Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, Joe, you're ready to talk about emotional intelligence again?

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Not really, but I got a feeling I'm not going to get out of this without it.

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So here we are.

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All right.

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So yeah, first follow up item from last episode was the assessment that I had you take, which

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I gave you the long version.

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There is a shorter version also, but obviously with more questions that you asked, the more

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valid the results are.

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So before I psychoanalyze you, anything jump out to you from doing this?

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I was really, really, really, really long.

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I got through it in a little over 30 minutes and I'm fast at these things.

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Did you discover that there are keyboard shortcuts for the options?

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Nope.

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Didn't.

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Should have told you that.

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Sorry.

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That's okay.

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I did notice I can't go back.

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Yeah, of course figured that out.

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Okay.

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Well, that's like, okay, there's a back button, but I can't click it.

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Why is there a back button?

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Because your first answer is the best answer.

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So it took away the ability for you to go back.

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Then make the back button go away.

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Anyway, side note, I will say that whenever I got started, I got about what was I probably

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20, 30 questions in and I looked up and the progress bar had like barely moved.

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I was like, what?

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So I got about a hundred questions in like, okay, I'm not even halfway through this thing.

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So yes, there's a lot there, but I was looking through the results on it and it's got a

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ton that comes out of it.

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So I could see where there's a ton of value in this.

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I have not even had a chance to go through my own results in a lot of detail, let alone

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yours.

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So I posted my results on the bookworm club.

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I don't know if you want to do that.

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Did you?

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Okay.

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So I wasn't sure if you were comfortable making these public, but I'll share mine too then.

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Yeah.

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So public, feel free to psycho analyze me people like I ate.

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Sure.

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Hit me.

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So what insights did you get from your results?

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If any.

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There's a lot of things that I think I struggle with and a lot of those have to do with my

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own comfort levels around like how good I am at getting things done and how I communicate

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with that with other people.

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And this just showed me that a lot of it, what am I trying to say, a lot of it is true

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that I do struggle with a lot of those, but I think it's worse than I thought it was.

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That's my thinking at the moment.

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All right.

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Well to give you a little bit of hope looking at these, I mean your results really aren't

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that bad.

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Really?

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Yeah, for sure.

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And the other thing is like when people take this assessment, usually there are some areas

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that are lower.

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And I think I mentioned this in the last episode.

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The research shows though, because remember this has been used over eight and a half million

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times, 140 dot torl level papers and books on this particular assessment, right?

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If you focus on one of these areas and then go through a curriculum designed to develop

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that skill, you will see improvement across all of the areas.

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So since you've made your results public, do you mind if I talk about these a little

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bit?

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Sure, go for it, hit me.

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Okay.

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So your lowest area is commitment ethic.

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And the numbers on here really don't mean a whole lot because it's a bell curve.

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And they kind of explained that at the beginning.

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Yeah.

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So like one of these, I got 68 and we'll get to me in a second, but that's actually the

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maximum number you can get in a particular area.

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Sure.

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And I would argue actually that one maybe has negative repercussions too.

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So I won't get that in a minute.

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But your commitment ethic being in the first range here, the develop range, basically that's

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the low end and then there's a color to represent that.

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So those bars are red.

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And then the strength and range that's kind of in the middle and then the enhanced range

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that's the high end.

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And then based on where you land in these different ranges, it gives you a little bit

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different interpretation of your score and kind of paints a picture of where you're at

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as you go through those results in the instrument itself.

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Now when you print it off, obviously you just get the numbers.

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Right.

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It's designed to help you understand it even if you don't have a psychology degree.

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Sure.

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And kind of the reaction that I had the first time I went through it and also a lot of

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people have when they go through it is like, "Wow, I can't believe how crazy accurate this

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thing is."

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Really, it's not that difficult.

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There's not rocket science here.

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It's just you've answered these questions about yourself.

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You've defined yourself and then so it's helping you interpret what you're really saying

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about yourself.

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That's why I gave you the longer one because the longer the assessment, the more valid

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the answers.

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The shorter one I think is only like 84 questions.

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But that's where you get sometimes some false positives and stuff.

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So commitment ethic being on the low end, that really isn't a bad thing because even

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though you've got a couple scales that are red, if you went through a curriculum in developing

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commitment ethic, if that was really something that you said, "This is something I want to

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change," if you did that for a couple of months, you would probably see if you took this again

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that it had moved all of the needles in the direction that you wanted to go.

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Does that make sense?

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Yeah.

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No, it does make sense.

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For example, another one that's really low is stress management, which I've known for

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a long time.

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I'm terrible at that.

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Some of this I know is changing right now because my work situation changed and I'm making

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sense.

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Exactly.

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I know that some of this is in the works of being edited already.

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Exactly.

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That's the real key here is it shows you where to make the edits.

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Now you kind of intrinsically, I think, knew where you needed to make some edits.

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Yes.

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But not everybody has a podcast that they do with somebody and they read a book every

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two weeks and they talk about their accountability items and holding each other accountable to

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what they said they're going to do.

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If everybody did that, there'd be no need for an instrument like this because you can't

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see your own blind spots, right?

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Right.

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You need somebody else who's going to show you, like, "Hey, you've really not been yourself

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lately.

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Everything okay?"

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Yeah.

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Well, this kind of shows you maybe everything's not okay.

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In fact, one of the uses for this, if you scroll onto the bottom, there's interpersonal

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aggression, interpersonal deference, and then personal change orientation.

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So aggression and deference, those are kind of inversely related, which you can see on

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yours, like, aggression is kind of right at the end of the middle or normal range and

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really it's more towards the low end, okay?

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But deference is high.

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So you tend to defer, okay?

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Now if you have somebody who is terrible at stress management, they tend to defer.

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They are completely unhappy with themselves and all of these other scores are low.

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Those are the kinds of things that can indicate that this is somebody who maybe will blow

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up and maybe there's going to be a violent incident.

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In the past, you might just be able to say, "This is going to lash out and say something

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verbally abusive at work.

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Now you've got to worry about kids bringing guns to school."

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But that's the kind of thing.

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If you see that in somebody, you have that red flag and you're like, "Oh, we need to

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intervene here before it gets to that point," because that stuff happens when people feel

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like they have no other options.

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They feel painted into a corner.

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And I know I am grossly generalizing this, but eight and a half million times, there's

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enough data here to show that that's kind of the process here.

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You can see the patterns.

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Now you're not going to shoot up a school, all right?

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But you can see that you tend to defer and that causes you some stress.

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So really what you want to do based on these results is the next time you have the opportunity

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to be assertive and stand up for yourself, take a step in that direction.

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That's kind of the type of stuff you can get from this.

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Yeah, which makes a lot of sense to me because I feel like that's an area that I've become

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aware of more so in the last probably six months, but I haven't really spent a lot of

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time focusing on building out that area.

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So again, this is putting terms and numbers to things.

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I feel like I've intuitively noticed, but haven't been able to truly focus on doing

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anything about.

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Yeah, a couple other quick observations regarding yours.

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Your decision making is high.

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Your sales orientation and leadership is high.

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We added that term leadership because a lot of people were taking this and they view the

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term sales orientation and they're like, well, I don't want to be a salesperson.

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Right.

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Right.

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And you probably maybe even feel like you don't want to be a salesperson because you're introverted,

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not extroverted.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Yep.

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So, but if you are married, you have sold yourself at least once.

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That's what I always tell people.

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Yes, it's true.

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And if you have a job, you've sold yourself once.

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Yes, exactly.

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So sales is really not trying to get rid of used cars and take suckers for every buck

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that they have.

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It's being able to sell people on an idea and leadership is being able to sell people

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on the idea that you can help them get where they want to go.

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So I like the fact that those are kind of combined now.

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Your empathy score being high does not surprise me at all.

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Your interpersonal awareness score being high does not surprise me at all.

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Interpersonal assertion, that could also kind of be lumped in with the ones on the bottom.

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That is on the low end as well.

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So again, that just kind of shows like what your natural tendency is to defer and, well,

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I'll figure out a way to make this work.

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But as you know, that's not super healthy and we don't need to get into details, but

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you've gone through some stuff, which I would argue also contributed to the low stress management,

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low physical wellness scores.

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So could it be that if you're able to nail that assertiveness versus aggression or deference,

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that fixes all of the "problems" that you see here.

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That's the fascinating thing about this kind of stuff to me.

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And I also wondered how much physical health played into some of this as well.

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For sure.

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There's the physical awareness piece, which is really low on this.

