Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So for the first time in history, I think we do not have any follow up this time, Joe.

00:00:06

It's not legit. Not legit follow up, I should say.

00:00:10

That happens when you don't have action items, though.

00:00:13

I might be able to break that in a word.

00:00:17

I was looking at you, so you've got the two here.

00:00:19

It occurred to me, is it yesterday,

00:00:24

that I started doing something that I've been talking about and trying to do for a long time,

00:00:28

and actually saw results on it, so that there might be some long-term follow up.

00:00:32

Oh, that counts.

00:00:33

If we wanted to dig into the archives, Joe's been meditating lately.

00:00:37

What?

00:00:38

And actually kind of got some results out of it that I'm pretty comfortable with.

00:00:45

So, yeah, I'm a bit dumbfounded by it right now, but yes.

00:00:53

So details, what are you using? How is this happening?

00:00:56

Yeah, all the stuffs.

00:00:59

Part of the reason I attempted it again, because I didn't even tell you I was doing this.

00:01:03

This is, you know, for the listeners, this is Mike's genuine reaction,

00:01:07

because he had no clue I was bringing.

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I'm signing out on the fly.

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I, it's no secret. I joined a corporation here not too long ago,

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and have been working through a lot of that transition, going to work for someone else.

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All kinds of details that go with that that we're not going to go into quite yet,

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but with that, it meant that I had a lot more on my plate

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and had a lot to learn a huge transition.

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Lots going on.

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And as such, things got a little chaotic for me.

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And with the health, the health issues that I've been working through lately,

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it occurred to me that my brain was just all over the place.

00:01:52

So I sat down, I think it's been about a week ago now,

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and pulled out Oak, which is the app I usually trial with that,

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and sat down and did a 10 minute meditation, and was convinced it did nothing.

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But then I told myself, well, it usually takes a few days,

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like people say that, you know, the first time doesn't always have the immediate results.

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So I attempted day two and thought,

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I think I feel like I'm a little more focused at the moment.

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Maybe, I don't know.

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So then that was enough to get me to try day three.

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And after I completed my 10 minute meditation on day three,

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it occurred to me that I was going back into some of my corporate job a lot more on point

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and could stick with things a little bit better and could help bring other people back

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on task whenever they try to derail a conversation about something specific.

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So I've continued doing that daily.

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And it seems to be helping me quite a bit right now.

00:03:03

And I'll make two points here.

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One is I don't do this first thing in the morning

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because at that point, my mind is already pretty calm at that stage.

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So trying to settle down is not hard at all.

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But if I wait until about 10 a.m.

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when all the craziness is full force and then go take a break,

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that makes a big difference.

00:03:26

So I'm finally seeing some results from meditation after how long Mike is.

00:03:31

It's been like a year and a half of on and off experiments with meditation.

00:03:36

I don't know how long it's been.

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It's been a while.

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It's been so long that I've given up on it.

00:03:43

Yeah, so the cat being let out of the bag, I guess.

00:03:47

We kind of talked about this on a recent episode of Focus,

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where we had Chris Bailey on.

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Chris and David went back and forth quite a bit about the effectiveness

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they've gotten from meditation.

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I just kind of had to sit there quietly because I've found that I don't do that anymore

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and kind of have replaced that with an extended prayer time in the morning.

00:04:06

Which I am still formulating my thoughts on how and why that may be more effective for me.

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So I don't want to get into that quite yet.

00:04:18

But kind of what I'm realizing, I think, is that I see the benefit of meditation.

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I think a different application of it for me is more effective.

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So I've kind of gotten away from the...

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I was using headspace, logging into headspace and doing that for 10 minutes a day.

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I may go back to that at some point.

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I don't know though.

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I can't say that I've extremely missed it.

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And that feels kind of weird for me to say that because of how high I was on it not too long ago.

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Yeah.

00:04:51

So yeah, I have a feeling I'll be revisiting it at some point.

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But as of right now, it's kind of been replaced.

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I will say it's a bit odd to say that it's been helpful because to me it tells me that

00:05:08

not necessarily that meditation is a great thing that I need to be doing.

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But it's more of an indicator that my life got so chaotic that that 10 minutes is making a difference.

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That's been the indicator to me.

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So from my stance, it has more to do with I need to be focusing on trying to alleviate some of what's causing that chaos.

00:05:33

So it's prompting me to ask some other questions.

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I don't think any of those will come up today.

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We'll find out.

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But it's at least prompting some conversations, both me and myself as long as as well as conversations with my wife about what do I...

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What do I do to eliminate some of that chaos?

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Because if meditation is having this big of an impact, one, it's great.

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I'll continue doing it during this time.

00:06:00

But once we get past that chaotic period, will it continue to have that impact?

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It's hard to say.

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Sure.

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I will probably at that point drop it just to find out.

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But...

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Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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But I guess kind of the thing that was surprising to me is that I'm kind of going through this season right now where everything I know

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is wrong.

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So it's really stressful trying to figure out a new normal.

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Trying to launch this course.

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And in the midst of that, the thing that previously had given me a sense of calm and control has fallen by the wayside.

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So I kind of anticipated that I would be hearing from my wife who has to put up with my shenanigans that you've been really edgy lately.

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Yadda yadda yadda.

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What was happening before?

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But that hasn't been the case.

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So I don't know...

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I mean, I'm sure part of it, I attribute to my...

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I've rejiggered my morning routine.

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And like I said, I've got a little bit different and extended prayer time in the morning.

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So I kind of think that that's kind of taken the place.

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But I haven't seen the negative ramifications that you would typically expect from walking away from something like this, especially after you saw positive gains from it in the first place.

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Yep.

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So...

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I'll let the experiment continue.

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We'll see.

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You be the guinea pig and report back.

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Okay.

00:07:24

I'll try.

00:07:25

I did put a couple other things in the follow-up here because we didn't have any action items, but there were a couple of cool things that happened in the Bookworm Club.

00:07:32

So first of all, there was a little bit of a conversation which you were more active in than I was.

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So I wanted to say thanks to Martin McGowan and Awful Otter.

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I have no idea who Awful Otter is, but that's an awesome screen name.

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For helping me understand a little bit better, Paul VanRiper's victory, they, at least when I read through those comments, my response was a little bit more tempered.

00:07:58

I felt a little bit less righteous indignation for all the wrongs that had happened to Paul VanRiper.

00:08:05

So thank you for providing more context for that, everybody.

00:08:10

Yeah, and just to clarify, that's for Paul VanRiper was the leader, the general, the rogue general on the red team during the Millennium Challenge War Games.

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So if you don't remember who Paul VanRiper is.

00:08:24

Yeah, and we just read the book and thought we understood it all and these people said, "No, I've actually been involved in these. It makes sense."

00:08:32

With number one was kind of cool.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I didn't have to say the first-hand experience with these War Games, but at the same time, it's like, "Okay, yeah, there is another side of this."

00:08:42

So, thank you for contributing and completing the picture a little bit more for me.

00:08:48

The other one I want to call out is I want to say thank you to everybody who voted for Atomic Habits so that Joe and I can talk about it next time because this has been a long time in the making, I feel, and now we have justification for it.

00:09:00

Fair enough.

00:09:02

Fair enough.

00:09:03

Yeah, I will get to that when we get there, but yes, I'm about 50 pages into it as we're recording this one and I picked it up this morning.

00:09:15

So, that'll tell you a little bit.

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There.

00:09:19

Yep, no spoilers, but that story at the beginning.

00:09:22

Holy cow, right?

00:09:23

Hey, yeah.

00:09:25

Yep.

00:09:26

Alright, so Teaser, put a pin in that one.

00:09:28

Come back next time.

00:09:29

This time, we're talking about a different book, one that I had picked and actually one that was highly voted on the Bookworm Club, and that is the Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.

00:09:39

Now, the reason that I picked this one was basically I wanted to do something that people have voted for in the club, and this was the top vocater, if one of the top vocaters, if not the top vocater.

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So, right now, as we're recording this one, there are two at the top, atomic habits and the Four Tendencies.

00:10:00

Huh?

00:10:01

Alright, there we go.

00:10:02

So, it was the top.

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I was right.

00:10:04

Gretchen Rubin is also somebody that I have heard a lot about in the productivity space over the last several years, but I have never read or listened to anything by her.

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I know she has a podcast.

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I know she's written several books, so this was kind of weird that I had not come across any of her work before.

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And so, I picked this basically to remedy that.

00:10:33

And this is an interesting book that is basically built around an assessment that she created and provides a framework of explaining how and why we act the way that we do, which is where the name the Four Tendencies is.

00:10:44

She's named the Four Tendencies, comes from, she breaks it down into four different groups.

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The upholder, the questioners, the obligers, and the rebels.

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And she's got this cool little diagram at the very beginning, which kind of explains very simply what each of these are. We're going to get into each of them in more depth as we go here.

00:11:05

But just real briefly, she's got this like Venn diagram sort of a thing. The upholders are people who meet both outer and inner expectations.

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Questioners resist outer expectations, but meet inner expectations.

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Obligers meet outer expectations, but resist inner expectations and rebels resist both outer and inner expectations.

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So, if you were to combine this whole book down into a single page diagram, that's what she does right at the beginning of the book.

00:11:37

Yeah, and I do just want to clarify. It's easy to say a poller questioner obliger rebel meeting outer and inner expectations, but sometimes it's hard.

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At least I struggled at least at first to understand, "Okay, what do you mean by outer and inner expectations?"

00:11:53

And actually, what I came to is that outer expectations is when someone else wants you to do something or asks you to do something, do you jump and say, "Sure?"

00:12:04

Or do you resist that? That would be the outer expectations. The inner expectations would be things like, "I'm going to go for a run every day this week."

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Or every other day this week. Like, that's an expectation you're putting on yourself.

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So, that's an inner desire that you're giving yourself.

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So, do you easily and readily meet those whenever you give yourself those tasks?

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Or do you resist those? And depending on where you're at in this four circle, Venn diagram of sorts, it dictates whether or not you have the tendency to meet those outer or inner expectations.

00:12:43

Yep, exactly. So, let me give a really ridiculous example. You were using the event of recording bookworm as the what we want to have happen here.

00:12:54

So, the upholder would say, "Joe expects me to show up for bookworm and I expect myself to show up and record bookworm. Therefore, I'm going to show up and record bookworm."

00:13:05

The questioner is going to say, "Well, I want to show up and record bookworm, but I really don't know why Joe wants me to show up and record bookworm, but I'm going to do it anyways because I'm going to meet that inner expectation."

00:13:20

The obliger says, "Joe expects me to show up. I don't really want to, but because Joe expects me to show up, I'm going to show up."

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And the rebel is going to say, "I'm not going to show up unless I want to. It just so happens that I want to."

00:13:35

Is that fair?

00:13:37

I think that's fair. The one differentiating thing I would throw out there is that the rebel would potentially show up late.

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True.

