.

01:06:48

So if you identify that you get home at the end of the day,

01:06:52

you're really tired and Netflix is so accessible

01:06:56

but you know that you lose three hours every night

01:06:58

because you've been watching whatever,

01:07:00

then maybe like Danariah, you need to take the batteries

01:07:02

out of your remote and just introduce

01:07:04

a little bit of friction there,

01:07:05

which is gonna win you back three hours a day.

01:07:08

Like that's kind of a ridiculous example,

01:07:11

but that's the kind of impact I think

01:07:14

that the thinking about your willpower can have.

01:07:17

And again, we're still just in the lies section here.

01:07:21

We're gonna get into the truth, focusing question,

01:07:26

but really these are the things in this section

01:07:29

if I were to paraphrase this,

01:07:30

these are the things that will contribute to you

01:07:34

not being able to do the one thing.

01:07:37

So with willpower specifically, maybe the belief is,

01:07:40

I'm gonna do my one thing when I get home from work

01:07:43

and then you get home from work

01:07:44

and you find yourself in a situation

01:07:47

that you're not physically equipped to deal with

01:07:51

because your willpower has been depleted

01:07:53

and you're sabotaging yourself

01:07:55

just because of the way that you've structured

01:07:56

your day sort of thing.

01:07:57

- Yeah, I think a good example of this is diet.

01:08:01

And I can speak to this personally now.

01:08:05

Due to health stuff, I'm working through

01:08:09

my first ever Joe's gonna go on a diet sort of thing

01:08:12

and not to lose weight by any means.

01:08:14

If you've met me in person, you know I'm thin as a rail.

01:08:17

The last thing I need to do is lose 20 pounds.

01:08:19

I don't know that I would be around much longer

01:08:21

if I did that, but that's just the way I am.

01:08:24

So because of health, I'm working on implementing a diet

01:08:29

that does some things like cutting out sugar and such.

01:08:32

My default has always been,

01:08:35

I can eat pretty much whatever I want and I'm fine.

01:08:38

But that's not the case anymore,

01:08:41

which means that my best case scenario is to set myself up

01:08:46

such that the environment around me

01:08:48

makes it very easy to stick to that diet.

01:08:51

So I can't just rely on the willpower side of things

01:08:54

because we've read enough about this.

01:08:56

We've studied it enough to know

01:08:58

that I will fail given the opportunity.

01:09:01

It will not go well if I allow myself

01:09:05

to just trust my instincts.

01:09:07

I will instantly fall in that process.

01:09:10

So I have been working through new defaults

01:09:15

on what do I grab for snacks when I'm done at work?

01:09:18

What do I grab for a mid-morning 11 Zs?

01:09:23

What do I use for second breakfast?

01:09:24

These are very important questions

01:09:26

that all hobbits need to answer.

01:09:28

So I need to recreate what my default answers are

01:09:33

for those in order to prevent myself from relying

01:09:37

on willpower later on.

01:09:39

Because as the lie says,

01:09:41

willpower is always on will call, that's not true.

01:09:44

And I know better.

01:09:45

So I'm not gonna rely on it.

01:09:47

- Right.

01:09:47

All right, so next one, a balanced life.

01:09:51

- Doesn't exist.

01:09:52

- Exactly.

01:09:54

So this, I was really excited when I saw the title for this

01:09:59

because I think it was a 12 week year

01:10:01

we were first introduced to the concept

01:10:04

of intentional imbalance.

01:10:06

That's kind of what he's advocating for here also.

01:10:10

Although the visuals that he has in this section

01:10:13

do kind of show work on one side and life on the other.

01:10:17

And personally, I don't think it's that simple.

01:10:19

I don't think those are the only two distinctions.

01:10:21

- No.

01:10:22

- And in fact, later on in the book he talks about

01:10:24

some different areas that you wanna apply the one thing to.

01:10:27

So I would argue that there is just life

01:10:29

and your work is a part of that,

01:10:31

but it's up to you to balance this whole thing.

01:10:34

But the visuals indicate like there's work

01:10:38

and then there's life.

01:10:39

And he's basically saying that when you're doing one,

01:10:42

you're not doing the other.

01:10:44

And so it's kind of this balancing act

01:10:47

or counter balancing act where you're not just trying

01:10:50

to do both of these at the same time.

01:10:52

Sometimes you are gonna be working

01:10:54

and life is gonna suffer a little bit,

01:10:55

but then you have to reciprocate by focusing on life

01:11:00

and being okay with work suffering a little bit.

01:11:03

Again, like I don't agree with just those two distinctions,

01:11:07

but I do think that the section,

01:11:10

there's some interesting takeaways.

01:11:11

So number one, he talks about the term work life balance,

01:11:15

not being coined until the 80s,

01:11:18

when more than half of all married women

01:11:21

joined the workforce.

01:11:23

And Ralph E. Gomoroy, I believe is the author,

01:11:26

he credits this to, says,

01:11:28

"We went from a family unit with one breadwinner

01:11:30

and one homemaker to one with two breadwinners

01:11:34

and no homemaker."

01:11:35

So women specifically under this model

01:11:38

are feeling the pressure of going into the workforce

01:11:41

but still being expected unfairly,

01:11:43

I would argue by society and their husbands

01:11:46

to manage all of the life stuff at home too.

01:11:49

So if that sounds like an impossible situation,

01:11:52

I would argue that it is, but also that's the one

01:11:54

we willingly embrace whenever we talk

01:11:56

about work life balance.

01:11:57

It's just not set up for success.

01:12:00

- I thought it was interesting,

01:12:01

'cause he did a count of the number of times

01:12:05

the phrase work life balance was mentioned

01:12:07

in newspapers and magazine articles.

01:12:09

- Yeah. - And in the decade from 1986 to 1996,

01:12:14

so in 10 years, that phrase was used 32 times

01:12:19

in newspapers and magazine articles.

01:12:22

And in the year 1997 alone, it was 34 times.

01:12:26

Now, fast forward to 2011,

01:12:31

'cause he doesn't have any data in here beyond that,

01:12:33

but in 2011, in that one year,

01:12:36

it was 1,452 times.

01:12:38

- Yeah, ridiculous. - It had a peak in 2007,

01:12:41

it's 1,674.

01:12:43

So it's kind of nuts.

01:12:45

This is, I think of it as a term,

01:12:47

it's been around for a long time,

01:12:48

but in regards to history, it's very new.

01:12:51

- Yep, yep, definitely.

01:12:53

The other thing worth calling out here, in my opinion,

01:12:57

is this analogy he shared of juggling balls,

01:13:00

which even here, he's kind of destroying his own visuals

01:13:04

of work versus life because there's more than these two balls.

01:13:08

But he says that you have all these balls

01:13:10

that you're juggling, family, integrity, whatever.

01:13:14

And I didn't really write down the specific areas

01:13:17

because, again, I think like these areas,

01:13:19

you define these for yourself.

01:13:20

He talks about these a little bit later too.

01:13:22

But really just the analogy here is that you've got

01:13:24

all these balls that you're juggling,

01:13:25

work is the one that is rubber and will bounce back.

01:13:28

The rest of them are made of glass.

01:13:30

So those are the ones you have to be careful with.

01:13:32

You can't excuse all the other stuff

01:13:34

just because work is saying to do this,

01:13:37

which is easier to do when you are the one calling the shots

01:13:42

about how you work.

01:13:44

I was kind of interested to get your response to this

01:13:48

given the fact that you mentioned

01:13:50

at the beginning of this episode,

01:13:51

you work for a company now and we recorded this on New Year's Day

01:13:55

because this is the day you have off.

01:13:57

- Yes.

01:13:58

- So what was your response to that analogy?

01:14:03

Did you, again, I read it and I'm like,

01:14:06

yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

01:14:07

I'm gonna make sure that I chuck the work ball

01:14:11

if I'm gonna let something go.

01:14:13

But I don't know, did you have a different reaction

01:14:15

because of your situation and maybe you don't have

01:14:18

as much flexibility with that particular wall?

01:14:21

- I think it's, I'm in a weird position with this.

01:14:25

So I used to work corporate, then I worked

01:14:28

for a virtual company, then I worked for myself

01:14:30

for three years and now I'm back in corporate.

01:14:33

And so I've been in all of those scenarios

01:14:35

and I worked for a small company

01:14:37

before I worked corporate originally.

01:14:39

So I've been in all of those different scenarios

01:14:41

and I think right now I'm in a weird spot

01:14:44

where I understand, like, I'll put it this way,

01:14:48

corporate is a much slower pace than what I'm used to pulling.

01:14:53

So for me, it's pretty easy for me to say,

01:14:57

yeah, work can bounce back, but frankly,

01:15:01

it's not too hard to keep that ball in the air at all.

01:15:04

Like, especially considering what I've just come from.

01:15:07

So I get his analogy.

01:15:10

I think it's a little weird to think of it that way.

01:15:13

But to me, I see it as if I keep the work plate spinning

01:15:18

all the others I can focus on a little more.

01:15:22

'Cause to me, the work when I can almost,

01:15:25

like I can almost put it on autopilot in a lot of ways,

01:15:28

I'm pretty good at segmenting my focus

01:15:30

when I'm back and forth.

01:15:31

So I just, to me, the hard part is making sure

01:15:34

I've got the time part nailed down.

01:15:37

For me, the focus piece I'm pretty good about.

01:15:39

I'm gonna go work on my work stuff here.

01:15:41

I'm gonna be 100% engaged in that.

01:15:44

Okay, work is done, get home,

01:15:46

and now I'm gonna be 100% at home.

01:15:47

Like, I'm usually pretty good at that, especially right now.

01:15:50

So working corporate actually makes that easier

01:15:53

than working for myself.

01:15:55

So I don't know, I didn't really find anything with this

01:15:58

that struck me as, you know, yeah, that's completely dead on.

01:16:03

Or no, that's absolutely wrong.

01:16:04

I was like, well, there's a lot of areas.

01:16:06

It's not just work in life.

01:16:08

Like I have friendships, I have my faith,

01:16:12

I have, you know, I still have a side gig.