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It's down in the red as well, which in my main makes perfect sense because right now

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is horrendous for health and wellness in the world of Joe.

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So it made perfect sense to me.

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Cool.

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Want to talk about my scores?

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I do because now I'm curious.

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Now I've got a little bit of background on this.

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Now I'm pulling yours up because I want to see this.

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You're going to make this public too, right?

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Yep.

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Mine are a little bit weird because I'm further along, I guess, on my emotional intelligence

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journey because it started when I was born in my family.

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But if you were to look at this maybe even five years ago, my results probably look a

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lot more similar to yours.

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So one thing that really was a struggle for me was my deference was really high.

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And on this score, you can see that it's actually pretty low.

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Aggression is also fairly low.

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Assertiveness is kind of right in the middle.

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So I've come a long way compared to when I first took this in high school and being able

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to be assertive and stand up for my rights but not trample on the rights of others.

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The other thing that really isn't a surprise to people who follow me online probably is

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like the drive strength motivation being pretty high.

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I tend to stick my teeth into an idea and then just make sure I do whatever I need to

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make it happen.

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Commitment ethic is maxed out at 68.

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I would argue that that one sometimes gets me into trouble because once I say yes to

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something, I can't let it go.

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I can't be the guy who just doesn't follow through on stuff.

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And that's to my detriment sometimes.

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Stress management is kind of in the middle.

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That's actually higher than I would have guessed.

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It's been a pretty stressful several months for me.

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But the fact that I am still here, I feel is kind of reflective of the fact that I have

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built in some systems and have some skills in that area where I'm able to mitigate some

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of that stuff.

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Maybe my wife who hears me complain all the time says otherwise.

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I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't matter really what you go through.

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If you have the skills to cope with that sort of stuff, you can get through almost anything.

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So I kind of feel like I've been through almost anything.

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And this score is kind of one of the things that's helped me get through that.

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Physical wellness also.

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This is the high end or the enhanced range.

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And that was again based on some results that I saw here.

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I basically work out at least six times a week going to the gym, now also cycling.

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So I don't mess up my knee when I run.

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But that has been a huge thing.

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And now it's gotten to the point where like if I don't get to the gym, it affects my mood.

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So sure.

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Or I noticed that it affects my mood and I don't like it.

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So I make sure that I get there.

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Time management is also maxed out.

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I would argue that I probably still have some room to grow in that particular area.

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But this is strictly just viewing, managing your time.

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It's not saying no to the things that you shouldn't be doing or the intentionality effectiveness.

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I feel like that's kind of where I need to go to the next level with that sort of stuff.

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But yeah, that's basically me.

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Now what you see for the real effective leaders, whether they are big teams, small teams, whatever,

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is that most of these scales tend to be in the enhance range.

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So they have developed these skills to the point where they can basically fit whatever

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the situation demands.

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Okay.

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So that's why I brought up the point last time.

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Like if you develop emotional intelligence, that means that you're not naturally introverted

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or you have to become more extroverted because kind of like the personality stuff in terms

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of leadership and reaching your full potential to a certain degree, it doesn't really matter.

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Your personality is your personality, but you got to learn to manage it effectively.

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And depending on the situation, there is going to be a right and wrong way for that to play

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out.

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So yeah, emotional intelligence in a nutshell.

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Yeah, I'm looking at these numbers.

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The only thing that's like there's a lot of numbers here.

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I remember the quiz was the survey was giving me some explanations of where these numbers

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came from.

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I noticed like where it's maxed out, yours and mine match on everything except time management.

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Do those max numbers change depending on the person going through it?

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Let's see.

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So let's look at the raw scores.

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I'm 22 out of 24 on time management.

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You were 13 out of 24.

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So basically what that maxed out 70 is saying, remember this is a bell curve.

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So this time management specifically has probably shifted more towards the low end in terms

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of people generally sucking at this, which is why it looks like that bar is maximized.

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But I guess technically, you know, 22 out of 24, that's not 100% in terms of my responses.

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Same thing with equipment ethic.

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That's 23 out of 24.

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But because of the bell curve, like it's close enough that it basically is, yeah, you're

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in the 100th percentile or whatever.

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Sure.

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All right.

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That makes sense.

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Well, I will say this was a fascinating process to go through.

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Definitely told me some things I was not not aware of, but also not oblivious to.

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So take that for what it's worth.

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Yes, there was a lot there.

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I was grateful for having gone through this.

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So thank you for sending this to me.

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I have no idea the value of what you sent me.

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So thanks.

00:16:12

Well, I gave you, I think, the whole bundle.

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So if you wanted to go through and look at the curriculum associated with those areas,

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actually, the assessment will automatically assign the lowest areas.

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And then you can go through the skill building as a post assessment at the end, which kind

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of documents your growth.

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So sure, if you're curious, you know, you can continue to work on it.

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But otherwise, you know, you can be done too.

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All right.

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Well, thank you.

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I'm looking at the rest of follow up.

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We got a few things to go through here.

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Quick note again on memberships.

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We are live right now.

00:16:46

So premium members of the Bookworm Club.

00:16:49

Hi.

00:16:50

Hello.

00:16:51

We're talking to you right now.

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There is a chat that you can jump in if you are listening and you have a point of clarification,

00:17:00

you know, let us know.

00:17:02

We'll be glad to try to answer those on the show.

00:17:06

So let's see.

00:17:07

What else do we have here?

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Oh, I added a calendar.

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Somebody mentioned putting a calendar on the Bookworm Club.

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We'll put a link to this in the show notes, but it's on club.bookworm.fm.

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And I still have to teach Mike how to put things on this calendar.

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But the thinking is that we'll try to post when we have a live show coming up.

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If Mike is up for it posting, when episodes will drop.

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And if we do any other sort of thing going on, like, I'll probably put max stock on it.

00:17:39

Like that sort of thing, trying to keep all of them.

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Everything is going on around Bookworm on that calendar.

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We should probably do the same thing for faith-based productivity, Mike.

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That just occurred to me.

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Probably so many things.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Well, let's get Bookworm nailed down first.

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All right.

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Oh, fun times.

00:18:02

Speaking of max stock, that's coming up very quickly.

00:18:05

Do you still have a coupon code for this?

00:18:06

I do.

00:18:07

Somebody asked me the other day, actually.

00:18:09

So I was going to bring it up anyways.

00:18:12

If you go to the max stock website, which I believe is maxstockconferenceandexpo.com

00:18:18

and register, there's no special link.

00:18:21

But if you use the coupon code FOCUSED, then you will get $70 off of the weekend pass,

00:18:28

which right now is $249.

00:18:30

So it's essentially the early bird pricing.

00:18:33

It's a good chunk of change.

00:18:34

It's like a 30% discount.

00:18:36

So if you haven't bought your ticket yet and you're going to go, make sure to use that

00:18:39

coupon code, save a bunch of money.

00:18:41

There you go.

00:18:42

And come see Jo and myself.

00:18:44

Yeah, we'll say hi.

00:18:45

It'll be fun.

00:18:46

There's quite a few folks going.

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I was on a call with a friend this morning.

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We were talking through some things about max stock.

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So yeah, it's going to be a good time.

00:18:54

There's going to be a lot of folks there.

00:18:55

It'll be a big event.

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It seems to grow every year, so it'll be fun.

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FOCUSED, should we get into action items from last time?

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Yeah.

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I have three, one of which you just talked about.

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Take the survey.

00:19:07

I did it.

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I did my thing.

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Done.

00:19:10

Good job.

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I also have been trying to pay attention to my emotions multiple times throughout the

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day.

00:19:15

Mike recommended this app mood notes.

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I have to say that's been enlightening.

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I've been trying to check in with that three or four times a day and just note what's going

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on, the feelings specifically I have at that time.

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I'm trying to use it as much as I can so that it has more data on me.

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Sometimes I like seeing the results from that sort of thing and sometimes it terrifies

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me.

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This one's kind of in between.

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Sometimes I'm really excited to go look at those.

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Sometimes I really don't want to go look at it.

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Here we are.

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Mood notes.

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I like it.

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It's a good one.

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I like that.

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It's not free.

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I don't know how much it was, but it's helpful.

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I'll say that.

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The last one I have here is building optimism into my thoughts.

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I have a habit of focusing on the negative things and being critical of both myself

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and others way more than I should.

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I'm trying to give that a 180 and reverse that.

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All right.

00:20:12

I don't know how that's going.

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So you pull the mic and pick the action item that is impossible to measure your sink.

00:20:20

Yeah.