00:13:47

Just because they don't want to be locked into a timeframe, they don't want to be told when something or what something, they want to do things on their own.

00:13:56

Yeah, they have to want to do it.

00:13:58

Yeah. So, as long as it fulfills something that they really want to do and they're allowed to do it on their own schedule, they'll jump right in.

00:14:09

But telling them they're going to record at 1.30 on a Saturday afternoon, probably going to get some pushback.

00:14:17

Yep.

00:14:18

Right. So, everybody has their primary tendency and then kind of like a secondary tendency.

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We'll get into our results here in a little bit.

00:14:27

But another way to clarify this, I think, would be to share the jokes that she tells at the beginning, which kind of cringe worthy, but I do think it helps explain the...

00:14:38

What each one of these does. So, you've been warned. All right. So, do you remember these jokes, by the way?

00:14:45

I didn't. I was just looking them up because I don't recall them.

00:14:49

Well, we'll do them right now, but we'll do them live. Okay. So, live reaction here. So, Joe, how do you get an upholder to change a light bulb?

00:14:56

Ask them to.

00:14:58

He's already changed it.

00:15:00

[Laughter]

00:15:02

I'm going to put in the little drum sound effect right there.

00:15:05

See, this is good. I kind of know the expectations here, too.

00:15:09

All right. So, how do you get a questioner to change a light bulb?

00:15:13

I should know this now.

00:15:15

Why do we need to change that light bulb anyway?

00:15:18

[Laughter]

00:15:19

Fair. It's the obliger that you could just ask.

00:15:23

Yep. How do you get an obliger to change a light bulb? Ask him to change it.

00:15:26

[Laughter]

00:15:27

And then, how do you get a rebel to change a light bulb?

00:15:30

They're not going to change a light bulb.

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They're going to change it yourself.

00:15:35

[Laughter]

00:15:36

Love it.

00:15:37

So, yeah, those were very corny jokes which were sent to her by somebody as an explanation for the four different tendencies and she liked them so she put them in the first chapter of the book.

00:15:47

And I do think you can really see the different tendencies in those responses. So, there you have it, little four tendencies humor for you.

00:15:55

Should we dive into the specific tendencies?

00:15:58

Yeah, and I just want to call out that we're going to go through these four.

00:16:02

And there is a quiz in the book. Do you remember the URL? We should get that in the show notes because I think it'd be cool for folks to take this test themselves.

00:16:14

It was pretty quick. What was it? Five minutes, maybe, if that?

00:16:17

They're in Liza Rant.

00:16:19

Yeah.

00:16:20

So...

00:16:21

But we'll stick a pin in that. I don't remember what the URL was because it's not like four tendencies.com.

00:16:26

It's related to her podcast, but we'll definitely put the link in the show notes. You can go through it for free.

00:16:32

And like you said, it just takes about five minutes. So, I did it. My wife did it. And I know you did it. And Becky did it as well, right?

00:16:39

Yeah. So, it's quiz.grichinroogan.com.

00:16:42

Oh, okay. That's not the one that I saw in my book, but if it goes the same place.

00:16:47

Well, it's because I'm web developer. The actual URL was like better podcasts, something slash quiz, but it redirects to quiz.grichinroogan.com.

00:16:59

So, if you want to bypass all the redirects. That's easier. That's how you do it. Yeah. That's what it is.

00:17:04

So, anyway, quiz.grichinroogan.com, that'll get you to the quiz that you can take. Again, it's super quick. We'll get into that later.

00:17:13

But these four, you know, Mike and I have already taken this. Our spouses have both Rachel and Becky have both taken this quiz as well.

00:17:23

So, our goal here is we're going to go through these. But when we get to hours or our spouses, we'll talk about some of those from a personal stance to some degree, as much as we can in a way to help explain them.

00:17:35

I think it would be a lot easier that way as opposed to just talking about them and then sharing our results at the end.

00:17:40

So, theoretically, it will be a lot easier that way. We'll find out. Go by the seat of your pants. So, that brings us to the first one, Mike.

00:17:48

Yeah, the first one is the upholder. And this is me. So, the upholder is the one who meets both outer and inner expectations.

00:17:58

The phrase that she uses at the top of this is that discipline is my freedom. And that part resonates with me.

00:18:05

So, at this point, I'm like, "Yeah, you nailed me. Good job." And then she goes into the strengths and weaknesses, which real briefly here, there's a bunch of them.

00:18:13

By the way, this part of the book, as she gets into these in the sections, was a little bit confusing because she just ties them all together in running paragraphs.

00:18:23

And then at the end distills them down to five or six points, which are always completely missing from the paragraphs that she wrote. Or is that just me?

00:18:32

I didn't notice that when I went through it. But then again, you're in a polder.

00:18:37

True. True. So, just as an example, some of the strengths, like when she's going through the paragraphs, she talks about how you readily meet expectations.

00:18:44

You're often very intrigued by rules. If you decide to do something you do at high degree of self mastery, really suffer from resentment or burnout, don't depend on others from motivation.

00:18:53

But then at the end of the chapter, she has simple phrases, which I think are a lot more concise and maybe better.

00:19:03

So, self-starter, self-motivated, sticks to a schedule and reliable as an example. And that kind of bugged me because I'm going through those descriptions.

00:19:11

I'm trying to jot down some notes. And then I get to the end and I'm like, "Well, I should just wrote that down. I'm just going to jump to the end of the chapter and write those down next to them."

00:19:18

Now, if there ever was an upholder... I don't know. Is that like a polder rebellion? I don't even know how you would describe that.

00:19:26

That's my big issue with this. When I got through the upholder section, I was like, "Yes, this is totally me."

00:19:31

But then we went through all the other sections and I was like, "Oh, but I also do that." And in this context, I also do that.

00:19:38

So, I don't know. Maybe it's not so simple. But anyways, those are the strengths.

00:19:43

What was your opinion of the upholder as you read through this? I know Gretchen mentions she's an upholder too.

00:19:53

And I feel like this is the first one she goes through. And she's kind of telling her story, but were you kind of bored with it at this point?

00:20:05

Or were you connecting to it? I mean, obviously I was because it was my tendency. But as a non-upholder, what was your reaction?

00:20:12

Yeah, going through this, I... Obviously, I'm not an upholder. But going through it, I could see how a lot of people would like to be an upholder.

00:20:26

Because my perception of it was that if an upholder wants to do something, they can motivate themselves to do it and don't have to fight themselves.

00:20:36

So, you can go through and say, "I'm going to work on this video course every day, and you don't struggle with that at all."

00:20:45

Theoretically.

00:20:47

Now, here's the trick with this. And I can sense... Because going through this and looking at each of these, every single one of them, I could see aspects of myself in.

00:21:01

And I think a lot of people will do that, which is why she doesn't say the four personalities. And she doesn't say the four productivity types or something like that.

00:21:14

It's tendencies. Like, you don't stick to this at all times. It's just the core one that you lean towards.

00:21:22

So, I don't think she spelled that out very well. I wish she had. But it... I only gathered that from the title of the book. She never really calls that out anywhere in this.

00:21:37

She does mention, like, you have within each of these... You'll have a tendency to lean towards the ones that are next to it, not directly opposite of it.

00:21:48

So, like, an upholder usually doesn't lean towards a rebel. And a rebel doesn't usually lean towards... on a polder. But an upholder can lean towards a questioner or an obliger. Pretty easy.

00:21:59

Yeah, based on that Venn diagram. Yeah. So, again, and there's a picture that Venn diagram on that quiz page, so quiz.gretchenroogan.com. Like, there is a picture of it there. I don't know if we'll get it in the show notes or not.

00:22:10

But you can take a look at that and you'll see how those two tend to lean over each other. But they don't, like, the upholder and the rebel don't overlap at all.

00:22:17

See, I think I'm exhibit A for "they do." But you don't understand how that's even possible on the framework that she puts forth.

00:22:27

So, I wondered if it was possible for the opposites to also overlap. Yep. Not just the sides. Because, again, me personally, I saw aspects of all four of these in myself.

00:22:45

But I definitely have one that I lean towards and that I am for the most part. So, I get your point that you can pull all those apart.

00:22:56

But I also don't think she's trying to say, "This is 100% all you ever do. She's just pointing to, "This is your tendency that you tend to fall back on."

00:23:07

Okay. Is that fair? That could very well be. That's definitely not the impression that I got reading this.

00:23:14

Because she doesn't flat out say, "You shouldn't get a job in this area if you're this tendency." But the way she wrote it kind of felt prescriptive to me where it was like, "This is the way that you work."

00:23:28

So, you should do this when you're working with somebody else of this type. It's not just just flow in a different tendency.

00:23:37

That's not any of the advice that she gives isn't tailored that way. It's kind of like, "This is who you are. You can't change who you are, so you have to do things this way if you want to get what you want."

00:23:46

Which is the last section of this book, by the way, is like applying the four tendencies.

00:23:52

Right. And then another way that I thought about it too. Do you know, so a holder typically can lean towards questioners or obligers? Do you know which one you lean towards?

00:24:02

I do. I wrote this down. I want to make sure I get it right. I'm going to hold her a bludger.

00:24:07

Yeah. That would have been my guess. Now, one of the aspects that we'll talk about later is that obligers have this rebellion side.

00:24:13

Yep. So, if you're... And this is something else I thought about. Okay. A holders, through what she's talking about, if they tip towards questioners or obligers, questioners and obligers can also tip towards a rebel.

00:24:26

And if an app holder can tip towards those, to me it's not that far of a stretch to say, "If you can tip towards questioners or obligers by proxy, you get to the rebel side as well."

00:24:37

You can also get to it that way. So, I don't know if any of that actually holds true. There wasn't. And I wrote this point down.

00:24:47

She doesn't have science behind this? No, she does not. This isn't one of these books that you bring in and say, "We did this study and we've verified it through these six follow-up studies."

00:25:03

That's not this type of book, which I was torn by because number one, it's kind of refreshing because that's most of the books we go through is just very head science heavy.

00:25:13

But at the same time, it's like, "Okay, how much truth is there in this?" Yeah. Probably some. Maybe quite a bit. I don't know.

00:25:26

But if you're looking for a book that comes at this type of model that's very science-based, this is not it. She's very much using personal experience and borderline random online surveys to get at some of this.

00:25:44

Yeah. And the survey itself isn't even that long. I think it was like 13 total questions or something. Again, it doesn't have to be a thousand questions and a hundred research studies done on it to validate its effectiveness.

00:26:00

She was looking for a tool to reinforce some observations that she had made. And I think there is a kernel of truth in the observations that she had made. I do have a rant at the end, so we'll get to that in a little bit.

00:26:14

Sure.

00:26:14

Should talk about my weaknesses. Yeah. So the weaknesses of an upholder, they generally feel compelled to observe rules even when it's more sensible to ignore them. Totally me become impatient when others don't live up to expectations.

