Bookworm Transcripts

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Have an amazing sweatshirt on today Mike is it the bookworm sweatshirt?

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Totally the bookworm sweatshirt nice reminder if you want your own bookworm sweatshirt

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They are now available again. You don't have to wait till so many are sold you can buy them right now on cotton bureaus

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So we'll put a link to that in the the show notes for anybody who wants their own amazing bookworm sweatshirt

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I love this thing like this is so this is the hard part about these things like I love it

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But everybody expects me to love it. That's the problem with this like this is legit my favorite and it doesn't like

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Yes, I love that has bookworm on it

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But it doesn't have anything to do with that really well

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I shouldn't say that it probably does but it's super comfortable. I love it. It's a very very nice sweatshirt

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Go cotton bureau. I plus won your recommendation on the sweatshirt quality alone not the logo on the front

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Yeah, but you need to buy the one with the logo on the front totally

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Definitely can do that

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I have another follow-up question here for you

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It's actually not on the list okay, but because you brought up last time and I'm gonna put you on the spot here

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Okay, are you still meditating? I am all right

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So it's been what now a couple of weeks at least yep tells me my life is still chaotic

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No other insights you've gleaned from the practice I know that it has allowed me to focus when things are

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like especially nuts at

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At the office because I'm working corporate right now

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So like because of that I've noticed that it helps me significantly

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But and I think I mentioned this last time

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I was like I think that's simply an indicator that there's too much going in too many different directions

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Within that one realm sure like I'm pretty good outside of that realm but inside of it. It's it's corporate

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So it does help me significantly there

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I'm curious if I were to remove myself from that if the benefits that I'm seeing would simply

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Vanish into thin air obviously that's not gonna happen soon, but

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There you go. That's what I know so nothing especially new about it Mike just you know continuing that process

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It's still going strong though so far yeah kudos to you

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I'm trying to think people always people ask me this. What is the app? I'm using oak is what I use for it nice

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Which a lot of people seem to like for me it doesn't matter as much because I just do the silence unguided

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10-minute meditation, so it's pretty basic so you know pretty much any meditation app out there could handle that but

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Yeah, is what it is. I like it. There's so many meditation apps out there and so many of them have so many people using them

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If you want to laugh go download the episode of

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10% happier, which is

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Blinking on the name now is it Dan Sullivan? Yes

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Okay, so he has this podcast where he interviews people about meditation and there's an episode where they interviewed Gary Vee and

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They're trying to walk him through a meditation and he won't shut up long enough for them to do it

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But he keeps going on and on about how he's so into meditation because this is gonna be the next big thing

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Yeah, so he's not wrong

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But it is funny watching Gary Vee try to meditate we're listening to it anyways

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Gary Vee slow down for three minutes

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Yeah, oh

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Yes, I'm still meditating

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Dan Harris 10 days a happier right with Gary Vee. Yeah, I looked it up. I was like wait that doesn't quite sound right sounded

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Correct, but it wasn't sorry Dan Harris 10% happier. I have to follow up items

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You don't have any because you know you're like that. Yes, but I will say

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Having gone through this book. I feel more justified in my opinion about

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The invalidity of the four tendencies, but we'll get to that. It's okay

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I felt like it completely justified my entire beliefs on it. So okay, okay

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So anyways your action items sir. All right number one was external accountability with pro course tasks

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So the web business that I still run I've been posting my

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Action items for that business to my team

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at pro course I

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Can't say that they're especially holding me to it

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But the fact that I've posted things and they can see them is enough to get me to follow through on those so

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That's been going pretty well so far. So that was number one number two

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Tracking health items as a form of accountability. This has actually worked brilliantly for me

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Is just tracking the amount of coffee I drink and how much water I drink in a day, you know pretty basic and

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Also with like the meditation piece that's being tracked as well. What's the other piece sleep?

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steps

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Stairs like all those pieces are all like automatic for me. I don't have to do anything for him

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so I have been tracking all of those and

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I can tell from looking at some of that data

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like if

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My day went well or went poorly from a health stance like how exhausted was I like I can pretty much see it on those graphs

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Of how it all works out

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So it's working really really well and I know that from the time I started tracking a lot of that my health is improved to

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a small degree but enough to make it worthwhile so I will continue doing this it's very interesting and fascinating to me

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But I do know that I drink way more water than I used to just because I feel like I'm trying to make sure I hit my number

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So that does help me to to have a healthier lifestyle in that sense

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So, you know, I would say it's a very positive thing in that regard cool

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So you're tracking all the things all the things well a few small things in comparison to some people like I haven't even started so

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Yeah, sure sure still don't have an Apple watch still don't plan to have an Apple watch

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Sorry

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We're gonna get to it next time, but I just started the introduction to digital minimalism by Cal Newport

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You know, I'm curious to see

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How and if your opinion changes at all after going through that book?

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Yeah, and I know like I think I'm further along in that book right now

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Yep, then what you are but this I think I'm through chapter one

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I'm like halfway through chapter two that'll be an interesting conversation next time. That'll be fun. It will be

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But that's not what people are tuning in today to hear no

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Certainly not because this week we get to talk about habits. It's atomic habit time from James clear

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This is what I know you've been talking about for a while. Yeah, and it's been making the rounds

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I think I see why this will this will be a good conversation as well because this is a very

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How would I describe like this is a very action oriented and very dense book like yeah?

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Sometimes we get these books and I think you know like that should have been a blog post like

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You should have written three thousand words on a blog post and call it good James basically did that like ten thousand times

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And then pick the best stuff and put it into exactly so as much as I think you could take any one of these

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Concepts and turn it into a blog post the fact that he has a huge number of them in here

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It makes it well worth the time to read so I do recommend you pick it up. It is

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very very chock full of

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Here's something that might work for you and it's like at each step along the way

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It's like here's a way that you could build habits and here's another way you could build it and here's another way

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And it all depends on which of the strategies work better for you and which one do you want to take on so?

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I'm excited about this conversation because I think this is a really cool book

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Awesome

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Yeah, so I

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Have mentioned before that I really like this book

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So that's not going to be a surprise to anybody who's listening to this

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I also interviewed James clear before I left Asian efficiency and he's a really smart guy

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intimidatingly smart actually

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I think that's that's probably the only time I think I interviewed somebody where I just felt like over my head

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Talking to them just like they're a whole nother level sure

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But that's because James has lived this stuff for a really long time in fact in the beginning

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He makes a comment that in order to write a good book you have to become the book

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And I'm not entirely sure I agree 100% with that

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I do agree that that process definitely will create a good book

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But then I look at people like John Maxwell who have written hundreds of books and he mentions in the latest one

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Which I read for I actually am still reading for a gapbook leadership

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That he looks back at his his first books, and he's like that's garbage. It's terrible. I wish it would go away

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Like you want to go back and you want to you want to refine and all that stuff and upgrade it because you've changed

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And I think that there's a lot of validity to putting stuff out there

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And then and then looking at the results and making the changes that way

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But but anyways James perspective with this is that he had to embrace habits

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he has a crazy story at the beginning and

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I actually by the way, I read this the first time I went through it and this last time

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I went through the audible version of it

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So I got to hear James tell me the story because he he narrates it himself. He does. Yep. Okay. Yeah, those are always the best

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I think typically typically sometimes you have an author that just can't talk but

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Well, see that's the thing James can talk, but he doesn't my opinion anyways like it wasn't

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His excitement over what he was reading didn't come through like somebody like say Pat Flynn for will it fly because I listened to that

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I'm on audible as well

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There's some people who you can just tell and it comes through in their voice like they are super excited about this

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This topic and I wholeheartedly believe that James Clear is very much

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invested in cares deeply about this topic, but you kind of didn't get that from the audible version at least I didn't

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So I was a little disappointed by that

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But it is interesting though

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If you've read something in one way previously to go back and do it a different way because you pick up different stuff

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My action items this time were totally different than the ones I got when I read through it myself. Oh sure. Yeah, so

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Interesting, but his story just real briefly. He was a senior senior in high school. I believe we should probably throw a disclaimer out here

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It's like if you're a little queasy in the stomach like

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We won't share a whole lot of details. Yeah, maybe skip ahead. I don't know

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but anyways, he was an athlete so he was on the baseball team and a

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bat flew out of the batter's hands and hit him in the face and

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Like broke his nose broke his eye sockets

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They rushed him to the hospital. He almost died and it took him a really long time to recover and

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He basically had to embrace

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Habits to get back to not only where he was so he could do the things that he was doing before but then once he did that

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he started applying them to other areas of his life and he ended up doing really well and lots of different things but

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Like that was kind of the the origin story for James Clear's journey with with habits. Yeah, which is

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Kind of it he tells a lot of that story, which is

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Ugh, it just kind of made my skin crawl when I first read it and

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You can definitely see how that had led him to the whole process of building out

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basically a lifestyle yeah of

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building in these

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Actions and these daily activities that would continue to strengthen him physically

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but had the second level effect of building him

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Building the strength mentally as well. Yep

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So it's it's kind of cool to see how that all came about and he basically gives you the story of how he got to the point

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To writing the book, which is really cool

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But anyway, it is a crazy story when you hear about it, but it kind of made me a little like

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Yeah, exactly. So when I read the book

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hard hardcover the first time

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That story like almost had me in tears and then when I listened to it

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This is why I say like it didn't really sound like he was owning this thing because I totally expected him to be

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Dripping with emotion at that point, you know, and he's maybe he's just told it so many times that is yeah

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This is what happened to me. Yeah

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So it was kind of like weird though because I had such a strong emotional reaction to it the first time in the second time like

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It happened to him, but doesn't sound like he has the same emotion

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Right. It's just something that happened. Right. I don't know. Maybe he's in the stoicism

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Well, I'm sure he is. Yeah, but he once he gets past that story he leads us into the section on fundamentals

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Yes, and it's kind of an interesting

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It's an interesting area because he talks about how much habits play into your life and how much power they have

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Over what you accomplish in life and probably the the intro one of the and we've got three points here to talk about

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but one of the interesting points that he gets to is that

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Because habits have such a powerful effect

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They they lead you to trying to build out

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Systems of doing things as opposed to setting goals to accomplish

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You know because the goals have just like a one time like once you reach it

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Then what yeah, whereas the systems once you have those in place and you have all of these habits developed

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You just continue to work towards improvement on those and they can lead to a lot bigger gain in the long run

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That was something it was really interesting to me. It's like okay. Well, I

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Have a tendency to want to set goals

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You know, that's what everybody in the productivity space tells you to do is like set your goals for the year

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like set your goals for the next eight weeks like set your goal for this quarter and

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He kind of comes out this like no, like that's a terrible thing to do. Why would you do that?

