Bookworm Transcripts

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I saw your tweet about, was it National Booklovers Day?

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Is that what it was?

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- Yeah, yep.

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- And I totally missed it.

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I was like, we cannot, I felt like a complete failure, Mike.

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- It's cool, it's cool.

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Especially after reading this book about social media,

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you're forgiven.

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- I know.

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(laughing)

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- I try to keep up with some of those National Puppy Day,

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some of those types of things,

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but I noticed them like two days late,

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it's terrible.

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And I've been that way for a long time.

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Even some bloggers are really good about,

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they'll write an article for Father's Day,

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or Christmas is coming up,

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and they'll write an article that somehow correlates

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to whatever's going on on the calendar.

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I've never been able to do that.

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(laughing)

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I never get it right, and I don't know why.

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I just don't.

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- I only saw it because it was trending.

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- Oh, yeah.

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Yeah, that's what's trending on Instagram or Twitter,

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those are lifesavers sometimes.

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Like, when, what was it, Twitter Moments,

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when that came out, there was a lot of people upset about it,

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because they're like, this doesn't make sense,

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it won't work out.

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I'm like, that is one of the best sources of news I get

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for some reason.

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It's like the one place I go.

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Like, okay, even myself, I'm like,

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I don't think this is such a great idea,

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and here I am checking it at least twice a day.

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Don't tell Cal Newport, but that's just,

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(laughing)

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it's a place I go.

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- Twitter's a great source for news, in my opinion,

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because no matter which way you lean,

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if you were to go to an actual news site,

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you're gonna get very, very biased coverage.

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- Right.

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- And there's a really good,

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maybe we can put this on the list at some point,

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but Simon Sinek has a book called Leaders Eat Last,

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where he talks a little bit about that.

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- Okay.

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- The shift of when news sites stop being,

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Julie news sites, and it was really more of like,

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the spin that was put on the news to get more readers.

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And it's really interesting, but after you read it,

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you're like, yeah, I can't trust anybody anymore.

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But Twitter gives you at least a snapshot

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of what the world is thinking about current events,

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in my opinion.

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- Yeah, I know that working for a corporation

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and doing a lot of data analysis,

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and then paying attention to what,

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some of the scientists within our company were working on,

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and seeing how they went about publishing articles,

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about the stuff that they were researching.

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It's crazy how the more you know about something,

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the less you trust it.

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- So, that's true.

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- I totally get it.

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So here's a real question.

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So talking about cutting back on things,

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that's my awesome segue there.

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How's the minimizing process going

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after reading the more of less?

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- It's going, it's going to be a long process, I believe.

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But I have embarked on the journey,

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and a few things that have been close to my heart

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for a long time, I am actually in the process

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of giving some things away.

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So I mentioned before, actually during the episode,

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that I kind of started this process

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before I even read the book with guitars,

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and then it's gone into technology devices,

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although I do have a little bit of a confession

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to make there.

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A little bit later.

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And then the other big thing is bags.

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I have been a collector of bags for a long time.

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I don't even know why, but.

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- Like, you're not talking like grocery bags, but.

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- No, I'm talking about like backpacks, messenger bags.

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Like, I don't know why, but I have, I think,

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five or six Timbuktu bags.

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- What?

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- And yeah, as I'm going through my stuff,

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I'm like, I don't need that one, I don't need that one.

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And I already have targets in mind

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for people to give those to, but I have not

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actually given them away yet.

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I did give the computer away that I was telling you about

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last time, and that was an incredibly rewarding experience.

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I should have seen the look on this guy's face.

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And as I gave it to him at church where I saw him,

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and then I was actually on worship team.

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So we were practicing before service,

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and I see him in the hallway, and he's just like dancing.

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(laughing)

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- I got this old MacBook era that I couldn't use anymore.

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So that was really cool.

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And it really created momentum and makes me

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want to give more stuff away.

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So it's happening. - Nice, nice.

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I, wow, you are way on this one.

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This is okay, so I have attempted to go down this path.

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But for me, it's a lot simpler, I guess,

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'cause I didn't really have a ton of things to begin with.

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So for me, it's mostly, I've kept some of my old notebooks

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around that I've taken notes in.

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I don't know why I kept these things.

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But I did get rid of some of those.

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I don't even, I didn't even feel the need to scan them in.

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Some people feel like they need to scan that stuff in.

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I just don't, I don't see it.

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I don't see the point.

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So I threw them away.

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Obviously you can't use them.

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All the pages are written on them.

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So I haven't gone through a lot of things

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to try to donate, like what you're saying.

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But in my case, it's a lot of find the things

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I don't need and throw it away and, you know.

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(laughing)

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Let my girls play with it.

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That's pretty much the extent of what it's been for me.

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So nothing near as fun.

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But okay, are you gonna get to this whole computer thing?

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It sounds like you bought something.

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Like you can't talk about getting rid of things.

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- I did not buy anything.

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This is not my fault.

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(laughing)

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- It's not your fault.

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- My wife got me an iPad Pro 9.7 inch

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for a belated Father's Day gift.

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- Okay.

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- Completely unexpected, but very awesome.

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At the time, I was probably in your camp where it's like,

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I don't really need an iPad Pro,

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but once I had it and I started using it,

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I have noticed a couple things.

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So since you brought it up, I'll just,

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I'll tell you what I was waiting for this in light.

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Yeah, so I gleaned something in light of reading

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Deep Work by Kill Newport.

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So he talks in there about scheduling the offline blocks.

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And this is going completely out of order.

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So I apologize.

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But I have discovered that using the iPad Pro to do writing,

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I am actually a much faster writer on that device

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because I think the iOS, the operating system

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provides constraints where I can't be distracted

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by other things as long as I turn off the notifications.

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I don't have all these other things open in the background.

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You've really got, you can do split screens.

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So at most you've got two things up at once.

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But I've actually written several outlines and articles.

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Using the iPad Pro, I'll go down to the coffee shop.

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'Cause my office is upstairs right above

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a really nice coffee shop.

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So what I've been doing is when I need to write,

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I go down to the coffee shop and I can write consistently.

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Now I've done this like three or four times.

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About 1500 publishable words in about 45 minutes.

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Nice.

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Which is amazing compared to where I used to be.

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I've mentioned before I used to get up really early

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when I was working on my book

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and crank out a thousand words before work.

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But a lot of those words never saw the light today.

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This is totally different 'cause I can go down there

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and everything just kind of flows.

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But then I get done and I'm like,

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"Hey, actually this is pretty good."

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So it's a little bit different application

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of the scheduling the offline blocks.

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But I feel like I've been applying that principle

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even before, well I guess I really got the iPad Pro

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like I think right after we recorded last time.

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So it's kind of before but also during the reading

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and the application of what I've gotten from DeepWorks.

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So that's been a really interesting takeaway.

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Your wife didn't listen to our episode did she?

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She did just not before she bought it.

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(laughing)

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So here's a question for you then.

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So if the iPad Pro helps you write more

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because it's more focused with your Mac setup,

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do you run multiple screens for that then?

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- I do.

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I have a external monitor that I plug into my Macbook Pro.

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- So you run the two side by side then.

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- Yeah, but I don't do that all the time.

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And to be honest, I probably don't use it the same way

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that a lot of people would use like a multi-screen setup.

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Like right now as we're recording,

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I've got logic open on my Macbook screen

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just so I can make sure that everything looks good

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while we're recording and I don't hit any snags.

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I've also got quip open which has our notes to go off of.

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And then I've got a couple other things

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that I've actually gotten from the first time

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that I read DeepWorks documented in an Omni-Outliner file.

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So I have those two open on my main screen

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Skype running in the background

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but I don't have a bunch of things all lined up

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or I'm constantly switching between one and the next,

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like a lot of people do.

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I tend to just focus in on the one screen

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and if I have to have something up

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that I have to check occasionally,

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like for Asian efficiency we use HipChat,

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I'll use HipChat, I'll leave that open

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on the second screen sometimes.

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- Yeah, now the reason I ask because I have,

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I went through this unintentional experiment

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of using nothing but a MacBook Pro screen for a year

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and I can talk about this

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because I just wrote an article about it

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and it will come out shortly before this episode releases.

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So this will work out good.

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So it hasn't been released as we're recording this

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but it will before you get a chance to listen to this.

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So for the listeners it'll be in the show notes

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but Mike you can't read it yet.

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But I've been doing, I've been working solely off

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of a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.

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Like those are my only devices

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and I've been operating that way for a year,

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a little over a year now.

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But over time I've realized that I have the same experience

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as what you're talking about with the iPad Pro

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where if you just sit down,

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you only have access to a small portion of visibility

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on a screen and that means that you end up

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being able to zone in on it I guess would be the word for it.

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Does that make sense?

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'Cause it sounds like it's the same thing

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but it's just a different device.

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- Yes, absolutely.

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Zoning in would be a great definition.

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I think maybe another way to describe it is,

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I mean just going back to the title of the book,

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like it naturally facilitates deep work versus shallow work

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where shallow work you're kind of switching

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from one thing to the next

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and you're kind of scanning the horizon

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where that setup forces you in one general direction

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with your work.

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Yes, you can go and switch to those other things

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but when they're not all instantly accessible,

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it provides a little bit of friction

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where it kind of keeps you focused on the thing

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that you're supposed to be doing.

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- Interesting.

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Okay, well, I'm not gonna keep going on this

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but it's interesting that that worked out well

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'cause I know that a lot of people talk about the benefits

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of having a specific device for a specific task

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and it sounds like that's your iPad Pro.

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- Yeah, and it could be your MacBook too.

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It really doesn't matter what the device is,

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the key is, and maybe this is just because

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of how I've used iOS versus macOS, I guess it's called now.

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- I know, I'm still trying to get my head around that.

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- I think part of it is I've learned some bad habits

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with macOS, I mean I know that there's full screen built

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into a lot of applications now,

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but I just find right now the iOS constraints

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actually provide an atmosphere for me to do deep work better

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and just jumping into the book, I guess,

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the definition of deep work that Kel Newport uses

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is professional activities perform

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in a state of distraction free concentration

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that push your kind of capabilities to the limit

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these efforts create new value,

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improve your skill and are hard to replicate.

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I think that as long as you are focusing

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on the professional activities,

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like the things that push your kind of capabilities

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to the limit, then it doesn't really matter,

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you could set up whatever device you wanna use the correct way,

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but for me that's my iPad Pro,

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it provides the distraction free atmosphere for me

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to do deep work more, I don't wanna say effectively,

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but it's easier to click in, I guess.

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- Yeah, no, that makes sense.

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- That sounds, it's very similar to my writing desk

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that we've talked about in the past where literally

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it's not possible for distractions there

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because it's only pen and paper and that's my only option.

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So my only, well, I guess my only potential distraction

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is to stare at the wall, that'd be fun.

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But yeah, so let's just go ahead and jump in here, Mike.

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So the book for today, 'cause I think we're both really

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anxious to get into this 'cause we have a ton of notes

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on this one, I was looking through everything we have

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on this, is there anything in the book we didn't right now?

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So this might be a long episode, we'll see.

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But deep work by Cal Newport, this was my choice

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and my primary reason for picking this is guilt.

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It's, we were talking about Twitter earlier on

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and this is one that it kinda made the rounds.

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You saw a lot of people for awhile talking about it

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on Twitter and I guess you still see some people

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starting to rave about it right now, but I saw a lot

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of the hype, it made me curious, a lot of people

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were talking about it and I wanted to know

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what we were talking about.

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So thus, we've now read deep work and I'm quite happy

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that we did.