00:26:28

Also me can become disapproving and uneasy when others misbehave. That's definitely me. Find it difficult to delegate because they doubt others will follow through. This is the one that got me because when I was working with Asian deficiency, Tan had me working with a VA.

00:26:43

And I had so much trouble working with this VA. And I was like, "This isn't working." When I read this, I was like, "Oh, that makes sense because everybody else was able to work with her and they were able to get results, but I just couldn't ever get it to work."

00:26:56

So maybe that's why my upholder tendencies. To others, the ways of an upholder seem extreme. Yep. I can sometimes seem cold and inflexible. Yep. Defensive, rigid, can seem humorless or uptight. I take issue with this one, but maybe it's true. I don't know.

00:27:13

And then demanding. That's definitely true. They're not very glamorous, edgy or endearing.

00:27:21

Hmm. Okay. Well, so there's parts of this that she's reading my mail. There's other parts of this which maybe I'm just choosing to say. I don't want to identify with that part of it. Some of these weaknesses though, like I said, I totally identify with.

00:27:38

She also explains the concept of tightening with upholders. This is where it becomes harder and harder to make an exception to take a break or lighten up. This definitely is something that I've dealt with.

00:27:49

So you just continue to do these things that you've always done and it's hard to let things go. Say, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I think with the upholders specifically, my life personally, if I'm not careful, can get to the point where I've signed up to meet all of these different expectations.

00:28:10

And I just go through the things and I try to try to get just a little bit more efficient. But I also think that the last several years have taught me a lot about the concept of effectiveness and how you need to make sure that you're doing the right things.

00:28:24

So this is something that I wouldn't say I struggle with anymore anyways. The three questions that I mentioned in the personal retreat course are kind of key to that.

00:28:35

I know what should I start doing, stop doing and keep doing and I make myself pick something to stop doing every single time. So maybe I've just built systems which are going to combat against this.

00:28:45

But this whole idea of tightening is something that people need to be aware of because you don't even see the expectation expectation creep I guess. I don't think that's a term. I'm just, I'm going to use that though. I think it kind of makes sense.

00:28:59

So I think that's a project creep expectation creep and you just keep tightening the screws and squeezing out a little bit more efficiency until at some point, something's got to give.

00:29:09

And this can occur in any context, not just work, which is typically what people think of when they think of productivity is how can I crank out more widgets. How can I get a little bit more work done during my day.

00:29:19

I don't really like that definition of productivity. I think productivity is just doing what you intend to do. And you can apply that to your personal life as well.

00:29:28

This is definitely something that is worth calling out here for all of my fellow upholders who maybe are dealing with this. This is something that you should be aware of.

00:29:37

Something I want to call out here just because I find it entertaining. Two of the weaknesses that you pointed out, which oddly enough you saved for the very end of this list and yet on the list that she gives us there, the first two are defensive and rigid.

00:29:53

And then you're going to jump into the chapter.

00:29:58

But it's interesting to me that you're fighting some of this and not wanting to be boxed into just the upholder when that is an aspect of that personality in itself.

00:30:12

It's just just an interesting point.

00:30:15

Yeah, that's fair. Because I'm not one that wants to say this is the gospel truth. This is just a rough guideline. I'm willing to say that.

00:30:27

But it seems like you're trying to lock in on one or the other. I'm not sure that that's what you're doing, but it's what it sounds like to me.

00:30:34

Yeah. Well, maybe I got to do my rant now.

00:30:41

Okay, so we can pin it and we'll come back later if you want. That's fine. We can go on to questioners. That's fine.

00:30:49

Okay. Well, before we do that, let me give you a couple hints for dealing with an upholder because this is another part of each one of these chapters, which I think is worthwhile.

00:30:59

This is probably the most valuable part here. So if you were to boil down what can you get out of this book, recognizing the way other people work and learning how to speak their language.

00:31:10

There's a ton of value just in that. So dealing with an upholder, they hate to miss expectations. They have trouble setting priorities because they all seem important. See, again, like there's something that like, I don't have trouble with that.

00:31:22

But maybe that's just because of the work that I've done the last several years. Upholders are self motivated. They want to meet expectations, but they don't like it when their schedule gets changed.

00:31:32

Yep. A casual comment like, you should do X might set off enormous and unintended expectations. Totally. I've done that where someone has made a comment and then I've run with it and then like, oh, actually, I didn't really mean that. I was just kind of thinking out loud.

00:31:49

They may become angry or defensive at the suggestion. They drop the ball or made a mistake and they put a high value on a follow through. That term in particular is interesting to me because a while back, I read for one of my gap books.

00:32:06

What was it called? It's the one written by Kathy Colby, the person behind the Colby assessment. The corner of connection. That's what it was. And one of the scales in the Colby assessment is follow through.

00:32:20

So I kind of am wondering, is there a correlation between these four tendencies and the Colby assessment? I bet there would be, but also the Colby is like the science based version of this. So there'd probably be some inconsistencies too.

00:32:36

But I kind of think that like the upholder, that maybe aligns with the follow through the Rebel is going to be the quick start. The questioner is going to be the fact finder and then the obliger would line up with the implementer.

00:32:55

I was curious to see how the strengths finder lines up with these. I bet there's a lot of correlation with those as well. But yeah, I think you have a good point. At the end of each of these, there's a whole chapter on dealing with an upholder questioner obliger Rebel.

00:33:12

And it's very helpful to go through that because she spells out in each of those like, okay, if you have an upholder that you're working with and this is at work, or you are married to them or it's an upholder child, if they are a health client, or if you're picking a career,

00:33:31

she goes through each of those and tells a couple stories for each of those scenarios, which is super helpful. And again, I think to your point, those are extremely valuable areas because once you've learned about the tendency, then you kind of get some action, not necessarily action items, but examples of how it can be applied.

00:33:51

And I know we're spending a lot of time here on upholder. It's the first one. We're explaining some of the book layout. So I get that. But yes, I did find that section in each of these areas quite helpful.

00:34:02

Cool. So you move on to the next one, which is questioner?

00:34:06

Yes. Now, I'll introduce this one because questioner is exactly what it sounds like. They like to ask a lot of questions. They meet inner expectations very readily, but tend to resist outer expectations.

00:34:25

And this is my wife, Becky. So she falls into this category. And as I was reading this, I was like, "Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You do all of this." So this has prompted a lot of conversations between us, thankfully, before this recording, simply because I was like, "Okay, tell me how your brain ticks in this way." So it was very fascinating.

00:34:47

But just to kind of go through the strengths side of this, looking at the summary of this, the points here are data-driven. They are fair-minded according to their own judgment, interested in creating systems that are efficient and effective.

00:35:04

They're willing to play devil's advocate, comfortable with bucking the system if it's warranted. They are interconnected and unwilling to accept authority without justification.

00:35:14

And I had all kinds of points here, just kind of going through this with my wife, like, "Okay, Becky. You're definitely one that's just super focused on data.

00:35:28

Like, this woman can research like nobody's business." And it's because she's got tons and tons of questions about things, which is awesome because you really get deep on what's the right decision.

00:35:41

And usually they come out with awesome decisions as a result. So it was fascinating to kind of work through that.

00:35:48

Data-driven and need justification, always asking why. If you can convince a questioner about the rationale behind a decision, they are all in.

00:36:01

But if they question or have second thoughts on the reasoning behind a decision, they're going to fight and continue being quizzical.

00:36:13

Even so much so that Gretchen told a couple stories about some folks who lost their jobs because their boss thought they were being insubordinate or not going along with what their expectations were.

00:36:27

When really they were just trying to find the justification for what they were being asked to do. So it was very interesting.

00:36:35

So what was your take on the strengths side of that, Mike?

00:36:39

Well, when I read the strengths side of this, I thought to myself, "Okay, I was wrong. I'm actually a questionnaire."

00:36:47

I can tell you from working with the family business, the thing that has caused the most friction between my dad and myself has been my dad.

00:36:58

I guess the Colby term for it would be, "He's a quick start." So he just has an idea and he goes and does it.

00:37:04

And I'm like, "No, why are we going to do that? Or what if we did it this way?" And he just would get so frustrated with me because I would always have another question.

00:37:13

And to him, it's a challenge and it's a dragging of my feet that I don't want to do this thing.

00:37:19

And really, I just want to be able to connect to the vision which really, like he hasn't articulated yet.

00:37:26

It's just this gut instinct and that's how he works.

00:37:28

So that caused a lot of friction and lots of different examples from lots of different other organizations and teams that I've worked with over the years.

00:37:39

So I definitely get the wanting to know why and being driven by the data part of this.

00:37:47

Now, the flip side of this is the weaknesses side.

00:37:51

Can suffer analysis paralysis? Definitely true. There are times when my wife, I have to tell her, "Just decide already."

00:37:58

I'm like, "You've been researching this for a month and a half. We're talking about a pair of shoes. Please, just buy a pair. It'll be okay."

00:38:07

Okay, so true story. Four months ago, I started doing some research on weighted blankets because I was like, "This sounds like a great idea. I definitely want one of these."

00:38:23

So I was looking at the different options and spent probably about a month researching them and could not make a decision.

00:38:33

So eventually just walked away from it. And then my wife surprised me with one for Christmas, which I absolutely love, but I never would have picked it because I couldn't make the decision.

00:38:43

Yep. Anyway, analysis paralysis, that's it to a T right there.

00:38:49

Impatient with what he or she sees as others complacency. And I think that can come out with things like waiting in lines was the examples she mentioned.

00:39:01

Questioners typically have issues with waiting in line because if there's a line that means there's an inefficiency somewhere, and the business or operation should be doing something to solve that inefficiency.

00:39:12

So this is again totally new. If you ever watch me waiting in line for the first 30 seconds, I do pretty good. And then I start fidgeting. And then the phone comes out.

00:39:24

And by the time I get to the register, even if it's only like five minutes, I'm sighing real big and I'm looking around, rolling my eyes because I just can't stay on waiting in line.

00:39:33

So maybe you again question or tendencies. I don't know. Maybe you're really close to that upholder question or line. Maybe you're right in there.

00:39:42

Could be. All right. What else is here? Crackpot potential. Unable to accept closure on matters that others consider settled if questions remain unanswered. Yeah, that I could see that.

00:39:54

Definitely me. My wife will sometimes continue asking me questions on things that I thought we had already decided. And in some cases already completed.

00:40:02

But I think that we're still talking about it. It's like, why? This is already done. But yes, she needs to have those questions answered. They may refuse to observe expectations that others find fair or at least non optional.

00:40:15

The example given was traffic regulations. Sometimes questioners will violate traffic regulations because they don't understand why those rules are in place and they don't make sense.

00:40:25

That could get you in trouble. That one seemed weird to me. I mean, maybe it's just I don't really understand this. But since you live with a question or when was the last time Becky was like, I'm just going to go the wrong way.