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I was like, thank you James. I appreciate that. I hate goals

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Yeah, so

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Just as just to clarify this he defines goals as the results you want to achieve and systems as the processes that lead to those goals

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And one of the problems that he identifies with goals which this

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Totally spoke to me was that winners and losers have the same goal

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So it's kind of a confirmation bias that we interview the people who won the game the championship

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Whatever and they talk about how they set this goal to beginning of the year and how they achieved it because everybody else

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Had probably the same goal, but they're the only ones who who got there. So how do you reconcile that?

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He also says achieving a goal is only a momentary change goals restrict your happiness goals are odds with long-term progress

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So the way to really make long-term progress is not to set a singular goal and then achieve it

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but to stick to the the system and

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Get 1% better all the time. He says on page 27. You do not rise the level of your goals

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You fall to the level of your systems and he starts this chapter with the story of the British cycling team

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Which just real briefly they were middle of the pack and then they had a coach who came in and he challenged them to get 1% better

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And every every single facet of the of what they did

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And so they did and those 1% changes added up and then in five years

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They won 60% of the gold medals they won five out of six tour to France races, which they had never won before

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You know and he uses this I think he's got the chart here

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I know for sure he has it in the blog post

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But the 1% changes how they add up if you got if you got 1% better every day at the end of a year

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You're over 37 times greater than you were at the beginning

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But likewise if you got 1% worse 0.99 every day that that compounds to 0.03 at the end of the year

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so almost nothing and

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Really the the point is that you don't need to be chasing this huge goal

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You have to make these very small shifts in direction

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From where you are right now and then those lead to a very meaningful change in your destination

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Yeah, I like the stories about like cycling and such like I was reading some of that. Oh, that was a really bad cycling team

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They won like that's cool. Yeah, I like the like the stories - there's one thing in here the outcome base habits versus the identity base

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Habices kind of relates to this so just a personal story. I guess relating to this

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Last May I ran my half marathon and I finished but I ended up hurting myself in the process kind of had to start over

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Okay, and I hadn't read this book at that time

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So I remember feeling when I had finished the half marathon

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Like it felt cool to be to have accomplished my goal

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But I knew that I had hurt myself the positive high that I got from finishing this race after all these months of

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Training and now I'm gonna have to deal with the the physical therapy and stuff like that. It's kind of like is this it?

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Was this what it was for?

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It almost doesn't seem worth it at that point

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So one of the things that he talks about here is the identity based habits versus the outcome based habits the outcome would be

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Running the half marathon

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But he's saying you don't want to do that you want to embrace identity based habits

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And you want to become the type of person who does the thing that you want to do

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So the key is to change your identity

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You don't want to run a marathon you want to become a runner likewise

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You don't want to read a book you want to become a reader and your habits are how you embody your identity

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The difference here is that the outcome based habits go from the outcome and then they go to the process

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And then the belief is that if you do this long enough you'll embrace the identity

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Whereas the identity is kind of like inwards

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Going outward where you identify this is who I am and then the process or the system

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This is what I have to do and then that naturally leads to the outcome and the score takes care of itself

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Yeah, I thought that was a very interesting

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This is that section was one that probably struck me the most in the book which I was not expecting

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Usually something that's gonna strike me is usually somewhere in the middle towards the end

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After they've got some of my groundwork laid this one kind of hit me right at the beginning

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Which I was not ready for and I thought was completely unfair

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but

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It was interesting that a lot of times when I think about the habits that I want to build

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It's all about the the action itself that I want to do so like for example

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I I have kind of fallen out of it. I did it for a long time, but journaling at night

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Like I've thought of that as like yes, I would like to journal at night

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but

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That's the outcome

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Like the process of course is grabbing the pen and paper and sitting down a writing but the outcome is having journaled

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But what he's saying is instead of saying that you want to have journaled at the day

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You want to be the person who journals? Yes, exactly which is a simple subtle shift in

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How you talk to yourself? Yep, which I don't really like I'm not one that gets all

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You know lovey-dovey over that sort of thing like they've always felt kind of fluffy to me

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but for whatever reason this one kind of got me and it's like okay, well I

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Am not someone who journals once in a while. I am a per like I am a journaler. Yep

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It's it's different when you think about it that way

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I'm kind of trying to use that specific

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I have an action item on that one, but like that one is one that I want to

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To work on but it just kind of hit me like well, it's different, but

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It does have an impact and he spells that out like okay

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You can you can set the goal, you know, or set the system to have you doing these habits

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But it's when you embrace that as your identity that it can start to truly become part of what you do every single day

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Yeah

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And that's the the mindset shift that has to take place for this stuff to to really stick like just as an example

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I've shared the story before of when I wrote my book

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I was getting up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour every day before I went into the office and eight months later

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I had self-published my my book

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but for a long time I didn't write it because I was

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Having an identity crisis. I'm not a writer. I I hated English class in high school

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so I

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Had to I had to embrace the identity of being a writer before I could say that the goal of writing a book was ever going to be

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Possible and then from that point

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What does a writer do they show up and they write? Right? Okay?

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So James Clear says on page 38 that every time you do that every action you take is a vote for the type of person that you wish to become

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So number one you embrace this identity and then number two you prove it to yourself by showing up every day and doing these things

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And the more that you do that the more you believe in the identity the identity that you've ascribed to yourself

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And so it's kind of it kind of has a snowball effect. Yeah, but I should say like all of these

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like no matter how you look at

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Habits and what you do every day. They're all behaviors that you take and

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It all involves like when you're talking about building habits. Those are all behavior changes. Yep

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That's where he spends the rest of his book is how do you go about implementing new habits behavior change and

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He's got these four laws

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that make it easy

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To or that help you guide you through the process of building in these behavior changes in these habits

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Those four laws and we're gonna go through each of these four the first one is make it obvious

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Second law is make it attractive

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Third law is make it easy and fourth law is make it satisfying and I think we'll we'll talk about each of these four

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but I also want to mention that

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these are when you want to

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bring on something new positive and

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He does call out, but we're not gonna spend a lot of time on it with how to

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to basically flip these

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Such that it it helps you to overcome the bad like how do you break up bad habit at the same time?

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He goes through that piece as well again. I don't know how much time we're gonna spend on that particular piece, but

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You know, it's it's interesting if you flip these but yeah, like so make it obvious like the inverse of that is make it invisible

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So if you have a bad habit make it invisible

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Make it attractive make it unattractive make it easy make it difficult

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Make it satisfying make it unsatisfying like if it's a bad habit just flip it on its head and do the opposite

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right and these all line up with the

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the the the Q routine reward cycle that we learned about in the power of habit and

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Actually in this book James talks about the history of that and it's actually not

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Charles Duhigg or the people from MIT who originally came up with those three steps

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I believe he attributed it to BF Skinner in like the 1950s that sound right it sounds about right? Yeah

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Okay, but then he adds another step which I think is really important

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Which was always something that until I read this book

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bothered me about that habit loop from the power of habit, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it and

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He adds right after the cue the craving so step one is a cue step two is the craving number three is a routine number four is to reward

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So really what this is saying is that when you see the cue the craving is triggered

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But that doesn't mean necessarily that you have to follow through with it whereas the power of habit is like oh

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There's a cue. I guess you're gonna do this thing

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Yeah, so that that always bugged me when I when I go back now and I look at that cue routine reward

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It seems so wrong to me now that I have embraced

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Or understand James Clear's model sure

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No, I think he he does call it out because that was one of my

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skepticism's coming into this book was we just read a book not too long ago about

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habits and

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How does this compare to?

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To that that's probably a question a lot of listeners have I would say if you're going to pick between those two do this one

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Definitely I think do Hig did an excellent job, but I think James Clear takes his work and

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Builds off of it significantly so much so that it feels like a completely different

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Topic almost it does so I would highly recommend this one over that. I feel like James Clear's book gives you a lot more hope

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I don't know if it's that but he gives you a lot of action items that make it very reachable sure

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I guess by the end of the do Hig book

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You know when he talks about the gamblers and the people who are dealing with addictions and just kind of like oh

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That's what they do like it's kind of like yeah, what a sad way to

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View this stuff. There's another we can do we're going to be manipulated by the target guy

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And if we've had trouble with gambling or alcohol or anything like that's just the way it's going to be and it's like oh

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Yep, no

00:25:05

Doesn't have to be that way you can make positive change in your life

00:25:07

And I feel like James Clear gives you the framework to do that. Yeah wait till we talk about minimalism next time with Cal Newport

00:25:14

Right

00:25:16

Have you noticed like I think we're interested in reading that book

00:25:21

All right, stop. All right first law make it obvious

00:25:24

Basically you want to start a new habit?

00:25:28

What should you do make it absolutely obvious?

00:25:32

That's the task is in front of you and one of the ways that people talk about doing this like probably the classic is

00:25:39

Set your clothes out the night before like put on your running clothes

00:25:42

The habit is not going for a run the habit is getting into your clothes like

00:25:48

Yep, like if you can get into the clothes if you can get that first step done the rest of it can follow suit

00:25:54

Because once you have your workout clothes on, you know

00:25:57

It's almost more work to go change again than it is to go through with the run exactly

00:26:01

Yeah, that's the concept. He's talking about here

00:26:04

Yeah, and there's a couple of things that are really interesting in this this first section in this first

00:26:10

Chapter in this section actually he talks about the the Japanese practice of the train systems the pointing and calling do you remember that?