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- Glad you gave in the internet peer pressure, huh?

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- I know, I know, it's crazy how the internet people

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can do that.

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- Yeah, this book is phenomenal and I've, I mentioned,

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I read it previously and it hit me so hard

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that I actually developed a convinced tan

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to let me do this, but we actually have a deep work

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webinar that we do for Asian efficiency.

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Wow.

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- That I actually did it this week and we talk a lot

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about applying some of the strategies and principles

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that Cal talks about in the book, but yeah,

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this book is awesome.

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- I, it's been a long time Mike since I've run across

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a book that has single handedly had this big of an impact

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on me.

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I think the last time it was, it hit me this hard

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would be getting things done.

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The first time I went through it where it just makes you

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stop and rethink everything, this I think does that

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for me, which is interesting because one of the first

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things that I ran across in the book was a conversation,

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when the conversation, but he was going through a study

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that talked about, and I'm gonna have to look it up

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'cause I forget the guy's name, and there were some

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interesting names in this book that I had,

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I know you wrote one down for talking about it a little

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later, I wanna hear you pronounce it, but he talks

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about what's the guy's name, Grant.

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So Adam Grant, he's a professor at Wharton School

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of Business at Penn, and he developed this whole process

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of understanding how people are thinking and how they're

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working at a specific point.

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Anyway, long story short, he found out that some

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of the more effective people do work in batches,

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so they group similar tasks and work on them in those

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groupings, in those batches, and whenever I read that,

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I was like, well, that's getting things done.

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Like, that's, go clear back to episode one.

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That's where we started this whole journey, and the concept

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of batching tasks in order to accomplish more

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in a short amount of time.

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Oh, yeah, definitely, I've been doing that.

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I'm on, this is how the book started, and I'm thinking,

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oh, I'm off to a good start here.

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Yep, definitely.

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The batching task is really, it kind of ties into,

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I think he talks in the book, I think it's A Tension

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Residue by Sophie Leroy, where a lot of times we don't

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recognize the switching tasks that are involved with the

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tasks that we've decided to do throughout the day,

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and she was a researcher, and the book is chock full

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of these references.

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She was a researcher, I think at the University of Minnesota

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who identified that when you switch from one task to another

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that there is a residue of your attention that remains

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focused on the previous task.

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And then also with, in regards to switching, you need to make

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sure that you're focusing on the deep work because the other

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finding she had was that if the work on the first task was

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unbounded or of low intensity, so, i.e. checking email for a

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lot of people, then that is gonna set you up to perform

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not as well on the next task.

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And batching kind of addresses that where you can focus on

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related tasks and you can take advantage of the synergy

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that you get when you're already moving in a certain

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direction and then you have all these things that are kind

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of on the periphery.

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You're already in that mindset, you're already in that mode,

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so it minimizes the amount of attention residue and the

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switching costs associated with going back and forth

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with those things.

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- Yeah, going off of that,

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there was one that was interesting because they made the

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correlation of, like you're saying, the attention residue,

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but something I had never thought about, Mike, was how

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switching projects back and forth can have the same effect.

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We all know multitasking doesn't actually work.

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Some of us like to claim that we're good at it and that we're

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able to do multiple things at one time.

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We all know you're false, you're lying, you're not actually

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that great at it.

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But it was interesting to me that there were,

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the same effects that could happen if you move from one

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project to another.

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So I'm working on building out a website and then I step

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over and go to recording a podcast and then I'm going to

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step into designing a website for somebody.

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And if I do those three in succession, then I can very

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quickly and very easily have this lag between them and not

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actually get deep into a project, which means that I don't

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do as well on it as I could have if I was able to focus on it

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entirely.

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Does that make sense?

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Because it's effectively--

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it's detrimental in the same way that multitasking is, but

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when you're switching back and forth from projects.

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Yes, that makes perfect sense.

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Now, one thing I'll throw out there is--

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it's a quote that I put in here that I really liked by Arnold

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Bennett.

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And I've experienced this myself.

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He said that one of the chief things which my typical man has

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to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a

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continuous, hard activity.

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They do not tire like an arm or a leg.

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All they want is change, not rest, except in sleep.

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So that is important because we tend to focus on, well, I'm

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going to do this thing.

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It's going to be really intense.

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I'm going to do deep work for a while.

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And then I got to take a break because I got to let myself

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recharge.

00:19:49

And he's basically saying that that's not true.

00:19:53

You can go head down into one website task and then switch

00:19:56

to another very intense, deep work type task in a totally

00:20:03

different arena.

00:20:03

And your brain has no trouble keeping up with that.

00:20:08

Now, sometimes there's little things that you can do to

00:20:10

kind of facilitate the transition and to kind of get

00:20:15

things moving again in the right direction.

00:20:17

Like, one experiment that I did a little bit ago was, whenever

00:20:21

I was feeling tired or drained in the middle of the day, I read

00:20:25

a study that if you took a break and you did something that

00:20:29

really just challenged you mentally, that it really was an

00:20:35

adrenaline shot, like a caffeine boost for your brain sort of

00:20:39

a sort of speak.

00:20:40

So one of the things that I did was I kept my guitar in my

00:20:44

office.

00:20:45

And whenever I felt like I just couldn't go anymore, I hit that

00:20:48

law maybe in the middle of the afternoon.

00:20:50

Instead of going and getting a coffee, I would pick up my

00:20:52

guitar and I would play and I would specifically try to write

00:20:56

and create something because the research that I had read

00:21:00

back this up and I've noticed it in my own life that when I

00:21:04

did that, even for a short period of time, like 10 to 15

00:21:07

minutes, it kind of pressed the reset button.

00:21:10

And then after that, I could go and I could do something real

00:21:14

intense and needed focus again.

00:21:17

And I think that you could do that even without the mental

00:21:24

interlude, I guess, in my case, playing guitar.

00:21:27

I think that you could, if you're going to work real hard on

00:21:30

writing an article or developing a site or whatever, you can be

00:21:34

head down in that code for a long time.

00:21:36

And then when you hit a wall, all you've got to do is switch

00:21:40

the deep work task that you want to do.

00:21:42

And you'll find that you're able to hit the ground running

00:21:45

and there's efficiency in the work that you're doing for the

00:21:48

new task.

00:21:49

At least that's my experience.

00:21:51

Yeah, I think that makes sense to a point because I know that

00:21:54

for me, it's almost similar to if I was working on coding a

00:22:00

website or building a web application, and then I just got

00:22:04

burned out on it and then went to write a blog post because

00:22:08

that would be kind of an creative, difficult endeavor,

00:22:12

depending on the topic for the article.

00:22:14

And then coming back to do the development.

00:22:17

But in my case, that wouldn't work.

00:22:19

I just know that it would just continue to drain because for

00:22:23

some reason, maybe it's the same side of creativity.

00:22:26

I don't know.

00:22:27

But there's something going on, at least in my mind, that

00:22:29

doesn't let me do that.

00:22:31

But see, this is the thing.

00:22:33

I went through this.

00:22:35

It challenged my thinking on that because previously I've

00:22:39

always thought about whenever I have those walls, like you

00:22:42

hit the wall and you just don't want to keep going,

00:22:44

that I would try to find some way to take a short five,

00:22:48

ten minute break, go for a walk, brainstorm something, and

00:22:53

see if I could hit that reset button like what you're saying.

00:22:56

And whenever I would do that, I would step away from the

00:23:00

thing I'm doing and hope that it could recharge.

00:23:04

And it sometimes worked, it sometimes didn't.

00:23:06

But Cal Newport challenges the idea that you would need to go

00:23:12

do a reset.

00:23:13

At least that's the way I took it, Mike, because it meant that I

00:23:18

could work those muscles in my brain to get to a point where

00:23:22

they could handle longer periods of challenging and

00:23:27

mentally draining work, which can come back to the willpower

00:23:33

instinct with how do you go about building the muscle of your

00:23:36

brain and how do you go about getting better at the things

00:23:40

that you're doing and continue to develop your ability to do the

00:23:46

hard stuff, I guess.

00:23:48

And you can start to tie a lot of these books together with how

00:23:52

do you get past the resistance to start and how do you go about

00:23:56

continuing to work on it.

00:23:57

And I think Cal Newport, he talks a lot about how to continue

00:24:02

doing the hard stuff, how to continue doing that deep work

00:24:06

when you feel like you're done.

00:24:09

And I feel like I'm just belaboring this at the moment.

00:24:12

But it's the idea that you can push through some of those

00:24:16

walls.

00:24:16

And a lot of the stuff that we've learned to this point with

00:24:19

bookworm can show you that there are ways to get past that

00:24:22

wall.

00:24:24

Yes, the walls are--

00:24:26

I don't want to say artificial, but you can develop your focus

00:24:32

muscle, I would argue, to the point where you don't hit

00:24:36

those, at least at the point where you would typically hit

00:24:39

them anymore.

00:24:41

At least that's my experience.

00:24:43

And I guess that's coming from somebody who was working a

00:24:47

40-hour-a-week day job and was trying to write on the side

00:24:50

and squeeze in some stuff for Asian efficiency, which looking

00:24:54

back at it now, maybe I was trying to do too much at that

00:24:57

time.

00:24:57

But what it built up the positive from that was that I would

00:25:02

argue it developed the ability for me to enter in and do deep

00:25:08

work using the journalistic approach that he talked about.

00:25:12

We can dive into the approaches in a little bit.

00:25:14

But every time that you do that, I think you flex that focus

00:25:18

muscle, deep work gets a little bit easier.

00:25:21

And then you can do it a little bit more, and a little bit more,

00:25:24

and a little bit more.

00:25:24

And if you keep doing it consistently, that was one of

00:25:26

the things that he was talking about in the book was that

00:25:29

you need to do these things consistently.

00:25:31

And you'll leverage the compound effect to produce

00:25:34

substantial results if you're just consistent with it.

00:25:37

You can't just do it once and say, oh, that was hard.

00:25:39

But there I did it.

00:25:40

Now I'm good for a week.

00:25:42

You have to consistently do it.

00:25:43

But as long as you do that, I think that the average person

00:25:49

can overcome those obstacles that--

00:25:54

again, they're not artificial, but they're almost like

00:25:57

mental.

00:25:57

You have to get to a point where you see that you are able

00:26:02

to overcome them.

00:26:04

And then once you see that, yeah, I can beat this thing, then

00:26:07

it usually isn't very long until that breakthrough or that

00:26:09

victory comes.

00:26:11

I know that getting over that initial hump where it's like,

00:26:14

yes, I can do this, that's the hard part.

00:26:16

I know.

00:26:17

So right now, the project I'm working on is working with

00:26:21

OmniFocus, which is--

00:26:23

that's the book I wrote.

00:26:25

But I'm transforming it into a video series.

00:26:30

So I'm going through the process of creating--

00:26:34

so I'm creating screencasts that emulate a lot of what's

00:26:38

in the book.

00:26:38

So it puts a video to what you're doing.

00:26:40

So for me, there's a lot of interesting things with that

00:26:45

and the whole process that goes with developing a screencast.

00:26:48

Well, what I found like was there's a lot of instances

00:26:51

where I just don't want to--

00:26:54

I don't want to sit down and turn on the camera.

00:26:55

I don't want to sit and turn on the microphone and go.

00:26:58

It's just something that--

00:27:00

I just for whatever reason, it's hard to get myself going on it

00:27:03

or I'm at it for a while and I'm just like, OK, I'm just done.

00:27:07

And something about that has shown me that even though I

00:27:13

don't want to keep going, there are some little things

00:27:15

that I can do to spark me to keep going.