00:40:36

Yeah, that was why is this here? Traffic regulations is, she doesn't struggle with that one. And I think that's because she has accepted the rationale from a broad stance of regulations of someone else has thought this through in detail.

00:40:52

And if I follow these, this is the safest way to operate. So because these rules are in place, this is the safe way to go. So she's bought in on that. So I don't, she doesn't question those.

00:41:03

So yes, she's she's fine in that regard. It when it gets to things like, I'm trying to think of an example. Like when you start talking about things around like health insurance or health care sharing ministry or.

00:41:18

Simple things like when should paperwork be filled out? Like she has tons and tons of questions around those and will sometimes try to skirt those systems. So I could see it in that regard.

00:41:29

But when it comes to traffic, no, she won't do that. Okay.

00:41:34

But probably one of the keystone aspects here is that questioners may resist answering others questions. Now this, this just baffled me. It's like, okay, questioners. And I know there are some of you listening.

00:41:49

You will ask tons and tons of questions, but the moment someone turns around and starts asking you similar questions, you get impatient and frustrated.

00:41:59

To me, that is just bonkers. Like, come on, like you're the one asking questions. Like that didn't make sense to me. But I understand it. And it's, and I asked my wife about it.

00:42:11

I was like, okay, why is this? Why is it that if I start asking you questions in the same way that you ask me questions, you get angry with me? Like, why is that?

00:42:19

And it's because, at least according to my wife and in her scenario, it's because she's already thought through the whole thing. She's already done all the research. She understands exactly why she's doing something. She's fully justified it.

00:42:32

You have no business questioning me on my decision because I've already done all the hard work and come to that decision. So there's no point rehashing any of this because it's already made.

00:42:42

Like, that's, that's her mentality anyway. That's the way she put it. So I was very entertained by that. It was very interesting.

00:42:50

Yeah, in the book Gretchen Rubin describes it as they'd rather not explain themselves because it's exhausting to revisit it. And that one made sense to me, although hearing you describe it in Becky's words, I think that makes sense to at least in a team-based scenario.

00:43:11

So, for example, if we're going to delegate work and we're all working on this project and we're implementing scrums, so we're going to get together in two weeks and have our sprint meeting.

00:43:24

And we're going to talk about the work that was done. I can get frustrated too when people are like, "Okay, so, like, why did we do this?" And then you have to re-explain everything that already happened rather than just talk about the results.

00:43:39

The people who want to know why, even why we did it that way, that can be frustrating.

00:43:47

And can sometimes get reprimanded. Yes.

00:43:51

Depending on the boss.

00:43:53

Yep. One thing I thought was interesting in this section was her advice to look to second-level reasons for motivation.

00:44:01

I instantly thought of the five-wise exercise from this and why that might work for some people who are questioners.

00:44:10

You familiar with that exercise?

00:44:12

No.

00:44:13

Basic idea is if you want to get to the root motivation for something, you just keep asking yourself why.

00:44:21

Just as an example off the top of my head, I had a goal to run a half marathon. And if you were to ask me, "Why did I want to run a half marathon?"

00:44:29

It's because I want to be in really good shape.

00:44:33

Well, why do you want to be in really good shape? Because I want to be able, like, if you dig down deep enough, the root is that

00:44:39

I want to be able to play basketball, rough house with my kids when they're older because I wasn't able to do that with my dad.

00:44:46

Every time we played basketball and I was in high school, he was older. He ended up getting hurt.

00:44:51

So, I don't want that experience from my kids. I recall like having to hold back.

00:44:57

And I don't want that. I want to be able to just be there doing it with them.

00:45:01

I don't want them to have to change their approach because they don't want to hurt dad.

00:45:05

So, like, if you dig deep enough, that's the root motivation is I want to improve the quality time that I can spend with my kids when they're older.

00:45:12

Just being boys.

00:45:14

But you won't get there unless you keep asking the question, "Why?" when you trace it all the way back to my goal of running a half marathon.

00:45:22

Does that make sense?

00:45:23

Yes.

00:45:24

Okay. So, if you have that long-term goal in mind of I want to be able to build this relationship with my kids in this specific way when they're older, that might provide a little bit more motivation than, "Oh, I got to go do my run today because I got this half marathon coming up in May and maybe I should just not show up."

00:45:45

That's the difference there.

00:45:47

So, moral of the story there is questioners need to find rationale for why they're doing something and sometimes it's not direct.

00:45:55

If it's something from someone else, you can sometimes take an expectation that someone else has given you and take it to the second order and try to find intrinsic motivation for it so that you can get yourself to follow through on it.

00:46:11

I think that's what you're getting at.

00:46:12

Yeah, exactly. Keep digging deeper and you'll find a strong enough why, which is going to provide the motivation to do the thing that you want to do.

00:46:20

And that's really what Gretchen Rubin's talking about here.

00:46:23

Sure.

00:46:24

But the thing that I would kind of push back on, I can see why that would be valuable for a questioner, but I don't think it's any less valuable for any of the other tendencies.

00:46:34

So, I understand why she put it in this chapter, but I kind of don't think that it's compartmentalized to only this chapter.

00:46:44

Sure.

00:46:45

Yeah, I could see how, and we'll talk about this one shortly, but translating that one from the questioner to the rebel, I could see that working to some degree.

00:46:58

I don't know that that would work as well for an obliger. It may have the opposite consequences, turning it from an external expectation into an internal.

00:47:11

Well, now it's one that they'll resist instead of one that they would follow through on.

00:47:15

Yeah, it would go so well.

00:47:17

Right, so let's get to the obligers. Before we do that, I also want to real quickly go through how to deal with a questioner.

00:47:23

All right, so reject lazy explanations, enforce limitations to help force action.

00:47:29

Questioners can make a spouse feel attacked or unsupported.

00:47:32

That's something that you should just recognize, I guess, and try to steer away from if you are a questioner.

00:47:37

Yep.

00:47:38

You can't say because I said so to a questioner child, that was literally what she said in the book.

00:47:43

And my response was, you can't say because I said so to any child.

00:47:46

Like, that just doesn't work. And I don't want to get into parenting philosophy here necessarily.

00:47:54

But, I mean, I don't know. Do you do that?

00:47:58

No, but again, that's a view on parenting.

00:48:03

Right.

00:48:04

Right.

00:48:05

Okay.

00:48:06

So backing slowly away from that one, it's extremely important to answer questions regarding medication for healthcare professionals.

00:48:13

This one, I totally like the example that she shared.

00:48:17

This made so much sense. If you have somebody in your office recognizing what tendency they are and speaking to that tendency so that they follow through and take their medication is a very, very, very good idea.

00:48:29

Yes.

00:48:31

I have medication that I have not taken before.

00:48:37

And I'm looking back on it. I can kind of, I'm replaying the scenario even though it was a long time ago of being in that doctor's office and they're trying to explain to me, for example, I had a seizure when I was 18 years old.

00:48:51

I was just out of my senior year of high school.

00:48:55

And I was standing in line at a McDonald's with a friend of mine and had a seizure in line at the McDonald's.

00:49:02

So the rest of me to the hospital, they gave me some medication, ended up way over prescribing my medication and I was taking enough for a 300 pound woman.

00:49:11

Basically, it was making me drowsy. I was sleeping like 12 hours a day and could do nothing.

00:49:15

So dial it back, get it fixed, go away, go into college and they couldn't tell me why I had a seizure.

00:49:22

They're like, well, maybe you'll have another one. Maybe you'll be fine the rest of your life. We don't really know.

00:49:26

So freshman to college, of course, I'm not taking my medication. And then I had another one in the fall of my freshman year at college.

00:49:36

I've not had any issues since then. There's figured out a lot over the last, gosh, how long was that? 15, almost 20 years now?

00:49:46

But yeah, so I guess maybe I'm a questioner in that respect, but I could locate myself when they were sharing some of those stories.

00:49:56

Yeah, for sure. But yes, there are a lot of questions I have for questioners, but they don't always, they're not received well.

00:50:07

That said, let's go to a bliger. So this is me. Sounds like it's also Rachel. Yep, according to the results, anyways.

00:50:16

Yeah, this, so as a bliger, we meet outer expectations, but resist inner expectations. Very easy to follow through on something someone else wants me to do.

00:50:28

But when it comes to things I set out for myself to do, I fight. And yes, I was fascinated by going through this because I'm like, yep, yep, same scenario you had with a pollers like that's me, totally me.

00:50:43

Yep, that's me. So here are, here's some of the strengths. Good boss, responsive leader, a team player, feels great obligation to me.

00:50:54

Other expectations responsible, willing to go the extra mile responds to outer accountability. That last point there responds to outer accountability.

00:51:03

That was a key point with this in that it's easy for a bliger to put off things they've set up for themselves in an effort to do something for someone else.

00:51:14

Unless there is external accountability, someone else holding them to follow through. And this is where I would say Bookworm is key for me in this.

00:51:26

So let's go all meta here. Nice. In that if it were not for Bookworm, I can guarantee you I would read a tenth of the books that we read.

00:51:36

If that. And it's primarily because of the fact that Mike is expecting me to show up in a week and a half from the time I pick up a book or two weeks from the time I pick up a book and to talk about it.

00:51:50

Well, Mike is expecting me to do that. So I darn well better get my button gear and read that book. Like that's, that is a lot of it for me.

00:51:59

And I've had this conversation with a few folks like if it were not for Bookworm, I would not be reading as much as I was. And that's, that's huge.

00:52:06

Like there's a prime example. Like I will not read as much for myself. But because I get the chance to talk through it with someone else and share it with our audience.

00:52:16

Like because all of you are listening to this, that's like the only reason I'm really focused on reading so much because you all expect me to show up and do it.

00:52:25

Like that is, that is a huge motivator for me because of the external accountability that comes with that. So there you go, Mike.

00:52:33

Nice. Positive peer pressure. Love it. Yeah. Thanks guys.

00:52:38

This is something though that I kind of think, again, you know, I have some issues with bucketing people into these four different tendencies and you already tried to talk me off the ledge and say they're just tendencies.

00:52:51

But there's a whole big section in here about picking the right kind of external accountability. And I kind of feel like this applies to anybody, whether or not you are an obliger or an upholder like me where you do want to meet external expectations.

00:53:07

I think this would even, if you find the right thing, that would even work for a questioner or a rebel. So some of the things that she talks about having apps, notifications or emails, an actual person, an accountability group, client customer or employee, deadlines, consequences for actions, some crazy examples she shared.

00:53:29

Like somebody had scheduled an embarrassing social media post and they have to wake up on time in order to disable it every day.

00:53:37

Somebody else would leave the gym with a friend's shoe so that they have to show up in order for him to work out the next day.

00:53:44

Like, I kind of feel like there's a ridiculous hack for lack of a better term to cause you to follow through no matter what your tendency is, but external accountability regardless of your tendency is a good idea.