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I'm going to think this way.

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I dare you to measure that.

00:20:25

Yeah.

00:20:26

So here I am.

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We'll see.

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I'm continuing to work on that one.

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I still stink at it, but here we are.

00:20:34

It's still, it will be a thing for a while, I think.

00:20:38

All right.

00:20:39

You just had one.

00:20:40

Yeah.

00:20:41

My one action item was to identify the emotional fault lines in my marriage and my wife listened

00:20:47

to the episode.

00:20:48

She said she wanted to do the same thing for me.

00:20:51

I've been taking notes.

00:20:52

We haven't had the conversation yet about these are the things that I feel cause stress

00:20:59

in our relationship, but even without sitting down and comparing those notes, there have

00:21:04

been a couple things that we have talked about because of this action item where something

00:21:09

happens and I'm like, okay, so this is what I'm thinking when this happens and this is

00:21:15

really stressful.

00:21:16

She's like, oh, didn't know you were thinking that way.

00:21:19

So I'll figure out a different way to do that.

00:21:22

Sure.

00:21:23

A lot of it has to do with us trying to get five kids out the door in two places in a

00:21:30

timely manner.

00:21:31

Wait, that's hard?

00:21:33

I didn't know that.

00:21:34

Well, it's hard, but we make it harder than it needs to be sometimes.

00:21:38

So we're kind of in the maybe identification or phase of that where it's like we recognize

00:21:45

that when we wait until the last minute and then, okay, everybody get in the car.

00:21:49

Like that just creates a baseline of stress and that's usually when there are issues.

00:21:56

Somebody hits somebody and somebody's balling in the car, you know, is pulling out the driveway.

00:22:00

Like sure, we can do a better job setting the tone and being calm and in control and

00:22:06

moving people in the direction that we need to go.

00:22:09

Like if we just don't be so frantic on our end, it has an amazing exponential effect

00:22:16

throughout five separate kids.

00:22:18

Yes.

00:22:19

In terms of the whole sounds stupid to use the word culture in a car, right?

00:22:24

But that's kind of what it is.

00:22:26

Like, I don't know, you can feel the stress.

00:22:29

You can cut the tension with a knife when we don't do it right.

00:22:33

And when we do do it right, it just makes everything simpler.

00:22:35

So that's one specific example of something that has happened from this action item,

00:22:41

but there's more to come, I'm sure.

00:22:43

Well, I wish you the best of luck with that.

00:22:44

I know that kids tend to like they mimic your attitude.

00:22:51

Exactly.

00:22:52

So if you're stressed and hurrying and trying to get out the door, like they'll tend to

00:22:55

do the same thing, but that has a tendency to clash.

00:22:59

Yep.

00:23:00

Yeah.

00:23:01

They very much reflect what you don't even see yourself a lot of times.

00:23:08

So that is a very keen observation.

00:23:11

All right.

00:23:13

We better get into this book.

00:23:15

Yeah.

00:23:16

Okay.

00:23:17

Pretty psycho.

00:23:18

So today's book is free to focus by Michael Hyatt.

00:23:22

And the subtitle is a total productivity system to achieve more by doing less.

00:23:28

So that kind of sets the tone for a systems book, which I mentioned, I'm not a huge fan

00:23:33

of, but I like this book more than I thought I would.

00:23:38

So want to just jump right into it.

00:23:41

I read this in two days.

00:23:43

I read you.

00:23:44

Wow.

00:23:45

So you couldn't put it down.

00:23:46

I couldn't put it down.

00:23:49

And I attribute that to Michael Hyatt being phenomenal at writing because he's really

00:23:55

good at writing.

00:23:56

I'll give him that for sure.

00:23:58

He is really good at writing.

00:23:59

What's interesting though is I had the same, same reaction.

00:24:04

Like I just want to keep reading this.

00:24:08

But also if you look at my my node file, I don't have a single quote captured, which

00:24:18

I think that's like the first time ever that that's happened.

00:24:21

So he's a great writer.

00:24:23

I feel like, you know, there's a lot of emphasis in the, the productivity.

00:24:28

Like when you, when you write online, there's even like apps that try to get you to, to

00:24:33

write at a, like a fifth grade level or something.

00:24:35

So it's easier to read.

00:24:37

I feel like Michael Hyatt did such a good job with that that nothing was really memorable

00:24:42

for me from like some specific phrase that he used.

00:24:46

Yeah.

00:24:47

Which I thought was, was interesting.

00:24:48

I mean, it doesn't, doesn't detract from the message of the book at all.

00:24:51

I don't think, but I was kind of surprised by that.

00:24:53

Yeah.

00:24:54

I didn't underline anything.

00:24:55

Like that's how I tend to do things is I'll underline it, make notes like an in, in,

00:24:59

in index in the back, which is a thing I stole from, from Maria, Popova and Tim Ferris.

00:25:07

And I'm, I'm sure a lot of people, it's a pretty common thing anymore.

00:25:11

But I, I normally do that.

00:25:13

I have none on this.

00:25:16

And I think you're right on that.

00:25:17

Another thing, a thing to point out is, and I don't remember where he mentioned, it was

00:25:21

probably in the automation section about, or the delegation where he had someone else

00:25:26

take a lot of his posts and the content that he's already written and compile it into this.

00:25:31

Hmm.

00:25:32

Okay.

00:25:33

So someone else was heavily involved in getting this book put together.

00:25:36

And then he basically just edited it later.

00:25:39

Gotcha.

00:25:41

Something along those lines.

00:25:42

I'm probably botching that to some degree, but someone else was heavily involved in

00:25:47

getting this written that wasn't Michael Hyatt.

00:25:51

And for whatever reason, that really irked me.

00:25:55

Like it, it really, really bugged me.

00:25:57

So I don't remember reading that, but that wouldn't surprise me.

00:26:01

I do recall thinking Grammarly did too good a job.

00:26:05

Yeah.

00:26:06

Yeah.

00:26:07

But.

00:26:08

All right.

00:26:10

So this book is broken into three sections as you do.

00:26:14

And the first section.

00:26:15

Those sections are in three sections.

00:26:17

Yes.

00:26:18

This is the ultimate book of threes.

00:26:20

So the first section is the first step in his process to regaining focus.

00:26:26

And that is to stop.

00:26:27

Step two is to cut.

00:26:28

Step three is to act.

00:26:30

Let's talk about these in order.

00:26:33

So we'll start with stop and because there's three chapters in each, I think we can crank

00:26:37

through these pretty quickly and get the main ideas.

00:26:40

But we don't necessarily need to hit on every single chapter if we need to skip around

00:26:46

too, because there are some chapters that have key ideas.

00:26:49

Some feel or just like he put it there because he needed three.

00:26:55

Yeah.

00:26:56

So the first chapter formulate, he mentions another list of three.

00:27:03

He has three common productivity objectives.

00:27:06

Number one is efficiency.

00:27:08

Number two is success.

00:27:10

And number three is freedom.

00:27:12

I actually really liked this part.

00:27:14

I think this is one of the strongest messages that Michael Hyatt teaches is this whole idea

00:27:21

of productivity being the key to creating the freedom that you want.

00:27:26

So he mentions freedom to focus, freedom to be present, freedom to be spontaneous, freedom

00:27:30

to do nothing.

00:27:31

I mean, you can insert your own definition there, freedom to blank.

00:27:36

But I feel like that is the big idea behind the whole book and is something that everybody

00:27:44

can relate to.

00:27:45

Yeah.

00:27:46

I see how that could be a big thing.

00:27:51

I mean, essentially he's trying to define productivity at this point.

00:27:55

I don't argue with him on that.

00:27:58

And I think it's, and maybe this is what hooked me on this.

00:28:02

He did a very good job of hooking me in this book because I, my sense is like he's not

00:28:07

trying to, let me back up with this being a systems focused book.

00:28:13

Yes, it's systems, but at the same time it's, it's a higher level of system.

00:28:20

Like GTD was ground level, show me how to manage, you know, keeping track of, I need

00:28:27

to change this light bulb.

00:28:29

Like that, that was the level that GTD was operating on, is operating on this.

00:28:35

Michael Hyatt system here is at a higher level.

00:28:38

Like it's along the lines of how do you go about deciding which projects and which areas

00:28:44

of life you're going to be working on.

00:28:46

Like that was, that was the level that he's operating on.

00:28:49

So it's not like those two are competing.

00:28:53

Like they definitely can work together.

00:28:56

And my sense is that a lot of these systems focused books like to go down at the task level

00:29:03

and operate there, not all of them, but this one has a tendency to be at the higher level.