00:27:18

And then it somehow perpetuates.

00:27:21

And honestly, if you're reading this book,

00:27:23

something I found, if you're in the middle of reading this,

00:27:26

the book itself is motivation to keep working

00:27:30

and to develop the deeper levels of work

00:27:34

that you're going to do because you're sitting here reading it

00:27:36

and it's like, you know, he's a great author

00:27:38

and he's telling you these stories of people

00:27:41

who are able to spend all this time in isolation

00:27:44

or away from the distractions in order

00:27:47

to develop some pretty sophisticated and interesting

00:27:50

things.

00:27:50

And whenever you hear those stories, it's like, OK, well,

00:27:54

I could do that.

00:27:55

I can keep going.

00:27:57

I can keep this stuff moving.

00:27:59

And when it's all said and done, you yourself

00:28:02

end up producing more and feel a lot better about it.

00:28:06

Yes, you're more satisfied.

00:28:07

And that's where the Mihaly cheek sent Mihaly stuff comes in.

00:28:12

That's going to say how you're going to pronounce that.

00:28:15

I only know that because I looked up the pronunciation of it.

00:28:19

So hopefully I got it.

00:28:20

I got it right.

00:28:21

But he talks a lot about flow, which people might describe

00:28:27

as getting in the zone.

00:28:28

Cal Newport would describe it as deep work.

00:28:31

But he's been doing this research since the '70s or the '80s.

00:28:34

And basically, his research indicates

00:28:36

that what people really want, according to all the research

00:28:40

that he's done, is not an easy life but a fulfilling life.

00:28:45

And I think that's a really important distinction

00:28:48

because a lot of people think, like going back to what we talked

00:28:50

about last time, the if then mindset,

00:28:53

if I can get to this point, then I'll just

00:28:55

be able to take it easy.

00:28:56

I'll be able to coast.

00:28:57

I don't have to worry about all this stuff anymore.

00:29:00

That actually doesn't bring the satisfaction

00:29:02

that you think it will.

00:29:04

But if you're able to apply the deep work principles,

00:29:07

if you're able to enter into what Mihaly cheeks

00:29:10

that Mihaly would call flow, then that

00:29:13

is going to translate into happiness, satisfaction,

00:29:17

in both your personal and your professional life.

00:29:19

So when you go into a job interview, for example,

00:29:23

the first question that you usually ask is,

00:29:24

how much does it pay?

00:29:25

Because you think that if you're compensated accordingly,

00:29:27

then everything's going to be great.

00:29:29

You're going to love what you do.

00:29:30

That's not the case.

00:29:32

Better question would be, am I going

00:29:35

to be able to do deep work here?

00:29:36

Or am I going to be stuck responding

00:29:39

to what other people are declaring as urgent?

00:29:41

Am I going to be stuck responding to email for eight hours a day?

00:29:46

Am I going to be able to enter in and focus everything

00:29:49

that I have, all my cognitive abilities on what

00:29:52

I'm going to be doing?

00:29:53

And it doesn't even matter what that thing is.

00:29:56

It doesn't have to be designing a logo or developing

00:29:59

a website.

00:30:01

I mean, you have in the notes here from the book,

00:30:03

The Craftsman Mindset.

00:30:04

He talks about a blacksmith and a wheel--

00:30:07

forget what the term is, but somebody who makes wagon wheels.

00:30:11

These are jobs that still exist, even though those technologies

00:30:14

are completely obsolete for the most part.

00:30:17

No one's buying antique Viking swords anymore,

00:30:20

except as collector's items.

00:30:21

But there's this guy in Wisconsin who--

00:30:23

this is what he does.

00:30:24

And he's so passionate about it because it's really, really hard.

00:30:28

And he's able to focus on it and produce something

00:30:31

that when he's done, even though it's difficult, he looks at it.

00:30:35

And he's like, yes, I have accomplished something.

00:30:37

I've done something great, and he feels satisfied.

00:30:40

This is where it gets hard for knowledge workers.

00:30:43

Because you brought up the blacksmithing mindset

00:30:48

and how they go about doing things.

00:30:50

Well, they build things with their hands.

00:30:52

I think about this whenever I go out to my wood shop,

00:30:54

and I build something like a piece of furniture of some kind.

00:30:58

I go out there, and some people in the GTD world

00:31:02

get upset at me because I don't really

00:31:03

keep a task list on the stuff I'm building out there.

00:31:07

And the reason is I can go out to the wood shop,

00:31:10

and in 10 seconds, I can tell you what the next step is

00:31:14

that needs to be done just by looking at the piece

00:31:16

that I'm working on.

00:31:18

And it has nothing to do with a need

00:31:21

to keep track of all the stuff that I'm working on.

00:31:23

It has a lot to do with being able to see what comes next

00:31:27

because it's a physical thing that you're working on.

00:31:29

You can physically see what you're doing.

00:31:32

And when you have the ability to just look at it

00:31:35

and know what you're doing, then it's just simple.

00:31:40

And when you're done, you have something

00:31:41

you can put in your hands, you can go put it in the house,

00:31:43

you have the ability to look at something

00:31:48

and say, I made that, there's pride in that,

00:31:50

there's satisfaction in saying, look what I made.

00:31:53

I mean, you can do that.

00:31:55

With say I'm building a website,

00:31:58

or I figured out something that a client wanted to learn

00:32:02

about, and I was able to generate a report for that,

00:32:05

if I do those things, if I close the computer,

00:32:10

it's gone.

00:32:10

You can't see it anymore.

00:32:13

It's not something that you're gonna be able to say,

00:32:16

look what I did, it's not in front of you.

00:32:19

So you have to develop a mindset

00:32:22

that helps you to understand

00:32:24

how that satisfaction comes about.

00:32:28

I'm not sure I fully figured it out, Mike.

00:32:30

I thought it was, he made some really good points,

00:32:32

but it's one of those things that I think I get it,

00:32:37

but it's gonna take me a little while

00:32:39

to get my head around it and just

00:32:42

and wrestle with it in order to fully understand it well.

00:32:44

I have to say, hey yeah, I've got satisfaction

00:32:47

in building those websites

00:32:49

versus the same satisfaction that can come from

00:32:52

opening the drawer to a dresser that I built.

00:32:54

Does that make sense?

00:32:55

'Cause it's the difference between being able

00:32:57

to put your hands on it and see it

00:32:58

versus closing the computer and it's gone.

00:33:01

- Yeah, I get that.

00:33:03

I mean, you're not gonna have a physical, tangible thing

00:33:06

that you can pick up when you're done

00:33:09

with your knowledge work for the day,

00:33:11

but I think the important thing is,

00:33:13

going back to Ryan Holiday, the obstacle is the way.

00:33:16

It's not so much the end result, but it's the journey

00:33:18

that's important.

00:33:20

There's a quote actually by the blacksmith guy

00:33:22

in Deep Work, he says, to do it right,

00:33:25

it is the most complicated thing I know how to make

00:33:28

and it's that challenge that drives me.

00:33:30

I don't need a sword, but I have to make them.

00:33:33

And I think that mindset can definitely be applied

00:33:37

to knowledge work as well, whether you're creating videos

00:33:41

in my case or writing blog posts or creating a website,

00:33:45

writing code, there's a lot of different avenues

00:33:48

that that approach could take, but the result is the same.

00:33:51

The joy comes from the journey.

00:33:52

- One of the things that he talks about in the book,

00:33:57

they are philosophies of Deep Work.

00:34:00

I thought it was really interesting because

00:34:02

when I started it, I was thinking he was gonna give us,

00:34:07

this is how you come about doing Deep Work,

00:34:10

but then he presented these four philosophies.

00:34:13

I'm just gonna work through these.

00:34:14

And then I think we should share the ones that we picked,

00:34:17

'cause I'm sure you already know which one you're

00:34:20

gonna fall into would be my guess.

00:34:22

I think there was four.

00:34:23

- So three? - Three.

00:34:25

- Three or four.

00:34:25

- No, there's four.

00:34:28

I know he says I had an out because I present the--

00:34:31

- Oh, you wanna go do this? - You wanna do it?

00:34:33

- Sure, yeah, I can lead him.

00:34:35

The first one is the monastic approach.

00:34:38

And this, I think, is what most people think of

00:34:41

when they think of Deep Work,

00:34:43

because they think of the person who just disappears

00:34:46

for a while while they focus on their big project.

00:34:49

And then they reappear six months later

00:34:51

and they've got their book or they've got their created thing.

00:34:54

That is gonna be by far the hardest one for anybody

00:34:59

that I know to apply.

00:35:02

And I think it's actually pretty impossible

00:35:04

for a lot of people.

00:35:05

But he does give some examples of people

00:35:08

who have done that in the book.

00:35:10

- I will say, going through that one,

00:35:12

I was sitting here thinking, man, that would be,

00:35:16

that'd be really cool to just,

00:35:18

I'm gonna go do this for four months and just be done,

00:35:22

just be done with it, but I couldn't do it.

00:35:25

(laughs)

00:35:26

I want to, but there's no way I could do it.

00:35:29

- Yeah, and then the second one

00:35:30

is probably the more approachable one

00:35:32

for somebody like you who wants to embrace that approach.

00:35:35

And I agree it does sound pretty awesome sometimes,

00:35:37

but that's gonna be impossible.

00:35:39

Then the second one is maybe feasible

00:35:42

and that is the bimodal approach.

00:35:45

And so in the bimodal approach,

00:35:48

what you're doing is you are splitting your weeks

00:35:52

and months into the deep and shallow.

00:35:54

And because you're differentiating them

00:35:57

on a large chunks of time like that,

00:36:01

you're able to go off the grid for a little bit

00:36:04

and get some really solid deep work done,

00:36:06

but you're not gone long enough

00:36:07

to really be completely disconnected from everything.

00:36:11

And he uses an example in the book

00:36:12

that I absolutely love of JK Rowling.

00:36:16

Do you remember that one?

00:36:17

- I do.

00:36:18

- Okay, so yeah, I did a little bit more research

00:36:20

on the story.

00:36:22

She, when she wrote the first Harry Potter book,

00:36:27

she wrote it on a manual typewriter as a single mother

00:36:31

and she submitted it and it was rejected 12 times.

00:36:36

Okay, so you really have to understand

00:36:37

that this was not just a one time event for her

00:36:41

to go do this deep work,

00:36:42

that she had been cultivating this approach to deep work,

00:36:45

what not necessarily the bimodal approach,

00:36:46

but that the prioritization of deep work for a long time

00:36:49

because by the time she got to this book,

00:36:52

I think this is the Deathly Hallows example.

00:36:55

- Yeah, yeah.

00:36:55

- She was basically in an environment

00:36:58

where it just wasn't gonna happen.

00:36:59

She was at home, her kids were going crazy,

00:37:03

her dogs were barking, the window cleaner was coming

00:37:06

and she's just like,

00:37:07

there's no way I'm gonna finish this here.

00:37:08

So what she did is she rented a room at the Belmoral

00:37:13

in Edenberg, I believe, which is pretty nice hotel,

00:37:17

actually very close to where she got the inspiration

00:37:21

for Hogwarts, part of the Harry Potter's series.

00:37:25

And she didn't just rent a room,

00:37:27

she rented the Penthouse suite, so it was really expensive.

00:37:30

And I think that's the key part there

00:37:32

that makes it bimodal is that this was not

00:37:35

a large amount of time,

00:37:36

there was significant pain for every day

00:37:40

that she was still there writing that book.