00:26:17

I do which was very interesting to me. It kind of made me want to start calling things out when I leave the house

00:26:22

Yeah, so this is kind of like the checklist from the checklist manifesto except that the

00:26:27

Conductors will literally point to the thing that they are looking at and say it out loud

00:26:33

So say you have a checklist of things you need to check before the train leaves the station

00:26:38

They're gonna point to each one and say the no the gap is minded

00:26:44

Since then the UK they got that the mind the gap, you know, that's only thing I can think of up in my head

00:26:48

But that actually saves somebody's life one time because there was this lady who was chasing her kid and the kid got into one of these

00:26:55

Like high speed bullet trains and her arm got stuck in the door and because the conductor was going around and pointing at everything

00:26:59

He pointed at the platform because that's what he always did and he noticed that this this woman had her arm stuck in the train

00:27:06

So they opened it up let her out. No crisis diverted

00:27:09

But that point in calling he says in this first chapter this actually reduces mistakes by 85%

00:27:16

Which seems like a really high number, but I don't know I guess I I guess I kind of believe it

00:27:22

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense

00:27:24

I mean if you're constantly calling like if you

00:27:27

Look at it the fact that you're saying what should be there and if it contradicts what you're saying

00:27:34

That'll flip a switch in your brain like whoa something's not

00:27:38

Not where it's at whereas if you're not calling it out. It's easier to

00:27:43

Just skim over it and not actually look at it even you just kind of maybe glance out of the corner

00:27:49

Eye instead of actually acknowledging it but by saying it out loud

00:27:52

It kind of trips the trigger and says you're you're paying more attention to it than you would have if you didn't call it out

00:28:00

Yeah, that's a surprising thing

00:28:01

I guess is that we think that we noticed these things

00:28:05

But basically the statistics are saying that you don't notice anything

00:28:09

You're actually pretty terrible at remembering to do stuff and doing it right unless you physically point at it

00:28:15

Which I don't know I can see a lot of people being like I refuse to believe that like I've yeah

00:28:20

I've been doing it this way and I haven't had any catastrophic mistakes one of the pieces of this

00:28:26

Law that he calls out is something called habit stacking as a way to take advantage of this and

00:28:34

It's it's exactly what it sounds like you're stacking one habit on top of another

00:28:38

Because for example, let's let's use like a nighttime routine. You're going to bed

00:28:44

You brush your teeth what you could do because a lot of people have the habit of brushing your teeth

00:28:50

But not as many people have the habit of flossing their teeth

00:28:54

You can you can fight me on that all you want but I have yet to hear a dentist tell me that people on average

00:29:01

Floss their teeth just as much as they brush them

00:29:03

so what you could do is take advantage of the fact that you already have the habit of brushing your teeth and

00:29:09

Build in the connection of brushing my teeth flossing my teeth brushing my teeth flossing my teeth and connect those two yep now

00:29:17

Personally I have a tendency to want to floss my teeth before I brush them

00:29:21

But hey, you know if it helps you get into the habit, it's better than not doing it at all

00:29:24

so

00:29:25

That that's the concept there is you take advantage of one habit stack another one on top of it because then it becomes

00:29:31

An obvious transition. Yeah, the key is that you

00:29:34

Have to the the queue needs to be the same as for the the old habit as the new habit that you're you're trying to create

00:29:42

So if you do something once a week and you want to you want to create a daily habit

00:29:48

Don't try to stack it on top of the thing that you do once a week

00:29:52

Yeah, make sure that you do it on something that you do every day and then the order I think matters too because

00:29:57

Like like you mentioned with the flossing you like to do it before you brush your teeth

00:30:02

And I agree like I do that that too

00:30:04

but the

00:30:06

To the book habit stacking would be I am already doing this thing so after I do this thing

00:30:11

I'm going to do this thing also right so minor minor thing there

00:30:15

but I really think that this whole idea of

00:30:18

Habit stacking and then really even and pointing it going back to pointing and calling really just like understanding and identifying

00:30:25

The habits that you have in your life, which I know this is a recurring theme and I've got action items for this

00:30:30

But this is really important. He shares a quote from Carl Jung

00:30:34

He says until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate

00:30:39

That's pretty powerful and it also is kind of pretty it's kind of sobering too because whether you like

00:30:48

Your situation where you are right now or not

00:30:52

What he's basically saying is that what you have done has gotten you to this point and I don't think anybody anywhere can argue with that

00:30:59

Right and then really it's like okay

00:31:02

So you are where you are like don't look back and be upset that the stuff happened

00:31:06

But how are you going to implement positive change?

00:31:08

How are you going to continue to get 1% better and it feels very approachable when you freeze it that way?

00:31:14

It's not like okay, so by the end of of this year

00:31:17

I'm gonna have done this thing and that's gonna lead into this new season of my life

00:31:21

And I'm gonna launch my my side business whatever all I got to do is is not break the chain essentially

00:31:27

Which is another point maybe we'll get to it. Maybe we won't he does talk about that in here

00:31:31

But I just need to focus on today

00:31:34

I just need to focus on doing this one thing this 1% better in whatever whatever area it happens to be and

00:31:39

That's gonna compound and that's gonna gonna add up but until you identify this stuff

00:31:44

And you know he mentions the habits scorecard in here where you can literally put an axe for

00:31:51

Every every day that you you do something

00:31:53

Until you start doing that stuff you really have no idea what what is contributing to your current situation until you take stock or inventory of that stuff

00:32:00

Yeah, I want to call out like I've got two action items two different habits that I'm wanting

00:32:05

To build in both of which like one of them has to do with mental health the other one has to do with physical health

00:32:10

I have a lot of little ones that I'm trying to pay attention to

00:32:14

But I didn't know how to put an action item around that so I didn't

00:32:17

But one of them that I'm wanting to do is get back into the journaling habit

00:32:23

I want to be a journaler to follow through on that

00:32:26

But one of the things that I'm trying to do with that is

00:32:29

To take this make it obvious law at face value is I have a notebook that I use for journaling

00:32:37

in

00:32:39

Past days I normally would just stick it in with a lot of my other notebooks in my bookcase

00:32:46

Which means it like it's kind of out of the way. I don't see it. It's not in front of me

00:32:51

Same thing like whenever I do journal I like to use my fountain pins because you know fountain pins rule the world

00:32:56

So you know fountain pins are my thing so I like to use them for for journaling so

00:33:03

In order for me to actually journal I have to go over to the bookcase get my journal

00:33:09

Go to my backpack grab my pin and then sit down and do it so

00:33:15

Pretty simple, but those two steps are enough to stop me from doing it at all

00:33:19

So what I'm trying to nail down is

00:33:22

How do I throughout the day or in the morning or when I'm done?

00:33:27

Just have it set up such that all I have to do is sit down a right

00:33:30

Yep, I'm trying to get it to where I have that in a place that I sit down

00:33:36

Every evening and do that so that it's as simple as it could possibly be

00:33:43

That I think is what at least one piece of

00:33:46

This law there's you know

00:33:48

You can go into the third law and jump ahead to make it easy like I'm kind of playing into that a little bit as well

00:33:53

But this one if I have it in front of me and I can see it

00:33:57

It's a lot easier for me to actually follow through on it. Yep, definitely

00:34:02

That's that's the big takeaway

00:34:04

I think from this book in terms of implementing this stuff and creating the habits that maybe you've tried to create previously

00:34:11

but have been unable to do so is don't just try to

00:34:15

Discipline or willpower your way into doing them consistently but change the terms of engagement and dip the scales in your favor

00:34:23

Right. He does talk about discipline in this section, which I'm not sure I 100% agree with this

00:34:29

But he talks about how discipline people construct their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control

00:34:35

so really it may look like they have a lot of willpower or self-control

00:34:40

But really what they've done is that they've changed their desires and so the person who eats healthy all the time

00:34:49

Still has the still like they still like the chocolate cake

00:34:53

but they've attached enough desire to

00:34:57

Liking eating the vegetables that they're able to resist it and so you look at it

00:35:02

You're like oh wow you have so much more willpower than I do because I ate the chocolate cake

00:35:05

But really they just kind of shifted their mindset and they've attached to the long-term vision and they've identified with the healthy person

00:35:12

Who is the identity that they're becoming and what does a healthy person do they don't eat chocolate cake at the end of every meal?

00:35:18

Right, you know that that's kind of the thought process there. I do think that there's some truth to that

00:35:24

but I also think that

00:35:26

maybe it's not just

00:35:31

Creating the habits. Maybe there is a management piece to some of the stuff that happens

00:35:37

Throughout your day in terms of your your willpower as well

00:35:42

So habits would be one way that you could manage your willpower and conserve it for the things that really matter

00:35:48

But if you work in an office environment, which I mean you do Joe

00:35:52

So you know that there's like stuff that'll happen and there's nothing you can do about it

00:35:56

And at that point it doesn't matter what what habits you've created like you still have to deal with this stuff

00:36:01

Right, yeah, and so you can create habits around that you can control what you can control

00:36:07

But I think that habits are part of the bigger picture here not the whole thing

00:36:12

Yeah, like for example if you take deep work and combine it with the one thing and

00:36:17

Then throw in a corporate office environment where everybody sits, you know across from each other at tables and stuff

00:36:22

You know, we don't even have cubicles. I don't even have the wall there. There is no wall and

00:36:27

That means that if I sit down and try to focus on something I

00:36:31

Have to plan for like a 20 minute

00:36:34

one thing period in the morning for my work because the rest of the day is going to be spent answering questions or

00:36:42

Distracted work of sorts thus why the meditation piece is helpful, but yep, that's that's the work environment

00:36:51

I

00:36:52

Don't agree that that's the environment that they should be creating

00:36:55

But that's the one that the company has decided that they want people to operate within

00:36:59

So or maybe they haven't decided that's what they want you to operate in

00:37:03

But it's just the way things with things are people don't even consider it they're considered in this case. I

00:37:08

Know that for a fact

00:37:12

It's specifically designed to do that in this case and it's actually going to

00:37:16

They're actually moving us to a more open office area. So we're actually going to get worse

00:37:23

So anyway, you know, that's that's my opinion. They know how I feel so I don't mind if they listen to this. It's totally cool

00:37:28

but

00:37:30

With that environment it's like in this case they have specifically designed it to be that way

00:37:35

It's not great for working in those scenarios and it doesn't matter how many habits and such

00:37:43

I've built in because I could be following suit on

00:37:48

My afternoon tea time which gives me the time to think through on what it the projects

00:37:54

I'm working on but that won't necessarily hold because I never know when someone's gonna walk over tap me on the shoulder and say hey

00:38:01

Joe do you have

00:38:03

Who knows when that's gonna happen so my habits don't like it doesn't matter

00:38:07

It doesn't matter what I do. Yeah, I could build in the habits on how to respond to that

00:38:11

But that's corporate like that's that's the way that they want it to be

00:38:16

To operate so is it efficient? Is it the way to build a workplace? I would say no

00:38:21

I would tell them that this is not helpful, but that's what they want

00:38:25

So this is this is the environment they're trying to build so there that you just kind of go with it

00:38:29

There's not a whole lot you can do with that other than just figure out how to work around it

00:38:34

If you can get time to work on your deep work or one thing scenarios

00:38:37

But other than that, you know, you kind of have to build habits around like how you respond to those situations

00:38:44

And that's what I try to do. Yep. Do I have it figured out? No, but it's still a process for sure

00:38:50

There's my little rant on it. Sorry. Yeah, but but all that stuff as it happens is going to deplete your will power or your

00:38:58

Mental energy correct over else you want to define it

00:39:01

So it doesn't matter what sort of eating habits you have when you get get home

00:39:06

If you have junk food in the the pantry you may automatically go to it because you're completely spent that that's kind of the point

00:39:12

I was I was I was making is that James clear makes it sound like well as long as you implement good habits

00:39:17

Then you'll be super successful, but sometimes you're in an environment where it's working against you and there's nothing you can do

00:39:23

You just got a role with the punches and again control what you can control, but yeah

00:39:27

And that's an interesting thing too because like I do work in that environment

00:39:31

And I have a pretty strict diet that I stick to which people have been asking me what it is