00:29:08

And that's where he starts off with this is like, what's the point of this whole book

00:29:14

and the whole thing.

00:29:16

And it's a much higher level than a lot of the others that we've operated with.

00:29:19

Which is refreshing.

00:29:20

Yeah, it really is.

00:29:22

And maybe that's why it was a quick read and one that I didn't want to put down because

00:29:26

you don't really see that level of things talked about in this detail very often.

00:29:30

Sure.

00:29:31

Yeah.

00:29:32

Yeah.

00:29:33

One quick thing that he mentions in here under the efficiency is that smartphones have promised

00:29:38

to make things easier and give you more free time, but they don't deliver on that.

00:29:43

And obviously, Cal Newport wrote a whole book on that topic, but I feel like the key idea

00:29:48

here and is maybe a mindset shift for a lot of people who do view productivity as simply

00:29:53

the efficiency is that productivity should ultimately give you back more time, not require

00:29:59

more of you.

00:30:01

My opinion, when you are focused on efficiency, you're just trying to get a little bit more

00:30:06

breathing room.

00:30:08

The tendency then is to fill that space that you've created with your efficiency with more

00:30:13

things.

00:30:15

And then you try to get a little bit more efficiency.

00:30:17

And eventually, you are running so fast that you have absolutely no space.

00:30:22

Like if you're going 100 miles on the highway, you're following at a car's length, the person

00:30:27

in front of you.

00:30:28

And as soon as they have to stop, you crash.

00:30:31

Yep.

00:30:32

And the freedom, the space, that gives you more margin, you have more of a buffer.

00:30:38

And so things don't have to end up in a cosmic derailment of everything that you're doing.

00:30:45

You don't have to drop all the plates.

00:30:47

You just have to choose.

00:30:48

I'm not going to keep spinning these ones.

00:30:50

Exactly.

00:30:51

Now, you get towards the end of this chapter.

00:30:55

Every chapter has like an action item with it, like something you should sit down and go

00:31:00

through and do.

00:31:02

Did you do this?

00:31:03

I started to.

00:31:05

And then I realized that if I did do that, there was no way I was going to get through

00:31:07

it in a timely fashion.

00:31:10

So I downloaded the first form.

00:31:13

I can't remember what it was because I remember looking at it, spending a couple minutes thinking

00:31:16

about it and then deciding this is going to be like 100 hours of work if I do all of

00:31:21

this.

00:31:22

So I'm just going to skip this.

00:31:23

I do, I will say though, that the exercises and the resources that he have with this would

00:31:28

be worthwhile to do.

00:31:29

From a bookworm perspective, just getting the thing done, I kind of feel like there was

00:31:33

another book that we covered where we had to kind of not do it the way they intended.

00:31:36

I think it was Think and Girl Rich by Napoleon Hill.

00:31:39

No, that was.

00:31:41

Isn't that the one where he said, "Make sure you only do like one of these a month or something?"

00:31:47

That was the one with the morning pages in it.

00:31:49

I'm trying to blank on the name of the book.

00:31:50

Oh, The Artist Way by Julia Cameron.

00:31:52

There you go.

00:31:53

Could be that one too.

00:31:54

I swear Napoleon Hill was like that too.

00:31:56

Right at the beginning, he's like, "This is the right way to read this book."

00:31:59

Right.

00:32:00

And so I completely agree that that is the right way to read this book.

00:32:04

However, I did not do all of that.

00:32:07

Well, I did.

00:32:08

I did do all of these.

00:32:09

It didn't take me as long, but it was partly because I kind of knew a lot of the answers

00:32:14

to it before I got started, but I did want to go through it in the detail.

00:32:20

And the very first one that I went to, it did exactly what I expected Michael Hyatt to

00:32:27

do.

00:32:28

It required me to put in an email address in order to get the forms.

00:32:34

And I immediately started getting emails for events and classes and something almost

00:32:41

every day.

00:32:44

That was incredibly frustrating.

00:32:47

I get enough of this stuff and for that to just bombard me that much that fast was ridiculous.

00:32:54

So I fully expected that.

00:32:58

That's kind of the Michael Hyatt thing.

00:33:00

Like I get it.

00:33:01

I'm sure it works.

00:33:02

It probably brings a lot of income in for him.

00:33:05

I just have a tendency to not buy any of it because it drives me nuts.

00:33:08

Now you know how I really feel.

00:33:10

That said, I did go ahead and download all the things and they were helpful.

00:33:14

Like the the forums and things, they were helpful.

00:33:17

I wouldn't say that they were, I don't want to say groundbreaking it.

00:33:21

Like it's exactly what you expect.

00:33:22

He could have said, like he could have given you a couple questions and put them in the

00:33:27

book and you could have gone and grabbed just a blank piece of paper and answered those

00:33:31

questions and it would have been perfectly fine.

00:33:33

Sure.

00:33:34

But he did this whole heavily produced and formatted and designed forms to get where he

00:33:42

wanted to go.

00:33:43

I get it.

00:33:44

I mean, if you want an email address, it's a great way to do it.

00:33:46

Well, I'm sure those forms are coming from his free to focus course.

00:33:50

Yeah.

00:33:51

I'm sure they already existed and so that's kind of where he's pointing people.

00:33:54

I get it.

00:33:55

I do.

00:33:56

Again, I'm not arguing that that's the wrong way to do it.

00:34:01

It's just exactly what I expected in that scenario.

00:34:04

Again, the forum was helpful, but here we are.

00:34:08

It's worthwhile to know that that is the approach that he had when he wrote this.

00:34:13

This is not something that like, I've got to get this message out there.

00:34:16

The message already exists in the form of a digital course and the book was created in

00:34:20

order to sell more courses.

00:34:22

Yeah.

00:34:23

Yeah.

00:34:24

So keep that in mind.

00:34:25

And that's exactly what it is.

00:34:26

I mean, you go through it.

00:34:27

You cannot get away from the fact that there's a course on a bunch of other materials that

00:34:31

you can purchase around this.

00:34:33

Exactly.

00:34:34

I mean, it's exactly what you think.

00:34:36

There's even a planner and a journal and stuff that you can buy that have all the branding

00:34:40

and such for this.

00:34:41

So it's exactly what you would expect in that sense.

00:34:44

But that said, I'm rambling, complaining maybe.

00:34:48

At the end of each chapter, there are these action items to go through.

00:34:52

I did do all of these because I wanted to give it a full run.

00:34:58

The first, I think probably the first five or six, I did 100% exactly the way he was expecting.

00:35:07

Then they started to get a little light on impact and I let him drop off towards that

00:35:14

point.

00:35:15

I still did them, but didn't do them as thoroughly as I think he wanted me to.

00:35:18

Well, I did them not at all.

00:35:20

All right.

00:35:21

Well, now that we know Mike didn't do it, let's go on to chapter two.

00:35:28

I should probably defend myself at some point here and say that I know where he's pointing

00:35:34

with these because I have gone through not in its entirety, but I have seen the free to

00:35:39

focus course.

00:35:41

So I know where he's driving people with this sort of thing.

00:35:47

And I completely agree that there's value in asking the right questions and getting the

00:35:51

clarity of like, what is the next step?

00:35:53

But yeah, that's not what I did.

00:35:56

All right.

00:35:57

So next chapter number two, evaluate.

00:36:00

This is where he introduces the freedom compass, which is probably one of the central pillar

00:36:08

ideas in this book and this system.

00:36:11

I have a couple of issues with this.

00:36:14

But let's just describe what this is.

00:36:17

So there's this compass and in the book, it's kind of offset a little bit where you've

00:36:24

got like the standard two by two grid and you've got on the X axis, let's say, proficient

00:36:34

and not proficient.

00:36:36

And on the Y axis, you've got passionate or not passionate.

00:36:40

He just uses this compass to define these zones and he breaks it into four different

00:36:46

areas or four different squares.

00:36:48

If you were to do the two by two matrix sort of a thing, you've got the desire zone, which

00:36:53

is where you are both passionate and proficient.

00:36:57

You've got the zone two is the distraction zone where you have passion, but no proficiency.

00:37:02

The third zone is the disinterest zone where you have no passion, but you do have proficiency

00:37:06

and the drudgery zone is where you have neither passion nor proficiency.

00:37:11

Now my issue with this is in the use of the word passion.

00:37:17

I get it.