00:37:43

And also I would argue she could not just walk away

00:37:45

from her family, but what she did is she put herself

00:37:50

in a position where she could stack her time

00:37:52

and she could focus and prioritize finishing the book.

00:37:55

- See, I think that's brilliant and at the same time scary.

00:38:01

(laughs)

00:38:03

- Yes, definitely.

00:38:04

- If you, and I think he had a term for it,

00:38:07

it was something about how much you,

00:38:10

like you put a lot into it,

00:38:12

you put in a financial or a time element

00:38:17

that costs you significantly in order to force you

00:38:20

to spend more time with it.

00:38:22

- Yes, he called it the grand gesture.

00:38:24

- Yeah, there you go.

00:38:25

- Yeah, and so it doesn't have to be thousands of dollars

00:38:28

and weeks worth of time away from your family,

00:38:30

but taking a step out like that and saying,

00:38:34

drawing a clear line in the sand,

00:38:36

a public line in the sand is even better.

00:38:39

That built in accountability is often the kick

00:38:44

in the pants that we need to actually follow through

00:38:46

and do the deep work.

00:38:47

That's the idea behind the grand gesture.

00:38:49

- So we have monastic, we have bimodal,

00:38:52

and then what is it, rhythmic?

00:38:55

- Yes, rhythmic.

00:38:56

And so this is kind of just splitting your time

00:38:58

into the deep in the shallow on a day-by-day basis.

00:39:02

So I think this is really effective

00:39:05

because you can actually build up a natural cadence

00:39:08

where you sprint and then you recover.

00:39:11

So an example of this might be,

00:39:14

you might make Mondays your creative days

00:39:16

or Fridays your admin days kind of theming your days

00:39:20

and then batching your tasks

00:39:21

like you were talking about along those things.

00:39:23

So you know that at the beginning of the week,

00:39:24

when I'm coming off the weekend and I'm refreshed,

00:39:27

that's when I'm gonna try to produce a lot of videos

00:39:31

that day because I know I've got the most resources,

00:39:34

most gas in my tank to actually get stuff done.

00:39:37

- I think it is. - And this is,

00:39:38

isn't it Mike Vardy who does that?

00:39:40

He, like he's very public about it.

00:39:42

He's got different activities are done

00:39:45

on different days for him.

00:39:47

So he does have like an admin day, he has a dad day.

00:39:50

He's got a writing day, I believe.

00:39:53

And I forget what all he has,

00:39:54

but he's been talking about that for years

00:39:57

as far as I can recall.

00:39:59

- Yep, yeah.

00:40:00

And I actually, we do that too.

00:40:02

We theme our days like that.

00:40:03

We have the new year calendar that he talks about.

00:40:07

- Oh, right, right.

00:40:07

- Any, any year calendar where you see

00:40:11

the whole 12 months at one time.

00:40:14

And that is pretty effective.

00:40:16

And this is also pretty achievable,

00:40:17

especially for knowledge workers

00:40:20

where if you can control your own schedule

00:40:23

to any sort of degree where you're not going into an office

00:40:25

and you're not at the mercy of your superiors

00:40:30

who are gonna call meetings and say,

00:40:31

"You gotta be there right now."

00:40:33

Then you can implement this.

00:40:34

This is pretty achievable.

00:40:35

And I would say that this is the level

00:40:37

that pretty much everybody should at least shoot for.

00:40:41

So I will say that the rhythmic philosophy,

00:40:44

so you've got the little bit every day

00:40:47

or you've got your different days and stuff.

00:40:49

This is the one I'm falling into.

00:40:51

This is easily the one I'm choosing in this whole process

00:40:53

because it's easier for me to just maintain

00:40:57

the same routine every single day.

00:41:00

I just know that.

00:41:01

I operate a lot better at that.

00:41:03

So the way I've been coming at it, Mike,

00:41:05

is I, as far as a deep work schedule goes,

00:41:10

for me, I try to make sure that I capture my entire morning.

00:41:13

And that's every single day.

00:41:16

Every day I'm gonna go to work.

00:41:17

It's always in the morning.

00:41:18

And I can't say that I've done it for a long time,

00:41:23

but I've done something similar for a long time

00:41:26

where I've spent at least an hour or so

00:41:28

in the morning writing.

00:41:30

And I think a lot of writers talk about that

00:41:32

where you need to spend a certain amount of time

00:41:35

every single day, you'll see some people say,

00:41:37

"Well, I got my thousand words in today."

00:41:39

Like, you'll see that stuff make the rounds

00:41:42

on social media occasionally.

00:41:43

And there's a lot of power in that.

00:41:46

I think Kao would jump on board and say,

00:41:48

"Yeah, that's a great thing."

00:41:49

Because it does fall into this rhythmic scheduling.

00:41:53

And whenever you sit down to do the thing,

00:41:57

and you're so used to doing it every single day,

00:41:59

your mind just immediately shifts into that mode

00:42:01

and you're off to the races.

00:42:03

- I agree.

00:42:04

I would also say though that because you are a parent

00:42:08

and I am a parent, I would say that sometimes

00:42:10

you may have every intention of embracing a rhythmic approach.

00:42:13

You're stuck with number four,

00:42:14

which is the journalistic approach

00:42:16

where you're quickly flipping back and forth

00:42:18

between deep and shallow whenever you can fit a block

00:42:21

of time in.

00:42:22

And this is probably where I started.

00:42:25

I took a look at my schedule and I saw that

00:42:29

the only time that I was gonna get to not be interrupted

00:42:32

was at five in the morning.

00:42:34

So I started getting up early and writing a thousand words

00:42:37

and the day was my goal before I went into the office.

00:42:40

And that has kind of led to the point where I am now

00:42:45

where I can basically embrace a rhythmic approach

00:42:49

for the most part.

00:42:51

But there are gonna be times when I am gonna switch

00:42:54

back into journalistic.

00:42:55

And then there are also times when I would argue

00:42:57

I will actually embrace bimodal as well.

00:43:00

So for example, last year we went on a family vacation

00:43:05

for two weeks we went up to Manaco, Wisconsin

00:43:09

which is this Lake town.

00:43:11

There's a couple of coffee shops up there

00:43:13

and I was in the process of writing my book.

00:43:15

It wasn't happening as quickly as I wanted to.

00:43:17

And my wife and I came to the agreement

00:43:19

that I was going to get up early, go to the coffee shop

00:43:23

and basically work for like five hours before lunch

00:43:26

and get writing done.

00:43:29

And I did that for two weeks

00:43:31

and pretty much all of the content for my book

00:43:34

came out of that two week bimodal period.

00:43:38

So it's not like you have to choose one of these

00:43:39

and then okay I'm gonna do this now for the next six months.

00:43:42

I think you can kind of switch these up

00:43:45

and embrace these on a day to day or even hour by hour basis.

00:43:50

And you can do for the most part rhythmic

00:43:52

and then in the middle of your rhythm,

00:43:54

you get interrupted, whatever you switch into journalistic.

00:43:56

It's really just the focal point of looking for the place

00:44:01

and the time to do that deep work

00:44:04

using what he calls fixed schedule productivity.

00:44:07

You know, you can take your calendar, your schedule

00:44:11

and you can identify looking at that calendar

00:44:13

or that schedule where you're going to do your deep work

00:44:17

but it does all need to take place inside

00:44:20

of that context of time.

00:44:22

So I really do like that part of the book

00:44:25

where he talks about the fixed schedule productivity

00:44:27

and how he takes a look at his calendar

00:44:28

and he creates the hour blocks

00:44:30

and he lines them all up

00:44:32

and he basically schedules every single minute of his day.

00:44:35

That's one of my takeaways.

00:44:36

I wanna start doing that.

00:44:38

It doesn't always have to be deep work activities.

00:44:40

You can actually schedule rest or play or whatever

00:44:44

but making sure that all of that stuff

00:44:46

that is important for you to do gets on the calendar.

00:44:50

- Yeah and I can tell you that works really well.

00:44:52

I've been doing that for three, four months now.

00:44:56

I listened to, no, I watched a webinar by Sean Blonk

00:45:00

he's been doing it for a while

00:45:02

and I took away from that.

00:45:04

That was something I wanted to try.

00:45:06

So I started, I have a notebook here sitting next to me

00:45:11

and I've got the hours from six in the morning

00:45:14

until nine at night and every single hour in between there

00:45:17

and then every hour is accounted for

00:45:20

and I can see right now as I'm looking at my schedule

00:45:25

for the day, I'm supposed to be recording

00:45:26

bookworm right now.

00:45:27

So I think I'm on schedule for the day

00:45:30

but I know exactly what comes after this

00:45:31

and I know what time the day ends

00:45:33

and as long as I follow that schedule,

00:45:36

at the end of the day, if I followed that,

00:45:39

then it's like, oh yes, I hit exactly what I wanted to do

00:45:43

and whenever you do that, if you plan it out

00:45:46

and you're trying to be as smart with it as you can,

00:45:48

it's like, yes, I'm finally making great progress

00:45:52

but of course, kids, you fall off that schedule occasionally

00:45:55

and you just readjust but honestly, just having it on paper

00:46:00

I don't know why but that's freeing.

00:46:02

I've tried to do this with a digital calendar

00:46:04

but it's not the same.

00:46:05

It just doesn't, it doesn't work the same.

00:46:06

I don't know how many different versions

00:46:08

of digital calendars I've tried with this

00:46:10

and it just doesn't work.

00:46:11

- That's interesting because I was definitely gonna

00:46:15

take a digital approach.

00:46:16

I've actually created already a canvas calendar

00:46:20

where I can use that to kind of block out

00:46:24

all the different time frames

00:46:28

where I'm gonna be doing things.

00:46:29

It's not gonna have all the individual appointments on there

00:46:31

but I'll be able to just look at that one digital calendar

00:46:34

and get an overview of like, okay,

00:46:36

from this time I'm gonna be here,

00:46:37

from this time I'm gonna be here doing this

00:46:39

and even differentiating it not just based on physical location

00:46:43

but also just the mindset that I want to apply there.

00:46:48

I'll have to report back on whether my digital environment.

00:46:52

- Yeah, I wanna know if that works

00:46:53

'cause I gotta try digital multiple times

00:46:56

and it was almost like I didn't trust it for some reason

00:47:01

and I don't know why Mike.

00:47:02

It never fully made sense to me.

00:47:04

I tried it multiple times and you would think

00:47:08

I'm a digital person, I should be able to pull this off

00:47:12

and I always found that if I wrote it on paper

00:47:15

I was more apt to actually follow through with it

00:47:18

as opposed to if it's on the digital calendar

00:47:21

for some reason I would sometimes just not pay any attention

00:47:24

to it and I wouldn't realize I was doing that

00:47:26

until a couple hours later and then it's too late.

00:47:29

- That's interesting, yeah, I'll have to report back on that.

00:47:34

- I hope it works for you.

00:47:35

- Me too.

00:47:37

One other thing I wanna touch on talking

00:47:39

about the different approaches is the Deep Work formula

00:47:44

which really this kind of crystallized in my mind

00:47:48

that any one of these approaches is not necessarily

00:47:51

better than the others.

00:47:53

It's really not like if you're listening to this right now

00:47:57

and you're like, "Oh, Deep Work sounds awesome."

00:47:59

I read the book, there's all these benefits, sign me up

00:48:02

but I just can't do it.

00:48:05

You can do it, you don't have to devote 40 hours a week

00:48:09

to Deep Work in order to get the benefits

00:48:11

that Cal talks about in the book.

00:48:13

The formula for Deep Work is time spent

00:48:18

times intensity of focus.