00:39:37

It's like a modified paleo is the easiest way I can explain it because a lot of people understand paleo to some degree

00:39:44

I'm not die hard on that

00:39:46

But I like that it's a runoff of that but it means that I cut as much sugar out as I can and

00:39:51

There's a lot of times like right now. There's a lot of cookies upstairs

00:39:55

I've not touched one of them since they've been made and

00:39:59

It's because I kind of and it's it's partially because James clear has helped me with this

00:40:04

The whole outcome versus identity based thing

00:40:07

Whenever I like for example, it'll be snack time when we get done

00:40:11

Recording here because you know Joe's family is a group of hobbits time for 11 z's totally so

00:40:18

Whenever I come up from recording. It's going to be snack time. Guess what everybody else is gonna do

00:40:24

cookies, you know

00:40:26

and like

00:40:28

Whereas my reaction has to be no, I I'm a healthy person

00:40:34

I'm going to eat nuts and berries or you know, whatever it is that I

00:40:37

Decide to go with but that's that's what I have to do and that has helped with the discipline side

00:40:43

Is it a myth? I don't know. I don't know if I'm with you or against you there Mike, but that's

00:40:49

That's kind of my take at the moment

00:40:52

Sure

00:40:53

one other thing that we should call it from here and then that'll lead into the second law is this whole idea of the environment which I

00:41:00

alluded to when I mentioned that if you are out of willpower and you've got cookies in the pantry then maybe

00:41:07

It's gonna be harder to resist them

00:41:09

I think there's a lot of other factors that go into that but probably people who were listening at that point who have studied

00:41:14

This at all were yelling at me because they're like just don't buy the cookies

00:41:16

Yeah, and that definitely is something that you could do another thing that James

00:41:21

mentions regarding that which I think is a pretty genius tip is that

00:41:25

You don't have to be the victim of your environment. You can be the architect

00:41:29

So what does that mean?

00:41:31

That means you can set up your environment in a way that it facilitates the habits that you want to create for example

00:41:37

It's easy to not practice your guitar when it's put away in the case because there's no obvious trigger

00:41:42

So I actually have a stand that I put my guitar in

00:41:44

In my office and nice now when I walk into into my office

00:41:49

I see my guitar and guess what I play my guitar a lot more nice

00:41:52

You can also change your location which allows you to escape mental biases and makes it easier to make new habits

00:41:58

One of the key things that he talks about in this section is one space one use which I think is really interesting

00:42:05

It's also very interesting if you apply it to your digital devices, but again put a pin in that till next time

00:42:10

That's next time. Yeah, so that might be something that you want to think through to is not just where the habits

00:42:16

I want to create but where do I want these habits to to happen right?

00:42:20

Which kind of leads into the second law which is make it attractive because you can set up your environment to be attractive

00:42:25

But there's lots of other things you can do to make your habits attractive as well like

00:42:29

Well, one of the things that he mentions is super normal stimuli heightened versions of reality or these

00:42:36

Exaggerated cues and he says that society is filled with these highly engineered versions of reality that are more attractive

00:42:43

than the world that our ancestors evolved in so we've kind of

00:42:48

subjected ourselves

00:42:50

Willingly unwillingly whatever to this dopamine driven feedback loop

00:42:55

And he shares some research about how they blocked the dopamine and the rats brains in this study and it caused them to lose the will to live

00:43:02

They still liked things like sugar, but they didn't want it the desire had died

00:43:06

And likewise when they flooded their brains at dopamine then they performed their habits at at breakneck speed

00:43:12

So dopamine the pleasure chemical isn't just for pleasure. It's actually involved with motivation learning memory punishment aversion and voluntary movement. So

00:43:21

What we need to do is we need to apply those things towards the positive habits that we want to

00:43:28

Want to create and likewise you had listed the inversion of these four laws for the habits that we want to

00:43:35

To eliminate so we don't want to make it attractive

00:43:38

We want to make it repulsive if it's something that we want to stop doing and we can implement what he calls

00:43:43

Temptation bundling with the habit stacking that you had mentioned at the beginning

00:43:48

So that would look something like after my current habit

00:43:52

I will do another habit that I need after I do that habit that I need I will do another habit that I want

00:43:58

So that's kind of getting into the reward piece of this, but that's kind of how those pieces fit together. Yeah, and I think maybe

00:44:06

I was trying to think through the example here because like the

00:44:10

one of the other action I know I'm working on is like an exercise habit and

00:44:14

This one I like I really wish and I know listeners

00:44:20

I wish I could give you more on this

00:44:21

But I wish I could sit here and talk through like how I'm exactly planning to use a lot of these different aspects to do that

00:44:27

the problem that I have is with

00:44:30

you know

00:44:32

fighting lime is a scenario where

00:44:34

the specific types of exercise have different reactions for me and

00:44:39

For example, if I do something that generates like it really gets my temperature up and I get really hot and sweaty and you know typical, you know

00:44:49

Stereotypical exercise like that can cause like what's called a Herx reaction for me not gonna go into all that

00:44:56

But it means the next day basically I'm shot

00:44:58

So it can be a good thing in the long run, but it means the next day

00:45:03

I'm not gonna be good for much of anything. Well, I can't do that on a weekday

00:45:07

Like so I can't do it, but maybe once a week. Well, that's not enough exercise

00:45:13

so

00:45:14

For me like I can't sit here and say okay

00:45:17

This is what I'm planning to do because I haven't fully figured out what type of exercise I should be doing

00:45:22

So that's part of this for me is I've got some research to do to nail it down, but I know that regardless

00:45:30

One thing that I need to do is

00:45:32

Whatever that activity is because I'm not one that just loves to go exercise like this is going to be a working

00:45:39

Like it's gonna be a challenge for me

00:45:41

So I need to try to nail down something that I can do immediately after

00:45:46

Exercise that is attractive to me because I feel like that's something that like okay. I don't get to

00:45:52

X I wish I had an example

00:45:55

But I can't do X until I've done the exercise like to me that's gonna be a big piece in this process

00:46:02

And I think that's exactly what he's talking about in this second law of making it attractive with the temptation bundling piece

00:46:07

Like take advantage of a positive habit to help you build in one that

00:46:13

You know is positive, but it's not as easy going as the other is. I hope that makes sense

00:46:20

Well, I can I can give you an example. Okay, so I mentioned I

00:46:25

Ran my half marathon and I'm training to do it again this May and that requires

00:46:31

Some distance running in the winter in the Midwest. Oh

00:46:36

That doesn't happen outside. Good luck lately

00:46:39

Yeah, so I have to go to the gym and use the dreadmill. I mean treadmill, which is

00:46:47

So incredibly boring right but there is a YMCA that we're members of which is like 20 minutes from my house

00:46:54

It's a bit of a drive. It's it's downtown in Appleton, which is the the bigger city. We live next to that

00:47:00

Suburban I guess of a city with a hundred thousand people so whatever but anyways, it's a bit of a pain to get there

00:47:07

But they have treadmills that have this like virtual active stuff built in so you can plug in like

00:47:12

I want to run through downtown Vancouver or I want to run through

00:47:15

The small towns in Italy or I want to run through the Swiss Alps, you know

00:47:19

And then it's kind of like drone footage of so it's a little bit more interesting

00:47:22

The bottom line is that if I get to the Y I can do a distance run in the winter because that is enough to keep me

00:47:28

Interested in what I'm doing. Okay, if you just put me on any other treadmill after a couple miles like I can't take this anymore

00:47:35

So getting to the Y and and running like that's something that I try to do

00:47:41

But there's obviously a lot of friction and resistance to doing that especially if I'm not downtown like at the co-working space previously anyways

00:47:49

So kind of the way that I've rewarded myself for putting in the long runs

00:47:55

Because I'm at the point where I'm running

00:47:58

8 9 miles, you know, it takes over over an hour to do that

00:48:03

But right across from the Y there's this little hole in the wall Europlace which has amazing euros

00:48:09

But I'm never gonna go down there and get get euros anyways

00:48:12

So that's kind of like my reward for putting in the long run and burning a thousand calories on the treadmill is that afterwards as

00:48:18

I'm walking down to the locker room a place the the order in the in my phone

00:48:22

And then I'll by the time I take a shower walk out of the Y my euro is ready

00:48:25

So that's that's kind of the way I've done this is after I

00:48:29

After I get on the treadmill and I run 8 to 10 miles

00:48:34

Then I will go eat my euro and not feel bad about it. I like it

00:48:38

I'm not gonna do that because that would cause a lot of pain for me, but you know that's yeah

00:48:43

Yeah, yeah, no definitely and in fact I was I was thinking about your situation and obviously this is a conversation

00:48:48

We can have off offline, but I think there's options for you

00:48:51

And I don't know exactly which one is gonna fit

00:48:54

But I do encourage you to to look into that so absolutely my brother is really into like that high intensity interval training

00:49:00

I don't know if that would be too much for you

00:49:02

And this is also where as you were talking about that

00:49:04

I'm thinking something like an Apple watch may actually be beneficial because it's gonna give you that ring and you're gonna be incentivized to close that ring

00:49:11

I know Sean McCabe. He's done it like 600 days in a row or something like that

00:49:16

He's actually got a bunch of people that he shares his activity with but he'll only share it with you if you commit to closing that ring every single day

00:49:23

Yeah, because he wants to surround himself with those kinds of people which kind of leads into the

00:49:28

The other point about the the groups that we imitate habits from yeah

00:49:32

Yeah, which is which is interesting because

00:49:35

like I'm trying to take advantage of a number of these pieces to make it easier for myself and

00:49:42

Again, I don't know what types of exercise I should be doing

00:49:45

I'm pretty sure it's avoiding things like going for runs and doing like heavy lifting and stuff because because of the impacts that those have on like joints

00:49:53

but things like resistance workouts or

00:49:57

Even some of the more intense like yoga side of things like I've I've seen a lot of folks in

00:50:03

With my whole scenario getting into that so I think it's one of those

00:50:09

but I think your groups to copy thing from like James's whole explanation here like there are these different groups of people that we have a

00:50:18

tendency to imitate and

00:50:20

one of those are just your friend groups and

00:50:23

The people that you're around all the time you'll have a tendency to copy them

00:50:27

This is you know

00:50:28

This goes back to what you were told by your mom in grade school

00:50:30

Be careful of the friends that you make like that's that's exactly what this is because you'll have a tendency to copy them

00:50:37

I'm trying to take advantage of that to some degree and trying to

00:50:40

Talk about the exercise thing to some degree with the friends that I have because I know a number of my friend groups do

00:50:48

Have a lot of exercise habits. So if I get them to talk about it, it makes me feel guilty for not doing it. So

00:50:54

There we are

00:50:57

Right, so the three groups that we can imitate habits from just to close that loop number one the close your friends like you mentioned

00:51:05

number two is the many and

00:51:07

Number three is the powerful. So number one the close we imitate the habits of the people that we're close to

00:51:13

He shares that your chances of becoming obese

00:51:16

Increase 57% if you have a friend who becomes obese

00:51:20

Which is a lot the many number two when we're unsure of how to act we look to the group

00:51:28

This can have both positive or negative

00:51:31

consequences because the normal behavior of the group is going to override the desired behavior of the individual and

00:51:37

Then the powerful we try to copy the behavior of people who are successful because we want to become

00:51:43

successful ourselves

00:51:45

so this is fascinating to me because

00:51:48

Personally, I believe you can combine all three of these and I think Jim Rohn kind of hit on was it Jim Rohn?