01:16:14

I've got all these different things.

01:16:16

Like it's a matter of keeping them all in check.

01:16:19

Sometimes one has to be more in focus than the others.

01:16:23

And they need to give and take,

01:16:26

but I tend to have my family as the core

01:16:30

and the others work around that

01:16:32

as opposed to work being the center of that

01:16:35

and everything works around it.

01:16:37

Okay.

01:16:38

I think of it very differently because of it.

01:16:40

So I don't know, I'm an oddball, I'm aware of that.

01:16:43

All right, we all.

01:16:45

(laughs)

01:16:47

Everybody's special in their own way.

01:16:49

All right.

01:16:51

Big is bad, man.

01:16:51

Yeah, big is bad.

01:16:52

This is the last one in the live section.

01:16:56

This was an interesting one for me,

01:16:58

again, because of my situation.

01:17:02

So I didn't, he's got lots of cool visuals

01:17:05

throughout this entire book.

01:17:06

And I wrote, I took a picture of the one for this section

01:17:10

and put it in the mind node file.

01:17:12

But this one really wasn't that powerful, the visual,

01:17:15

but the idea behind it basically is that

01:17:20

when you connect big with bad,

01:17:22

it triggers what he calls shrinking thinking.

01:17:25

And so we kind of lower our trajectory

01:17:27

to what we consider to be safe.

01:17:30

But the truth is that no one knows their ultimate ceiling.

01:17:32

So worrying about what your ceiling is

01:17:37

is kind of a waste of time.

01:17:39

And as it pertains to my situation,

01:17:42

I'm getting ready to officially launch

01:17:46

faith-based productivity.

01:17:47

I struggle with thinking big about that.

01:17:50

So that's one of my action items,

01:17:51

is to think big about faith-based productivity.

01:17:54

On page 92, he says that to live great,

01:17:57

you have to think big.

01:17:58

You must be open to the possibility that your life

01:18:00

and what you accomplish can become great.

01:18:03

Achievement and abundance show up

01:18:05

because they're the natural outcome

01:18:07

of doing the right things with no limits attached.

01:18:09

That's kind of getting back to the one thing

01:18:11

that the knocking down the right dominoes.

01:18:13

He's basically saying in this section

01:18:16

that if you just knock down the right dominoes,

01:18:19

you will end up doing something great.

01:18:22

There will be achievement and abundance

01:18:24

simply by doing the right thing over and over and over again.

01:18:28

And the thing that I'm asking myself,

01:18:31

and I don't know all the answers yet here,

01:18:33

but like I said, I do have trouble thinking big

01:18:36

about some of the stuff that I do.

01:18:39

I wanna think to myself and identify

01:18:42

all the places where I have been

01:18:45

subject to this shrinking thinking

01:18:46

and kind of figure out for myself,

01:18:49

how have I limited myself simply by the approach

01:18:53

that I've taken?

01:18:55

I've noticed even when I started doing

01:18:58

the faith-based productivity,

01:18:59

talking to different people,

01:19:00

I would hear things come out of my mouth

01:19:03

like, well, this is the thing I wanna do,

01:19:05

but I don't know how big this can be.

01:19:06

And I've had people cut me off and they're like,

01:19:08

no, no, you don't even understand.

01:19:10

Like this could be big.

01:19:13

And for whatever reason,

01:19:14

I have trouble accepting that.

01:19:16

So I wanna fix that,

01:19:18

and I wanna start thinking bigger.

01:19:19

And I kind of believe that if you can train yourself

01:19:23

to think big about the things that you do,

01:19:27

obviously you can't just throw out a big dream.

01:19:30

And if you're not gonna do anything

01:19:32

that's gonna lead you to that point,

01:19:34

then you aren't gonna get those results.

01:19:36

But I kind of think what Gary Keller is telling us

01:19:40

and the thing that is appropriate for me right now

01:19:44

is to focus on the little things that you know to do

01:19:48

and then do those consistently all the while thinking big,

01:19:51

because that's gonna provide the motivation

01:19:53

to keep going.

01:19:54

And before long, you're knocking down some big dominoes

01:19:56

that you didn't think you would ever be able to knock down.

01:19:59

That's exciting and terrifying.

01:20:01

And on the surface, you might say like,

01:20:05

well, why is that terrifying?

01:20:06

Because the fact that you're doing it,

01:20:09

when you put forth the effort,

01:20:14

there's only two possible outcomes.

01:20:16

You either succeed or you fail.

01:20:18

As long as you don't try to knock down the dominoes,

01:20:21

you've always got that third option of,

01:20:22

well, someday I might be able to get serious about this

01:20:25

and start knocking down the dominoes.

01:20:27

And then, my life is gonna be different.

01:20:30

But it's scary when you do start knocking down those dominoes

01:20:32

and you don't know what the outcome's gonna be

01:20:35

because the voice in my head is saying,

01:20:39

this isn't gonna work.

01:20:40

And I recognize after reading this particular section

01:20:44

that I gotta stop that.

01:20:46

I have to start thinking positive

01:20:48

and I have to start seeing big picture.

01:20:50

Like maybe I do get connected with the right people

01:20:53

and this thing blows up and XYZ and the other thing.

01:20:57

That's gonna provide a lot more benefit

01:21:00

than capping myself and hedging my bets.

01:21:03

I think that's the justification

01:21:05

that a lot of people myself included will use.

01:21:07

It's like, well, if I don't think big,

01:21:11

then I won't be disappointed if it doesn't happen.

01:21:13

(laughs)

01:21:15

But that's, I don't know,

01:21:17

the fact that it's not even an option is more disappointing.

01:21:20

That's lame.

01:21:21

Don't do that.

01:21:23

- Right, right.

01:21:24

That's what I'm saying.

01:21:25

I'm recognizing that's not the right way to do this.

01:21:28

I need to let myself think big.

01:21:30

And just by doing that, the dominoes,

01:21:32

I believe it'll bring clarity to the right dominoes

01:21:35

that need to be knocked over.

01:21:36

And in the end, it is going to have

01:21:38

a significant positive impact.

01:21:40

And I'm gonna get a lot further than I would have

01:21:42

if I would have subscribed to the lower trajectory,

01:21:45

the shrinking thinking, whatever, just go for it.

01:21:48

And when you hit your ceiling, that's fine.

01:21:50

But once you get to that point,

01:21:52

you can say, okay, there's my ceiling.

01:21:54

But I think the sad thing is like,

01:21:55

if you don't wanna hit the ceiling,

01:21:57

then you're just never gonna get there.

01:21:58

You don't know how high it is.

01:22:00

- I think too many people suffer from fear of disappointment.

01:22:04

Like, don't be afraid of it.

01:22:06

Like, you're going to be disappointed by things

01:22:08

at some point.

01:22:09

Like, you can definitely set yourself up for failure.

01:22:12

But I don't think you should worry about,

01:22:17

if you want, you know, take faith-based productivity

01:22:20

as an example.

01:22:21

Let's say you launch it and 10,000 people sign up for it.

01:22:24

And you probably smirked whenever I said that, Mike.

01:22:28

(laughs)

01:22:29

- Yep.

01:22:30

- That isn't unreasonable in my mind.

01:22:34

But if you expect it, that's different than

01:22:39

thinking that you could have something big.

01:22:42

If you're expecting a big number, to me,

01:22:44

that's different than expecting it to be big

01:22:48

or acting as if it's a big thing.

01:22:51

So I don't think you should be scared of that

01:22:55

or afraid of it as much as embrace it.

01:22:58

Even, like, he even goes into Carol Dweck's

01:23:01

mindset book here.

01:23:02

- Yep.

01:23:03

- And the whole growth mindset versus the...

01:23:07

- Fixed mindset.

01:23:10

- Fixed, there you go.

01:23:10

I was drawing a blank on it.

01:23:12

So do you have a ceiling or can you grow past that?

01:23:15

You can grow past it.

01:23:17

- Right.

01:23:17

- I don't think we would argue with that.

01:23:20

So don't be afraid of growing to the point

01:23:24

where you do have something big.

01:23:26

Don't be afraid of that.

01:23:27

Even Bookworm has been growing quite a bit lately.

01:23:30

So thank you listeners.

01:23:31

But it's been fun to watch it continually grow.

01:23:35

I don't know if that's because we changed our mindset on it

01:23:37

or if it's just been around long enough.

01:23:39

- Yes.

01:23:40

- Yeah.

01:23:41

It's not a thing.

01:23:42

I think we're afraid of it going big.

01:23:45

I think we definitely expect it to get big.

01:23:48

So yes, there you go.

01:23:50

- And that actually leads in perfectly to the next section.

01:23:53

So part two is the truth.

01:23:54

And this is where we get into chapter 10,

01:23:56

the focusing question.

01:23:58

This is the single takeaway from the entire book.

01:24:02

Asking this question.

01:24:03

- Yep.

01:24:04

- What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it,

01:24:07

everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

01:24:11

And if you're not careful,

01:24:15

I think you can miss the impact that this question has,

01:24:19

which is why, I mean, he mentions it at the beginning

01:24:22

and you were asking, should we share it now

01:24:24

or should we do it later on?

01:24:26

But really chapter 10 is where he's really hitting this

01:24:29

for the first time in my opinion really strongly.

01:24:32

Because I think you have to understand the value

01:24:36

that comes from asking the right questions.

01:24:40

Otherwise, this simple little question is like,

01:24:43

well, there's nothing profound about that.

01:24:45

Well, maybe you're right.

01:24:47

Maybe it isn't that profound.

01:24:49

But there is a lot of powerful from asking the right questions.

01:24:52

In fact, he says that the quality of any answer

01:24:54

is directly determined by the quality of the question.

01:24:57

This is what my whole personal retreat,

01:24:59

handbook course is built off of,

01:25:01

asking the right questions

01:25:02

and giving your brain enough time to unravel them.

01:25:05

And everybody that I know that has done,

01:25:08

not just the process that I share,

01:25:10

but like this whole idea of thinking time,

01:25:13

they're blown away at the results that they get

01:25:17

simply by asking the right questions.