00:54:01

So it's cool that Bookworm provides the external accountability for you to read the books and create the positive change, get the new ideas that you want to implement in your life.

00:54:14

So you kind of, you've kind of figured out how that works for you, but I guess what I'm arguing is that regardless of the obliger role, there's that potential in everybody.

00:54:24

Yeah, my wife would argue with you. Well, she's a questioner. So I'm just saying, like she, if she decided that she wanted to read books on a regular basis, she would.

00:54:37

She wouldn't need something outside of herself to do so at all. It doesn't. Like she reads a lot and has no one or nothing at all to hold her to that.

00:54:50

She does a lot of things like that with no issue whatsoever. So I'm not sure I would agree with you on that. I think there are definitely nuances within each of these tendencies that I could see that, you know, with upholders.

00:55:06

Maybe if they're leaning towards the obliger side, they definitely need that because I think that the opposites can lean towards each other. I could see how some questioners could do that.

00:55:17

Rebels, if they're leaning towards one side or the other, could do the same thing. Like I could see that, but I think if you're a questioner through and through, that would potentially sound like nonsense.

00:55:31

Yeah.

00:55:32

And even Gretchen Rubin, like to her, she felt like something like that was nonsense because she doesn't need that type of accountability at all.

00:55:41

She even wrote books that were talking about meeting goals and having happy life and people would write into her and say, "Hey, yeah, that's great. All these things you're saying to do are amazing. But how do you get yourself to do those?"

00:55:53

She's like, "Well, you just commit to it and you just do it." Like that's...

00:55:56

Yeah.

00:55:57

Well, no, it doesn't work that way for everybody.

00:56:00

I agree, but I guess what I'm arguing is that the different tendencies, maybe they evolve or change regarding the context. So the book example with your wife, just use that one for a little bit.

00:56:16

Maybe for that one, she's totally a questioner and she is going to ask the questions and figure out the value and read the books herself. But with something else, like exercise or fitness or something else, there's going to be a different tendency and a different strategy that's going to work, at least in my experience.

00:56:35

So for example, the external accountability to read the books worked for you with Bookworm, but the external accountability to use the meditation app did not work. So why is that? It's the exact same mechanism, right? That you use this as an action item and you tried it and you couldn't stick with it, even though you didn't want to come back and say, "Yeah, I failed at this action item." Right?

00:56:59

Well, no, because some people respond to an app doing that. Some people need an actual person. I need an actual person in most scenarios. There's one scenario where it doesn't.

00:57:13

But for the most part, it needs to be another human being or I need to connect it to a different type of external expectation of some sort. So like, for example, this is a good one. So health, it's no secret. I'm working through all kinds of health stuff.

00:57:32

I discovered that one area where an app does work for me is tracking. As much as I've railed against tracking in the past, what I realized is that if I track something, I'll actually follow through and logging it and I will log it if I get it done and I'm going to make sure I get it done because I know I need to log it so that the data is there.

00:57:50

So one of the things that I need to do in my current state is keep track of how much caffeine I'm consuming and how much water I'm drinking. Those are two very important things that I need to be keeping an eye on. Well, every time I drink a glass of water, I make sure I log it because I need to keep an eye on how much I'm consuming across the entire day, which then means that I always know if I'm at my target for the day or not, because now that has become an external target that I'm trying to hit.

00:58:19

So that acts as external accountability to me in that regard.

00:58:24

But when it comes to things at my web development business, because I'm still operating that, I've learned that I need to be posting. It's a virtual team, remote team.

00:58:35

So I'm posting and writing out what it is I need to do each day as part of our standups.

00:58:40

And that acts as a list that other people can see that are on my team and they expect me to follow through on that. So now I've got another person expecting me to follow through on what I've committed to.

00:58:52

So those are mechanisms that I use, but they do require the external piece.

00:58:57

I explained some of this to my wife and how these are things that are important to me. And she looked at me like I was an idiot. Like this is.

00:59:06

Why do you need all this? Just make sure you're drinking water regularly.

00:59:11

But it doesn't work that way for me. If I just do that, I'll drink two glasses instead of seven. It doesn't work that way.

00:59:19

But that concept is completely foreign to her.

00:59:23

Okay.

00:59:24

Well, let me comment this a different way.

00:59:29

So here's the defensive side. I might come in and out.

00:59:32

Yeah. Well, page 123, she says, obligers may assume their behaviors due to low self-esteem or lack of motivation or because of some character flaw.

00:59:41

I have issues with that whole statement because those are some very different things that she combines into a single sentence.

00:59:50

But let's just use self-esteem. All right.

00:59:54

So the obliger who is not going to meet internal expectations, but is going to meet external expectations.

01:00:02

I would argue that regardless of the obliger tendency, if you do have low self-esteem and someone is asking you to do something, you can act very much like an obliger.

01:00:17

Right? We could be agree on that point.

01:00:20

I don't know. I am an obliger, so I do that anyway.

01:00:23

Okay. Well, see, here's the thing. And this is my rub with this whole thing.

01:00:28

Self-esteem is an emotional intelligence skill to come back to that argument and it can be developed.

01:00:37

I mean, the family business, we've got an assessment which I almost texted you and I'm like, "Hey, do you want to go through this prior to this so we can compare the results?"

01:00:45

But I didn't want to...

01:00:46

I almost did that too.

01:00:47

I'm not going to focus on that thing so much. But if you want to go through it, I'm happy to hook you up with it.

01:00:51

But the basic idea is that these 12 different success skills, self-esteem is one of them.

01:00:57

And you take the assessment, which is a research-based assessment, I think on that one in particular, there's like 120 doctoral papers and books that have been written on it.

01:01:05

It's been used like 8 million times. Okay?

01:01:09

So in terms of is this research-based, there is probably nothing more research-based.

01:01:14

And you start with the assessment, you identify your lowest areas, so it's very possible.

01:01:18

You take that assessment and self-esteem is your lowest area.

01:01:22

And then the research shows that these emotional intelligence skills are all interrelated, so you'll pick just the lowest ones to work on.

01:01:29

And if you can get some positive movement in those lower areas that actually reverberates across all of your different emotional intelligence skills.

01:01:36

It's not like one to one with all the other skills, but they are related.

01:01:41

So I've seen lots of people who have identified that they have low self-esteem, and then they go through a curriculum and they develop high self-esteem.

01:01:52

When you have high self-esteem, maybe you're able to say, "You know what? I'm not going to meet that external expectation, and I'm going to rebel against my oblige tendencies, and I'm going to stick up for me."

01:02:05

I've seen that happen, and just because that happens one time, obviously that doesn't mean that you've now changed the way that you're wired, but that's kind of the rub with me on this.

01:02:17

Because like I said, you kind of rocked my world at the beginning when you said, "These are the four tendencies, and maybe you can flow in and out of them."

01:02:23

I actually wrote in my notes that this whole idea of emotional intelligence is a different thought process than these four tendencies, because the four tendencies are basically prescriptive.

01:02:32

So this is the way that you are, and this is the way that you should work in order to get what you want from the other tendencies.

01:02:37

But personally, I believe that you can develop and change these emotional intelligence skills, and the key here is that you shouldn't just be excusing the behaviors that you desire to change by saying, "Oh, I guess I'm an obliger. I guess I'm always going to put other people's desires ahead of my own."

01:02:55

And I'm not arguing that you can change your tendency. I guess what I'm arguing is that maybe the four tendencies framework is only showing a small piece of this, and that there's a whole lot more to this concept.

01:03:09

But this is the one where it really sticks out to me. This is also by the way the biggest group, according to her survey results.

01:03:16

Yeah, like 47%. Yeah. Exactly.

01:03:19

So I don't know how much of this is a blide your tendency, and how much of it is confirmation bias for, "Oh, I guess I do always acquiesce to what other people want from me."

01:03:30

I don't know. I think there's, and she calls us out numerous times that people can, like, this is just one aspect of a broader personality.

01:03:39

She calls that out quite a bit in the section of... What is the broader personality?

01:03:43

Well, there's all kinds of ways to come at that. But even in the dealing with sections, one of those is always career, like picking a career that's good for each of these.

01:03:53

She always says, "Every job is doable by any of these tendencies. Some are just easier for others."

01:04:01

Now, there's all kinds of things, like what you're talking about with self-esteem and stuff, and those are all things that hit the nail on the head for me.

01:04:12

That's exactly true in most of those scenarios. I think what you're getting at is emotional IQ, or EQ, I think, is what they'll refer to it as.

01:04:22

To me, that's completely different than what we're talking about here.

01:04:26

Yes, that is a thing. Yes, you can improve and change on different aspects of that.

01:04:31

But again, this is a tendency. This is not something you're locked in on. It's not black and white.

01:04:37

It would be great to get Gretchen Rubin's response to that, because I kind of feel like she was saying, "This is the way things are."

01:04:46

She uses examples of the person asking for her slides, and she's like, "Well, I really don't use slides."

01:04:52

And I'm like, "Oh, but I'm this, and you're that, so you should give them to me."

01:04:55

And she's like, "Oh, okay, yeah, I guess I will, because that's what you are."

01:04:58

When I read it, it didn't seem like there was a whole lot of wiggle room to me anyways.

01:05:02

If there is, that kind of changes a lot of my thoughts on this book.

01:05:06

I think it depends on which one you landed in, Mike, because I read this with tons and tons of leniency across all these.

01:05:13

To me, there was a lot of flexibility.

01:05:16

No, this is what she said.

01:05:17

No, I didn't lock it in at all. I was like, "Well, there are some aspects of questioners that is me, even though it's the opposite of me.

01:05:25

I can see parts of the questioning in myself."

01:05:28

But that didn't impact me as a, "Oh my gosh, you're so wrong, Gretchen."

01:05:33

I didn't have that response at all, because to me, she calls this out.

01:05:38

Yes, you can, these bleed over. She says that. She even has entire sections on a bliger rebels and a bliger upholders,

01:05:46

and the overlap between those. She even calls that out every single time.

01:05:51

Anyway, we don't need to keep going on this, because I need to talk about a bliger rebellion here.

01:05:56

I guess I got weaknesses yet, which can get me to a bliger rebellion.

01:06:00

Okay, here we go. So, possible weaknesses with a bliger.

01:06:03

It's susceptible to overwork and burnout, because they do what everyone else asked them to do.

01:06:08

It may show the destructive pattern of a bliger rebellion.

01:06:11

Pin that exploitable, may become resentful, has trouble seeing no or imposing limits.

01:06:19

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, on all five of those.

01:06:24

A bliger rebellion being the big one here.

01:06:27

Now, this is what happens when people either take advantage of an obliger,

01:06:34

or don't show appreciation to, said, a bliger, because what can happen is they will continually meet your requests

01:06:43

until they hit that wall, and then good luck getting them to follow through again,

01:06:47

because then they become a rebel in that sense.

01:06:50

Now, to compound this, I'm pretty sure, Mike, that I'm an obliger rebel.