00:48:20

So all you really need to do is whatever amount of time

00:48:25

you have to devote to Deep Work, whether it is 15 minutes

00:48:29

or 40 hours a week, just dive in as deep as you can.

00:48:34

You can maximize your results by maximizing your intensity

00:48:37

even if it's just embracing the journalistic approach

00:48:40

here and there.

00:48:42

And then just by doing that, you make it easier

00:48:45

to do more Deep Work in the future.

00:48:46

One of the things he talks about,

00:48:48

which I really, really liked was what happens in your brain

00:48:52

when you do Deep Work.

00:48:54

He talks about how when you do Deep Work,

00:48:57

your brain produces myelin, which is the fatty tissue

00:49:01

that grows around the neurons.

00:49:03

And that actually causes the cells to fire faster and cleaner.

00:49:07

So when you're trying to learn something new

00:49:08

or you're working deep, then you actually cement that skill.

00:49:13

And when you're practicing something without focusing

00:49:17

like that, it's actually harder to isolate these neurons

00:49:20

that you actually want to strengthen.

00:49:21

So learning, the ability to learn is key.

00:49:24

Learning is an act of Deep Work.

00:49:28

- Now, one of the things I know he talks about,

00:49:30

because he, so we go through the philosophies.

00:49:33

One of the things he helps you figure out

00:49:36

is what should you be working on?

00:49:39

What is the Deep Work you should be focusing on?

00:49:42

I was very glad he did that.

00:49:44

He's like, "Okay, so I could set a site, I can schedule it.

00:49:48

I know my philosophy behind it."

00:49:50

What do I do?

00:49:53

(laughs)

00:49:54

That was kind of where I was at with it.

00:49:56

But he took you through this process

00:49:57

of determining what he calls wildly important goals.

00:50:02

And the thing I took away from that is you want to nail down

00:50:07

as few as you can get away with,

00:50:10

preferably one goal that you're going to shoot for.

00:50:13

And that's the thing that you work towards whenever you,

00:50:17

when you sit down to do the Deep Work.

00:50:19

For me, it was pretty easy whenever I went through that

00:50:22

of what should my wildly important goal be.

00:50:25

'Cause that's the course, the video series for Omni Focus.

00:50:29

And that just means that whenever I go

00:50:31

to sit down to do Deep Work,

00:50:33

that is the one and only thing I have to do.

00:50:36

Because it gets away from the attention residue thing

00:50:39

we were talking about earlier

00:50:40

with the shifting projects back and forth.

00:50:42

Oh man, I've been bad at that in the past.

00:50:44

Where I'd sit down and I was like,

00:50:46

okay, I've got a three hour block.

00:50:48

For 30 minutes, I'm gonna write an article.

00:50:50

For 45, I'm gonna work on the design for this new website.

00:50:54

And then I'm gonna spend an hour working on

00:50:57

this other code project that I've got going on

00:51:00

and just shifting back and forth between them,

00:51:02

just became a nightmare.

00:51:03

But whenever I have a single thing I'm working towards,

00:51:09

oh man, it gets easy.

00:51:10

At least for me, it felt super easy

00:51:12

because I know this is the one and only thing I have

00:51:15

that's important for me to work towards.

00:51:18

And I have a little bit of trouble with that

00:51:22

because I find that I am balancing

00:51:26

different responsibilities.

00:51:28

So it's hard for me to say this is the one thing

00:51:32

that is the most important over everything else.

00:51:34

Although there's definitely benefit in taking that approach.

00:51:37

There's an entire book written on that called The One Thing.

00:51:40

Which is a great book.

00:51:42

Maybe we cover that one at some point.

00:51:44

There you go.

00:51:45

For example, right now I've got the focus

00:51:48

with Asian efficiency.

00:51:50

And this is not a secret so I can talk about this

00:51:53

but we're working on a new product around email actually.

00:51:57

So I am laser focused as product director.

00:51:59

You need a beta tester.

00:52:00

(laughs)

00:52:01

Yeah, maybe.

00:52:02

So I'm laser focused whenever I'm working on

00:52:06

Asian efficiency stuff that is on completing that course

00:52:10

as product director.

00:52:11

That's my baby.

00:52:13

But also as we record this tomorrow

00:52:16

we have a big men's rally that we're having at our church.

00:52:20

And as the coordinator of our men's ministry

00:52:22

that is also something that is very, very important.

00:52:25

So I have to balance these responsibilities

00:52:28

and I think it's okay.

00:52:30

I think it's all right to say during this time block

00:52:34

these two hours where I'm gonna go deep on whatever task

00:52:37

that task is the one thing that I work on.

00:52:41

But it is okay throughout the course of the day.

00:52:43

Hopefully I'm putting words in Kale Newport's mouth.

00:52:45

So hopefully we won't tell it this.

00:52:47

(laughs)

00:52:49

But I believe that it's okay to do that.

00:52:53

The key is that whenever time you're gonna devote

00:52:56

to deep work you have one thing that you're working on

00:52:58

you're not bouncing back and forth.

00:52:59

But it's okay throughout the course of the day to say,

00:53:02

okay these two hours are gonna be deep work over here.

00:53:04

And in the next two hours I'm gonna do deep work

00:53:06

on this other thing.

00:53:07

'Cause that kind of goes back to what we were talking about

00:53:10

at the beginning that quote I shared with Arnold Bennett

00:53:13

where sometimes that actually is an efficiency mechanism

00:53:17

where you go until you can't go anymore on this one task,

00:53:20

you get stuck and then you switch tasks

00:53:21

and your brain doesn't care that it's hard

00:53:24

because your brain doesn't physically get tired

00:53:26

like an arm or a leg as he said.

00:53:29

But the ability to really dive in deep

00:53:32

and do deep work doesn't get tired.

00:53:34

I mean obviously there's limits to your willpower

00:53:35

and stuff like that.

00:53:37

But those kinds of things can actually spur creativity

00:53:41

and deep work and focus on a different task

00:53:43

when you switch like that.

00:53:45

You just have to switch the right way.

00:53:47

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:53:49

And I think that has a lot to do with,

00:53:51

like we were talking earlier with theming days.

00:53:54

Like if you had one day for this one

00:53:56

and one day for that one, I think that would help

00:53:58

or even like morning and afternoon,

00:54:00

but like the jumping back and forth,

00:54:01

I think is where it gets in trouble.

00:54:04

- Yes, yeah, I would out agree with that.

00:54:07

But even when you have to jump back and forth

00:54:09

'cause there are things that will come up,

00:54:13

especially if you work with other people,

00:54:16

though there will be quote unquote emergencies

00:54:20

that you have to deal with.

00:54:21

And I guess just from my experience,

00:54:25

no scientific research behind this,

00:54:27

but I would say that it has gotten easier for me

00:54:31

to go deal with a fire and then come back and do deep work

00:54:36

just because I have prioritized deep work.

00:54:40

I'm looking for the places to do deep work.

00:54:43

And I think that's really important.

00:54:45

And in fact, in the book,

00:54:47

he gives the definitions of deep work versus shallow work.

00:54:51

And I kind of shared the one about deep work already,

00:54:54

but just for review, I guess, deep work.

00:54:57

Our professional activities perform

00:54:59

in the state of distraction-free concentration

00:55:01

that push their kind of capabilities to their limit.

00:55:04

These efforts create new value.

00:55:05

They improve your skill and they're hard to replicate

00:55:07

versus shallow work.

00:55:09

And this is what people I think tend to gravitate towards

00:55:12

just because of the any benefit approach,

00:55:14

which I know you've got in the outline there.

00:55:16

Shallow work is not cognitively demanding.

00:55:19

They're logistical style tasks,

00:55:20

which are often performed while you're distracted.

00:55:23

And these efforts tend not to create much new value

00:55:26

in the world and are easy to replicate.

00:55:28

I think as long as you can identify deep work,

00:55:31

look to do deep work and make it a priority,

00:55:33

then you're on the right path.

00:55:35

- So part of the shallow work piece

00:55:40

that he talks about because, okay,

00:55:44

we just need to jump into social media here.

00:55:46

So obviously, I think whenever you look

00:55:50

at those definitions,

00:55:51

the vast majority of us are gonna say that social media

00:55:56

will fall into that shallow work category.

00:56:00

If you're a social media manager,

00:56:02

it's probably going to be your deep work

00:56:06

to figure out your strategies

00:56:07

and how you're gonna use social media.

00:56:09

But the vast majority of people,

00:56:11

it doesn't fall into that category.

00:56:13

And this is something, you know,

00:56:15

you mentioned the any benefit bias.

00:56:17

So what that essentially means is in our society

00:56:22

and our culture, in the world we live in

00:56:24

with technology and the ultra-connectivity

00:56:27

that we have with everybody else in the world,

00:56:29

we tend to come at things with the mindset

00:56:33

that if a tool offers any sort of benefit at all

00:56:38

to the business or the work that you're doing,

00:56:40

if it has, you know, take social media, for an example here,

00:56:44

if Twitter has the ability to drive people to my blog

00:56:49

in any capacity, whether it's one click, two clicks,

00:56:52

a thousand clicks, doesn't matter.

00:56:54

If it has any capacity to bring them to my site,

00:56:58

then I need to use it.

00:57:00

I've heard a few people in the blogosphere

00:57:04

who will talk about jumping onto any

00:57:06

and every social media network there is.

00:57:09

And whenever they do that,

00:57:12

they're essentially fragmenting their attention

00:57:15

across all kinds of social media sites,

00:57:17

which is fine if you wanna do that.

00:57:20

But ultimately what he's saying is whenever you're jumping

00:57:23

into all of those, you're doing it

00:57:25

because you think there's at least some benefit.

00:57:28

And even though there's some benefit,

00:57:30

the question that he has is if it,

00:57:34

even though it has some benefit,

00:57:37

it may not necessarily be vital

00:57:40

or ultimately beneficial to what you're doing

00:57:43

because there are negatives that are gonna come with it

00:57:45

and you have to weigh the positives against the negatives

00:57:50

in order to come out with your decision.

00:57:52

And whenever you look at something like social media,

00:57:54

take Twitter or Instagram or Facebook,

00:57:57

the vast majority of the instances that we use those in,

00:58:01

there are a significant number of negatives,

00:58:03

primarily in attention and time

00:58:06

that we need to devote to those

00:58:08

that even though we're giving it that amount of time,

00:58:13

we're not getting a whole lot in return from that.

00:58:15

So his question then is, well,

00:58:18

if there are more negatives and there are positives,

00:58:20

should you be using that tool at all?

00:58:22

And that led me down this whole path of,

00:58:25

okay, do I reevaluate all this stuff?

00:58:28

And should I be using certain ones?

00:58:30

How much should I be using them?

00:58:32

How many do you use?

00:58:35

It's just, it makes you question a lot of things.

00:58:37

And thankfully I'm not one that jumps into the mindset of,

00:58:41

I need to have all of them.

00:58:42

I tend to just say, okay, Twitter is kind of my space,

00:58:46

but what I am, and this is,

00:58:48

I'm gonna jump into action items here.

00:58:50

One of the things that I run is I have a discussion site

00:58:54

that sits behind my blog.

00:58:56

It's what runs the comment structure on my site.

00:59:00

So yes, there's comments,

00:59:01

but there's a full-on discussion software called Discourse

00:59:06

that runs behind all of that.

00:59:07

So it's what embeds the topics into each article.

00:59:11

And you have the ability to create topics

00:59:14

that are outside of those comments.

00:59:16

So it kind of creates this whole community behind the scenes,

00:59:19

which is a lot of fun.