01:25:19

He says to get better answers,

01:25:20

you have to ask better questions.

01:25:21

He shares a quote by Voltaire,

01:25:23

judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

01:25:26

And so this focusing question,

01:25:28

this is the thing that will lead you to your first domino,

01:25:33

but you can apply this, you know,

01:25:35

the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20.

01:25:37

So you could say out of all the projects

01:25:38

that I can be working on,

01:25:39

what's the one project I can do that by doing it,

01:25:41

everything else is gonna be easier unnecessary.

01:25:43

Okay, you identify your project,

01:25:45

then you can ask this about your project.

01:25:46

What's the one thing I can do right now

01:25:48

that by doing it, this project,

01:25:50

and everything else is gonna be easier or unnecessary?

01:25:52

This single question,

01:25:53

if you just keep applying this over and over and over again,

01:25:56

I really do believe that this helps you

01:25:58

knock down the right dominoes.

01:25:59

This produces the results that he was talking about

01:26:02

in the first section that the lies

01:26:04

will try to keep you from getting.

01:26:06

So I do really like the structure of the book

01:26:09

and the fact that he's getting to this question

01:26:11

at this point, but this is,

01:26:15

we're like what an hour and a half into this episode,

01:26:19

and we're finally getting to this.

01:26:21

There's a reason that this is delayed,

01:26:24

and that is to maximize the impact that it has,

01:26:27

in my opinion.

01:26:28

So I want to just really drive home strongly right now,

01:26:30

if you're still listening to this episode,

01:26:32

like this is the thing.

01:26:34

Make sure that you understand this

01:26:37

and simply apply this question.

01:26:40

And apply it, maybe test it out,

01:26:43

different areas of your life.

01:26:44

Maybe you're not gonna go

01:26:45

do your whole productivity system

01:26:47

based off of this one question.

01:26:49

Maybe test it first.

01:26:50

But everybody that I know that has done that

01:26:52

has been blown away by the clarity

01:26:54

that they get from doing this.

01:26:55

Now I know you, first time you've read this book,

01:26:57

so I read it before,

01:26:59

and this was the thing that really impacted me.

01:27:02

So what was your response to this focusing question?

01:27:06

Were you like, is this too simple or?

01:27:08

- No, I don't think it is,

01:27:11

with great questions come great answers.

01:27:13

So there's that whole side of things.

01:27:16

But I want to couple this with the next chapter.

01:27:20

One, to help speed us up.

01:27:22

Two, that it made more sense to me with the next one.

01:27:26

So the next chapter is the success habit.

01:27:29

And in that he talks about the importance

01:27:31

of asking this question on a repeated basis.

01:27:34

- Right.

01:27:35

- That's the sum total of what he's getting at.

01:27:37

So ask it on a daily basis, on a weekly basis,

01:27:40

a monthly basis, a yearly basis.

01:27:42

Any time you need to make a big decision

01:27:43

or something is going on that you don't like

01:27:46

or something's not going on that you do want to happen,

01:27:48

like this is the question you need to ask.

01:27:51

And part of me really wishes this question

01:27:53

was a part of getting things done.

01:27:55

But David Allen had put it into that system

01:27:58

because it would solve a lot of the issues

01:28:00

that people have with that structure.

01:28:03

But to me, I know, like I have points in my morning

01:28:07

and at the end of my day where,

01:28:11

I'm not necessarily asking questions,

01:28:13

but there are things that I do

01:28:15

that require me to ask myself questions.

01:28:17

Like what is my plan for the week ahead?

01:28:20

I write it on the list as weekly plan,

01:28:23

but I know that I'm asking myself of,

01:28:26

well, what is it I need to accomplish this week?

01:28:29

Well, I don't really think of it as,

01:28:31

what's the one thing I could be doing

01:28:35

that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?

01:28:38

Like I don't ask myself that question,

01:28:41

but I have been doing that in the last, I don't know,

01:28:44

it's probably not been a week with holidays and such,

01:28:47

but last three or four days I've been asking this question

01:28:49

on a daily basis.

01:28:51

It does have some pretty interesting effects.

01:28:54

Nothing like groundbreaking currently,

01:28:57

but it's a very fascinating way of coming at things.

01:29:01

So to me, I simply implemented it as part of my regular routines,

01:29:04

which is why I love having those checklists

01:29:06

that I work off of during those times,

01:29:08

because it's very easy for me to alter those habits

01:29:11

just by adding something to that list or removing it,

01:29:14

so or tweaking what it says.

01:29:16

Like that's the part that's important.

01:29:18

So to me, the success habit here is asking this

01:29:20

on a repeated basis, but the answers that I get

01:29:24

whenever I ask this question sometimes surprise me

01:29:28

and it's not always intuitive on what I should be doing

01:29:33

to drive me at the broader mission.

01:29:36

So I love the question.

01:29:38

I wish I had been asking myself this earlier.

01:29:41

- Right, and he breaks down, I forget if it's in chapter 11,

01:29:46

maybe chapter 10, like the three different parts

01:29:48

of the question, I don't think it,

01:29:51

that part I didn't really think was all that strong,

01:29:54

but the way he phrased this question is very specific.

01:29:58

Like it accomplishes a specific outcome

01:30:01

that he engineered it to do.

01:30:04

So you've got like the one thing,

01:30:06

that's the two inch domino, that's the approachable piece.

01:30:09

I can do that, such by doing it,

01:30:11

everything else is gonna be easier on necessarily.

01:30:13

The main idea there is that there's a system

01:30:15

which is going to be affected by this single action.

01:30:19

And I think that you can, it's different than asking

01:30:22

what's the most important thing that I can do.

01:30:25

So in terms of systems, the one thing that you can do,

01:30:28

which is gonna make everything else easier or unnecessary,

01:30:31

if you focus on the last part of that,

01:30:33

what's gonna make everything else that I do easier

01:30:36

or unnecessary, that brings a lot more clarity

01:30:38

than just saying like, well, what's the one thing

01:30:39

I should be doing?

01:30:41

And that's the thing I wanna call out here

01:30:43

because I think the first time I read this,

01:30:46

after a while, I kind of regressed to abbreviating

01:30:50

this question to what's the one thing I should be doing?

01:30:52

And I think the systems aspect of this is very important.

01:30:57

He also talks about in chapter 11 here,

01:30:59

specifically applying the focusing question

01:31:01

to all different areas of your life.

01:31:03

He's got what looks kind of like a wheel of life

01:31:05

sort of a thing.

01:31:06

That's what reminded me of anyways,

01:31:08

where you've got your finances, your spiritual life,

01:31:10

your physical health, your personal life,

01:31:11

your key relationships, your job or your business.

01:31:14

And he's got arrows pointing to all these different

01:31:16

circles and what's the one thing I can do

01:31:18

for all these different areas?

01:31:20

I agree with that in principle.

01:31:23

I do think there's a danger though,

01:31:27

in trying to do all of these one things at the same time.

01:31:31

Maybe if you break it down small enough

01:31:35

and you create these as habits,

01:31:38

you can touch on all of these,

01:31:40

but the 12 week year is basically built on the principle

01:31:44

that you can't tackle everything at once.

01:31:47

So in my opinion, this is the point of the book

01:31:51

where I would throw out a caution.

01:31:55

If you're getting excited about the idea of the one thing

01:31:58

and you see this picture and you see,

01:31:59

yeah, like those are the different areas of my life

01:32:01

that I want to address.

01:32:03

And you start asking yourself this question pretty soon.

01:32:06

You've got goals that you're trying to accomplish

01:32:09

in all these different areas.

01:32:10

You will probably get overwhelmed and frustrated.

01:32:14

- I disagree, but.

01:32:15

- Yeah. - We're good at that.

01:32:17

I saw this wheel and thought

01:32:20

that's a great way to come at this

01:32:22

because if you stop and think about it,

01:32:25

yes, you could do one thing in all these areas

01:32:27

and be overwhelmed, but the trick is

01:32:28

you're only doing one thing.

01:32:30

You're not focused on all the extra chaos

01:32:32

that comes with it.

01:32:34

That's part of the point that he's got here.

01:32:36

So you're limiting it.

01:32:38

If you take this in its totality

01:32:41

of the way he intends it,

01:32:43

you're actually doing less by doing this.

01:32:47

So it's easier to do the most important thing

01:32:50

that makes everything else easier or unnecessary

01:32:53

if you do that in every area.

01:32:56

So to me, it's easier to do it in all of these

01:32:59

than it is to try to do it in one and not the others.

01:33:02

- Sure.

01:33:03

- Does that make sense?

01:33:04

- It does. - That might be crazy.

01:33:06

This might be a case of Joe gone nuts, but.

01:33:08

- I feel like it's kind of counter to his argument

01:33:12

for a balanced life where you are picking

01:33:15

either work or life to work on.

01:33:17

And if I'm looking at, when I look at this circle,

01:33:20

I see business and job as work

01:33:22

and all of these other things as life.

01:33:24

And since he said earlier,

01:33:26

you're gonna be focusing on work or life

01:33:29

and neglecting the other one occasionally

01:33:31

to try to do all seven days at the same time

01:33:34

seems overwhelming to me.

01:33:37

But I think I understand what you're saying.

01:33:40

And I do think once you get a system in place,

01:33:44

there is a lot of value in figuring out

01:33:48

what's the one simple thing I can do for all of these areas

01:33:53

that I'm absolutely just not gonna neglect.

01:33:55

'Cause I think practically that's how it pans out for me.

01:34:00

I go to the gym every day.

01:34:01

I read my Bible in Prairie every day.

01:34:03

So I'm checking a lot of these boxes that he has here.

01:34:07

But in terms of goal setting and big outcomes,

01:34:12

that's where I think applying this question

01:34:16

gets a little bit, needs a disclaimer, I guess.

01:34:20

But if you're looking at it as just,

01:34:22

I wanna set up a simple habit every single day.

01:34:25

I don't even wanna think about it.

01:34:26

It's gonna become automatic at some point.