00:51:56

We said that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with

00:52:01

So the five people that you spend the most time with assuming that they are successful

00:52:06

They are the close and if you're spending a lot of time with them

00:52:10

They are in a lot of instances the many and as long as they're the right people they are also the powerful so can you?

00:52:16

combine all of these into an accountability group or a mastermind or a community

00:52:24

Where the desired behavior is the normal behavior and you have something in common with the people there?

00:52:31

I believe that you can and this is what I want the Bookworm Club to become

00:52:36

I think that someone had mentioned that we should be sharing our action items on the club as well

00:52:43

So if we want other people to do it, we should do it too. I think that's a great idea

00:52:46

Yeah, I'm gonna start posting those

00:52:48

I guess I'm gonna have to manually go in and comment on those and say here are my action items from the episode but

00:52:54

I'll create a category for it. We'll create a new topic for each one of them

00:52:57

Okay, but I think that if you're listening to this podcast

00:53:01

Obviously you want to get those dots and those ideas that can inspire you to do better

00:53:09

Be more excellent in whatever area of life you you want to improve in

00:53:15

I would I think if you were to boil down the one common characteristic of people who listen to this podcast it would be the growth mindset

00:53:23

Okay, so that is that is gonna take care of category number three

00:53:27

Category number two and category number one

00:53:30

I think are kind of related so if the people that are around you the people that you're if you're gonna go check a site

00:53:36

Over and over and over again, you know

00:53:38

Don't go to Twitter or Facebook where people are posting all their trash go to places where people are saying things that are going to build you up

00:53:45

and

00:53:46

The Bookworm Club could totally be that and I think like there's there's some interactions in there right now

00:53:52

And it would have to really be exponentially

00:53:55

Multiplied in order for it to get to the point where people had the same compulsion to go in there all the time

00:54:01

Like they do a social media network

00:54:03

But it has that that potential and then also

00:54:07

Really you get out of it what you put into it

00:54:10

So you can become as close to the people that are are on those groups as as you want to be and if you want to be a lurker

00:54:17

And just see what everybody else is doing. That's fine

00:54:20

But if you want these people to be the close people for you

00:54:25

Then you got to put forth a little bit of effort, but that's why

00:54:29

Podcasts are so cool in my opinion

00:54:32

because you instantly have a seat at the table with the people that you're listening to and

00:54:37

It always

00:54:39

Amazes me when I meet somebody at a conference for example and they're like yeah, I listened to bookworm

00:54:45

I listened to focus, you know, and I can't believe I'm talking to you and I'm like, I'm just a guy

00:54:50

I struggle with this stuff. Just like you do. I don't have this all figured out, but I'm on the journey

00:54:55

What?

00:54:56

Yeah, let's talk about you know what I've learned what you learned and maybe we can help each other

00:55:01

Those are always fun conversations like I don't know what I'm doing either like

00:55:06

Hate to burst your bubble in fact

00:55:10

I did a I did a podcast the other day as we're recording this it's been published with with J Miller productivity and tech and

00:55:17

He introduced me and he's like Mike Schmitz. Why don't you tell everybody who you are now? Well, I'm a poser

00:55:23

But it was as a fun conversation, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes that people want to go listen to that

00:55:30

I like J. That's fun

00:55:31

All right, third law

00:55:33

So the first one make it obvious

00:55:36

Second law make it attractive third law make it easy and I kind of alluded to this one earlier

00:55:41

Yep with the journaling habit of

00:55:43

Making it crazy easy to get into like if it's if the notebook is set out and the pen is there

00:55:49

All I have to do is sit down and start writing like that makes it crazy easy

00:55:55

To get into whereas if I have things spread out all over the house, it makes it incredibly difficult now again

00:56:02

You can flip this for habits that you want to break

00:56:06

And he talked a little bit about you know if you have a habit of watching TV at night

00:56:12

Make it difficult to watch TV take the batteries out of the remote and hide the remote

00:56:15

Yeah, by the way when he said that I'm like, hmm. I wonder where he got that idea

00:56:19

Yeah, yeah, but he mentioned I

00:56:21

Think it was kind of in passing. He's like, you know, and if that's not enough, you know

00:56:25

Unmount the TV from the wall and put it in the closet. Yeah, what?

00:56:30

Maybe not

00:56:32

Wow, that would be an undertaking

00:56:35

You would probably never watch TV if you just took it off the wall and you had to go install it every time you wanted to watch TV

00:56:40

Yep, that would be quite the deal, you know, there's commitment but that anyway

00:56:45

That would be the opposite of make it easy make it difficult if you're trying to break a bad habit

00:56:52

Yep

00:56:53

Yeah, how badly do you want to break that habit?

00:56:55

It's kind of what it what it comes down to yeah one of the big things that I liked in this section was chapter 11

00:57:01

He says walks or the title of chapter is walk slowly but never backwards

00:57:06

So this is where I think is in this chapter he talks about how the the days that you don't feel like doing it

00:57:14

But you show up anyways those are the ones that are most important

00:57:18

So it's the bad workouts that are actually the important ones because you don't lose the progress that you've made

00:57:25

If you just show up every day and one of the things that he calls out in this section

00:57:29

Which is very important to understand if you're going to track yep

00:57:34

I showed up every day is the difference between motion and action

00:57:37

Because motion makes you feel like you're getting things done

00:57:42

But never leads to results and he says that preparation can become a form of procrastination

00:57:48

So motion can be planning motion can be strategizing motion can be learning and as somebody who's trying to launch

00:57:55

A course and a business

00:57:57

This is tough for me because there's a lot of stuff

00:58:00

I know that I don't know and so I have to figure that stuff out but

00:58:04

James Clear would say that the days that I spend researching instead of writing or creating those are days where I've

00:58:12

I've got motion, but I haven't produced any action, which is the actual doing it's producing the result

00:58:18

All of the learning isn't going to translate into moving the needle for faith-based productivity

00:58:24

I have to actually do the work no big deal. Yeah minor

00:58:30

It's a minor detail, but for somebody who

00:58:33

Who has a growth mindset? I think maybe you're even more susceptible to this because

00:58:38

The fact that you're learning something means nothing if you do nothing with it, right?

00:58:43

That's the challenge to everybody listening to

00:58:46

Bookworm and to us when we go through and you write down our action items

00:58:51

That's why the external accountability a bookworm is so great because I know you're going to ask me about this stuff

00:58:56

And so I can't just put it off and do nothing

00:58:59

It's going to cause me to do something with it

00:59:01

And really like if I were to read these books on my own not show up and talk to you about them and not take action on the action items

00:59:07

Is there any benefit from reading these books?

00:59:09

Probably not, you know if it doesn't change anything, right?

00:59:12

And it's going to get like the accountability side of it's going to

00:59:15

Explode once we start putting these on the club. Yeah, I know

00:59:20

I've been sitting here thinking about this to some degree well that that kind of ties into

00:59:25

The commitment devices because he talks about like the personal contracts and he has some crazy stories of people who have done some ridiculous

00:59:32

Contracts there was one guy who like if he didn't weigh himself every day then his wife got to spend $500

00:59:39

Whoever she wanted like

00:59:41

Is is crazy ridiculous, but and he James even admits when he talked to this guy

00:59:46

He's like I think that that's a little overkill and the guy's like no no no because if I don't do it this way

00:59:50

It's not going to happen. Yeah, and so I don't know at some point

00:59:54

Yeah, it is kind of scary to to up the stakes and putting our action items publicly on the club where everybody can

01:00:02

Chime in and hold us accountable like that is raising the stakes

01:00:06

but

01:00:08

If we really want to apply this stuff then it's worth it

01:00:11

That's really the the question that you have to ask is

01:00:14

Is it worth it? Am I willing to pay that price?

01:00:17

John Maxwell actually in leadership says that so i'm going to mess it up, but basically

01:00:22

Success isn't complicated. It's just harder than a lot of people think and if you're willing to pay the price

01:00:29

You can be successful, but not very many people are willing to pay that price. Yeah

01:00:33

I think there's

01:00:35

And I haven't done this. I've been debating it to bring a parenting aspect into this

01:00:40

Is I've been trying to work with our oldest

01:00:43

She's in the middle of piano lessons right now

01:00:47

And she loves doing piano lessons, but I haven't figured out if that's because she likes

01:00:51

Having the time to talk to her piano teacher

01:00:53

Or if she actually likes playing the piano because she doesn't you know, it's typical. She doesn't like doing

01:01:00

the practice at home

01:01:03

but what I've debated is

01:01:05

Taking on

01:01:07

The learning of an instrument with her

01:01:09

So that I could come alongside her and be a part of that with her

01:01:13

Yeah for a long time. I've wanted to pick up harmonica and learn how to play that

01:01:17

I haven't made this decision, but I've debated picking that up as a way to

01:01:21

Kind of build in a commitment device of sorts with her

01:01:25

It's like, okay

01:01:27

I will practice if you practice or it's something that's probably the wrong way to do it

01:01:31

But something along those lines that

01:01:34

Helps both of us stick to that so that that's something I've played around with for her

01:01:40

Granted, she's six. So, you know, we're not

01:01:46

I'm not gonna drive her to the bone

01:01:48

But that's that's something I've played around with is how do I help my kids build in good habits as well?

01:01:54

Yeah, uh using some of these but it's it's a little

01:01:58

Challenging because you're not the one

01:02:00

Like you're not the one setting the intrinsic motivation inside of them. Yep

01:02:06

like you can try to lead that and try to

01:02:08

Persuade them towards that, but you can't actually make those commitments

01:02:13

Kind of throw a parenting flair on there, but that's that's from a commitment device

01:02:17

Like I've played around with that concept of picking up a harmonica so that I could learn it with her

01:02:21

But does joe need another thing to be doing right now? Probably not so

01:02:25

Yeah, you know, there we have it. Thus no action item for learning harmonica

01:02:29

Well, let me let me just piggyback on that a little bit because

01:02:32

Our kids are a little bit older and we've got three of them now in piano lessons

01:02:37

But the piano lessons that they are involved in

01:02:41

Through the the local music store

01:02:43

Embrace what's called the yamaha method and basically the parent shows up and does the music lessons with the kid

01:02:50

They practice with the kid at home and it's not like you're doing everything exactly the same

01:02:55

But it's kind of like partner activities, right?