00:59:20

We have a lot of interesting conversations over there.

00:59:22

But what I've learned through this process

00:59:24

is that that is actually,

00:59:27

that's where I need to be spending a lot of my time, Mike,

00:59:29

because I can spend a lot of time on Twitter.

00:59:31

I can spend a lot of time on Instagram.

00:59:34

And there are various others,

00:59:36

GitHub kind of floats out there for me as well.

00:59:39

But ultimately, I need to be more focused

00:59:43

on that discussion site as opposed to the social media sites.

00:59:46

And that really pains me to say that.

00:59:48

- Yeah, you've embraced the craftsman approach

00:59:51

to tool selection as Cal calls it,

00:59:53

which is adopting a tool only if it makes positive impacts

00:59:57

on the core factors that determine success

01:00:00

in your personal professional life,

01:00:01

substantially outweighing the negative.

01:00:04

The whole idea behind the any benefit approach

01:00:06

is that we justify our use of these things

01:00:08

because there is some benefit.

01:00:11

But I forget who said it.

01:00:13

There's a quote that says,

01:00:15

"Good is the enemy of the best."

01:00:17

Because if we focus on the things that are good,

01:00:21

we'll justify our focus on those things.

01:00:25

And we will completely miss the things

01:00:27

that are really the best thing for us.

01:00:30

And that, if you decide to use social media,

01:00:34

that's okay, you just have to take into account

01:00:36

the whole picture.

01:00:38

You have to look at all the pros and all the cons

01:00:40

and really decide, is this something

01:00:42

that is really gonna be beneficial to me?

01:00:45

And for me personally, I really like Twitter.

01:00:49

I got my current position with Asian efficiency

01:00:51

through Twitter actually.

01:00:53

But I am hardly ever on Facebook.

01:00:57

And I probably will never really be on Facebook

01:01:01

other than to check in once in a while

01:01:03

and maintain contact with some family members.

01:01:06

That's the only social media network that they're on.

01:01:08

And I guess just a little bit of a bunny trail here.

01:01:13

The difference between Facebook and Twitter in my mind

01:01:16

is that Facebook, because it's all based on,

01:01:18

I wanna add you as a friend and someone has to reciprocate,

01:01:21

it's all based on who you used to know.

01:01:24

Which for me means a lot of people

01:01:26

that I went to high school with that, to be honest,

01:01:28

I don't really want to surround myself

01:01:30

with those people anymore.

01:01:33

I'm John Lee Dumas talks all the time

01:01:34

about how you are the average of the five people

01:01:38

you spend the most time with.

01:01:40

And when you're spending time on social media

01:01:42

and you're surrounding yourself with those voices,

01:01:44

those are people who are speaking into your life.

01:01:46

Whereas Twitter, there's not that reciprocal follow aspect

01:01:49

to it, so you can actually follow the people

01:01:51

who you want to surround yourself with.

01:01:55

So Twitter is kinda like who you want to know.

01:01:57

And that's how I got the job at Asian efficiency.

01:02:00

I was following these people who I classified

01:02:02

as my internet heroes.

01:02:03

So Joe was on that list,

01:02:06

Tan was on that list, Mike Vardy,

01:02:07

a lot of the people that we've talked about

01:02:09

who now are kind of my quote unquote contemporaries,

01:02:13

not trying to put myself on the same level

01:02:16

as some of those people necessarily,

01:02:17

but I am part of that community now

01:02:20

and that would have never happened

01:02:21

if I would have constantly been looking backwards.

01:02:23

I had to look forward and focus on

01:02:25

who I wanted to become.

01:02:27

So a little bit of a diversion

01:02:28

from the any benefit approach,

01:02:29

but really it's just an example, I guess,

01:02:32

of that I believe anyway,

01:02:34

social media isn't necessarily bad.

01:02:37

And you don't have to be a social media manager

01:02:40

in order to get significant benefit

01:02:43

from those avenues and those communities,

01:02:46

those communication channels.

01:02:49

But you do need to take into account

01:02:52

how many of these things you're going to check

01:02:54

on a regular basis and you do have to call

01:02:56

and curate the ones that really aren't bringing you

01:02:59

the value that you really need to.

01:03:01

You can't justify them by embracing

01:03:04

that any benefit approach.

01:03:05

You really have to make sure

01:03:07

that everything that's there is essential.

01:03:09

- And I think that Twitter is kind of a,

01:03:13

it's a tricky one for folks in the business that we are in

01:03:17

because it can bring a lot of very good opportunities

01:03:22

and it has for me as well.

01:03:24

But honestly, if I stop and think about it,

01:03:28

the ones that really matter,

01:03:29

the opportunities that have really gotten me somewhere,

01:03:32

a lot of those have come through email,

01:03:34

which might explain why I'm addicted to email.

01:03:37

(laughs)

01:03:39

I don't check it constantly,

01:03:41

but it's one where I've,

01:03:43

and we've talked about this,

01:03:45

I've been in trouble the last two episodes,

01:03:47

but the main thing for me is that a lot of great opportunities

01:03:52

for me have come through email.

01:03:54

Now, I've taken it as an action item

01:03:56

on the last two,

01:03:58

is it the last two that we've talked about this?

01:04:01

So the last two, I think it's the last two.

01:04:02

The last two shows,

01:04:04

I've been trying to figure out how I was gonna do this

01:04:06

and Cal has almost a whole chapter on email in here.

01:04:11

And he has a ton of tips that are extremely helpful,

01:04:14

especially for me,

01:04:16

that I have been working to implement,

01:04:18

and I actually already did this on my site.

01:04:20

So even as we're recording this, this is already done.

01:04:23

But I have pulled my email address off

01:04:26

a lot of places.

01:04:26

I put together something like what Cal calls a sender filter.

01:04:31

So there's a series of questions.

01:04:33

If you go to the contact page on my site that it's like,

01:04:36

okay, if your request is this, post it here.

01:04:38

If it's this, go here.

01:04:40

If it's this, go to Google.

01:04:41

If it's this, okay, I guess you can fill out the form below.

01:04:44

But don't expect a response

01:04:45

because I'm not gonna respond to everything.

01:04:47

So I did go through and do all of that

01:04:50

to try to help with the inputs

01:04:53

and the massive email that I do get.

01:04:55

And even since I've put that in place,

01:04:57

my email account has gone down drastically.

01:05:00

And even the ones that I get,

01:05:02

I don't feel the pressure to have to respond to everything.

01:05:05

So I can say this does work very well

01:05:07

as for somebody that's in my type of role,

01:05:09

because so much of what I do is based on what's in my head

01:05:13

and what I go to work on.

01:05:14

So I'm not really dependent, at least very much,

01:05:17

about the other people that I'm working with.

01:05:21

There's some of that with clients,

01:05:23

that I've got a separate sort of email system

01:05:27

that works for that,

01:05:28

that I make sure that those are called out.

01:05:29

So I never miss those,

01:05:31

but the mass of people who run across me through the site,

01:05:35

those I need to filter a lot more.

01:05:38

And that's what I've been working on and doing.

01:05:40

And it's been very successful for me,

01:05:42

even in the short amount of time that I've put it in place.

01:05:45

But he has a ton of tips on how to respond to email,

01:05:49

how to think about it,

01:05:51

even has this whole framework on how to craft a response

01:05:54

or to write an email that says,

01:05:56

okay, this is what's gonna happen.

01:05:58

This is what you can expect.

01:05:59

If you reply to this, I'll take that as a confirmation.

01:06:02

And it's like this very formal, almost robotic form

01:06:05

of this is how you write the email.

01:06:08

And the whole point of that is to eliminate

01:06:11

the number of responses you get back,

01:06:12

because as we all know, the more you send,

01:06:14

the more you receive.

01:06:16

So if you can craft it such that you don't need

01:06:20

to send another email once it comes back,

01:06:22

then you don't have to worry about getting more,

01:06:24

which is a very good thing when you're getting hundreds a day.

01:06:27

- Yeah, here's the key though,

01:06:29

is that you could get a thousand email messages a day.

01:06:34

And if you're just okay with not getting back

01:06:37

to those people, selecting all those messages,

01:06:40

hitting delete, then that's a perfectly acceptable

01:06:43

email system.

01:06:44

That's kind of what Sean Blanc does.

01:06:46

He's talking about how he spends a half hour a day

01:06:48

dealing with email.

01:06:50

And he gets more than a half hours worth of email every day.

01:06:52

So he replies to the cherry pixel ones he wants to reply to.

01:06:56

- Right.

01:06:57

- And then basically just archives everything else.

01:06:59

So you can do that, but I think you're kind of like me

01:07:01

where you don't like doing that.

01:07:03

You want to make sure that you have a system in place

01:07:05

where you can filter out the things that are truly important

01:07:08

and everything that you're talking about,

01:07:10

those checks on the front,

01:07:12

that will eliminate a lot of email you have to deal with.

01:07:14

So I think that's definitely a great first step.

01:07:17

But really the thing that we have to overcome

01:07:20

is the ability to, we have to develop

01:07:24

is the ability to say no to stuff.

01:07:26

We have to overcome the fear of missing out.

01:07:29

And a lot of times we say yes to those opportunities

01:07:31

because we don't want to miss out on maybe

01:07:33

that opportunity has something valuable for us.

01:07:37

And he describes this approach with email specifically

01:07:42

as a culture of connectivity in the book.

01:07:45

And he says that a culture of connectivity

01:07:47

is easier because you don't have to plan ahead.

01:07:50

You can run your day out of your inbox.

01:07:52

The problem with this is obviously that you're working

01:07:54

according to what other people are saying is important.

01:07:58

Unless you develop enough of a backbone to say no,

01:08:01

what you're telling me to do actually isn't important.

01:08:04

I have to find something else is important.

01:08:06

But you will take some people off,

01:08:07

whether you're putting extra checkboxes on the front

01:08:10

of your contact form or your ignoring email

01:08:13

or you're replying and saying, nope, sorry,

01:08:15

you're not gonna do this.

01:08:16

Like you have to be okay with that.

01:08:18

That's a key tipping point I think for really being able

01:08:20

to focus in and do deep work on the things

01:08:22

that truly are important.

01:08:24

- Yeah, I know one of the quotes that I wrote down

01:08:26

for that he put in a book was the world represented

01:08:31

by your inbox, in other words,

01:08:33

isn't a pleasant world to inhabit.

01:08:36

Which I would totally agree with.

01:08:39

Because the vast majority of them are,

01:08:41

and one of the things I had to put on my contact form,

01:08:44

and it's almost sad that I had to do this,

01:08:46

but it simply states that if your question

01:08:49

is a technical question and you haven't searched Google

01:08:52

for at least 10 minutes, then you don't need to respond.

01:08:56

Like, ghost check Google first,

01:08:58

but I get a ton of email from people that,

01:09:01

how do I install an Apple script in OmniFocus?

01:09:04

How many times have I had to answer?

01:09:05

It's even out on my site on how to do this,

01:09:07

but people don't search for things.

01:09:09

They would rather send an email than to search for it.

01:09:12

So I actually had to put that on there

01:09:14

because I get so many of these technical questions

01:09:15

and it's just out there.

01:09:17

So go search for it first.

01:09:19

- Yep, definitely.

01:09:22

One other thing I wanna hit on

01:09:23

because you had it on your list here.

01:09:26

I know we're going long,

01:09:27

but I've actually been implementing this

01:09:29

as the productive meditation.

01:09:31

- Right, right.

01:09:32

- So not to complete switch topics on you,

01:09:34

but I wanna make sure we get this in.