01:34:28

Maybe it's gonna be 18 days.

01:34:29

Maybe it's gonna be 254 days.

01:34:30

Who cares?

01:34:31

This is the thing I wanna make sure that I do every day.

01:34:35

That makes sense where you are gonna build it

01:34:37

into sort of a routine.

01:34:39

But I don't know.

01:34:41

Maybe just because of my situation

01:34:43

with faith-based productivity and trying to think big,

01:34:45

that's more like project focused.

01:34:47

That's my approach to reading this,

01:34:51

where I kind of view it as trying to do all these things

01:34:56

is kind of ridiculous.

01:34:59

- Yeah, I think if you read the questions he has

01:35:03

on the page just on the opposite side of this,

01:35:06

the questions he asks are not,

01:35:09

and this is maybe the misnomer here,

01:35:12

is that he's saying that big is not bad,

01:35:16

that you should think big to try to get a great answer

01:35:20

to these things.

01:35:22

And yet the questions in this specific area

01:35:24

during the success habit,

01:35:26

the questions he's asking are not,

01:35:29

they're not that.

01:35:31

They're not massive.

01:35:32

- Yes, exactly.

01:35:33

- So I don't think that asking this question

01:35:36

and trying to say, okay,

01:35:38

spiritual life finances,

01:35:39

business relationships, personal life,

01:35:41

my job, my physical health,

01:35:43

what's the one thing I can do to achieve

01:35:46

enormous success in each one of those

01:35:50

and really drive it hard?

01:35:53

I don't think that's what he's getting at

01:35:55

in this specific chapter.

01:35:57

I think he's more saying,

01:35:58

this has profound effects

01:36:00

if you ask these questions in these different areas.

01:36:03

I don't even know if he's saying do them all at once.

01:36:05

- Yeah.

01:36:06

- He's just saying,

01:36:07

this is something that you can do in each of these areas

01:36:10

that can have a profound effect.

01:36:12

And I don't think I would argue with that.

01:36:14

I'm going to attempt to do a lot of these all at once.

01:36:16

So we'll find out.

01:36:17

(laughing)

01:36:18

- All right.

01:36:20

- We'll see how it goes.

01:36:22

It's new year, time to do resolutions, right?

01:36:24

We'll say that's a resolution maybe.

01:36:26

But that's my approach with it.

01:36:29

These aren't necessarily going to be big.

01:36:31

I do have one area where I'm going to push really hard

01:36:33

similar to what you're talking about.

01:36:36

Disclaimer, it's not corporate.

01:36:38

(laughing)

01:36:38

It's a saying.

01:36:39

But this is a thing that I think you can do

01:36:42

in all of these areas.

01:36:43

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have one

01:36:46

or that you're going to be huge in all of them.

01:36:48

I think you're definitely going to be unbalanced

01:36:51

in one area and that one area is where you go big.

01:36:54

- Yep.

01:36:55

- So anyway, that's the way I'm coming at it.

01:36:57

I don't know if that's right or wrong,

01:36:58

but it's the way I interpreted it.

01:37:00

- No, and I think that's the right way to apply this,

01:37:04

to be honest.

01:37:05

I guess I'm just lumping this all together

01:37:07

in my Mind&Note file under Part Two,

01:37:10

and it's all leading together because in the next section,

01:37:14

Chapter 12, he talks about the path to great answers.

01:37:17

This is where he has a picture,

01:37:20

number one, ask a great question,

01:37:21

and then number two, find a great answer.

01:37:24

So if you were to ask a great question,

01:37:26

to find a great answer and to think big

01:37:28

about all of these different areas,

01:37:30

that's where the danger lies in my opinion.

01:37:33

Maybe that's not what he's saying,

01:37:35

but that's where my brain went.

01:37:36

And probably it's because I've been doing

01:37:38

the Wheel of Life stuff recently anyways,

01:37:40

and that's what it reminded me of when I saw that visual.

01:37:44

But yeah, so if you're approaching this as maintenance mode,

01:37:47

what are the things that I can do in these areas

01:37:49

every single day?

01:37:50

That's one very valid approach.

01:37:53

Another very valid approach would be,

01:37:54

okay, I wanna set a big goal in one of these areas,

01:37:56

which one do I wanna focus on?

01:37:58

But the one to stay away from is to think big and specific

01:38:02

about all of these different areas at once,

01:38:04

try to do everything in all those different areas.

01:38:07

In my opinion, unless you were completely,

01:38:10

and maybe this is what he meant,

01:38:11

and this is what he was able to do.

01:38:14

But for a lot of people, I think you don't have

01:38:17

complete control over your entire day

01:38:20

where you can just press the reset button

01:38:23

and start from scratch.

01:38:24

Like for your example, you've gotta show up for work

01:38:27

regardless of what your big priority is.

01:38:32

You have to work around that thing,

01:38:36

and that's okay in my opinion,

01:38:39

but to really just go hard on all these things at once,

01:38:43

like it does require you to have complete control

01:38:46

of how you design your life.

01:38:48

And I think that that's ideal,

01:38:52

but maybe not realistic for a lot of people.

01:38:55

- Sure.

01:38:56

Well, let's talk about the path to great answers,

01:38:58

and then we'll see if we can lump all

01:38:59

of part three together all in one shot.

01:39:01

(both laughing)

01:39:03

- Yeah, this is a long one.

01:39:04

All right, so the path to great answers,

01:39:07

he mentions the asking a great question,

01:39:10

finding a great answer,

01:39:11

and the question should be big and specific.

01:39:15

He's got like the four different quadrants,

01:39:17

big and broad, small and broad, small and specific,

01:39:19

and big and specific.

01:39:21

The reason you want to select a big and specific question

01:39:25

is that it will force you to change the way you do things

01:39:30

in order to achieve it.

01:39:33

And this is the thing that I think is really

01:39:36

an important point, but can also be something

01:39:39

that turns a lot of people off.

01:39:42

Is this idea of, well, I could set this goal

01:39:45

for this thing that's doable,

01:39:46

I could set this goal, which is a little bit of a stretch for me,

01:39:49

or I could set this goal, which is way out there,

01:39:51

but it is possible, it's just going to require

01:39:54

a significant change on my part

01:39:56

in creating new systems and things like that to get there.

01:39:59

And that's what he's arguing for here,

01:40:01

which is why I don't think you can do this

01:40:03

about the seven different areas.

01:40:06

You gotta really pick one to focus on,

01:40:09

but extraordinary results, he says here,

01:40:12

require a great answer and require you to live outside

01:40:15

of your comfort zone.

01:40:16

- Yeah, I saw this as a way to come up with a question

01:40:19

and answer to just do goal setting to nail down

01:40:22

like a mission of sorts that you should be asking

01:40:25

the one thing question about,

01:40:29

or using that to help get you there.

01:40:31

So that was the only thing I had an issue with

01:40:33

on this chapter is how do you connect this

01:40:35

to the focusing question?

01:40:37

Like it seemed like it was a bit of an ad on top of that.

01:40:41

So I had a little bit of a struggle trying to figure out

01:40:43

how he wanted this all to work together,

01:40:46

but I understand it too.

01:40:47

You know, it's go big or go home.

01:40:50

- Yep.

01:40:51

- Yeah, so I think what he would say,

01:40:53

and he's not here to defend himself,

01:40:55

so we'll talk about him.

01:40:57

- So I'll win.

01:40:57

- I think what he would say is to set a big

01:40:59

and specific goal, which is so far out there

01:41:03

that if you were to continue doing the things

01:41:04

that you're doing now, there's no way you could do it.

01:41:07

And some of the examples he mentions,

01:41:08

like how can we double sales in the next six months?

01:41:11

That's not possible with the current way things

01:41:16

are most likely.

01:41:18

So then you have to figure out what are the changes

01:41:21

that you need to make, and that does tie

01:41:24

into the focusing question.

01:41:26

Because when you're hitting the reset button

01:41:30

and you're trying to create a new system,

01:41:32

the focusing question I would argue

01:41:34

is the most important in that scenario.

01:41:36

Because of the last part of it,

01:41:38

which is that it's going to make everything else

01:41:41

easier or unnecessary.

01:41:44

So when a lot of people want to,

01:41:46

that's a general statement, I know that,

01:41:49

but let's just, for the sake of argument,

01:41:51

say you want to start a business, okay?

01:41:55

You don't go print business cards.

01:41:59

You probably don't even create a website

01:42:02

unless you're an internet-based business,

01:42:04

like a lot of the stuff that you and I do, Joe,

01:42:06

like that would be one of the first things that you do,

01:42:08

but for somebody who's gonna do carpentry on the side,

01:42:13

like maybe you don't need the website,

01:42:14

maybe you need to do something else.

01:42:16

But those are the things that people get caught up on.

01:42:18

And if you ask this question, it's easy to say,

01:42:21

well, I don't need the business card first.

01:42:24

I need the product to sell or whatever.

01:42:27

And that's where I think like this can be really helpful

01:42:30

when you're going back to the drawing board

01:42:32

and you're trying to figure out what do I need to do

01:42:34

to get to that point.

01:42:36

Because you could say, well, if I'm gonna set this goal,

01:42:40

which is beyond a stretch and it's in the realm

01:42:42

of possibility, I need to have XYZ and the other thing.

01:42:45

I don't know anything about websites.

01:42:46

I don't have anybody who can design me a logo,

01:42:49

but that's the thing that even though I'm not really skilled

01:42:51

at that, I'm gonna pick at that and I'm gonna invest

01:42:54

a whole bunch of time and waste a whole bunch of time,

01:42:56

I would argue because it's gonna provide a little bit

01:42:58

of procrastination for the thing that I know

01:43:01

I really should be doing.

01:43:02

And that's where the focusing question can really help you

01:43:05

identify right away.

01:43:06

Like this is not the thing that you should be doing right now.

01:43:09

This right here, this is the thing because it's going

01:43:12

to make everything else easier or unnecessary.

01:43:15

I think that that really helps.

01:43:17

That could really help a lot of people.

01:43:19

- So part three, extraordinary results.