01:02:58

And so you could theoretically learn piano with your kid if you were doing something like the the yamaha method and I

01:03:06

recognized now

01:03:08

how brilliant that is

01:03:10

because it's no longer just the kid has to

01:03:14

Has to have the motivation to follow through and practice at home, but the parent is involved with it as well

01:03:21

So instead of you go practice, it's together. Let's go practice

01:03:26

Right, you know and also it's a group lesson

01:03:29

So if your if your daughter is is social for example

01:03:33

Then they're around other peers or the kids their age who are doing the same thing

01:03:38

And so there's kind of like a positive peer pressure that's that's going on there as well

01:03:42

Yeah, she's not so that would be the opposite of

01:03:45

Well

01:03:46

Some of my kids are not also but

01:03:49

It's surprising to see I mean a lot of the kids that are in those classes are not that way

01:03:54

Because there's a couple goofballs, you know who like to make everybody laugh and they're really outgoing, but you know jonathan is

01:04:00

our our third child he's

01:04:04

Very very quiet, but he loves it. He loves being around those kids even if he's not

01:04:08

Talking and chatting with them all the time. So you might you might be surprised

01:04:12

Yeah

01:04:13

I also want to talk real quickly about the commitment devices because you can

01:04:17

Where these are really powerful

01:04:19

I think as I read this uh as I read this section

01:04:23

Is when you want to eliminate a negative habit so you you probably can apply these in a positive context as well

01:04:30

But if you really want to break a bad habit, you can set up systems which are going to make it

01:04:36

Make it very very difficult to do that sort of thing

01:04:40

So you mentioned like taking the batteries out of the remote that would be one example of a commitment device

01:04:45

A couple other things that he mentions in here are the cash register because that kind of

01:04:51

automated ethical behavior because stealing became nearly impossible

01:04:56

And he mentioned I think he does this

01:05:00

Where he has his assistant change his social media passwords

01:05:03

On monday morning and then keeps them from him to friday

01:05:07

So he did that when he was writing this book he gets a social media passwords on friday

01:05:11

He can mess around on social media over the weekend and then on monday he can't log in anymore

01:05:15

Yeah, which I thought was brilliant like if you really want to go to that extreme

01:05:18

But again, that's kind of the question that you have to ask regarding all these habits is

01:05:22

How how extreme are you gonna go with this stuff? How badly do you want it?

01:05:25

Yep, that's that's an intense one. Yeah

01:05:28

Something i'm ready to go go there yet, but who knows maybe after digital minimalism

01:05:32

We'll see

01:05:35

All right fourth law last one here make it satisfying

01:05:38

and

01:05:40

This is coming to the fourth side of

01:05:43

the the four step process into

01:05:45

The habit with the reward side and just like what it sounds like positive reinforcement

01:05:52

Make it happen immediately. That was a big thing is something

01:05:57

You know the moment you've completed that habit that reward needs to happen right then it can't be delayed

01:06:02

Yep, if it's delayed you may not connect it like your brain won't connect it to

01:06:06

The the process that you went through but whatever it is it has to happen immediately

01:06:12

Yeah, so this is a really

01:06:14

Important piece is this whole idea of making it satisfying you're right

01:06:19

You have to have that immediate reinforcement right away and you have to view your situation the right way because

01:06:25

habit outcomes

01:06:27

are often

01:06:29

misaligned so

01:06:31

As an example like with a good habit the immediate outcome usually is negative

01:06:36

The ultimate outcome though is positive where with bad habits the immediate outcome is positive the ultimate outcome is is negative

01:06:44

so

01:06:45

you have to kind of

01:06:46

Figure out and hack your motivations here because the more immediate pleasure that you get from an action

01:06:52

The more likely you are to to repeat it but also the more immediate pleasure you get from an action that could also be a warning sign because

01:06:59

You should probably question whether it aligns with your long-term goals what you want to do is build in that motivation to your long-term goals

01:07:05

Get those incentives to to start a habit and then the identity that's what's going to help sustain it

01:07:12

Exactly and then do it over and over again. Yep. Don't break the chain

01:07:17

Exactly. Yeah, this is this is the part where he talks about the the jerry sinefeld thing

01:07:22

and uh, really the point is not that you're not going to miss but never miss twice

01:07:27

So

01:07:29

What do you do when you when you break a habit and he makes the argument?

01:07:34

That the important thing is not that you missed

01:07:38

A day but that you get back on the the horse the next day never missed twice

01:07:44

And this is where he talks about the cost of missing a day

01:07:48

Being greater than the cost of showing up even for one of those bad workouts where you're not on your a game

01:07:54

But at least you showed up

01:07:55

Because he talks about the the compound effect and he uses some numbers to describe this i'm not trying to get this right

01:08:02

But let's say, you know, you're you're at 100 and you

01:08:07

Improve by 50 percent. Okay, so you know, you've gone from 100 to 150

01:08:13

So that is a 33 percent gain

01:08:16

But if you went 50 backwards, it's a 50 loss. Does that make sense?

01:08:21

It makes sense. I'm not sure the math holds up with it, but yeah, yeah, well, that's

01:08:25

I'm positive. That's exactly this this numbers that he used

01:08:30

But the main idea here is that yeah, you're gonna miss everybody's gonna mess up

01:08:34

But what do you do when you mess up because when you miss once it's very easy to excuse it and miss again

01:08:41

And that's where the habit tracking really helps

01:08:44

And this is something I was thinking about with the habit tracking and a lot of the the app in particular that i've been thinking that

01:08:50

I want to track my habits with it's kind of built on this whole concept of streaks

01:08:53

And if you break a streak and let's say you're at 100 days on your your streak and then you break it

01:08:58

It's it can get really demotivating to have to start over

01:09:02

So i'm not entirely sure how I want to handle that yet because if you did like the x's on a piece of paper

01:09:08

You at least still see everything that you had done previously you still see the hundred days that you got in a row

01:09:13

And i'm not not entirely sure

01:09:16

What I want to do with this, but I do think that this is a really important piece

01:09:22

Is this this habit tracking because we don't really understand what we do unless we track it

01:09:29

We can think that we do a pretty good job of resisting something

01:09:33

But if we put an x for every time we did it we might be surprised how many x's show up on on the

01:09:39

On our sheet for the things that we want to eliminate sure and I I need a way to do that

01:09:44

I think with the habit tracking like there's a ton of apps out there that do it

01:09:47

And I would assume that's probably where you're gonna go

01:09:51

with it, but I

01:09:54

I think you're right in saying that if you had something that said

01:09:57

I've been at this for a hundred days in a row like awesome. That's amazing

01:10:03

But what happens if you miss that day?

01:10:05

What comes next like what do you do after that point?

01:10:09

Well

01:10:11

If you don't have the number

01:10:13

On there like if you just have a whole bunch of x's on a calendar on the wall

01:10:16

You're not gonna go through and count them

01:10:19

Like maybe you have a count on them you can get a rough idea

01:10:22

But if you miss a day, I feel like it doesn't hurt as much

01:10:24

Yeah, as if you're looking at a number that says 173 on the app and then you break it and it starts over and it shows you zero

01:10:32

Exactly that zero

01:10:34

Is pretty demotivating

01:10:36

Whereas if you have a calendar on the wall with x's on it

01:10:38

And you miss a day

01:10:41

And then you pick it up against in the next day. You still see all those x's like you still see

01:10:45

All of that history exactly whereas most of the apps that are out there don't do that

01:10:51

Right like they they don't treat it that way. They say like streaks like that's even the name of one of them

01:10:56

Like that that's what they do like it starts over whereas that's not

01:11:01

I don't think that encompasses the full intent here. I think it has a

01:11:06

Potential to actually do a little bit of harm in the process

01:11:10

Yeah, the apps aren't

01:11:13

aren't designed in a way

01:11:15

That is in alignment with what james says on page 201

01:11:19

He says the first mistake is never the one that ruins you it is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follow missing once is an accident

01:11:25

Missing twice is the start of a new habit

01:11:28

So yeah, if you did it 100 days in a row and you miss once it's like all of that gets thrown out the window

01:11:33

When really the the most important thing is that that next day, but

01:11:38

I don't know like at that point you've got the new identity

01:11:43

Maybe that you're trying to to uh to align yourself with and the old identity

01:11:48

Which you've cast a lot of votes to say like I am the person who it doesn't work out and who eats junk food and stuff like that

01:11:54

So it's almost like when you're trying to create a new habit embrace a new identity and stuff like that happens

01:12:00

It's like aha see you're not who you think you are

01:12:02

Yeah

01:12:04

Towards the end of this section he gets back into accountability again

01:12:07

Yep, you kind of get the hint that this is something that's important

01:12:11

I I don't know if you have anything else that you want to say about this, but I think there's there's an interesting aspect here with

01:12:18

You know take the streaks idea the calendar piece. That's a form of accountability

01:12:23

the the tracking I do on coffee and water that's kind of a form of accountability because

01:12:28

I know that if I am not tracking it like well then my whole data set is compromised

01:12:33

So I'm being accountable to myself in that way

01:12:37

So I think there's different forms that this can take

01:12:40

Obviously the club bookworm club could be that as well, but I don't know. Is there something else you want to say about this?

01:12:46

Well the the title of the chapter

01:12:49

That this pops up in is how an accountability partner can change everything

01:12:53

So

01:12:55

You're right. There are different ways that you can provide accountability

01:12:58

But I would challenge people who really want this stuff to stick

01:13:02

To find an accountability partner somebody who is going to hold your feet to the fire

01:13:08

He mentions in this section that pain is an effective teacher if failure is painful

01:13:13

It's going to get fixed if it's painless

01:13:15

It's going to get ignored and the more immediate the pain the less likely the behavior

01:13:19

So if you can find the right person

01:13:22

Who is going to hold you accountable to the changes that you want to make and this is also where he mentions like the habit contract

01:13:29

But even without a formal contract an accountability partner. I think is a very

01:13:34

Powerful and important idea. So I put it in this outline because I wanted to touch on it

01:13:40

But we kind of hit it earlier right?