01:09:35

- No.

01:09:36

- Productive meditation is awesome.

01:09:39

And so my application of this is,

01:09:43

basically I will be working on a task

01:09:46

and whenever I am stuck on a task

01:09:50

where I just specifically with this product

01:09:53

that we're creating,

01:09:54

I'm creating these outlines for the different videos.

01:09:57

And frequently what I will do is

01:10:00

I will take my dog for a walk

01:10:02

and usually in the past what I would do in that scenario

01:10:05

is I put my Bluetooth on and I would either listen

01:10:07

to a podcast or an audiobook.

01:10:08

I'd always be consuming some sort of content,

01:10:11

but the productive meditation

01:10:12

that he talks about is where you go on a walk, for example,

01:10:16

you change your environment,

01:10:18

you get moving a little bit

01:10:19

and you just think about the problem.

01:10:22

And that is really effective.

01:10:24

I've found that as I'm walking my dog,

01:10:25

I usually have my iPhone with me

01:10:28

and as I'm thinking about things,

01:10:29

I'm like, oh yeah, that's a really great idea.

01:10:31

Then I'll go ahead and capture that in drafts.

01:10:33

But I have been able to create outlines specifically,

01:10:39

much more quickly using that method

01:10:43

than if I'm sitting down even when I've got my focus music,

01:10:47

playing through my headphones,

01:10:49

my noise canceling headphones,

01:10:50

like I have the atmosphere set up

01:10:52

where I should be able to do deep work,

01:10:54

but just getting out and walking the dog

01:10:56

and just thinking about the problem

01:10:58

actually has brought a lot of solutions

01:11:00

and a lot of clarity to some things

01:11:02

that I've had to work on.

01:11:03

So that's my experience with productive meditation.

01:11:06

When I read this, my first thought was,

01:11:11

is this weird?

01:11:12

Like, is this abnormal?

01:11:13

That was my first thought because to me,

01:11:17

this is just, maybe I'm just really weird, Mike.

01:11:20

Don't tell my wife I'm admitting that.

01:11:22

But I have been doing this process for years

01:11:26

and didn't know it.

01:11:27

Because for such a long time,

01:11:31

I've known I have a racecar brain.

01:11:33

Some people like to call it ADHD.

01:11:35

I just like calling it a racecar brain.

01:11:36

And to me, it's the same thing.

01:11:38

And I've gotten to a point where it might be

01:11:43

to where I jump from topic to topic,

01:11:44

but so much of the time I have a solution

01:11:47

or a problem I'm trying to solve.

01:11:49

And I'm just interested in it enough

01:11:51

that I just keep pummeling at it

01:11:53

and keep working at it until I have a solution nailed down.

01:11:57

But I've been doing that for at least two and a half

01:12:00

to three years, I know,

01:12:02

where a solution or a problem would come up.

01:12:04

I'm mowing the yard and I'm thinking about it

01:12:07

the whole time I'm mowing.

01:12:08

And it's like an hour, hour and a half time that I'm mowing.

01:12:11

And I'm just gonna think about this problem

01:12:13

the whole time until I have a solution to it.

01:12:14

And then when I'm done,

01:12:16

I know that whenever I have a period of time

01:12:18

that I'm doing something like that,

01:12:19

I just go and like in that case,

01:12:21

I'm gonna go take a shower,

01:12:22

but while I'm cooling down,

01:12:24

I'm gonna write down all of the notes that I have

01:12:26

for that thing so I don't forget it.

01:12:28

And then I'll take a shower.

01:12:29

And I've been doing that for a long time.

01:12:30

And I can honestly say this thing is amazing.

01:12:33

But again, I didn't know it was weird, Mike.

01:12:35

I didn't know it was not normal.

01:12:37

- It's not normal.

01:12:38

- Yep, I definitely agree.

01:12:41

Not that you're weird, but that it does work.

01:12:44

(both laughing)

01:12:47

- So it's one of those things that I realize

01:12:51

I've been doing for a long time,

01:12:52

but because I now understand it more,

01:12:56

it's the same thing.

01:12:57

Like once you learn more about something,

01:13:00

you're either gonna run away from it

01:13:02

because you know too much about it,

01:13:04

or you run towards it because you understand it more fully

01:13:07

and you wanna take advantage of it.

01:13:09

So I think in this case,

01:13:10

it's the case where I wanna run towards it

01:13:12

and do it more because I understand it more fully.

01:13:15

- Yeah, that makes total sense.

01:13:18

And that's kind of the result,

01:13:21

I think of how Calla writes the book.

01:13:24

I mean, kind of going out of order,

01:13:26

but you talk about how you get the explanation,

01:13:32

the way that Calla explains it,

01:13:33

and it's like, yeah, that makes sense.

01:13:34

I'm gonna continue to do this.

01:13:35

I got that with just about everything

01:13:38

that he wrote in this book, obviously.

01:13:41

I put for the author's style that it's very academic,

01:13:46

but it's not an approachable,

01:13:48

very, very well researched and supported.

01:13:50

Everything that he shares is very well documented.

01:13:54

It's got an easy and engaging writing style.

01:13:55

And then reading it actually makes you feel smarter

01:13:58

because Calla's brilliant, he's done a lot of the work here,

01:14:01

but you feel like you understand everything

01:14:03

that he's telling you because he explains it so well.

01:14:06

And then because of that, you're like, yeah,

01:14:09

yeah, I gotta do this more

01:14:10

because this just makes perfect sense.

01:14:12

- Right, absolutely.

01:14:12

And the more time I spent understanding him,

01:14:16

the more I wanted to go create my own stuff.

01:14:19

And well, we've talked about this in the past.

01:14:22

I dive into studies occasionally.

01:14:24

I didn't even look one up on this.

01:14:27

I, he has, if you go to the back,

01:14:29

he has citation after citation.

01:14:32

Like there are hundreds of these things.

01:14:34

- Yeah.

01:14:35

- Like even simple stuff, like where he ran across a phrase,

01:14:40

he has it cited as, I found this on Twitter

01:14:42

from this person and this was in an article

01:14:44

from 14 years ago and it's where on earth

01:14:48

did you come up with all this?

01:14:49

But so there was no way I was gonna dive into it.

01:14:52

I figured he easily knows.

01:14:54

(laughs)

01:14:55

He's easily got it all figured out.

01:14:57

So I didn't even attempt to look into things.

01:14:59

But he, he explains things very well.

01:15:02

And a lot of times I criticize authors for going too long

01:15:05

and belaboring a topic and just going to like reiterating it

01:15:09

too much.

01:15:11

And I feel like Cow had so much information

01:15:14

that he wanted to cover that he never crossed

01:15:16

a topic twice ever.

01:15:18

And that I think is one rare.

01:15:22

Usually somebody will reiterate a topic

01:15:24

somewhere along the lines in order to prove a point.

01:15:27

But I didn't run across that here at all

01:15:29

that I remember anyway.

01:15:31

I didn't notice it if he did,

01:15:33

which tells me he's a really good writer.

01:15:35

But just the fact that he's writing about Deep work

01:15:39

immediately gives him credibility because you know he's,

01:15:42

you know he's doing the process that he was writing about

01:15:44

as he's writing it.

01:15:46

- Yes, yeah.

01:15:47

The only thing I would say is that because he packed

01:15:51

so much material in there,

01:15:53

that it is maybe a little bit too easy to gloss over

01:15:58

some of the really important stuff.

01:16:01

Like the four approaches I think are really, really important.

01:16:05

But he explains all of them in the span of like 10 pages

01:16:09

because he's got so much other stuff in the book.

01:16:12

- So maybe there's that, but,

01:16:14

and maybe that's why I was such a big fan of it

01:16:16

because it was extremely dense and I like dense books.

01:16:21

- Yeah, I do too. It did not feel like any of any of the words

01:16:25

that he wrote were unnecessary.

01:16:29

- So let's jump into action items here

01:16:31

'cause one, we're long and two, I have a bunch.

01:16:35

So one of which I already have done.

01:16:38

So I talked about the email thing that was on my list

01:16:41

to get done, but I feel like I've got that done at this point.

01:16:44

I'm gonna say I'm done with the email thing Mike.

01:16:46

I'm gonna say that I'm gonna be done working on systems

01:16:50

and how to manage the input of email.

01:16:53

I probably still have some work to do on how I write them,

01:16:55

but I'm not sure where that lands quite yet.

01:16:58

So I'm gonna say that part's done.

01:17:01

One thing that I've been doing,

01:17:02

and I mentioned this earlier was the writing

01:17:04

of the hourly schedule down per day,

01:17:08

but he has a method on how to track those deep hour,

01:17:13

deep work hours per week.

01:17:18

And part of my system of how I write things down,

01:17:20

I've been putting down goals for a week anyway.

01:17:23

So it was pretty easy for me to say,

01:17:24

okay, this is week number 32 out of the year.

01:17:27

These are the three or four things

01:17:28

I wanna get done for this week.

01:17:30

So I'm just adding on, putting his tick marks per

01:17:34

the number of deep work hours I get done in a week on there.

01:17:37

So that's an action item I'm taking forward.

01:17:39

- Nice.

01:17:40

One of them I have on here is a shutdown ritual.

01:17:43

I noticed you have this one down here as well.

01:17:46

I wrote one of these a couple months back,

01:17:50

but I never actually started using it.

01:17:51

I was calling it an end of business ritual,

01:17:55

where there was a series of things you do

01:17:56

at the end of your work day

01:17:58

to essentially get yourself ready for the next day

01:18:02

so that you don't have to continue thinking about it

01:18:06

when you go home.

01:18:06

So it's a method to help you create that separation

01:18:10

between work and personal,

01:18:13

as far as the separation between the time you're at work

01:18:15

and the time you go home.

01:18:17

So I went ahead and put one in place.

01:18:19

I can't say it's a habit or it's a normal thing

01:18:21

'cause I've only been doing it a couple days,

01:18:23

but the couple days I've done it, it's been extremely helpful.

01:18:25

So I'm gonna try to continue doing that.

01:18:27

- Yeah, this is something that I've been working on

01:18:32

and somewhat implementing.

01:18:34

I just have not really devoted the,

01:18:38

I've not really prioritized it to the level that I should.

01:18:43

But there are a couple things that I've implemented

01:18:47

into my shutdown ritual.

01:18:49

Now I just gotta get more consistent with it.

01:18:50

But that is something that is very, very important,

01:18:54

I feel, especially after reading this book,

01:18:56

being a knowledge worker,

01:18:59

because I think that is a really important difference

01:19:02

between somebody who is creating something physical,

01:19:04

like a carpenter, for example.

01:19:06

You know that I have to apply the polish or whatever.

01:19:11

I'm not a woodworker, so I couldn't give you the terms,

01:19:14

but like the stain.

01:19:16

You're gonna go ahead, you're gonna stain these cherries

01:19:18

and then there's nothing else that you can do with that.

01:19:19

You gotta let it sit overnight, so you're done.

01:19:22

But with knowledge work, there's always more words to write.

01:19:25

There's always more work I could be doing on these videos.

01:19:28

So it's really hard for me to completely disengage

01:19:33

whenever I'm done and really not just keep looking

01:19:37

throughout the rest of the evening for,

01:19:39

"Oh, is there a pocket at a time

01:19:40

"where I can get just a little bit more work done?"

01:19:42

And in my own life, I justify that because I say,

01:19:45

"Well, if I do this today,

01:19:47

"then tomorrow's gonna be easier."

01:19:49

And really what I realize after reading this book

01:19:51

is like, "I gotta stop that.