01:43:21

Here's what I have what we do on this

01:43:24

since this is gonna be long anyway.

01:43:26

I think we should go through,

01:43:28

there's four things we've got in our outline folks.

01:43:30

We've got purpose, priority and productivity.

01:43:32

That's all kind of as one.

01:43:33

Time blocking which I'm guessing we wanna spend

01:43:36

a little time with.

01:43:37

Three commitments, the fourth thieves.

01:43:39

I think we should talk about the three commitments

01:43:41

very quickly, the fourth thieves

01:43:43

and then come back and do the other two.

01:43:45

- Okay.

01:43:45

- That's my thinking 'cause we'll wanna spend more time

01:43:47

on the other two.

01:43:48

- All right, so the three commitments.

01:43:51

I'm not gonna find this section, there we go.

01:43:54

All right, this is chapter 16.

01:43:57

The three commitments are number one,

01:43:59

follow the path of mastery.

01:44:01

Number two, move from E to P and three,

01:44:04

live the accountability cycle.

01:44:06

All right, following the path of mastery,

01:44:09

this kind of comes back to what I consider

01:44:12

to be a misquoted thing he attributed to Anders Eriksen.

01:44:17

He said that he came up with a 10,000 hour rule,

01:44:20

but we read Peek and he basically railed against Malcolm Gladwell

01:44:25

for creating the 10,000 hour rule.

01:44:27

Or am I misremembering?

01:44:28

- Mal, yeah, Malcolm Gladwell used Anders Eriksen's study

01:44:33

to get that number.

01:44:34

- Okay, okay.

01:44:35

- So it is, I think he has it correctly attributed here.

01:44:39

'Cause I'm pretty sure Gladwell used that number.

01:44:43

He got that number from someone else.

01:44:44

He's not the one that came up with it.

01:44:46

I think Gladwell even states that in his book.

01:44:49

- Okay, but I do remember when we read Peek

01:44:52

that the 10,000 hour rule was basically a myth,

01:44:56

but he's saying like the 10,000 hour rule

01:44:59

is kind of the way to achieve mastery,

01:45:01

which if you really wanna dig into that,

01:45:04

you can go listen to that episode.

01:45:06

- Yep, then there.

01:45:07

- Yeah, mastery also though, which is worth calling out here,

01:45:12

it's a path you go down, it's not a destination you arrive at,

01:45:14

which I thought was an important distinction.

01:45:16

Mastery is really just giving the best that you have

01:45:19

to become the best that you can be

01:45:21

at your most important work.

01:45:23

So that goes back to the very,

01:45:25

when we started off this episode talking about

01:45:27

the early episodes of Bookworm

01:45:28

and how we were to go back and listen to them,

01:45:30

we'd probably be ashamed of the quality of those.

01:45:33

Like that doesn't matter

01:45:35

because those were steps on the journey to mastery,

01:45:37

not that we've achieved it yet,

01:45:39

but we're on the trajectory

01:45:41

and that's what he's saying the path of mastery is.

01:45:43

It's not putting in the 10,000 hours

01:45:46

and after the 10,000th hour,

01:45:47

now finally you are on the path of mastery.

01:45:51

- The second one here is move from E to P.

01:45:54

E being the entrepreneurial way of doing things

01:45:57

and P being the purposeful way of doing things.

01:46:00

His point is the E,

01:46:02

entrepreneurial is our natural approach,

01:46:06

whereas purposeful is like you're working with mission.

01:46:09

And I think the interesting thing with this

01:46:12

is that if you're an entrepreneur,

01:46:14

you tend to come at things and say,

01:46:17

okay, here's a new thing that needs someone

01:46:20

to do something about.

01:46:21

And you jump in and you're going super fast

01:46:24

and at some point it gets hard

01:46:27

and you can either push through,

01:46:29

but most entrepreneurs have a tendency to say,

01:46:31

oh wait, there's this other area

01:46:33

that has this new thing that could use some work.

01:46:35

I'm gonna go jump in on that.

01:46:37

So you tend to cap your achievement

01:46:40

by constantly going just a little ways

01:46:43

and then stopping and coming back.

01:46:45

Whereas the purposeful approach is when you're doing,

01:46:49

as he says, quote unquote,

01:46:51

doing what comes unnaturally

01:46:54

where you use things like the systems

01:46:57

and the models and the focus to drive up your willpower

01:47:01

in order to break through that natural ceiling of achievement

01:47:05

so that you can then achieve a much higher level of success

01:47:08

than you ever possibly could using the entrepreneurial mindset.

01:47:12

- Yep, yeah, exactly.

01:47:13

So the four points on the graphic

01:47:15

that he's got there for the entrepreneurial mindset,

01:47:17

number one, disappointment, number two, resignation,

01:47:20

number three greener pastures,

01:47:21

number four, the cycle continues

01:47:23

and the purposeful mindset,

01:47:26

which is the one that breaks through that plateau,

01:47:29

on number one, focus, number two, models,

01:47:30

number three systems and number four, breakthrough.

01:47:34

Basic takeaway, in my opinion,

01:47:36

would be connecting to your purpose, finding your why.

01:47:38

That's what allows you to make the modifications

01:47:40

to the models and systems

01:47:41

that allow you to break through the glass ceiling.

01:47:43

- Last one here, the accountability.

01:47:46

All right, live the accountability cycle.

01:47:49

This, there's another graphic here

01:47:55

which I don't think is real great to be honest with you.

01:48:00

But the main takeaway here for me

01:48:04

was that the accountability mindset

01:48:06

is going to be looking for solutions.

01:48:09

So page 184, he says,

01:48:10

you can either be the author of your life

01:48:12

or the victim of it.

01:48:13

Don't settle for the victim mentality.

01:48:17

You have control over certain things in your situation.

01:48:20

Maybe you don't have complete control,

01:48:22

but figuring out what you can control

01:48:24

and manipulating those systems

01:48:27

to produce the results that you want

01:48:28

will create more control and more freedom.

01:48:31

And as you take that approach,

01:48:34

one of the things that can help you consistently follow through

01:48:36

with that is accountability.

01:48:38

So you could be, you could apply that

01:48:40

as accountability to yourself.

01:48:42

We talked about the earlier,

01:48:43

the ability to make a promise to yourself

01:48:44

and follow through with it.

01:48:46

But also, if you need some help,

01:48:47

there's nothing wrong with that either.

01:48:49

One of the questions that I wrote down

01:48:50

was who's holding you accountable?

01:48:53

And if you really want some accountability,

01:48:56

I mean, even something like the Bookworm Club

01:48:58

is a great place to start.

01:49:00

It's free, you can go on there,

01:49:01

you can share your action items from the books,

01:49:03

cast book club, we're all in this together.

01:49:06

Even just writing it and posting it somewhere publicly

01:49:08

for other people to see,

01:49:09

maybe that's the thing that helps you follow through

01:49:12

and do the things that you're supposed to do.

01:49:14

But identifying ways that you can have accountability

01:49:18

can provide enough traction for you to do your one thing.

01:49:23

And that's important.

01:49:24

- Absolutely.

01:49:25

Now, the Four Thieves, I'm gonna run through these quick

01:49:28

and we'll come back to time blocking.

01:49:30

The Four Thieves, inability to say no,

01:49:33

the fear of chaos, poor health habits,

01:49:37

and the environment doesn't support your goals.

01:49:40

Now, he goes through the importance

01:49:43

of having good productivity.

01:49:44

I think we've talked about all of these

01:49:46

to some degree over the life of Bookworm.

01:49:50

The inability to say no, you're saying yes too many times.

01:49:53

You have too many commitments.

01:49:55

This is probably the number one thing I think we see

01:49:56

in the productivity space probably like,

01:49:58

as folks have said yes way too many times

01:50:00

and there's too much on their list.

01:50:02

Pretty common.

01:50:03

Two fear of chaos when you start focusing on the one thing

01:50:07

that you're supposed to be doing in that day.

01:50:09

It's inevitable that other areas of your life

01:50:11

are going to fall apart in some degree.

01:50:14

- Yep.

01:50:14

- And he's saying that don't let that chaos scare you

01:50:19

and it's going to happen at least for a time.

01:50:22

- Oh, it's coming.

01:50:23

- So, yeah, it's gonna hit you.

01:50:26

So anyway, don't be afraid of that.

01:50:28

Poor health habits.

01:50:29

This is part of what I'm working on right now

01:50:31

is revamping my diet to some degree

01:50:34

in order to help me with some health issues.

01:50:36

So, that's just a thing you need to be aware of.

01:50:39

But he does get into meditating.

01:50:41

(laughs)

01:50:43

- Yeah, he's got a recommended routine.

01:50:45

- Yep, he's got a whole routine here that, you know,

01:50:49

okay, sure, I'm gonna do mine.

01:50:52

- Which by the way, as a side note,

01:50:54

this is one of the things that like,

01:50:56

there are a whole books written on these recommended routines.

01:50:59

This is one small section in one of 18 chapters

01:51:03

in this book.

01:51:05

So, I feel like there's a ton of stuff in here

01:51:08

which if you just took it and applied it at surface value

01:51:11

would provide a huge amount of value to your life.

01:51:16

But it's almost lost in the shuffle

01:51:18

because there's so much stuff in here.

01:51:20

- Right.

01:51:21

- And it's not directly tied to the one thing.

01:51:24

I mean, he does a pretty good job

01:51:25

of tying it back to that focusing question.

01:51:27

But the recommended routine,

01:51:30

there's a lot of great stuff there,

01:51:31

but he doesn't get into like all the different specifics

01:51:33

that how Elrod does in the miracle morning.

01:51:36

But still, like the stuff that he lists here

01:51:38

is pretty good.

01:51:39

Main idea for me is just protect the golden goose.

01:51:42

- Yes, yes.

01:51:44

The last thief of productivity here,

01:51:47

I mentioned this earlier when I was talking about diet,

01:51:49

the environment doesn't support your goals.

01:51:51

So, if the people you're around

01:51:54

are constantly bringing you down

01:51:55

or your work environment is such

01:51:57

that it makes it hard for you to do your job.