01:06:55

I think I lean towards the rebel side, which is kind of entertaining,

01:07:01

and whenever I was explaining it to Becky, she's like, "What? What is wrong with you?"

01:07:07

Because I think she's a questioner that leans towards an upholter.

01:07:10

Opposite's attract.

01:07:12

So, we're directly opposite on those regards.

01:07:16

So, it's very entertaining, but yes, this obliger rebellion is something I can tell you

01:07:21

from firsthand experience is one that I can very easily, like if people ask me for things,

01:07:27

I will bend over backwards to make it happen.

01:07:29

If Becky asks me for something, I will go to the moon to make it happen.

01:07:33

But the moment people start asking repeatedly, and I get the feeling that they're doing it just because

01:07:38

they think I'll follow through on it, then I snap and good luck getting me to follow through.

01:07:44

It's so hard for me to break through on that.

01:07:48

If I continue to be nagged and harassed over it, sometimes I'll still acquiesce and go with it.

01:07:54

But a lot of times you're going to have to fight to get me to go through with something,

01:07:59

because I'll just continually say no or just ignore it.

01:08:01

So, there you go.

01:08:03

But yes, obliger rebellion is a real thing.

01:08:06

I can speak firsthand on that, but it's something that people need to be aware of, for sure.

01:08:12

Yeah, somebody in the book described it as the big "no" that kind of wrecks my life for a while,

01:08:16

which I thought was interesting.

01:08:18

But again, I've dealt with this.

01:08:20

So, maybe I'm an obliger in certain areas, I don't know.

01:08:24

But the reason that she uses for this obliger rebellion is that obligers don't protest

01:08:30

against a troublesome situation.

01:08:32

They expect others to know and stop imposing their expectations.

01:08:36

Okay, so going back to the weaknesses, which you were all like, yep, yep.

01:08:41

But that aligns with me.

01:08:43

A lot of this comes back.

01:08:45

Again, I don't want to keep belaboring this point, but there's an emotional-intelligent

01:08:49

scale for this too.

01:08:51

Aggression versus deference.

01:08:53

And on this scale, you can, regardless of which end of that scale you land on,

01:09:01

you can move towards the middle, which is assertion, learning to balance what other people want from you

01:09:07

and stand up for what you want.

01:09:09

And the research behind the assessment tool shows that people who are bullied, for example,

01:09:17

they will defer, and they will defer, and they will defer, and they will defer until eventually

01:09:21

they explode, because they can't keep it inside anymore.

01:09:25

So, again, that's an emotional-intelligent skill that you can develop,

01:09:29

even if you are naturally a quote-unquote obliger,

01:09:33

you can develop the skill to be assertive and stand up for yourself.

01:09:37

But again, I don't want to totally go in there, but there's-

01:09:39

But that's the response.

01:09:41

That's not the beginning.

01:09:43

That's your reaction to it, and I would agree with you than that.

01:09:47

But even though, because I feel like I'm pretty good at saying no to things when I need to,

01:09:53

but that does not change my want to say yes.

01:09:56

Sure.

01:09:57

Okay.

01:09:58

Every time someone comes to me and say, "Hey, can you help me with a website?"

01:10:00

My gut reaction is yes every time.

01:10:02

But I have learned what you're talking about in when to say no and when to stand up for myself.

01:10:11

Like, I will do that.

01:10:12

I don't have an issue with that, but that doesn't change the fact that my gut reaction is either

01:10:17

to one, crawling a hole, or two, say yes.

01:10:20

Like, those are still my gut reactions.

01:10:24

I just don't follow through on them.

01:10:26

Okay.

01:10:27

Yeah, that could be.

01:10:28

Technically, I'm an upholder.

01:10:31

So I should be in agreement with you on the website thing, right?

01:10:36

But my natural response to me will come to me and ask for a website is like, "No way."

01:10:41

I make exceptions a few times.

01:10:44

Lately, I designed a website for somebody just because current work situation got to put food on the table.

01:10:51

Right.

01:10:52

I don't know.

01:10:53

But at the same time, you're also one that follows through on your internal, and you have strong internal.

01:10:58

That's true.

01:10:59

You have expectations, so you will prioritize those over what someone else says.

01:11:04

So, of course, that would make sense.

01:11:06

That's not you questioning.

01:11:08

That's you knowing your priorities and knowing what you can and can't do because you're an upholder.

01:11:14

Yep.

01:11:15

So every time you say, "Yeah, I can see this on myself."

01:11:18

Well, yeah, you can because that's an aspect of your upholder tendency.

01:11:21

All right.

01:11:22

This is fun, Mike.

01:11:24

I know.

01:11:25

So, should we talk about how I can be a rebel too?

01:11:29

Sure.

01:11:30

This will be fun.

01:11:31

I'll let you explain this one since you're a rebel.

01:11:33

All right.

01:11:34

Well, the rebel resists outer expectations and resists inner expectations.

01:11:38

The kind of catchphrase here is, "You can't make me, and neither can I."

01:11:42

The strengths associated with a rebel, they do things because they want to do them.

01:11:46

They don't mind breaking the rules.

01:11:47

They often enjoy it.

01:11:48

They enjoy defying expectations.

01:11:49

Their biggest asset is their voice of dissent.

01:11:52

They do authenticity and self-determination.

01:11:54

Often do better when there are no expectations.

01:11:56

They're independent.

01:11:57

They're able to think outside of the box and they're spontaneous.

01:12:00

Now there's some of these which I am definitely not.

01:12:04

I'm definitely not spontaneous.

01:12:07

I would argue I am pretty independent.

01:12:10

And there are definitely times and places when I am in full-on rebel mode.

01:12:18

So this is tough.

01:12:21

Like on page 176, they mentioned that rebels can tie an activity with their deep values

01:12:25

by viewing it as an expression of who they are.

01:12:27

And I put in parentheses core values.

01:12:29

I feel like for a lot of stuff that I do, I need this piece.

01:12:34

This is me unless I have that connection with like, "This is the core values.

01:12:40

This is who I am."

01:12:42

They say you find rebels in ministry and military because they've found something big

01:12:46

enough to deserve all their energy and devotion.

01:12:49

So there's definitely pieces of this that I align with.

01:12:53

And I do struggle, like if I don't understand the expectations, so rebel questioner, you

01:12:59

know, I'm going to argue against it, especially when it's like one more thing.

01:13:04

My default is going to be, "No, and I'm going to get angry about it."

01:13:09

And so like, I don't know, I have a real hard time pinning myself down to like the

01:13:14

upholder because I see pieces of this at different points in my life and in different

01:13:19

contexts.

01:13:20

It's interesting you see it that way because as someone who's known you for a little while,

01:13:28

this, I wouldn't say that these are things about a rebel that you're relating to as much

01:13:33

as you being very firm in your personal drive, like your inner choices.

01:13:41

Like you've prioritized things and you are very solid on those.

01:13:45

You're sticking to them and you are holding them tight.

01:13:48

To me, that's more what you're doing as opposed to fighting what's out there because this

01:13:55

is more about, yes, you're independent as a rebel, but they're doing it because they

01:14:02

don't want to be controlled.

01:14:04

The mission behind it is very important there.

01:14:07

To me, when you do that, it's because you feel like you're drawn towards a higher mission

01:14:13

that's either Christ-centered or it's based on the priorities you've set for yourself.

01:14:19

It's not because someone else is trying to control you or someone has given you something

01:14:24

and expected you to do it.

01:14:25

That's not why, whereas for a rebel, that is why.

01:14:29

It doesn't have anything to do with the purpose behind the ask.

01:14:33

It has to do with the fact that they asked it all.

01:14:37

Do you get the difference there?

01:14:39

Yeah.

01:14:40

I'm not sure.

01:14:42

Like I said, this one I struggle with.

01:14:44

When I was, let me see, what was that?

01:14:48

A senior in college, I guess.

01:14:49

I went on a missions trip with Campus Crusade to North Myrtle Beach and like summer projects.

01:14:55

So it's like 10 weeks.

01:14:58

When I was there, I had my, the way summer project worked, at least when I went, like

01:15:06

the staff is there, the adults for the first five weeks and then they leave and it's the

01:15:12

students who run everything at that point.

01:15:14

And every staff member has people that they're assigned to, that they disciple while they're

01:15:20

there.

01:15:21

So my disciple told me before he left, he's like, "You have a ton of potential, but you

01:15:27

won't listen to anything anybody asks you to do."

01:15:31

So full on Rebel Mode, you know, and I recognize that and I've worked very, very hard over

01:15:38

the last, however long that was, you know, 15, 20 years to change that.

01:15:45

But that is my default response to pretty much anytime anybody asks me to do anything

01:15:52

is, no.

01:15:55

Sometimes I go into question mode and I figure out with the why, but other times it's like,

01:15:59

"No, I don't care."

01:16:01

And so like, I don't know, I don't know.

01:16:05

I think you could probably convince me that this is a manifestation of my poller tendencies

01:16:10

at some point, but.

01:16:11

Well, here's, let's flip it though.

01:16:14

Let's ask this question.

01:16:15

Is it possible you're actually a Rebel with a strong mission that you want to fulfill and

01:16:22

it manifests itself in a way that appears to be in a poller?

01:16:26

Could be.

01:16:27

I mean, my assessment results say absolutely not, but.

01:16:30

It's fair.

01:16:31

But I'm just asking that question because if your gut reaction is no to everything, it's,

01:16:38

to me it would be possible that you're doing what you want and you resist.

01:16:44

Like, we've not talked about this, but you know, with my corporate job, I have to do

01:16:50

like all the email thing and it's open all day long, notifications on, etc, etc.

01:16:56

All the things you're not supposed to do, but the culture is such that I have to do that

01:17:00

or I'm going to lose that position period.

01:17:04

My guess is that whenever I said that you got like, you cringed in your chest tightened

01:17:09

a little bit because that is something that you feel you should never have to do because

01:17:13

you're bending to what other people want you to do.

01:17:17

So my thinking here, just a theory, I don't know this for certain, but maybe it's possible

01:17:24

that you have a tendency to resist anything internal or external, potentially, but you

01:17:32

have a strong mission that you're, that you want to fulfill.

01:17:36

And because that's so strong, you're able to bring yourself to doing the inner expectations

01:17:42

as a result.

01:17:44

Maybe that's what's going on.

01:17:46

I could also start making some arguments around you being a questioner as well.

01:17:50

But I don't think I could put you in the obliger category.

01:17:53

I don't think I could do that, but I also, like, I can't see what your motivations are

01:18:00

behind any of these.

01:18:01

But if you're telling me that your gut reaction is no at every chance, my immediate thought

01:18:06

is your rebel is just manifesting itself in a different way.

01:18:10

Correct.

01:18:12

Or the framework is broken.

01:18:14

Which is really the larger point, I think, with the four tendencies.