01:19:53

"I gotta have a set end time

01:19:55

"and I've gotta have that ritual

01:19:56

"that allows me to disengage."

01:19:58

And he even talks about how when you do,

01:20:01

when you don't do the shutdown ritual correctly,

01:20:04

then you're actually robbing your productivity

01:20:06

from the next day because you're not getting

01:20:09

the reset that your body really needs.

01:20:12

So definitely something I need to do.

01:20:14

I also mentioned I wanna start scheduling

01:20:16

my offline blocks.

01:20:17

I sort of am doing that to a limited degree,

01:20:20

not completely offline with the,

01:20:23

how I work with my iPad Pro,

01:20:25

but this is specifically completely offline.

01:20:29

I wanna have specific times where I cannot get notified anyway.

01:20:34

And then also I mentioned earlier,

01:20:37

scheduling every minute of every day

01:20:39

using that fixed schedule productivity system,

01:20:41

which I believe actually goes along

01:20:43

with the shutdown ritual.

01:20:44

If I have a set time that I wanna be finished by,

01:20:46

everything that I schedule has to be done before that time.

01:20:51

So I think those kinda go hand in hand.

01:20:53

- Yeah, and the only other thing I have

01:20:55

as far as action items,

01:20:56

and again, I've kinda mentioned this already,

01:20:59

I think we get kind of excited.

01:21:01

This is what I'm gonna do.

01:21:02

But I'm trying to scale back on the social media stuff

01:21:06

'cause at this point in the game for me,

01:21:10

I'm like, I know that especially things like Instagram and Facebook,

01:21:15

it just doesn't, there's really not much benefit in it at all.

01:21:19

So if you follow the any benefit principle,

01:21:22

those need to go.

01:21:23

So deleting Instagram off my phone was the first step there.

01:21:28

I'm not gonna say I'm off of Instagram yet,

01:21:31

but it's still, it's very hard for me to get to it right now.

01:21:35

Facebook, I haven't really done anything with it

01:21:37

in years much to my family's sugar in.

01:21:40

So whoops.

01:21:41

So those are easy ones.

01:21:44

Twitter's a difficult one for me

01:21:46

because that's where I've previously said

01:21:48

that's where I'm gonna hang out.

01:21:49

But the more time I spent thinking about that

01:21:52

as opposed to this discussion site

01:21:56

that I run behind the site,

01:21:57

I really feel like that's where I need

01:22:00

to be directing my focus.

01:22:02

And the more that I'm able to direct my focus

01:22:06

in that direction, I think the better off I am.

01:22:09

Because I like to share articles,

01:22:11

I like to share what I'm learning

01:22:13

and something I've discovered.

01:22:14

I like to do that and share those with other people.

01:22:17

But I'm not so certain that Twitter's the right space for it.

01:22:21

I mean, people will say that you wanna do that

01:22:22

because you can get links and it can get back to your site.

01:22:25

And it's kind of a, you click on mine,

01:22:27

I'll click on yours type of thing.

01:22:29

But I don't think that in the long run

01:22:33

that really helps.

01:22:35

And you know, if I look at the number of people

01:22:37

that come from Twitter onto my site,

01:22:40

honestly it's pretty small in comparison.

01:22:44

You know, if I look at,

01:22:45

I don't even know how many followers

01:22:46

I have on Twitter right now,

01:22:47

but it's significantly more than I was at a year ago.

01:22:51

I think I'm somewhere around 800

01:22:53

and maybe a year ago I was at like 300,

01:22:55

somewhere around those lines.

01:22:56

But honestly, you're not getting, you know,

01:23:00

a handful of clicks that come off of those.

01:23:02

So I don't think those really,

01:23:04

it's not a place that I feel

01:23:06

I should be spending a lot of time.

01:23:08

Because I know that if people are in the discussion site,

01:23:11

one, they've either left a comment on my site,

01:23:14

which means they're engaged with the content I write,

01:23:17

or two, they felt that the type of thing that I write

01:23:20

is interesting enough to join that community.

01:23:23

So to me, the target audience that I wanna be working for

01:23:27

and two, are the folks that are a part of that discussion site.

01:23:31

So that's where I feel like I want to spend a lot of my time.

01:23:35

So I'm gonna be trying to direct more of my attention there.

01:23:37

I'll probably still post things on Twitter.

01:23:40

Obviously I will on the bookworm Twitter feed

01:23:42

since I control that one.

01:23:43

Can you have more than one person control a Twitter account?

01:23:46

- Probably not control it,

01:23:49

but you could have people contribute it for sure.

01:23:52

- Okay.

01:23:53

- So I can help you do some of that.

01:23:54

And I should, I wanna make a distinction here

01:23:57

with the action items, because I think it can maybe be

01:24:01

a little bit overwhelming if you're listening to your say,

01:24:03

"Oh, Joe and Mike are applying all of these radical changes

01:24:05

every time they read a book."

01:24:07

It's not necessarily really radical changes,

01:24:10

but it's the implementation of adhesion efficiency.

01:24:12

We have a core value called Kaizen

01:24:14

where it's kind of like constant improvement.

01:24:16

And so these are all things that I've noted

01:24:18

as I read the book, like, "Hey, I should try that."

01:24:21

And when I try that, if it produces not just any benefit,

01:24:25

but if it really does hit the mark

01:24:27

and it really does resonate and I see the results

01:24:30

and I decide that, "Yeah, that's the thing

01:24:32

that is really gonna make a difference."

01:24:33

And I'm gonna go ahead and apply that,

01:24:35

but I think that if you just look at the list

01:24:38

to takeaways every single time,

01:24:39

maybe it's a little bit overwhelming,

01:24:41

but just know that these are things that we're gonna try,

01:24:43

not necessarily that we're gonna commit to

01:24:45

radical lifestyle changes every single time.

01:24:47

Is that the way you view these?

01:24:48

- Absolutely, because I don't meditate anymore.

01:24:50

(both laughing)

01:24:52

It's like, well, that was one of the first things is,

01:24:54

"Okay, I need to start meditating more in order

01:24:56

to help drive more focus in my brain.

01:24:58

I can't do it, Mike."

01:24:59

And it doesn't even show, like,

01:25:00

I could do it for weeks on end and it doesn't really,

01:25:03

I can't see any difference in doing it.

01:25:05

So I'm not gonna take the time to do it.

01:25:07

So yes, there are some things that we take

01:25:11

as action items and they fall off.

01:25:12

And in some cases, it's very quickly.

01:25:15

There was one, I don't remember what it was.

01:25:17

There was something that we said,

01:25:18

or I said I was gonna do,

01:25:20

I'm not gonna think of it,

01:25:22

but I remember I did it for two days and then I quit it.

01:25:25

I don't remember what it was.

01:25:26

I need to go look it up.

01:25:28

I'll look it up for the next one.

01:25:29

But yeah, there's a lot of these,

01:25:31

especially probably with the social media thing,

01:25:34

because you're coming off the high of just reading this thing

01:25:36

and it's like, yes, I'm gonna cancel all of them.

01:25:38

I'm gonna go build a cabin in the woods

01:25:40

and I'm gonna write constantly for six months.

01:25:42

Like, that's the mindset that you come out of this thinking

01:25:47

and at least that's the way I came out of it.

01:25:50

It's like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do.

01:25:52

But that's not the right approach,

01:25:53

not given the work that I do.

01:25:56

So I'm just trying to figure out, okay,

01:25:58

I'm gonna scale back on Twitter.

01:26:00

I'm not leaving Twitter.

01:26:01

I will definitely still be there,

01:26:03

but I'm gonna focus more of my time and attention

01:26:06

on that discussion site,

01:26:07

which honestly is more difficult than Twitter

01:26:10

because the posts and the things that go there

01:26:12

are longer for them and they take more thought to get out.

01:26:15

But ultimately, I think that's better for me

01:26:18

in the long run if you can catch the distinction there.

01:26:21

- Yeah, it makes sense.

01:26:24

- So I think by now people know how we're gonna rate this,

01:26:27

but Mike, how would you rate this?

01:26:29

(laughs)

01:26:30

- Well, this was a very influential book for me

01:26:33

the first time I read it,

01:26:34

and I got probably just as much, if not more,

01:26:37

out of it the second time that I read it.

01:26:38

So this is definitely five out of five for me.

01:26:41

- Yeah, that's an easy one.

01:26:42

I said earlier on, this is one of the few books

01:26:46

that's had a pretty major impact on my life

01:26:49

in a very positive way, I would say,

01:26:52

similar to getting things done.

01:26:54

So yeah, this is an easy five for me as well.

01:26:57

- So I guess the upcoming books here,

01:27:01

if you're following along at home,

01:27:03

are the Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lear

01:27:07

and Tony Schwartz, which was my pick.

01:27:09

We're gonna do that one next.

01:27:11

And then after that, Daring Greatly by,

01:27:14

I'll let you say the guy's name, I'm not sure.

01:27:16

- That's the gal's name, Brené Brown.

01:27:18

- Yeah, okay, sorry.

01:27:20

- No, Daring Greatly, I've had that one

01:27:21

recommended to me a couple times,

01:27:23

and that one, it'll break the mold

01:27:27

of the type of thing that we're doing.

01:27:28

It gets more into relationships as opposed to work.

01:27:32

So we'll move topics a little bit at that point.

01:27:36

- All right, sounds good.

01:27:39

And then if you want to recommend a book for us to check out,

01:27:44

there is a link to do that on the website.

01:27:48

So it's bookworm.fm/recommend.

01:27:52

And there's also a list of all of the books

01:27:55

that we have done, as well as the ones

01:27:57

that are planned and recommended at bookworm.fm/list.

01:28:02

- And we're still conducting this semi-experiment,

01:28:08

I guess is what we'd call it, Mike, over at remarks.fm.

01:28:12

So they've got their app and it's a way

01:28:14

to do the social podcasting thing.

01:28:15

We've talked about this a couple of few episodes

01:28:18

in a row now, but we've had a few people

01:28:19

leave in comments on specific points,

01:28:22

challenging us on things that we've said

01:28:24

and agreeing with us on some things.

01:28:26

So it's been kind of fun to see some of that back and forth

01:28:28

start to happen.

01:28:28

So we're still conducting that experiment.

01:28:31

So if you're interested in remarks at all,

01:28:34

you can check out the links we've got in the show notes

01:28:37

that'll take you over to both their site

01:28:38

and the app that goes with it to engage in that.

01:28:43

And then also, I've seen we've got a number,

01:28:46

a handful of reviews that are starting to come in.

01:28:49

Awesome, thank you to you guys on iTunes

01:28:50

who are leaving reviews over there.

01:28:52

If you want, go ahead and check that out.

01:28:54

I'll drop a link to the iTunes, what do you call that?

01:28:59

The show itself, the link to get to it.

01:29:03

That way you can go leave a review there as well.

01:29:04

So if you like the show, or even if you don't,

01:29:07

we'd love to see a review from you

01:29:08

just to let us know what you think of it.

01:29:10

And then there's some weird way that iTunes and Apple

01:29:13

uses those reviews to create the algorithms

01:29:17

in order to help other people find them.

01:29:19

So reviews and rating us goes a long ways on the iTunes store.

01:29:24

So if you get a chance, go check that out.

01:29:27

- Yeah, definitely.

01:29:28

We appreciate any feedback that you guys have.

01:29:30

We want to make this podcast book club even better.

01:29:33

So if you want to join us, go ahead and start reading

01:29:36

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lear and Tony Schwartz.

01:29:39

And we will talk to you guys next time.