00:37:18

You can tell like he has spent so much time trying to get a iteration throughout all

00:37:24

of this book, like the different zones, desire, distraction, disinterest, drudgery, like they're

00:37:29

all these, you know, and he's got the two different scales, passionate, proficient.

00:37:32

Like I know he picked those because they both started with P.

00:37:36

But I don't think passion really means what he's saying here.

00:37:44

And we don't need to unpack that whole discussion, but just real briefly, in my book and my

00:37:51

course, I kind of unpack that the root of the word passion is the Latin word petite and

00:37:57

it literally means to suffer.

00:37:59

So what he's saying, like the desire zone where you have passion and proficiency, these

00:38:05

are things that you really enjoy doing.

00:38:08

That's kind of the picture that I get.

00:38:10

Whereas true passion is things that are really important to you.

00:38:15

And the whole name, the desire zone makes it seem like this is the fun zone.

00:38:19

This is where you want to be, right?

00:38:20

And I agree.

00:38:21

You should bring passion into everything that you do.

00:38:24

But that's the other thing is like if there are areas where you don't have passion, there

00:38:29

are things that you can do to apply passion to those specific tasks or projects or even

00:38:36

the job that you're in.

00:38:38

I think it was micro of dirty jobs that said don't follow your passion, but always bring

00:38:41

it with you.

00:38:42

Like I believe that that's true.

00:38:43

You can do that.

00:38:44

And I feel like Michael Hyatt kind of touches on that idea a little bit.

00:38:49

But if you just look at this compass, you get, it's very easy to get an inaccurate view

00:38:55

of what this really means.

00:38:57

Yeah, that's fair.

00:38:58

I went through this and like part one of the action M's he has from the first is to write

00:39:06

down some of the tasks that you would normally do in a week.

00:39:11

And then when you finish this, the goal is to go through and like put your tasks into

00:39:16

each of these zones.

00:39:18

And then you go through a process over the next three or four chapters of figuring out

00:39:23

what to do with those.

00:39:25

Now, my first thought was, well, yeah, that's kind of cool.

00:39:30

But at the same time, I was like, I'm not going to do this regularly.

00:39:34

Exactly.

00:39:35

This is not something like like I started trying to follow a lot of this entire system, which

00:39:39

we'll get into in a little bit.

00:39:42

The first week after I finished this book and I'll be honest, like this is a cool compass,

00:39:49

but I've not thought about it since I did that homework assignment and finished the book.

00:39:53

Like it's not even been on my radar since then.

00:39:56

So I can't say it's something that's got long term impact.

00:40:00

It's kind of a neat concept, but for me, it just kind of stops there.

00:40:03

Yeah.

00:40:04

And ultimately what he's trying to get you to identify there are the, I would argue is

00:40:07

the same thing as the three questions that I ask in my personal retreat course, which

00:40:11

you know, I ask those once in order.

00:40:13

That's as often as I check in with those, but what should I start doing?

00:40:16

What should I stop doing?

00:40:17

What should I keep doing?

00:40:19

So the things that are in your desire zone is, as Michael Hyatt would define it, things

00:40:25

that you're passionate and proficient about, those are the things that you should keep

00:40:27

doing.

00:40:28

The things that you should start doing are things that aren't currently on your compass

00:40:32

that would fall into that category.

00:40:34

And the things that you should stop doing are all of the stuff that is in zone four or

00:40:39

zone three or maybe even zone two.

00:40:41

That's probably the progression there.

00:40:43

Start with zone four, cut that stuff out.

00:40:45

Then zone three, cut those out, zone two, cut those out as a trim it as much as you can.

00:40:48

Yep.

00:40:49

That's exactly what he was talking about.

00:40:51

But he gets into that in the second step of the whole system, the cut section.

00:40:55

But yes, evaluate.

00:40:56

I mean, he's talking about paying attention to the work that you do and making decisions

00:41:04

about what to do with those specific things and then trying to focus your time on the

00:41:08

ones that you're truly passionate about to use his term and proficient, Mike.

00:41:13

That's where you need to spend all your time.

00:41:15

Yes.

00:41:16

Which, by the way, we should probably define those real quick.

00:41:18

He defines passion as work that you love that energizes you.

00:41:22

So right there, I disagree with that.

00:41:24

But proficiency, he says, this is how well you do something.

00:41:27

It's your skills plus the contribution that you can make, the effectiveness of what you're

00:41:32

doing basically.

00:41:33

Did he mention Mahali in this section?

00:41:35

That just occurred to me.

00:41:37

I don't think so.

00:41:39

I don't have any notes for that.

00:41:40

Usually I write down any time any time it's Mahali.

00:41:42

I have that.

00:41:43

Maybe I've mentioned this.

00:41:44

A list of things.

00:41:47

Someday I'm going to write either a long essay or a book about books, like a book about nonfiction

00:41:52

books.

00:41:53

There's a list I've got collected of things that you have to mention when you write a

00:41:57

nonfiction book.

00:42:00

One of those is you have to mention Apple and Steve Jobs in some way.

00:42:03

You have to mention Mahali and Flow in some way.

00:42:07

Every single book has these in them.

00:42:09

You cannot write a nonfiction book without mentioning these people or these companies

00:42:13

in some way.

00:42:14

You have to talk about how willpower is limited.

00:42:17

Exactly.

00:42:18

It's a muscle.

00:42:19

You can grow.

00:42:20

You can have a growth mindset.

00:42:21

Like these are...

00:42:22

Yes.

00:42:23

Anyway.

00:42:24

All right.

00:42:25

So, chapter three.

00:42:26

So, in this chapter, there really wasn't a whole lot that I thought was substantial.

00:42:32

There is a list of seven practices to renew your personal energy.

00:42:37

There are books written on every single one of these.

00:42:40

So this is a very high level and kind of pointless review in my opinion.

00:42:47

But just real quickly, they are get enough sleep.

00:42:51

Number two, make sure to eat the right things.

00:42:53

Number three, move.

00:42:54

Number four, connect.

00:42:55

Number five, play.

00:42:56

Number six, reflect.

00:42:58

Number seven, unplug.

00:43:00

Did you get anything out of revolutionary out of that section?

00:43:05

This whole chapter, I mean, I'm in a stage where I'm very heavily focused on trying to

00:43:13

improve my health and trying to take care of myself.

00:43:18

So to me, this chapter, I don't want to say it was important, but it was interesting to

00:43:23

categorize different types of rejuvenation practices.

00:43:26

Sure.

00:43:27

So it was interesting to me to see, okay, there's these seven different types of rejuvenating

00:43:33

activities that I can embark on.

00:43:36

I hadn't really thought about it in breaking down things in this way.

00:43:43

Something I thought about, and he kind of alludes to this of trying to make sure that

00:43:46

you're building these things into every week.

00:43:49

Some of them are habits, like sleeping well, that needs to be a good habit.

00:43:52

Eating well, it's a good habit.

00:43:53

Move and exercise, those are habits that are routine based.

00:43:57

Those connecting with other people, giving yourself space to play and taking the time

00:44:03

to reflect, that's probably an area that I could improve on, but I hadn't really thought

00:44:07

about scheduling time with myself each week for those.

00:44:11

Sure.

00:44:12

Okay.

00:44:13

I hadn't gotten to that point.

00:44:14

That part was of interest, but again, I also haven't really thought about this much since

00:44:19

I finished reading the book, so I can't say it has a long-term impact again.

00:44:23

Sure.

00:44:24

I feel like these seven things is regurgitating a lot of this stuff that I've studied in

00:44:31

the productivity space the last several years.

00:44:33

If you've never heard this stuff before, I could see it being impactful, but just describing

00:44:39

each one of them very quickly like he did, I don't think there was a whole lot there.

00:44:45

I did think that his section on the rule of 50, which is basically the more hours you

00:44:49

work past 50, the less productive you are in a given week, that was kind of interesting

00:44:54

because he clearly articulates the old way versus the new way of time management, I guess,

00:45:02

or just how you quantify your productivity.

00:45:06

He says that the old way, your energy is fixed, but time conflicts.

00:45:10

And the new way, time is fixed, but energy conflicts.

00:45:12

And I think that's a really powerful idea.

00:45:15

And I've definitely seen that myself, where you have the time to do something, but if you

00:45:19

are just completely drained, you are not going to sit down and create those screencasts for

00:45:23

the course that you needed delivered by Friday.

00:45:26

So I feel like the way he described that was really good.

00:45:31

It wasn't just like, hey, you need to manage your energy, but this is the way people have

00:45:35

traditionally thought about this is that whenever you sit down and work, you're going to have

00:45:38

energy, and so you have to manage your time.