01:13:42

He does in the whole book with a conversation about advanced

01:13:48

tactics when it comes to habits and one of those

01:13:52

Which is interesting that it I have to admit I was a little bit caught off guard by this

01:13:58

But it made a lot of sense once he went through it was taking habits

01:14:01

and combining that with the concept of deliberate practice

01:14:06

Which we've talked about in a few different books here and there the primary primary one being

01:14:12

Creating flow by mahali cheek sent me holly. Did I get it? Yeah, I got it

01:14:17

Which he totally talked about but didn't give credit to which yeah, I was waiting for it right

01:14:21

Never happened. Yeah, I was waiting for it, but

01:14:24

He he eluded to it, but he and which was kind of surprising because he was pretty good about attributing

01:14:29

Most everything it seemed like yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that was kind of odd to me

01:14:34

but he did bring it up

01:14:36

And I thought it was interesting that he brought that particular piece into this book because it's true

01:14:41

like if you want to get into an advanced form of

01:14:46

A certain area taking your habits and doing the deliberate practice piece

01:14:50

Which if you're not familiar with that you don't have listen those other episodes

01:14:53

It's the concept of being very intentional with just that practicing

01:14:57

A given task and continually looking for ways to improve

01:15:01

Even in minuscule ways so you're deliberately trying to improve that particular task

01:15:07

If you combine your habits with that

01:15:09

That's what james is getting at and showing the potential power to become a professional or an expert in that particular

01:15:16

Field. I think that's primarily what he's getting out there

01:15:19

Yeah, exactly he talks about the upside and the downside of habits in this last section where you can get so automatic at doing something that

01:15:27

You stop noticing the errors and you stop making improvements

01:15:31

And that's where the deliberate practice piece comes in so you're not just automating this thing

01:15:36

It's something that you do and then after a while you've developed bad habits and the process of doing this thing

01:15:41

You're constantly striving to to get better in a specific area

01:15:46

Which kind of leads into the concept of the cbe or career best effort

01:15:50

Which I really like and I don't I don't have an action item specifically to this

01:15:56

but I do want to

01:15:58

Think about how and if I want to incorporate this into an annual review is what james clear calls that I would call it a personal retreat

01:16:07

So he does he does actually talk about personal retreats in this at the end

01:16:10

He talks about a couple of questions for the annual review that I liked what went well

01:16:14

What could have gone better and then really importantly I think what did I learn?

01:16:18

And then the other piece of that which he talks about is the integrity report

01:16:22

So what are the core values that drive my life and work?

01:16:24

How am I living and working with integrity right now?

01:16:26

How can I set a higher standard for the future?

01:16:28

I obviously am coming at this through the lens of creating the personal retreat handbook

01:16:33

So I have like a little mini course on this

01:16:36

And I thought that the questions that he posed alone were pretty weak. I think that you could you would create a

01:16:44

Right. So I mean obviously I'm looking at this through a certain perspective

01:16:49

Right, but I feel like that's a very important topic that he just touched on in the last chapter that

01:16:55

Could have been maybe an entire book. I don't know. Maybe I will write a book on it at some point

01:17:00

There you go. See that's your action item right a book on personal retreats

01:17:04

That's see that's that's what james wanted. He simply wanted to spark that in somebody. Yeah. Yeah. He also mentions that

01:17:11

There's he has like a supplementary chapter on like habits and parenting

01:17:16

Which is interesting because I don't think he has any kids

01:17:19

but also as

01:17:22

As I'm reading this again, my wife and I are working on another video course the intentional family

01:17:27

Which I guess I just teased it

01:17:30

But it's not going to be out for for a while

01:17:32

But we've got like a whole bunch of things and when he said there's a supplementary chapter on this

01:17:36

I'm like, okay, buddy. You're not even get close to

01:17:39

What needs to be said on this topic?

01:17:41

Yeah, he said he had two follow-up chapters one is about applying all of this to business

01:17:47

and one's applying it to

01:17:49

Parenting I've not read them. I understand I get it. I understand why he

01:17:53

Didn't include him. This is already kind of a long book. Yeah. Yeah, I think it would have been too much

01:17:58

So I I get it, you know, if you want extracurricular

01:18:02

That that would be the place to go, which I think I'll probably do I just am not there yet. But sure yeah

01:18:07

The other thing I wanted to touch on here though and maybe there's a rant here is

01:18:12

James's view on the role of jeans jeans meaning like genetics not blue jeans correct

01:18:19

Yeah, he says that the secret to success is choosing the right field to compete in

01:18:23

He says they do not determine your destiny, but jeans do determine your area of opportunity

01:18:29

I'm not sure I agree with this

01:18:33

He uses a physical example related to sports, which is kind of hard to argue with

01:18:38

he says that

01:18:40

Michael Phelps is kind of uniquely designed to be a

01:18:43

Really good swimmer and he uses another example of a guy who was a runner who is uniquely

01:18:47

Designed to be a good runner and if they switch sports they probably wouldn't be able to be as successful as they are

01:18:53

In their sports because of their physiology

01:18:56

but I feel like that's a

01:18:58

That's the easy example

01:19:01

That's the one you can't really argue with

01:19:03

What do you say about any other area like the poulger sisters?

01:19:07

Which he talks about in here where the kids were were groomed to be chess champions and they were all really really successful

01:19:13

grandmasters and stuff like

01:19:15

I don't know. I think that

01:19:18

It's it's bigger than just what you're physically able to do

01:19:23

I think you can

01:19:26

change

01:19:27

Your physiology to a certain degree neuroplasticity like you can change your brain

01:19:32

And I don't know the extent to which that is possible

01:19:36

But when you listen to this last section

01:19:40

Kind of the takeaway is figure out what you like to do

01:19:44

But feels like work to other people like that alone like I don't really like that

01:19:48

I think that the what you like to do

01:19:51

uh has

01:19:54

very little

01:19:55

It should should have very little influence in what you actually choose to do

01:19:58

I my book I talk about the the root of the word passion being the latin word petee

01:20:03

And it's not something that's fun, but it's petee literally means to suffer

01:20:07

So your passion is not something you like to do your passion is something that you're willing to suffer to see come about

01:20:12

What makes me lose track of time

01:20:15

Where do I get greater returns than you average person what comes naturally to me

01:20:18

A lot of this stuff if you were to answer these questions

01:20:20

playing video games

01:20:23

Like that's kind of

01:20:25

So I think they can probably provide some

01:20:28

Refinement of your vision or your purpose in the right context, but I think it's dangerous to apply it

01:20:34

To apply just this I feel like there's a lot more

01:20:38

To this and I think that even the advice at the very beginning of choosing the right field to compete in

01:20:44

That could cause people to limit themselves so much that they really don't identify the thing that really is the thing for them

01:20:53

Myself as an example, okay, so when I started working with Asian efficiency

01:20:58

I was writing but prior to that I didn't consider myself a writer then I started creating

01:21:03

Courses like videos screencasting, but I didn't consider myself a screencaster

01:21:08

Then I was started podcasting but I didn't consider myself a podcaster

01:21:12

Then I started public speaking

01:21:14

I mean if you trace this all the way back if I would have followed james's advice

01:21:18

I would have said you know what I would rather

01:21:22

suffer death by sharks than getting up in front of somebody live and talking to them, but

01:21:27

Now that's one of the things that's most fulfilling for me

01:21:30

But I never would have been able to get to that point if I would have said

01:21:34

You know, I guess this is something that doesn't feel like fun to me

01:21:38

It doesn't make me lose track of my time. I don't get greater returns public speaking at the beginning than other people

01:21:43

I compare myself to the people who do it really well. So I guess this just isn't for me

01:21:48

I think that's really dangerous, but there is some truth to learning to play a game where the odds are in your favor

01:21:52

Yeah, I get that. I'm not sure I connect what you're connecting

01:21:56

uh, like I I get his point on genetics

01:22:00

and I can't say that that particular area really struck me positively or

01:22:05

negatives like oh, yeah, some people are you know physically

01:22:09

better equipped for different areas

01:22:13

uh or enjoy them more like

01:22:16

could I

01:22:18

I'm not a musician by any stretch of the imagination. Could I develop perfect pitch?

01:22:23

Some people would argue. Yes. Some people would argue. No

01:22:27

You know, if you follow the neural plasticity

01:22:30

Process technically you could say yes. Am I ever going to do that?

01:22:34

Most likely not. I'm never going to take the time to

01:22:37

Spend the years of constant work in order to do

01:22:42

The process that I need to do in order to develop perfect pitch. It's not going to happen

01:22:46

Like that's not something that I'm equipped to do currently

01:22:50

But I would argue it's not something you want to do and and that's the thing like until you try you don't even really know

01:22:56

Yeah, but I don't know that that's what he's getting it like what you're talking about is

01:23:00

Is not what he's referring to you're talking about like the growth mindset and how you can build yourself towards something

01:23:06

I don't feel like he even attempted to say

01:23:09

That that wasn't possible

01:23:12

Like that wasn't even in the remote stretch of what he was getting at. I don't think well

01:23:17

I feel like in sports, it's easy to say that person's just not athletic

01:23:20

But like we've learned about in what book was that peak where the guy became a pga champion?

01:23:26

Right never played golf before right so there's contrary evidence to that

01:23:30

but even broader than that

01:23:33

You can describe this to a lot of different things. I think music is maybe another one where people

01:23:37

Assume that you're born with this natural ability or you're not

01:23:42

Is someone like Mozart a product of his environment like the pouljour sisters or is he really gifted in that area?

01:23:50

sometimes you don't even know but

01:23:53

I don't know. I guess what I'm arguing

01:23:57

is that

01:23:59

You have to start by considering all of the options. You cannot start by looking at

01:24:05

where am I naturally

01:24:08

Which way am I naturally leaning?