01:51:59

Like those are all things that are gonna prevent you

01:52:01

from being productive and working towards that one thing.

01:52:04

So, do something about it.

01:52:06

(laughs)

01:52:07

Don't let it rob from you.

01:52:09

Okay, now.

01:52:10

- Exactly.

01:52:11

- Let's talk about purpose and time blocking.

01:52:13

Mike, I'm sure you have lots to talk about here.

01:52:15

(laughs)

01:52:16

- Sure.

01:52:17

So, purpose, priority, and productivity

01:52:19

is the model that he shares actually

01:52:22

at the beginning of this part.

01:52:23

So, it's not even in a chapter necessarily.

01:52:26

There is a chapter devoted to live with purpose,

01:52:29

live with priority, and live for productivity.

01:52:32

But he shares the iceberg picture

01:52:35

in the two page thing at the beginning of chapter three,

01:52:39

which shows productivity as the top part

01:52:42

of the iceberg above the water,

01:52:44

underneath that you've got priority,

01:52:45

and then you've got purpose.

01:52:47

So, I think this is a fair representation of this.

01:52:52

I do like the alliteration

01:52:54

with the productivity priority and purpose.

01:52:57

It reminded me a lot of the analogy that I came up with

01:53:00

for the word hustle, because my book is called "Dowsha Hustle."

01:53:04

And this actually isn't in the book,

01:53:06

so don't buy the book expecting to see it.

01:53:08

I need to revise the book.

01:53:09

(laughs)

01:53:10

But the definition of hustle is to force to move

01:53:13

hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.

01:53:16

And the point that I make is that there's three parts,

01:53:18

their vision, purpose, and work.

01:53:21

And the work he would call productivity,

01:53:23

the purpose he would call priority,

01:53:25

and vision as I call it, he would call purpose.

01:53:27

Like, where's the big thing that you're why?

01:53:31

And then that's gonna dictate the direction

01:53:34

that you're moving, but what people ultimately

01:53:36

is gonna see is the work, or in his case,

01:53:38

the productivity.

01:53:40

And I think that productivity for productivity's sake,

01:53:43

work for work's sake, quote unquote hustle,

01:53:45

like most people think of it, just cranking or grinding,

01:53:47

that's not really accurate,

01:53:50

and that's just gonna lead to burnout.

01:53:52

It's not gonna lead to the big results

01:53:55

like you were talking about earlier,

01:53:56

work in the 70, 80 hours a week.

01:53:58

That's not the way to get there.

01:54:00

And again, this is part three extraordinary results.

01:54:03

So the way to achieve those extraordinary results

01:54:06

is to tie these things together.

01:54:09

Also in this section, by the way, the word priority,

01:54:12

this was interesting to me,

01:54:13

the original word priority, from the 14th century,

01:54:16

it comes from the Latin prior, which means first,

01:54:19

and it's something that means the principle thing.

01:54:24

So if something mattered the most, it was a priority.

01:54:27

But it remained unpluralized until around the 20th century

01:54:30

when it was demoted to mean something that matters.

01:54:32

So now we've got five different levels of priorities.

01:54:35

And really the point he's making is that

01:54:36

there is no top priority or multiple levels of priority.

01:54:39

There is just a thing that is most important.

01:54:41

That is priority.

01:54:43

And so that's how he applies the one thing to this,

01:54:46

which again is really powerful.

01:54:48

If you can identify the vision,

01:54:50

the thinking big about your future,

01:54:52

the purpose that you want to achieve,

01:54:54

and then the one thing, the priority, the vector,

01:54:56

the direction that you want to go,

01:54:58

that's gonna dictate the one thing,

01:55:00

the action that you take, the productivity,

01:55:03

the work that you actually do.

01:55:04

- Yeah, I think the piece about the priority

01:55:07

that I really liked is page 150.

01:55:11

He called it goal setting to the now.

01:55:13

- Yeah.

01:55:14

- And I really appreciated this because,

01:55:18

everybody does goals to some degree,

01:55:21

especially this time of year.

01:55:22

And I'll just walk through this quick

01:55:25

and then we can go on.

01:55:25

But you have a someday goal.

01:55:27

So what's one thing I want to do someday?

01:55:30

Okay, well, great.

01:55:32

Let's take that to the next level.

01:55:34

Okay, in order to hit that someday goal,

01:55:38

what's the one thing I can do in the next five years

01:55:41

to hit it?

01:55:42

Okay, well, based on that five year goal,

01:55:44

what's the one thing I can do this year

01:55:46

to hit that goal?

01:55:48

You see where I'm going here?

01:55:49

So based on the one year,

01:55:50

what's the one thing I can do this month?

01:55:52

What's the one thing I can do this week?

01:55:53

What's the one thing I can do today?

01:55:55

What's the one thing I can do right now?

01:55:59

I really appreciated that because although we know that

01:56:02

somewhat intuitively, no one does it.

01:56:06

(laughs)

01:56:06

Like I don't.

01:56:07

- Yeah.

01:56:08

- Like I wish I would do that.

01:56:10

And this is why I say,

01:56:11

I've got two action items here.

01:56:14

One is to ask this question,

01:56:16

the focusing question daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

01:56:19

And the goal there is that I'm constantly doing

01:56:23

this exact process is that I can write down my answers

01:56:27

to what's my long term goal,

01:56:30

what is it I need to do this year to hit that?

01:56:32

Like that's the exact process I'm working through.

01:56:34

It's probably not gonna happen today.

01:56:35

It's probably gonna happen sometime this week

01:56:37

or this upcoming weekend that I'll get through all of that.

01:56:39

But that's the plan is to use this exact model

01:56:42

to get there because once these priorities are nailed down,

01:56:47

answering that question on a daily basis gets really easy.

01:56:50

- Yep.

01:56:51

- Really easy.

01:56:52

- Yeah.

01:56:53

And that ties into the idea of hyperbolic discounting

01:56:56

where the farther away a reward is in the future,

01:56:58

the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.

01:57:00

So what you're doing when you employ that methodology

01:57:04

is you're creating momentum for that essentially someday

01:57:09

maybe goal, that thing that's way out there,

01:57:12

but it's gonna provide the motivation to take action

01:57:14

on it every single day because all you've gotta do

01:57:16

is this one thing, not work on something for 10 years

01:57:20

and then eventually you get there.

01:57:22

It makes it a lot more palatable, I guess.

01:57:25

It's a lot easier to show up every day

01:57:27

and do that thing when you break it down like that.

01:57:30

- And one thing that he, one tool that he tells you to use

01:57:34

that can really drive a lot of this is time blocking,

01:57:37

which we both have as action items here, Mike.

01:57:40

- Yep.

01:57:41

- And I feel like everybody knows what time blocking is.

01:57:44

You put something on a time on your calendar

01:57:46

and that's when you're gonna work on the specific item

01:57:51

and in this case it's your one thing

01:57:54

and he recommends like a four hour block

01:57:57

and he has all kinds of reasons

01:57:59

for how he got to four hours

01:58:00

and recommends eight a.m. to noon.

01:58:03

- Yep, yep.

01:58:04

- That's crazy talk.

01:58:05

- Right. (laughs)

01:58:06

- Like that's not gonna happen,

01:58:09

especially for me right now.

01:58:11

Like I'm gonna be doing good to get 30 minutes

01:58:13

towards it every day.

01:58:14

So I don't see this as a thing

01:58:17

where I'm gonna put four hours to it

01:58:19

but I did greatly appreciate that

01:58:21

this is something you should put on your calendar.

01:58:24

Keep your commitment to yourself

01:58:26

and over time this is gonna have a huge impact.

01:58:29

I totally buy into that.

01:58:32

I just know that me personally,

01:58:33

I do struggle with keeping these types of commitments

01:58:36

to myself.

01:58:37

It's very easy for me to plan over them and such.

01:58:40

So I know I'll struggle with this

01:58:42

so I'll definitely need your help here, Mike.

01:58:44

But I'm at least gonna give it a shot.

01:58:46

We'll see how it goes.

01:58:48

- Nice.

01:58:49

Yeah, this is from chapter 15,

01:58:50

Live for Productivity.

01:58:52

And the point that he makes

01:58:54

at the beginning of this chapter is page 157,

01:58:57

putting together a life of extraordinary results

01:58:59

simply comes down to getting the most

01:59:01

out of what you do when what you do matters.

01:59:04

So does what you do matter

01:59:07

and is what you're doing gonna matter?

01:59:10

It ultimately is the question that you're asking there.

01:59:12

But then if you were to break that down

01:59:15

and assuming that what you're working on does matter,

01:59:17

then you wanna be as quote unquote,

01:59:19

I think it I said it again.

01:59:21

You wanna be as productive as possible.

01:59:23

So the question he asks is how much is the system

01:59:26

that you're using worth?

01:59:27

Because he says money is a metaphor

01:59:29

for producing results.

01:59:31

So time is money essentially.

01:59:32

The time management system that you use

01:59:34

produces the money that you make.

01:59:36

So he says, are you using a $10,000 a year system?

01:59:39

Or is it a $100,000 a year system?

01:59:41

Is it a million dollar a year system?

01:59:44

And the question really is how much do you make?

01:59:47

That's a little bit uncomfortable to ask that,

01:59:49

but I get the point that he's making there.

01:59:52

So if you're assuming that the results you have

01:59:54

are coming from the system that you're using,

01:59:57

and if you're assigning a dollar value

01:59:59

of how much you make to the system

02:00:00

that you're using in terms of what it's worth,

02:00:03

then maybe if it's not producing the results that you want,

02:00:07

you should check it and design a system

02:00:10

that is more valuable.

02:00:11

That's where he's making the argument for time blocking.

02:00:14

And he talks about the different time blocks.

02:00:17

He says, there's three different time blocks you need.

02:00:19

Number one is time off.

02:00:20

Number two is your one thing.

02:00:22

And the number three is your planning time.

02:00:24

I really like the idea behind those.

02:00:26

I agree with you that when he shares the example,

02:00:28

it's kind of like not approachable for most people.