00:45:41

But a better way to do that is that the time is fixed, but if you can make sure that you

00:45:45

have the energy that you need to going into it, you are going to get more done.

00:45:49

You're going to be more productive.

00:45:50

And so if you can put a cap on the number of hours that you're going to work in a week,

00:45:55

whether that's 50, the rule of 50 or 40 or 30, whatever, then you approach it this way.

00:46:02

You might be surprised at what you're able to accomplish in less time.

00:46:05

I will say this.

00:46:06

I met with, in the midst of all my physical health stuff, I've met with my main doctor

00:46:14

now, the specialist that's helping me through things.

00:46:17

And she has helped me put together the first four of these.

00:46:21

So sleep, eat, move, connect.

00:46:25

So before I read this, I had been in a process already of making sure that those were regularly

00:46:32

something I do either via habit or by putting them on the calendar on a regular basis.

00:46:37

The last three play reflect unplugged.

00:46:41

Six and seven reflect an unplugged digital minimalism, really put me into those spaces

00:46:47

pretty heavily.

00:46:49

Probably play a little bit too, Mike.

00:46:52

Definitely the unplugged piece.

00:46:54

So that's why I say I don't think that this specific section was the piece that really

00:46:59

triggered a lot of that for me because of one, the stuff I had done with my doctor and Cal

00:47:04

Newport's book.

00:47:05

Like between those two, this was just review.

00:47:09

Now, again, I think your point is spot on.

00:47:12

Like if this is brand new, which I guess this book is really geared towards people who have

00:47:16

no clue with the productivity world.

00:47:19

If that's you, this could be very impactful.

00:47:21

I could definitely see that.

00:47:23

Yeah, I kind of think that even if you are brand new to it, there's not enough meat here

00:47:28

to cause you to really take action on this stuff.

00:47:31

Maybe there's a thing here or a thing there.

00:47:34

And you know, if all you did was start sleeping better after reading this book, that's still

00:47:38

a win.

00:47:39

So I don't know, I kind of have mixed opinions on this.

00:47:43

I kind of feel like on the one hand, why is this even in here?

00:47:47

Sure, sure.

00:47:48

But on the other hand, like how can you move on without talking about it?

00:47:52

So yeah, that's fair.

00:47:53

I don't know.

00:47:54

That's fair.

00:47:55

One of my action items did come from this section though.

00:47:58

So maybe I'm just a big hypocrite here because as you mentioned, the connect section, like

00:48:06

the people that you allow to speak into your life, the people that you're connected to,

00:48:10

I recognized as I was reading that very brief section in here.

00:48:15

And I'm not going to give Michael Hyatt really credit for this.

00:48:18

But like as I was reading, even the back of my head, because I don't think I, I don't

00:48:23

think he said this, but this is where my mind went was he's talking about connecting with

00:48:28

the right people.

00:48:29

You need to connect with people.

00:48:30

You can't just be a hermit, whatever.

00:48:31

I was thinking to myself, I need to cut out some voices from my life.

00:48:37

So he's saying to connect, to rejuvenate, I am saying I need to stop connecting to the

00:48:41

wrong things.

00:48:43

So my action item here is to do a social audit and just go through and look at who am I talking

00:48:52

to going through my messages app, for example, and seeing like who am I texting on a regular

00:48:57

basis and then asking the questions that really I think I picked up from Jim Rohn.

00:49:01

It's like, who is speaking into my life?

00:49:03

What effect is that having or what are they doing to me?

00:49:07

And is that okay?

00:49:09

Because I feel that there are some stressors there that probably have a bigger impact on

00:49:18

my overall state than I realize in the day to day.

00:49:23

And I want to kind of take stock of all of the different inputs and figure out how to

00:49:28

minimize the things that aren't bringing me joy, aren't bringing me life, aren't putting

00:49:34

me in a positive mental state.

00:49:37

And I know I'm not going to be able to eliminate all of them, but I feel like step one for me

00:49:40

is just identifying, I don't even want to use the word toxic because there's some relationships

00:49:46

like you can't get out of them and you really shouldn't.

00:49:48

It's not truly toxic, but it is draining.

00:49:51

It's not life giving.

00:49:53

And it's I think worthwhile to recognize who those people are.

00:49:58

These don't stop texting me.

00:49:59

You have to worry.

00:50:03

Thanks for that.

00:50:04

So that brings us to the end of step one of stop.

00:50:09

Step two is cut.

00:50:12

And this is where we're referring to like that freedom compass where he was talking about

00:50:17

the different types of tasks, like the drudgery tasks, the things that disinterest you, the

00:50:24

distractions, and then the desire.

00:50:29

Weird to me.

00:50:30

But anyway, that whole process like taking the bottom three and how do you slowly or

00:50:37

quickly get those off your plate so that you can focus on just the ones that you have

00:50:42

both passion for and proficiency in.

00:50:46

And the first step is the easy to say the hard to do in eliminate.

00:50:54

Yes.

00:50:55

Say no, Mike.

00:50:56

Just say no.

00:50:57

Well, I kind of have to a certain degree.

00:51:02

I again can't share a whole ton of details yet, but my work situation is kind of changing

00:51:09

and I've had to say no to a couple of things.

00:51:11

And that's been difficult, but I've done it.

00:51:14

And it's a positive net outcome.

00:51:16

I know that that being said, even though I am technically following this advice, there's

00:51:22

a whole section in here about how to get out of existing commitments that I was like,

00:51:26

yeah, right.

00:51:27

That doesn't work that way, not for most normal people.

00:51:32

So I don't know.

00:51:33

Maybe we should just talk about this and I'm interested to get your perspective on this.

00:51:37

Okay.

00:51:38

So how to get out of existing commitments?

00:51:38

He says, number one, take responsibility for making the commitment.

00:51:42

Number two, reaffirm your willingness to honor the commitment.

00:51:45

Number three, explain why honoring your commitment is not the best outcome for the other party.

00:51:49

Number four, offer to help solve the problem with them.

00:51:52

Number five, accept the fact that you will be misunderstood.

00:51:56

So that all sounds great, but what if they don't care?

00:52:01

What if they just want you to do it?

00:52:03

And what if that person happens to be important or you don't have the ability to say no to

00:52:10

them?

00:52:11

Maybe it's your boss, for example.

00:52:12

Okay.

00:52:13

So you follow all of this except for the key piece, which is actually follow through with

00:52:18

the no.

00:52:19

What happens when that gets challenged and you don't have the authority or the power

00:52:24

to follow through with that?

00:52:26

I don't know.

00:52:28

And I guess as I'm thinking through this, there's a couple situations where I'm in the

00:52:36

middle of something and we're trying to figure out what exactly this looks like.

00:52:40

And on one level, I want to just apply this and get out of it, just be done.

00:52:45

On the other hand, I kind of know in the back of my head that that's not the right way

00:52:51

to handle this.

00:52:52

This is something that I'm supposed to be doing.

00:52:53

It's just we need to work through some of the kinks in order to make this work.

00:52:57

Sure.

00:52:58

Okay.

00:52:59

So on the surface, according to the system, I have these things which are not in my desire

00:53:06

zone.

00:53:07

And Michael Hyatt would say, you should get rid of those.

00:53:10

Here's how to get rid of those existing commitments.

00:53:13

And then that five step process, I'm like, no, that's not going to work.

00:53:19

So what do you do with that?

00:53:21

You know, I'm not, I'm not really sure.

00:53:25

So the steps you read off were the ones of saying no to new commitments.

00:53:29

So was you meant to go through?

00:53:31

No, this is how to get out of existing commitments.

00:53:34

I was thinking the steps you mentioned were forgetting out of new ones.

00:53:39

I know that like one of the big things I've always heard is like, if you've made a commitment

00:53:43

to something and you need to get out of it, the best thing you can do is make sure you

00:53:49

have a solution for whenever you say no.

00:53:51

Yes.

00:53:52

Who do you send them to or something to point that person to?

00:53:57

Like that's always important in the process.

00:54:01

But I'm not sure how that impacts what you're talking about.

00:54:04

Well, okay.

00:54:05

So I agree with that and if that's where he had left it, I would be like, yeah, I agree.

00:54:12

That's good advice.

00:54:13

But kind of underlying these five points is the assumption that you are able to say no

00:54:21

and stick with it.

00:54:23

And whatever happens is not going to be a severe negative reaction, which I would argue

00:54:32

sometimes some situations that is going to be the case.