01:24:10

Because the right thing for you may be in the opposite direction and I think maybe it takes

01:24:16

Someone going through a situation where you end up completely changing what you were doing and you find something more rewarding

01:24:24

before you realize

01:24:27

How dangerous it can be to just keep doing the the next thing in in the current like climbing the corporate ladder for example

01:24:34

uh, and maybe that's not the right way to say that but

01:24:38

I guess the next step is not the logical one all the time. Yeah, I'm not really sure how you're connecting all that but with the

01:24:45

genetics versus growth mindset like I didn't feel like he was

01:24:49

arguing those two against each other

01:24:52

You know, I think he was because it wasn't even a super long

01:24:56

Section it was just a point that sometimes there are areas where physiology and genetics play a role

01:25:03

and when they do

01:25:06

Pick the area that's in your favor like that that was the piece of it that I got out of that not a whole lot

01:25:11

I don't think we need to belabor it anymore, but you know, that's that's the piece that I I felt like I got out of it

01:25:17

But I'm not real sure how

01:25:19

You're seeing the the comparison there, but you know

01:25:23

Well, he talks about like the personality tests and the five spectrums of behavior, which by the way

01:25:29

I actually did go through

01:25:31

the 300 question

01:25:34

Test before we recorded here today. So he basically is arguing the exact opposite

01:25:39

Of Gretchen Rubin where if you take one of these valid tests

01:25:44

They will tell you this is what you should do

01:25:47

Too funny

01:25:49

Okay, and I'm saying that I'm kind of in between where Gretchen Rubin isn't going to say that your tendency is going to

01:25:58

dictate what sort of work you do

01:26:02

James Clear is saying that it it should at least give you some some clues and and we'll limit the options that are available to you

01:26:10

I kind of think that there's something in the middle there. So it's good to know how you're wired

01:26:16

It's good to know the five spectrums of behavior the openness to experience the conscientiousness the extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism

01:26:23

It's good to know

01:26:25

Your current abilities in those different areas, but they're not set in stone either

01:26:30

So again, you can't argue with the physical sports example

01:26:34

If you have a physical handicap then you're not going to be playing in the mba

01:26:38

But just because you're tall doesn't mean you are and just because you're short doesn't mean you can't

01:26:42

Sounds like you just don't like the sports analogy

01:26:45

Well, I feel like it was the easy one

01:26:49

I feel like he should have used some other ones to support his points here. Maybe this is you know, tarmac habits 2.0, but yeah, maybe I don't know

01:26:58

Anyway, it was an interesting like the whole advanced tactics area is is an interesting area

01:27:03

I think generally what I got out of it was that if you want to improve in a certain area

01:27:10

Habits are a great way to to start like if you want to get better at doing something building in habits that continually help you to improve in that area

01:27:19

To me, that's what he was getting at in this whole section. Sure. All right fair enough

01:27:23

We can we can

01:27:25

Stop with all that you ready for action items. You got four here. I only have two I do I do so

01:27:30

Number one is and this is something that I kind of knew I needed to do even before reading this but having read it now

01:27:36

And he's he's talking about the habit scorecard

01:27:39

I want to reevaluate all my habits and this is probably something that I should be doing

01:27:44

Periodically, which is why another action item is to add

01:27:48

These questions to my personal retreat what habits do I want to add or remove?

01:27:53

So every quarter I am asking myself these questions

01:27:56

Another action item I have is to use a habit tracker

01:28:00

I have an app that I'm probably going to use for this

01:28:04

But like I said, I'm a little bit nervous about the fact that if I miss a day my streaks are gone

01:28:08

So I have to figure that out

01:28:10

And then kind of along the lines even though I just railed on the jeans determining

01:28:15

What you're going to do another idea in that section is to

01:28:21

rewrite the rules in your favor. So

01:28:23

How can you combine your specific skill sets to do something a little bit different than somebody else is doing it

01:28:30

I'm kind of already doing that with faith-based productivity because

01:28:34

The I mean I've I've been working in the productivity space

01:28:38

So I could be you know, just another productivity guy who's talking about journaling and habits and all that stuff

01:28:44

But I've I've nitched down based on who I am and my my bible college degree and how that influences what I do

01:28:50

So I guess, you know, I want to continue to apply that thought process to to what I do

01:28:56

How can I continue to niche down and serve the people that I do serve to the very best of my ability?

01:29:02

How can I give them exactly what they need and in doing so by combining my specific skill sets?

01:29:09

You know, how does that how does that change the the terms of engagement?

01:29:12

How does that rewrite the rules of my favor?

01:29:14

Just as an example of this because I don't think I'm doing a very good job of explaining it

01:29:18

He talks about he talks about how he created his own major

01:29:21

And when he did that he wasn't comparing himself to the people who were in the psychology program or the engineering program or whatever because

01:29:28

There was nobody else in his program. Yeah, but he graduated with stellar marks and he's doing, you know, his thing now

01:29:35

And I think that's something that everybody should consider. I want to consider it for myself. Yeah

01:29:39

Cool

01:29:41

All right. I expect four topics on the club

01:29:44

by monday, all right

01:29:48

I

01:29:49

I've got to an exercise habit and a journaling habit. I've talked about these throughout this this conversation

01:29:55

I need to figure out what the exercise habit is before I can start trying to implement it

01:30:00

But I'm going to be working on the journaling piece tonight. Like I I have the notebook is sitting right beside me

01:30:05

So we're done recording here. I'm going to grab my pen and set it on top. I might make it easy nice

01:30:09

So that's that's what I know. All right

01:30:11

Talk to me about style and rating. All right. Well, James clear has a phenomenal style

01:30:17

in fact

01:30:18

I don't think this is just a personal preference thing

01:30:21

When I was listening to it or started listening to it the audible version

01:30:25

We were actually driving back from dork county and I was listening to it my wife

01:30:30

I just started she's like, what are you listening to atomic habits by james clear?

01:30:33

Oh, I want to listen to it. So we did the thing where you share the air pods

01:30:36

and

01:30:37

More than once on the drive home. She like

01:30:40

Hits me and then looks at me with her mouth open like oh my gosh

01:30:44

This is amazing. And then a couple times she's like, I really like this guy

01:30:48

Just his whole his whole style and the content that's in this book is

01:30:52

Phenomenal like I said at the beginning

01:30:54

It's a result of everything that he's gone through and everything that he's learned

01:30:58

This is not something that he's like, okay

01:31:01

I'm gonna sign a contract and I'm gonna now go into the process of writing this book

01:31:05

He's been blogging about this stuff for years

01:31:08

Yeah, and that really comes through he knows his stuff

01:31:11

So even though I nitpick the the gene stuff at the at the end

01:31:16

I absolutely love this book. I gifted I think four copies of this last Christmas

01:31:21

It should not be a surprise that I'm giving this five stars. Nice

01:31:25

Yeah, I have followed james for a long time very long time

01:31:30

And have always loved his writing

01:31:32

It's been a while my since we've had a book that I had a hard time

01:31:37

Like it's dinner time

01:31:42

Okay, put the book down. It'll be okay. Like it's been a while since I've had one that's gripped me quite that much

01:31:47

James does a fantastic job at doing that

01:31:51

It is not a meandering journey. I think people know by now. Those are not the style of book that I like

01:31:58

I like dense books. They have a lot of information in them

01:32:01

That are kind of fast-paced. So this ticks all those boxes

01:32:05

It's pretty easy to give this a five. I'm I'm with you there

01:32:09

So we'll give it the double five on this because like I feel like this is one that

01:32:13

It's one of those that you could use is like a gateway self-help book

01:32:18

Like it's it could be a gateway productivity book

01:32:20

It could be like the one that you get started on

01:32:23

But it's also written in such a way that people who have been around it for a very long time come out with tons of

01:32:29

Takeaways from it. So yep

01:32:32

Definitely a pickup book like go for it. Definitely recommended

01:32:37

Yeah, you mentioned you don't like the meandering journeys

01:32:39

This book is definitely not that the podcast maybe is

01:32:43

So don't judge the content of the book based on this episode of bookworm

01:32:48

Yeah, we like the meandering conversations. Yeah

01:32:52

All right, with that said we'll put atomic habits on the shelf. What's next time Mike?

01:32:57

All right next one is my pick and that is digital minimalism by cal Newport

01:33:02

We've alluded to it a couple times already

01:33:04

This is going to be a good one and I think it's going to challenge me. Yeah, I think there's there's a lot of hype around it

01:33:09

So there's I have some pretty high expectations so far

01:33:13

It's on pace

01:33:16

I'm not going to say it's exceeding my expectations. It's about what I wanted it. So anyway, no more on that

01:33:21

uh

01:33:22

One of the books that's in that's mentioned in the first chapter of that is drunk tank pink by adam atler

01:33:29

And the description that he gave for it and then I looked it up a little

01:33:32

I was struggling to nail down a book for this like I was reading some of the description on it

01:33:37

It's like that'll be a very interesting conversation to have so drunk tank pink by adam atler

01:33:42

I'm gonna leave it at that but it'll be an interesting book. Yeah, I was definitely curious when you mentioned that before we started recording

01:33:50

I like the title too. Yeah

01:33:53

For gapbooks. I am still reading leadership by john maxwell

01:33:58

This book is rocking my world and uh, it's just really dense taking tons of notes

01:34:04

And it's taking me a little while to get through it. Yeah, I actually have a gapbook this time

01:34:08

I just finished it

01:34:10

Day ago a couple days ago. No yesterday

01:34:12

Uh, it doesn't have to be crazy at work by jason free ad and david hyenomire hanson dhh

01:34:18

Uh, these are the guys behind base camp

01:34:20

And they talk about how they built their business and how they go about building a calm

01:34:26

company

01:34:27

And the primary reason I picked it up was because i'm still building a company pro course

01:34:32

So like I wanted to use that as a base to help me put a mindset around how to build that

01:34:37

Love the book again. That's another one that I had a hard time putting down

01:34:41

So

01:34:42

Definitely highly recommend that one if you're anywhere near leadership of a company at all must read in that scenario

01:34:49

Yeah, I've read that one. It's it is very good and uh like a lot of their their books

01:34:55

And their chapters are really short. So it it's uh, it's a page turner. Yep for sure

01:35:00

All right, if you want to recommend a book

01:35:04

Please do so over at the bookworm club and also make sure to vote for it so that it gets near the top

01:35:10

Uh, I've picked digital minimalism joe picked another one based off of digital minimalism

01:35:15

But my plan after that is to go look at the the votes again

01:35:18

Uh, i've got a couple that i'm considering that are pretty high vote getters

01:35:22

So if you want to cast your vote for the next book that we're going to cover it now is a great time to do that

01:35:27

You can also get a list of all of the books that we've covered and all the plan books by going to bookworm.fm/list

01:35:35

Yeah, I was looking through when I was turning the old down what book I wanted to pick today

01:35:39

I was looking through some of the recommendations and there's one

01:35:42

On there. I wanted a call-out. It's called stand firm by sphind brinkman

01:35:48

Like the tagline on it is resisting the self-improvement craze which I told mike before a hand like that's like anti bookworm

01:35:56

like

01:35:58

That one might be rantworthy like that would be a very interesting one to do I didn't pick it

01:36:02

But if you guys really want us to go vote for it. Yep, so any anyway interesting tidbit there

01:36:08

uh ways to help out the show and

01:36:11

Promote the show uh iTunes reviews, you know as you would expect go on iTunes link in the show notes

01:36:17

Go leave us a review. We love those. We read them all the time. It's amazing. Thank you

01:36:22

Join the club club.bookworm.fm

01:36:24

And part of that is I'm going to be creating an area for action items. We're going to be posting our action items there

01:36:31

Join in, you know

01:36:33

Keep us accountable if you need accountability you post yours

01:36:36

We'll we'll try our best to interact with that as much as we can

01:36:39

We'll create a formal place for those uh on the club. So yes club.bookworm.fm

01:36:46

All right, so that's it for atomic habits and if you're reading along with us

01:36:50

Pick up digital minimalism by cal Newport. We'll be going through that one in a couple weeks. See you next time