02:00:33

But the one thing that I really got from this

02:00:38

in terms of time blocking, well, a couple things.

02:00:41

Number one, time off being important.

02:00:44

So having that be your first time block,

02:00:45

I thought that was a little bit radical,

02:00:47

but as I thought about that, I'm like,

02:00:48

no, actually that makes a lot of sense.

02:00:50

And then secondly, your one thing appearing

02:00:52

on your calendar, and you're like you said,

02:00:54

he's doing it four hours a day,

02:00:56

I probably can't even do it four hours a day,

02:00:58

even in my current situation,

02:00:59

but it really made me think,

02:01:01

what is the thing that I should be doing?

02:01:03

What is my one thing?

02:01:04

I think it's writing.

02:01:06

Writing is also the thing that I tend to not get around

02:01:08

to doing because I'm fiddling with the systems

02:01:10

or creating products or whatever.

02:01:12

- Or buying a Mac mini.

02:01:14

- Yeah, but I'm recognizing that if I were to simply create

02:01:19

writing as a habit and do it not for four hours a day,

02:01:22

maybe it's just an hour or two every day.

02:01:24

That would make a lot of this stuff that I do a lot simpler.

02:01:27

When it comes to creating product,

02:01:29

I've got the stuff written.

02:01:30

When it comes to sending out the newsletters,

02:01:32

I've got the articles written,

02:01:33

this is definitely something I need to do.

02:01:36

So that is gonna be one of my action items,

02:01:38

is to implement this time blocking

02:01:41

with the three different blocks.

02:01:43

And he also mentions a little bit later

02:01:45

of scheduling a time block of an hour per week

02:01:47

to review your goals.

02:01:49

That's something that I haven't done very well.

02:01:51

You could say that's part of your weekly review,

02:01:54

which again, not something I've done very well recently.

02:01:56

So that's my other action item from this section.

02:02:01

And again, this is a section where there's a ton of stuff

02:02:04

in here, a couple of pages he talks about

02:02:06

Maker versus Manager time.

02:02:08

We could do a whole podcast episode on that topic,

02:02:11

but that's another way that could influence

02:02:14

your time blocking.

02:02:15

He also talks about not breaking the chain,

02:02:17

the Jerry Seinfeld story.

02:02:20

He gives that guy a name, by the way,

02:02:21

which I never heard before.

02:02:23

Brad Isaac is a software developer

02:02:25

who apparently ran into Jerry Seinfeld

02:02:27

at an open mic comedy club.

02:02:29

And he asked Jerry Seinfeld how to become a better comic.

02:02:33

And the story goes that Seinfeld told him

02:02:37

to get a big calendar, put a red X on every day

02:02:39

you work on your craft, keep at it,

02:02:40

chain's gonna grow longer every day.

02:02:41

You'll like seeing that chain,

02:02:43

and then your only job then is to not break the chain.

02:02:46

So again, like this is a productivity principle.

02:02:49

You probably, if you're listening to this,

02:02:51

have heard somewhere else, but he attributes it

02:02:55

and adds a little bit of detail for a story

02:02:57

that I never really understood the whole thing.

02:03:00

So I appreciated that.

02:03:03

And again, like the don't break the chain,

02:03:05

especially when you're talking about your one thing,

02:03:06

that's a really powerful idea,

02:03:09

but it's one minor piece in this one chapter,

02:03:12

in this big book, which he's trying to tie back

02:03:15

to the focus in question.

02:03:17

It's easy to overlook the importance of that.

02:03:20

- Ready for action items?

02:03:21

- Yeah, let's do it.

02:03:22

- I have two.

02:03:23

I am gonna do the goal setting to now,

02:03:26

asking the question, perfect time of year to do that.

02:03:28

So good timing there.

02:03:30

Two, I'm doing the time blocking thing.

02:03:32

I've done this to some degree already

02:03:34

with blocking off weekly time for a weekly review.

02:03:38

I tend to do it on a monthly basis as well.

02:03:41

And I quasi do it for a yearly thing.

02:03:44

It's kind of what I'm doing this upcoming weekend.

02:03:46

So I do some of it.

02:03:48

Definitely a time block vacation time already.

02:03:51

So the piece that I need to do is the actual work time.

02:03:54

I have not been good about that.

02:03:56

So that's the piece that I wanna add to the whole thing.

02:03:58

Like that's the thing I wanna add overall

02:04:00

to my calendaring method.

02:04:02

- Nice.

02:04:03

All right, so for me, I want to revamp my time blocking.

02:04:07

As I mentioned, the three different blocks

02:04:09

and the order that he applied them,

02:04:10

I thought that was really good.

02:04:12

And I also wanna add one for reviewing my goals specifically,

02:04:16

but I'll probably just build that into the weekly review

02:04:18

and create a time block for that.

02:04:20

I also want to think big about faith-based productivity.

02:04:24

And that's the one that there's no way

02:04:26

you'll be able to hold me accountable for.

02:04:27

(laughing)

02:04:29

Actually, it's the third one

02:04:30

you probably won't be able to hold me accountable for either.

02:04:32

And that is to ask the question, who can I help succeed?

02:04:35

But I do think that I've already seen some changes

02:04:40

in the way that I interact with people after reading this.

02:04:44

And so I hope that that continues.

02:04:46

I guess if you see me not doing that,

02:04:48

you can hold me accountable and say,

02:04:49

"Hey, you said you were gonna do this."

02:04:51

But it's more just a mindset

02:04:53

that I wanna change.

02:04:55

- You could take number three,

02:04:57

who can I help succeed?

02:04:58

Do it on yourself and get number two, think big.

02:05:01

- Oh, there we go.

02:05:02

Get meta with my action items.

02:05:03

- Ooh, double dip.

02:05:06

All right, we'll check in next time.

02:05:07

Until then, author style on rating, no pressure, Mike.

02:05:11

- You go first.

02:05:12

- Okay, that's fine.

02:05:14

So there's a couple of points here.

02:05:16

One, he had a chapter, maybe two,

02:05:19

that felt like they didn't connect,

02:05:22

which is where I had what was the one.

02:05:24

The path to great answers,

02:05:25

where it was kind of like asking a goal setting question.

02:05:28

I had a hard time connecting that.

02:05:29

I think you tried to help me understand that,

02:05:31

but there's that piece,

02:05:33

there's a few small things with like the wheel of life

02:05:36

that do work, but we're not real sure how it fits in.

02:05:40

Just some things that don't always seem to be cohesive

02:05:44

and that made it kind of hard for me in certain areas.

02:05:48

Definitely love his style of writing.

02:05:50

He's a great writer.

02:05:52

Made it very easy for me to sit down and read

02:05:54

without having to try to force my way through it.

02:05:56

That was not an issue at all.

02:05:58

So all of that to say, like I really enjoyed this book,

02:06:01

definitely gonna recommend it to quite a few people.

02:06:03

It's an excellent primer on productivity in general, I think.

02:06:07

And even people who are in the productivity space

02:06:09

could really benefit from it.

02:06:11

But because of some of those qualms I have,

02:06:13

I am gonna put it at a 4.0, Mike.

02:06:15

There's just some things I feel like,

02:06:17

number one, I don't think it fits the 5.0 category.

02:06:19

That seems to become kind of sacred ground on Bookworm.

02:06:23

Sure.

02:06:24

But the 4.5, I don't know,

02:06:27

it just doesn't feel like it's quite there to that point.

02:06:30

So I'll stick with the 4.0.

02:06:32

All right.

02:06:33

Well, I will definitely go 5.0.

02:06:36

And I guess let me explain a little bit why,

02:06:40

because I definitely agree with you.

02:06:43

There are some things in here

02:06:45

that don't seem to fit at first.

02:06:48

And as I read it this second time,

02:06:51

I'm in a different place of have more experience

02:06:54

in the productivity world.

02:06:56

There's a lot of things in here

02:06:58

that I did not understand how profound they were

02:07:01

when you shared them the first time.

02:07:03

And I think that the strength of this book

02:07:08

is also the weakness in that it is sometimes hard

02:07:10

to connect those things.

02:07:12

So when I read it the first time,

02:07:13

he's going over something like the morning routine

02:07:16

and I'm totally just not even getting it.

02:07:18

I'm saying to myself,

02:07:19

he already told me the focusing question,

02:07:21

why is he even putting this in here?

02:07:23

Reading it now,

02:07:24

I see how he's tying these things together.

02:07:26

And what it did reading it a second time

02:07:29

is it filled in a lot of blanks for me.

02:07:32

So I actually got more reading it the second time,

02:07:36

I think than I did the first.

02:07:38

Even though when I read it the first time,

02:07:41

it had such a positive impact on me,

02:07:43

enough that I picked it my top book

02:07:47

in the bookworm draft.

02:07:49

So I don't know, I think that this is,

02:07:53

if you were to pick like one book

02:07:55

that you were gonna bring on a desert island

02:07:58

in terms of productivity or self-development,

02:08:03

personal growth, like this might be the one.

02:08:06

Not just because of the title.

02:08:08

(laughing)

02:08:09

- Well it is the one.

02:08:10

- Yeah, yeah, but there's just,

02:08:11

there's so much stuff in here.

02:08:14

Like even in the last chapter,

02:08:15

he's talking about the journey,

02:08:16

he's got a whole section on living large,

02:08:18

which we didn't even cover,

02:08:20

but there's a couple questions

02:08:21

and there's an exercise where he says,

02:08:23

write down your current income,

02:08:24

multiply it by a number,

02:08:25

it doesn't even matter what number it is.

02:08:27

It has to be a number.

02:08:28

And then ask,

02:08:29

well my current actions get me to this number

02:08:30

in the next five years.

02:08:32

If they will, keep doubling it until they won't,

02:08:34

then make your actions match your answer.

02:08:36

The first time you read something like that,

02:08:38

you're like, well, that's easier for you to say,

02:08:40

a lot harder for me to do.

02:08:42

When I read it now, I'm like,

02:08:44

you know what, that's really profound

02:08:46

and I completely missed it the first time.