01:18:21

And again, like maybe you're right, and these are just tendencies, and you can shift in

01:18:25

and out of these.

01:18:26

And if that is the case, I think I'm a lot more in agreement with them because my gap

01:18:33

book, which we'll get to in a little bit, is John Maxwell book called Leader Shift.

01:18:38

And the main idea at the beginning of that book is that things are always changing and

01:18:44

good leaders need to be always changing.

01:18:47

The number one skill he mentions that good leaders are going to need to have is the ability

01:18:53

to motivate others.

01:18:56

And I know there's a whole big section in here about speaking to the other tendencies,

01:19:01

which honestly to me was pretty elementary.

01:19:05

I mean, if you were to boil it down, you want to appeal to their values and you want to

01:19:11

appeal to their desires.

01:19:13

That is absolutely true.

01:19:16

But if you're speaking to me, which values and which desires do you appeal to?

01:19:21

Like therein lies the rub.

01:19:23

And I think if you're going to be a good leader, you need to be able to speak the language

01:19:29

of the person that you're speaking to.

01:19:33

And it's not going to be as simple as fitting into one of these four boxes.

01:19:36

Here's a question for you.

01:19:38

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but...

01:19:41

And then we need to finish up Rubble here.

01:19:42

But when you went through the questionnaire for this, was it a quick process for you or

01:19:49

did you find exceptions to each of those questions that were being asked?

01:19:53

No, this is an interesting question because every assessment that I take, whether it be

01:19:58

it's a strengths finder, be it Colby, be it Gretchen Rubens, I go through it fairly quickly.

01:20:04

And maybe part of that is my familiarity with assessments and the process and knowing that

01:20:10

your first instinct is usually the best answer.

01:20:14

So I don't sit there and Hemmyn Hahn, like, "Well, my this or my that."

01:20:17

Like, I just pick the one that makes the most sense.

01:20:19

But I do that for everything.

01:20:21

So I kind of don't think that contributed to like false positive in terms of me being

01:20:27

an upholder.

01:20:28

Okay.

01:20:29

I don't know that for sure though.

01:20:30

Oh, I was asking because that's what questioners do.

01:20:32

That's true.

01:20:33

Yep.

01:20:34

But you're not a questioner.

01:20:36

So...

01:20:37

No, I'm not, but I'm married to one.

01:20:38

That woman cannot take a test.

01:20:41

Like, if it's an assessment of some sort, she would...

01:20:45

I'll finish a 200 question test and then go make a cup of tea because it's going to

01:20:49

be a while.

01:20:50

Yep.

01:20:51

Because...

01:20:52

And part of what I'm getting at there is questioners have a tendency to not want to

01:20:56

be categorized.

01:20:57

They don't want to have labels put on them, which is why I was asking that question because

01:21:03

I wondered if you don't want any of these labels put on you.

01:21:07

I would accept the labels if they made any sense to me.

01:21:11

All right.

01:21:12

Like I said, when I read the upholder section, I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, she really knows me."

01:21:17

And then I read the questioner section, I'm like, "Huh, well, maybe that was a fluke."

01:21:21

And then I read the obliger section because obliger rebellion is totally something that

01:21:26

I've dealt with before.

01:21:28

But again, in specific context.

01:21:29

So if I've got a leader who is stronger than I am and they're just saying that they're

01:21:34

leading and that we have to do this, I'm going to be an obliger and eventually I may get

01:21:38

to the point where, "No, I can't take it anymore."

01:21:41

But there's so much nuance around the situations that I feel like at any given point, I'm exhibiting

01:21:47

different characteristics here, which I don't like that.

01:21:51

I want it to fit neatly in the box.

01:21:52

I want it to be according to the framework like an upholder.

01:21:58

But I can't reconcile it in my head.

01:22:02

Yeah.

01:22:03

Yeah.

01:22:04

All right, let's finish up Rebel and then you can rant on us.

01:22:07

If you haven't already somehow through all of this, strengths of the Rebel, independent

01:22:11

minded, able to think outside the box, unswade by conventional wisdom, willing to go his

01:22:16

or her own way to buck social conventions, in touch with his or her authentic desires

01:22:21

and spontaneous.

01:22:22

Again, they're not going to show up unless they want to.

01:22:25

Like that's just kind of how it goes.

01:22:27

Now weaknesses, they are likely to resist when asked or told to do something.

01:22:31

So you ask them something.

01:22:32

That's me.

01:22:33

One of the stories was a husband would ask his Rebel wife to change something about the

01:22:41

design of say the porch.

01:22:43

And she would immediately say, no, it's just fine.

01:22:46

But then a week later would come back and have implemented the exact thing that he had

01:22:50

recommended.

01:22:52

Rebels can come across as uncooperative and considerate.

01:22:54

That's me.

01:22:55

Have trouble accomplishing tasks that need to be done consistently the same way every

01:22:59

time.

01:23:00

Access though, ordinary rules don't apply.

01:23:03

Restless may find it difficult to settle down on a job relationship or city.

01:23:07

Struggles with routines and planning may be indifferent to reputation.

01:23:12

So all kinds of things in there.

01:23:15

I think you probably get the point like rebels have a tendency to just resist things, thus

01:23:20

the Rebel label.

01:23:23

All kinds of things that she gives for how to deal with a Rebel.

01:23:28

I can't say that too many of these struck me as groundbreaking, but the one thing that

01:23:34

she did call out was this three-step process of information consequence choice.

01:23:39

It's always important that the Rebel has a choice in the matter.

01:23:42

So give them all the information about something.

01:23:45

Show them the consequences of the choice and then say, okay, now what do you want to do?

01:23:50

And then let them make that choice.

01:23:52

And it seems like from what I can tell that works pretty well, the Rebel category is one

01:23:56

of the smallest or is it the smallest?

01:23:59

Do you remember?

01:24:00

It is the smallest.

01:24:01

17%.

01:24:03

The upholder is 19% I believe.

01:24:07

Okay.

01:24:08

So anyway, there you go.

01:24:11

Anything else you want to say about Rebels before you rant?

01:24:14

Well, I feel like I've been ranting a lot already, but let's just talk about this information

01:24:19

consequence choice sequence.

01:24:23

I feel like again, this is a great idea, but should be applied to everybody.

01:24:29

So as an example, one of the things that you will hear working for churches or working

01:24:37

with people at churches and it makes sense on the surface is that pastors got a hard

01:24:43

job because he's he or she is recruiting and trying to mobilize a volunteer army.

01:24:50

And the point being there is that all of these people are there willingly.

01:24:55

No one is forcing them to be there.

01:24:58

So you can't just say, you have to do this because I'm paying you, right?

01:25:02

Which on the surface makes a ton of sense.

01:25:06

Having worked in a semi corporate setting before, I will tell you though that it also

01:25:12

doesn't work in the marketplace.

01:25:15

It'll work for a little while, but those people will always burn out.

01:25:19

And if you want to build a quality organization, a quality team, you'll recognize that stuff

01:25:25

long before you have excuse to fire that person.

01:25:30

If you can't just force and lead that way, ultimately, and this goes back to leadership

01:25:36

thing, you have to motivate people to make the choices and move in the direction that

01:25:41

you want them to move.

01:25:42

You can't force anybody.

01:25:44

I mean, think about the whole concept of leadership, which leadership by the way, maybe

01:25:48

that's the thing that's kind of coloring my perspective on a lot of this stuff because

01:25:51

I'm fascinated by the concept of leadership.

01:25:55

Leadership is not a title.

01:25:57

It is not a position.

01:25:59

It has nothing to do with the amount of authority that you have.

01:26:03

You cannot bend people to your will if you are a leader.

01:26:06

You are a great motivator.

01:26:08

You're a great communicator and you're able to inspire people to follow you.

01:26:13

But at any point as a leader, if you don't lead well, the people who are following you

01:26:18

have every right to say, "I don't believe this person can get me where I want to go,"

01:26:22

and they're going to stop following you, whether or not you are paying them to do a

01:26:26

job.

01:26:28

At least that's my view on it.

01:26:30

This information consequence choice, giving people the information so they have an understanding

01:26:38

of what will happen if they do this, what will happen if they don't do this, and then

01:26:41

allowing them to choose, "Oh, I want the desired outcome, not the negative outcome."

01:26:47

Yes, I would argue tied to being a good communicator and a good leader, not just speaking to a

01:26:53

rebel.

01:26:54

Anywhere, questioner.

01:26:56

Good deal.

01:26:58

Who knows?

01:26:59

Yeah, my opinion of how...

01:27:05

I don't want to say this.

01:27:06

It's not the opinion of the book, but at the very beginning when I was reading this, I was

01:27:10

like, Gretchen Rubin has a spotlight into my soul.

01:27:13

By the end of it, I'm like, "She don't know me."

01:27:16

Oh, you're hilarious.

01:27:17

All right, do you have a rant you want to end this with?

01:27:20

No, that's basically it.

01:27:22

My rant would be that I like the idea, and I don't...

01:27:27

I'm not...

01:27:28

How do I say this?

01:27:30

This is as a book.

01:27:31

This is somebody's idea, right?

01:27:33

So it doesn't have to be research-based.

01:27:35

They're presenting a framework for things that they see.

01:27:39

I would do the exact same thing if I was in her shoes.

01:27:43

But based on my experience and my history and the dots that I've collected, I feel like

01:27:49

this as a framework for understanding how I work anyways falls completely short.

01:27:57

So by the end of this, it went from being like, "Oh, this is really insightful, impactful,

01:28:02

going to change the way that I live," to, "Oh, that was a good book," with no action

01:28:07

items for me.

01:28:09

When I explained the concept of this book to my wife, the questioner, her first response

01:28:14

was, "Why would people put you in four categories?

01:28:18

Why do you have to pick a category?"

01:28:22

And I'm seeing you embody this.

01:28:23

See, I think you can totally do this, though.

01:28:26

All right, I think you can totally do this.

01:28:28

I just think Gretchen Rubin, for me, anyways, didn't do it very well, in my opinion.

01:28:34

I have two action items.

01:28:36

You don't have any.

01:28:37

I see that.

01:28:38

This has been a very fun conversation for me.

01:28:41

First one, I think I've mentioned both of these.

01:28:44

External accountability with stuff at ProCourse.

01:28:46

Yes, I've been doing that.

01:28:49

It's been going well so far.

01:28:51

This has been a very insightful book to me as far as my own tendency because it's spot

01:28:57

on.

01:28:59

Seeing that external accountability is such a big deal, it's made me rethink how I'm doing

01:29:05

a number of things for the better.

01:29:07

So one in particular is the stuff at ProCourse.

01:29:10

Number two is tracking my health items because I feel like I need the data there and that

01:29:15

other people are depending on me to have good health.

01:29:19

That tracking has been extremely helpful.

01:29:21

So I'm going to continue doing those two.

01:29:24

We can check in on them next time.

01:29:25

That'd be good because I need that sort of thing, whether or not I make things again.