00:54:37

Also he talks about in this section, I don't think it's in these five steps, but in this

00:54:43

section as he's talking about these, he talks about how you've made this commitment for

00:54:47

this time period.

00:54:48

What if there's no time period associated with the commitment that you made?

00:54:52

I mean, this is talking about you made a mistake previously and you're trying to get out of

00:54:56

it, right?

00:54:57

He assumes that there is these parameters regarding or around your situation that I don't think

00:55:03

are true of every situation.

00:55:04

So I feel like this advice is kind of limited in its effectiveness.

00:55:09

Is this this just occurred to me going back to the very beginning here to the emotional

00:55:17

quiz and you're like maxed out on commitment ethic.

00:55:23

That could definitely be a piece because I don't deal with what you're talking about

00:55:27

here.

00:55:28

Like, for example, if I make a commitment and then I need to get out of it, like, I don't

00:55:33

feel like I'm going to struggle with that.

00:55:37

Like I won't want to do it, but I'll do it.

00:55:40

I'll go through the process like, okay, here's who you need to talk to.

00:55:43

This is the thing that needs to change.

00:55:45

Here's how you can move forward.

00:55:46

I need to step away and explain that and explain the scenario.

00:55:50

I don't really have an issue doing that and I don't really see how that would be harmful.

00:55:54

If anything, it would be helpful for that person to know that I'm committed enough, but I can't

00:55:59

commit to that and I thought I could.

00:56:02

Like, to me, I see that, but I have a feeling that in this case, this is just pure speculation,

00:56:07

Mike.

00:56:08

Do you want to lay down for this?

00:56:10

This is me thinking that because you have such a strong commitment ethic that maybe it

00:56:16

has more to do with you feeling like you're going to let them down than it does with the

00:56:21

logistics.

00:56:23

Is that fair?

00:56:24

It's a good calculation.

00:56:25

I think regarding certain situations, you are 100% correct, but I also think that unless

00:56:31

you have CEO privilege, there's a work context here, which is completely missing.

00:56:39

If you are in a situation, you have a job and your boss is telling you, you need to work

00:56:46

60 hours a week, but Michael Hyatt says, "I can't work more than 50 otherwise I'll be

00:56:50

less productive."

00:56:51

Okay?

00:56:52

So what do you do with that?

00:56:53

I can't say no, because otherwise you're going to lose your job.

00:56:57

There are other places that this plays out, but I think you're right.

00:57:00

So thank you for the insight.

00:57:01

Part of this is just me.

00:57:03

But I do think that part of this is also coming from Michael Hyatt's perspective.

00:57:08

And maybe that's who he wrote this book for.

00:57:12

And the people who are working in nine to five, they aren't his target audience.

00:57:18

I don't know that, but that's where my mind went as I read this is like, "Well, that'd

00:57:21

be great if you could do that all the time, but I can see a bunch of situations where

00:57:25

you don't have the ability to do that all the time."

00:57:27

Sure.

00:57:28

Yeah.

00:57:29

And I feel like he did call that out, that there's sometimes when it's just your job

00:57:33

to do things that you really don't want to do.

00:57:37

That's every job out there.

00:57:39

If you're in corporate, a couple of the guys in the chat, I'm sure know that scenario.

00:57:44

I've been back and forth with a couple of people here.

00:57:46

But there's a number of things that come up, especially in corporate or small business

00:57:53

scenarios where you just got to do things you don't want to do.

00:57:57

And I feel like he did allow for that, but very briefly, it wasn't massive at that time.

00:58:03

So I can't say that it's something that you can't get into a scenario where 100% of your

00:58:13

job is roses and coming up amazing all day long.

00:58:21

Like that whole world.

00:58:23

Exactly.

00:58:24

You can't just choose the things that you're passionate about, especially according to

00:58:26

Michael Hyatt's definition.

00:58:27

It doesn't work that way.

00:58:28

Yeah.

00:58:29

Even he has to do things he doesn't want to do.

00:58:31

And he called that out.

00:58:33

Exactly.

00:58:34

He got the sense, but I think the point is to try to get as much of it in that scenario

00:58:37

as you possibly can.

00:58:39

Sure.

00:58:40

Sure.

00:58:41

To help you.

00:58:42

I don't know.

00:58:43

I mean, I think that this advice is good.

00:58:46

I just think that there's maybe situations where you're reading it and you're like, "Hmm,

00:58:52

can't do that."

00:58:53

And again, for me, I think you're right, that part of it is my high commitment ethic where

00:58:58

I feel like sometimes I can't do that when really I do have the ability to do that.

00:59:01

As I was reading this, that's kind of where my mind was going is how do I manufacture

00:59:05

situations where I can actually use this advice.

00:59:08

And there's a lot of other great stuff in here about like every yes contains a no, time

00:59:12

is a zero sum game.

00:59:13

You want to look at not what you're going to lose when you say no, but look at what you're

00:59:16

going to gain.

00:59:17

Again, I've kind of gone through that and had to say no to some things and I agree 100%

00:59:22

with that stuff.

00:59:23

It's just like the blanket system and maybe it's just the way that it's phrased.

00:59:26

Again, this is a systems book, right?

00:59:28

Right.

00:59:29

And I hate systems.

00:59:30

That's fair.

00:59:31

But like this is the way to do it.

00:59:33

It's kind of like, well, maybe.

00:59:36

I did have another action item from this section though.

00:59:38

Oh, you did.

00:59:39

Which was, yeah.

00:59:40

I mean, this whole idea is eliminating, right?

00:59:42

So create a not to do list.

00:59:44

I feel like I've done this before, but I feel like it's time to do it again.

00:59:50

I remember you doing this at one point.

00:59:51

Are you going to publicize the stuff on this not to do list?

00:59:54

Maybe we'll see what's on there.

00:59:57

Do not text Joe.

00:59:59

Social audit hashtag.

01:00:00

Don't have to worry about that.

01:00:05

So that was the eliminate chapter.

01:00:07

And then we get to chapter five, which is the automate chapter, which I have to say

01:00:10

I was kind of looking forward to.

01:00:12

I don't know why because I knew what I was going to find when I got there.

01:00:17

And I mostly knew what he was going to talk about when I got there.

01:00:21

But I still wanted to go through it.

01:00:24

Basically, in the tagline on this chapter is subtract yourself from the equation.

01:00:28

It's exactly what you think.

01:00:30

If you can batch things and you can put things together to where things are very quickly

01:00:34

happening or you don't touch at all, you win.

01:00:38

Like that's the idea.

01:00:40

Yep.

01:00:41

He has four different kinds of automation here.

01:00:43

Number one is self automation.

01:00:45

This is where he talks about like the rituals.

01:00:48

I thought this was interesting because you hear a lot of people talk about morning and

01:00:51

evening rituals, but also a work day startup and a work day shutdown ritual.

01:00:55

He introduces here.

01:00:56

I thought that was a kind of cool idea.

01:00:57

Yeah.

01:00:58

That's one I've got an action item on.

01:01:00

I've done like the shutdown shutdown ritual a number of times.

01:01:04

I've kind of fallen out of it in recent months, but this is where this book acted

01:01:10

as a pretty good motivational tool for me overall.

01:01:13

I've not really done the startup routine before, but I've been trying it over the last week

01:01:19

or so.

01:01:20

I seem to really like it.

01:01:21

It seems to work pretty well.

01:01:22

I've been implementing that.

01:01:23

Cool.

01:01:24

Maybe I'll have to look at that too then.

01:01:25

I don't know.

01:01:26

I feel like this really just comes down to habits and identifying the places that you

01:01:29

want to apply them.

01:01:31

I feel like that's again, a very valuable idea that is glossed over very quickly and

01:01:37

under self automation, I guess it makes sense there, but I don't know.

01:01:43

The other ones here were really the ones that I was kind of interested in.

01:01:47

I was kind of wanted to see how he was going to frame these.

01:01:51

Number two is template automation.

01:01:53

Number three is process automation.

01:01:55

Number four is tech automation.

01:01:57

Now Michael Hyatt has been on the Mac Power users podcast a couple of different times,

01:02:02

but I also kind of get the impression that maybe he's not as tech savvy as he projects

01:02:13

given some of the recommendations that he makes.

01:02:19

I don't know.

01:02:20

I kind of feel like if you're looking for tech automation, there's a lot of other places

01:02:25

I would go first before looking to what Michael Hyatt does.

01:02:29

Sure.

01:02:30

Sure.

01:02:31

So, like Michael Hyatt said, like how he's using this stuff I think is actually kind

01:02:36

of cool.