02:08:48

(laughing)

02:08:49

He's also got Bonnie Ware's top five regrets of the dying.

02:08:52

Like I've read now 30 Lessons for Living,

02:08:54

which is an entire book on this topic,

02:08:56

but the point that he's making it here is like,

02:08:58

I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself,

02:09:00

not the life others expected of me.

02:09:02

There's so much stuff like that that's in here.

02:09:05

But also the way that it's presented,

02:09:07

I feel like it's very approachable

02:09:09

because you don't have to memorize a complete big system.

02:09:12

You don't have to memorize the three commitments.

02:09:14

You don't have to memorize the fourth thieves

02:09:16

or the sixth lies or anything like that.

02:09:18

The one, the one thing that you have to do,

02:09:23

that you have to understand in order for this book

02:09:25

to impact your life is that focusing question,

02:09:28

which even after I read it years later,

02:09:31

like I was still thinking about that,

02:09:32

I could still quote it,

02:09:33

what is the one thing that by doing it

02:09:35

is gonna make everything else easier or unnecessary.

02:09:39

So I think that this book is kind of unique

02:09:42

in that it almost doesn't matter where you are

02:09:46

on the spectrum or whether you're just being introduced

02:09:49

to personal growth and productivity,

02:09:52

or you've been in it for a long time.

02:09:54

This is still going to be a book that is going,

02:09:58

it has the possibility to significantly impact your life.

02:10:03

And so for that reason,

02:10:05

I walk away from this book more impressed with it,

02:10:08

now than I did when I read it the first time.

02:10:11

I kind of anticipated going into this book,

02:10:14

thinking that I'm looking back at it

02:10:17

through rose color glasses,

02:10:19

and there's that one question in there,

02:10:20

but the rest of this is just gonna be filler,

02:10:22

because I do remember that.

02:10:24

The one thing he gives you right at the beginning,

02:10:25

and then the rest of it, I don't remember.

02:10:28

But going back through it again,

02:10:29

I'm like, wow, there's actually a lot of meat here.

02:10:31

And even though it's 230 pages,

02:10:34

like you said, it's not too long.

02:10:38

That's really strange for the books that we cover,

02:10:42

where it's like, okay, I get the idea you can move on now.

02:10:45

He keeps moving on, and if you're gonna pick one thing,

02:10:49

if I were to pick one thing that to say negatively about it,

02:10:51

it's that he doesn't do a good enough job

02:10:54

of diving into the details

02:10:55

of some of these different things that he's sharing here.

02:10:58

It's almost like he has all this experience,

02:11:00

and he's assuming that he's talking to a peer or a colleague

02:11:04

who kind of understands this stuff already,

02:11:06

and if you don't understand it,

02:11:07

you don't have the opportunity to jump in and ask questions.

02:11:09

- Sure.

02:11:10

- Yeah, it's still my top book of all time,

02:11:14

and definitely a 5.0.

02:11:16

- Nice, it's a good one.

02:11:18

All right, we'll put that one on the shelf.

02:11:20

Coming up next, we were talking about Gladwell

02:11:23

here just a little bit ago, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

02:11:26

- Great timing.

02:11:27

- Have you started this one?

02:11:31

- I have not at all.

02:11:32

In fact, I don't even have this one yet.

02:11:33

I need to order it.

02:11:34

- Sure. - Thanks for reminding me.

02:11:35

- I am almost 30 pages in on it,

02:11:39

and essentially this is about snap decisions,

02:11:42

the first two seconds whenever you encounter something

02:11:45

in your gut reaction to it.

02:11:48

The whole book is about those two seconds.

02:11:50

That's my take on it so far, so.

02:11:52

- Interesting.

02:11:53

- I'm excited to talk through this one with you,

02:11:56

but yes, that's what's coming up next.

02:11:58

- Cool.

02:11:58

- What's your pick?

02:11:59

- The one after that, I went to the Bookworm Club,

02:12:01

like I said, I was going to,

02:12:03

and looked at the top vote getters,

02:12:05

and there were several which had the same number of votes.

02:12:09

The one that was the most intriguing to me,

02:12:12

well, actually there were two that were intriguing to me.

02:12:14

Quiet by Susan Cain, I did not pick that one,

02:12:17

but I think we definitely should talk about that one

02:12:19

at some point, maybe just 'cause I consider myself

02:12:21

an introvert. - I've read that one before.

02:12:22

- Have you?

02:12:23

Okay. - It's a good one.

02:12:24

- All right, well, to be continued,

02:12:27

but the one that I did select was the four tendencies

02:12:30

by Gretchen Rubin.

02:12:31

Gretchen Rubin is somebody that I've been familiar with

02:12:34

in the productivity space for a long time,

02:12:37

but I don't think I've ever read anything by her.

02:12:41

So that needs to change,

02:12:43

and when I saw that that was one of the most requested books,

02:12:46

it was easy for me to select that one.

02:12:48

- Nice.

02:12:49

Well, looking forward to that one, that'll be good.

02:12:52

I don't have a gap book this time, Mike,

02:12:53

between Christmas and New Year's, starting a new job,

02:12:58

it just wouldn't happen.

02:13:00

- Fair.

02:13:01

The gap book I'm reading right now,

02:13:04

I picked up as, it was just a comment that was made,

02:13:09

it was referred to in a different book that we read,

02:13:12

and I can't remember which one it was now,

02:13:14

but it's The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz.

02:13:17

And again, kind of timely because as we're reading

02:13:20

the one thing, there's a big section in here about

02:13:22

thinking big, my action item, thinking big

02:13:26

about faith-based productivity.

02:13:28

That actually was not even on my radar

02:13:30

when I started reading this,

02:13:33

but it was just something that I heard somebody else

02:13:35

recommend, and I'm just, just started it,

02:13:38

I'm 15, 20 pages into it.

02:13:40

And this is another one of those books,

02:13:42

kind of like the Stephen Covey thing,

02:13:43

I feel like if you were to read this,

02:13:45

there's a lot of profound truth in here,

02:13:47

but it's easy to write it off as like,

02:13:49

this guy doesn't really know my situation,

02:13:51

he has no idea what he's talking about.

02:13:53

And so it's a little bit difficult to apply

02:13:56

the right mindset to this and to believe that what he's

02:13:59

saying is actually going to work,

02:14:01

but this is something that has been around for a while,

02:14:05

I think on the cover it said there's like

02:14:06

six million copies sold or something.

02:14:08

So it's not just this guy who wrote this book,

02:14:12

like there's a lot of successful people who say like,

02:14:15

this is a good book, oh I know where I heard about it,

02:14:17

it was Michael Hyatt who referenced it,

02:14:19

I think in like best year ever.

02:14:20

And so Michael Hyatt, he's fairly successful,

02:14:23

I'd like to achieve Michael Hyatt's success.

02:14:25

So if he's attributing success to the mindsets,

02:14:29

approach by this book, then I'm gonna give it a shot.

02:14:32

- There you go.

02:14:32

- Which by the way, like this episode's already

02:14:34

way too long, but there's a section in the,

02:14:37

where was that?

02:14:38

It was in chapter 12, The Path to Great Answers,

02:14:41

where he talks about how books offer great answers.

02:14:44

He says in the one thing, a great way to get answers

02:14:46

from someone who has achieved what you,

02:14:48

a great way to get answers from someone who has achieved

02:14:50

what you hope to achieve is to read a book.

02:14:52

And I put as one of my little comments,

02:14:55

I wonder what do you think about bookworms?

02:14:56

(laughing)

02:14:58

- I kinda think you dig it.

02:15:00

- Nice, nice.

02:15:02

All right, well, in closing, I guess.

02:15:05

Mike's been selecting books from our book list,

02:15:08

the book recommendations.

02:15:10

How many more are you doing?

02:15:11

Are you just gonna start picking them from that?

02:15:12

Is that your plan?

02:15:13

- Hopefully.

02:15:15

- Okay. - I wanna see more votes

02:15:16

in there though.

02:15:16

- Okay, well, here's your call to action team.

02:15:19

Like get more votes in on the club.

02:15:21

So club.bookworm.fm, there's a whole recommendations category.

02:15:25

Sign up for an account, click the vote button.

02:15:28

It's that simple.

02:15:29

And if there's one that's not on the list

02:15:31

that you want to be on the list, just add it.

02:15:34

It's that simple, it's not too hard.

02:15:35

Give it a shot.

02:15:36

- Yeah, and we mentioned it in this episode,

02:15:38

but if you want a little bit of accountability,

02:15:41

as you do your one thing, then share your action items

02:15:44

on the bookworm club even.

02:15:46

We'd love to see that sort of stuff.

02:15:47

Join the podcast book club.

02:15:50

Also, if you wanna help out the show,

02:15:52

you can use the links in the show notes.

02:15:55

Those are Amazon affiliate links.

02:15:57

So we get a little bit of a kickback

02:15:58

when you decide to purchase a book or something

02:16:00

that we talk about if you use those links.

02:16:02

You can also leave a rating and review on iTunes.

02:16:06

Joe and I were looking at those even before we recorded here.

02:16:09

And I really appreciate the feedback that we get from those,

02:16:13

the people who have asked us to stop saying quote or unquote,

02:16:16

the people who pointed out that we should add chapter markers.

02:16:19

Like we do listen to that stuff

02:16:20

and we try to implement that stuff.

02:16:22

But even just leaving a five star rating,

02:16:24

and you don't have to write a big lengthy review,

02:16:26

that the iTunes algorithm basically takes

02:16:31

into account the ratings and also the recency of the ratings.

02:16:34

So that helps other people find out about the show,

02:16:36

believe it or not.

02:16:37

And we would really appreciate it

02:16:38

if you would help us join the revolution

02:16:40

and take down KCRW as the number one return for bookworms.

02:16:43

I'd appreciate it anyways.

02:16:45

- All right, call the actions done.

02:16:48

Let's pick up our next book next time,

02:16:50

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell,

02:16:51

and we'll see what our first impression is

02:16:53

since that's what we're all about.

02:16:55

There you go.