01:29:30

But that's what I'm doing.

01:29:32

So you can check in with me next time, Mike.

01:29:34

All right.

01:29:35

So what do you want to put on this list?

01:29:37

I do not.

01:29:38

And as I was going through it, I was trying to pick those out because I didn't have any

01:29:42

last time.

01:29:43

I'm like, I got to have action items for this one.

01:29:45

Don't have any action items.

01:29:46

At least I have quotes in my mind node file though.

01:29:49

Yeah.

01:29:50

So, I mean, this was a good book and an interesting book to read.

01:29:53

I just don't think it was life-changing for me.

01:30:00

And again, maybe that's because I've been exposed to a lot of these different assessments,

01:30:04

a lot of these different types of things previously.

01:30:07

And I prefer maybe the research-based ones.

01:30:10

I'm totally willing to accept that.

01:30:14

But yeah, this one just, at least from a assessment perspective, did not do it for me.

01:30:19

All right.

01:30:20

Style and rating hit me.

01:30:21

All right.

01:30:22

So Gretchen's got a very approachable style.

01:30:26

I really like the way that she writes.

01:30:29

I like the assessment at the beginning.

01:30:31

I took that before I dove into the results.

01:30:34

I'm not sure if you waited till the end or not.

01:30:36

But...

01:30:37

No, I did it right at the beginning because I wanted to know before I read about it.

01:30:39

Yep, me too.

01:30:40

So I did that right away.

01:30:42

That whole process was pretty quick.

01:30:45

You emailed the PDF.

01:30:46

I thought that was cool.

01:30:48

The PDF, again, is a little whacking.

01:30:51

But that's just because this is something that she...

01:30:54

I don't want to make it sound like no thought went into this.

01:30:57

So compared to a Colby assessment where you get a 50-page PDF on, here's what all your

01:31:02

results mean.

01:31:03

It's pretty light.

01:31:04

I think it's four pages and she basically says the same thing she says in the book.

01:31:09

There's not a whole lot more insight there.

01:31:12

So from an assessment standpoint, I've talked about I'm not a big fan of the four tendencies

01:31:17

framework.

01:31:18

I do think there was a lot of interesting story and example about how the different tendencies

01:31:26

related specifically.

01:31:28

We didn't even really get into that section about the applying the four tendencies and

01:31:32

then the different pairings and stuff like that, which is fine.

01:31:37

I can tell you there was at least one point in this book where she was talking about the

01:31:42

upholder obliger because that's my wife and I.

01:31:46

And I read this paragraph that she had in the book and Rachel just kind of laughed.

01:31:50

She's like, "Yep, yep, that's totally us."

01:31:53

So like I said, that happened with lots of other sections too.

01:31:56

So I think there's a lot of good from going through this book.

01:32:00

I think it will present a lot of different ideas, the strengths and weaknesses are great.

01:32:04

All the suggestions for dealing with the different people.

01:32:06

There's a lot of stuff you can glean from there even if you don't totally buy it into

01:32:09

the framework like I did.

01:32:11

So I'm going to rate this at three and a half and I'm kind of hesitant to do that.

01:32:17

I kind of want to rate it a four but I just can't get over by the end of the book.

01:32:24

The title is the four tendencies and I'm kind of railing against the four tendencies.

01:32:28

So I feel like if I were to rate it four, that would be kind of weird.

01:32:33

But I like Gretchen Rubin.

01:32:34

I'm definitely going to read more of her stuff.

01:32:36

I just think that this book in particular didn't give me a whole lot of answers.

01:32:42

I felt like it gave me a lot of answers.

01:32:44

I'll contradict you there.

01:32:47

Again, Gretchen's an excellent writer.

01:32:50

You can tell she's written in the past.

01:32:53

Very engaging.

01:32:55

Number of times I found myself having a hard time putting it down.

01:32:58

Like, oh yeah, it's standard time.

01:33:01

But going through it, yes, there were some areas where, at least from my viewpoint, I

01:33:07

saw how you can bleed over into each of these and how each of those can be manifested in

01:33:16

like if you are an obliger, it's easy to somehow, not somehow, but you can have tendencies

01:33:22

in the others.

01:33:23

But again, it's just that.

01:33:24

It's a tendency.

01:33:26

You can bleed over into those others.

01:33:28

That's my view on it.

01:33:29

I'm not trying to lock in on any specific, but I know that me personally going through

01:33:36

this and understanding these four groupings, like I was immediately seeing people that

01:33:43

I work with or am related to is like, oh, yep, that's them.

01:33:48

Like they are definitely in a polder.

01:33:50

That person is definitely in a bludger.

01:33:53

In a handful of cases, I've changed the way that I've interacted with those people and

01:33:56

it's come across very positively.

01:33:58

So big kudos for me to Gretchen because I felt like this was spot on in a lot of cases.

01:34:06

Again, I get your point, Mike, where the assessment is maybe a little light.

01:34:10

Personally, I felt like reading through them after having taken that.

01:34:14

I could see how some people would maybe morph away from those categories once they read

01:34:20

it and realize, well, actually some of my motivation is around this.

01:34:24

So you're not a questioner.

01:34:25

You're a rebel.

01:34:26

Like I could see how that could happen because the question here, I think, is pretty simplistic.

01:34:31

And that's because it's not science based, which I'm okay with.

01:34:35

Like I'm one that's a little more free with that sort of thing.

01:34:39

So as much as I like science based things and I feel like I can stand on them, this one,

01:34:44

I think for whatever reason, it just clicked with me.

01:34:47

So I'm good with that.

01:34:50

I don't think that this whole thing put together the way it was put together because I think

01:34:56

to your point, Mike, like some of the outlining and such was weird.

01:34:59

It was kind of hard to understand her flow of things to some degree.

01:35:05

Like when I first read it, I was like, oh, yeah, you're just doing a pollers first because

01:35:08

you are one.

01:35:09

Like that's why you started that way.

01:35:11

But then as I read it, I realized, well, it would be kind of weird to start with the

01:35:15

rebel and you can't really start with the questioner of the obliger because they're

01:35:18

in the middle.

01:35:19

Like you got to either start with the upholder or the rebel and starting on the, I don't

01:35:23

want to say negative side, but the contradicting side first would be kind of jarring to jump

01:35:30

into.

01:35:31

So I understand why she did it.

01:35:33

But again, I wouldn't say it's groundbreaking or super life changing, but it's definitely

01:35:39

changed the way that I view at least myself to quite a degree.

01:35:43

So I don't think I'd put it at four and a half, but I will put it at four just because

01:35:48

you don't think I should.

01:35:50

No, that's totally fine.

01:35:53

So our book for next time is Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I've seen around for

01:35:58

quite a while, it's tied with the four tendencies as far as number of votes on the Bookworm

01:36:06

Club.

01:36:07

So yes, I'm about 50 pages into this, definitely hooked.

01:36:13

I don't have a gapbook this time, but I might next time just because of how fast I'm going

01:36:18

through this one.

01:36:20

So looking forward to our conversation next time, Mike.

01:36:23

Nice.

01:36:24

Yeah, this is going to be a fun one.

01:36:26

My book for next time is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, which as we're recording this

01:36:30

was just released.

01:36:32

So it's Cal Newport's new book, and this just pushes all of my buttons.

01:36:36

So I want to make sure we cover this one ASAP.

01:36:41

Got it.

01:36:42

Good way or bad way pushing buttons?

01:36:45

I feel like this one is going to convict me and make me change some things.

01:36:50

All right.

01:36:51

I don't know.

01:36:52

I saw that he had another one coming out.

01:36:54

I listened to a podcast that he did with Jocelyn Keglai, Hurry Slowly.

01:37:01

He did an interview with her about it when he was still writing it, I think, at the time.

01:37:06

So when I saw this on the list, like, yeah, I'm looking forward to that one.

01:37:10

That'll be a good one.

01:37:12

Right.

01:37:13

And then my gapbook, which I mentioned, I started already is Leader Shift by John Maxwell.

01:37:18

It's another one that as we record this was just released.

01:37:21

The next idea of this book is that if you want to be a good leader, you have to change

01:37:27

and there are four different or I'm sorry, not four, we just did four tendencies.

01:37:31

There are 11 different shifts that you have to make and you're constantly making them.

01:37:36

And I've just gone through the first chapter.

01:37:39

And I think I wrote down like 15 different quotes that he used.

01:37:44

There's John Maxwell.

01:37:46

I don't know if you like his style.

01:37:47

You don't like his style, but it's definitely my style.

01:37:51

So I really like, I really like his writing and at least so far anyways, this is a really

01:37:55

good one.

01:37:56

Nice.

01:37:57

All right.

01:37:58

Well, the four tendencies was a recommendation on the book club as is atomic habits, which

01:38:05

we'll go through next time.

01:38:08

If you would like to get a book on that list of recommendations, just join the club club.bookroom.fm

01:38:15

and click the recommend button.

01:38:18

And all it does is it creates a new topic and you just paste a link into the book.

01:38:22

If you want to explain why, go for it.

01:38:24

If not, just leave us the link and other people can vote on it.

01:38:27

But I will say, if you create a book recommendation, at least vote for yourself.

01:38:31

Yes.

01:38:32

Like it seems like quite a few folks will post the recommendation, but then they don't vote

01:38:36

for it, but it's the votes that we're using as the ranking mechanism there.

01:38:42

So if you do create a book recommendation, click the vote button.

01:38:45

Definitely.

01:38:47

And if you want to help support the show, you can do a couple of things.

01:38:51

Number one, you can go buy a bookworm t-shirt if you want because they are for sale again.

01:38:56

Whoo hoo.

01:38:57

Number two, you can use the Amazon links, which are on the book list page, which I now figured

01:39:02

out how to update.

01:39:03

So those are affiliate links.

01:39:06

That list is up to date.

01:39:08

And if you buy the book through that link, then you help out bookworm.

01:39:12

The last thing you could do, arguably the most important thing you could do, is that

01:39:15

you could leave us an iTunes rating and review because I want to take down KCRW.

01:39:22

That's my big someday, maybe goal.

01:39:24

So join the revolution people, help it happen.

01:39:28

And then also, if you have any action items, share those on the club, which is club.bookworm.fm.

01:39:34

And for this one in particular, it would be interesting if you took the assessment because

01:39:37

it's free to share your results and maybe you can help me decide what I really am.

01:39:43

I'm not a tendency chameleon.

01:39:46

You just would ever want to be in the moment.

01:39:48

Total rebel.

01:39:49

All right.

01:39:53

Once you've done all that, pick up atomic habits because next time we're going to talk

01:39:57

about habits.

01:39:58

And I think it'll be a good conversation.

01:40:00

James Clear has been around for a long time.

01:40:02

I followed his writing for a long time.

01:40:04

Super excited to see the details of his book.

01:40:08

So join us next time and we'll go through atomic habits.