01:02:37

Like if I was in his position, I'm not sure that there's a bunch of other things like

01:02:41

low hanging fruit that he's missing in terms of the tech automation.

01:02:45

But for a lot of people, the tech automation specifically is not just about the efficiency

01:02:53

savings.

01:02:54

It's because they really like this stuff.

01:02:57

So, person I think of right away, Rosemary Orchard, she's loving shortcuts.

01:03:05

I know for a fact that she installed the beta when she was over at WWDC even though it says

01:03:12

basically thrill seekers beware.

01:03:13

Like don't do this.

01:03:14

It's going to break your device.

01:03:16

She just wants to see what's new.

01:03:19

She wants to figure out how to make her technology dance.

01:03:22

And that brings her a lot of joy.

01:03:24

That joy is missing from this equation because really this whole section on cutting things,

01:03:29

it's like how do I ruthlessly get rid of the things that I should not be doing because

01:03:35

it's not in my desire zone because it's not something that I am passionate and proficient

01:03:38

about that.

01:03:40

And for a lot of people, I mean, like there's a whole Rosemary and David have a podcast

01:03:45

on automation called Automators.

01:03:47

Like there's, I believe there's a whole bunch of people who are interested in this kind of

01:03:51

thing and it's totally cool that they spend a bunch of time figuring out how to make a

01:03:55

shortcut to do a specific thing, even if it doesn't give them a whole bunch of efficiency

01:04:00

savings.

01:04:02

And so I kind of feel like this section only covers one piece of this and why you might

01:04:07

want to do this.

01:04:09

Email filtering software, if the goal is just to get out of email as much as possible,

01:04:13

I'm completely on board with that one.

01:04:15

Macro processing software, text expansion, all that type of stuff, screen casting, that

01:04:18

kind of gets into like the delegation stuff.

01:04:20

It really isn't a use case for that feel other than you're giving somebody the same thing

01:04:27

over and over and over again, you're trying to explain something or you're trying to delegate

01:04:30

a test to somebody.

01:04:32

So I don't know.

01:04:33

It feels like a not very complete picture.

01:04:36

Sure.

01:04:37

Yeah, I could see that, but I also know like if this is a book designed for people who are

01:04:42

new to it, he's mentioning things that are very low level as far as like I script things.

01:04:47

I connect things via API without UI tools.

01:04:51

I'm kind of crazy when it comes to this stuff.

01:04:56

But I think what he's talking about is kind of like your entry level text stuff.

01:05:01

So I know that Michael Hyatt has scripted things before.

01:05:05

Like I've heard him mention that before where he's written Python scripts for things.

01:05:10

So I'm hesitant to say he's not that tech savvy.

01:05:13

I think he's just trying to make it approachable.

01:05:15

Could be, could also be that the scripts and things, that's not his desire zone.

01:05:21

That would be the distraction zone.

01:05:23

He's a fraction but not proficient.

01:05:25

Sure.

01:05:26

So maybe he's trying to cut those sorts of things.

01:05:28

But I feel like you can't have it both ways.

01:05:31

Either you should say, you know, I don't really do this kind of stuff anymore.

01:05:35

So go look at what Max Sparky does.

01:05:38

Or be like, okay guys, this is really what you need to do.

01:05:42

Which by the way, Max Sparky has a blur but the beginning of this reviewing the book.

01:05:47

Like one of the testimonials at the beginning of the book.

01:05:50

I was reading through these it when I first picked it up.

01:05:53

It's like that, this is David Sparks.

01:05:56

It's right.

01:05:57

But wow, that's cool.

01:05:58

So anyway, well done Sparky.

01:06:00

Yeah, you know, I haven't talked to David about that.

01:06:03

I am kind of curious though, if he knows that that's there.

01:06:07

That's that's true.

01:06:10

That's true.

01:06:11

Anyway, Michael Hyatt is a marketing machine.

01:06:13

That is something he is very good at.

01:06:15

So maybe you should talk about how he uses tech automation to crank through books and

01:06:19

create courses like that, give some context.

01:06:21

I don't know.

01:06:22

All right.

01:06:23

The last chapter in the cut step is delegate.

01:06:27

Guess what you're supposed to do, Mike?

01:06:29

I'm supposed to delegate, but I'm so bad at it.

01:06:34

This is, this was a good chapter.

01:06:37

This kind of smacked me in the face.

01:06:39

He describes a situation known as time famine, which I've definitely been there, where you

01:06:43

have more tasks than time to get it done.

01:06:46

And then the solution there is obviously to delegate.

01:06:49

What I really liked about this section was the five levels of delegation.

01:06:55

So he talks about like a seven step delegation process, which I don't think that really is

01:07:01

necessary to go through that.

01:07:03

But the levels of delegation, I think this is worthwhile because the process may look

01:07:08

different depending on the situation, but I feel like the levels give you a natural progression

01:07:12

to where you are finally able to let go of the thing.

01:07:16

This was always the piece that was missing for me.

01:07:18

I was never able to feel like I could just let it go and trust that it was going to get

01:07:23

done the way that I wanted it to get done.

01:07:26

So level one is that the person does exactly what you tell them to do.

01:07:33

And two is that the person research is a topic and then reports back to you.

01:07:39

Level three is that the person research is a topic.

01:07:42

They outline the options and they make a recommendation for the course of action that you're supposed

01:07:46

to take.

01:07:47

Number four, the person evaluates the options, makes the decision on their own, executes it,

01:07:51

and then reports back basically how it turned out to you so you can figure out did it work,

01:07:57

did it not work.

01:07:58

And then level five, the person makes whatever decision they think is best.

01:08:01

There's no need to report back.

01:08:03

That's obviously the ideal scenario.

01:08:05

That's where people want to get to when it comes to delegation.

01:08:08

But I feel like this framework follows a very clear progression of how you get there.

01:08:16

And again, I have not been great at delegating.

01:08:19

So I really have no experience with this, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

01:08:25

No, I think I like this section.

01:08:26

I can't say I have a whole lot to say about it.

01:08:29

I mean, I pay people that I delegate things to with my web business.

01:08:33

So I don't know how good at it.

01:08:38

I am, but I know that people don't have to ask me a lot of questions when I hand things

01:08:42

over to them, at least in that space.

01:08:45

So delegate things.

01:08:47

It means you don't have to do them and you can get bigger.

01:08:50

Go, go, go.

01:08:51

It's about all I got for that one.

01:08:54

All right.

01:08:56

Step three, act the first chapter in the section, chapter seven is consolidate.

01:09:02

And this is, I don't know, I don't know how I feel about this one.

01:09:08

There's this idea of mega batching that he introduces where you lump similar tasks together.

01:09:15

And he takes this to the extreme by putting like all of one activity in a specific day,

01:09:22

like a little batch record, a ton of podcast episodes.

01:09:25

So put all of his meetings on a single day.

01:09:29

And I get that on one level.

01:09:32

When I was at Asian efficiency, we used to have meeting day, except what happened was

01:09:35

that meetings crept to other days.

01:09:37

So that's kind of the back of my head is like, well, this sounds great, but can you really

01:09:42

100% pull this off?

01:09:44

I'm not sure.

01:09:45

Now, the one thing I do think that's valuable here is the broad categories of activities,

01:09:50

the front stage activities, the backstage activities, and then the off stage activities.

01:09:56

So front stage and backstage, those are basically the things that are related to working.

01:10:00

And then you make sure that you have enough off stage time so that you can rest and recuperate,

01:10:04

come back and give your best effort to building your thing when you come back.

01:10:10

I am kind of curious, have you thought about this backstage front stage idea?

01:10:16

And if so, what do you consider like backstage versus front stage tasks?

01:10:20

Yeah, this is I debated because like this whole chapter he does mention like theming

01:10:27

your week, like putting together your ideal week.

01:10:30

That's something Michael Hyatt's been promoting and talking about for years now.

01:10:36

I don't know if he gets into he does get into like theming your days to some degree, which

01:10:42

is like a whole Mike Vardy, a productivityist thing.

01:10:46

So I get that.

01:10:47

That's kind of cool. The whole front stage backstage piece.

01:10:51

I like it. I mean, it's a cool concept. I get the idea of doing front stage activities

01:10:59

on a certain day, doing backstage activities on another day. Like I get that and I can

01:11:05

see how that would be extremely helpful.

01:11:10

I can't say that my line of work, like that doesn't seem to fit real well for me, mostly

01:11:19

because I just have too many different kinds of tasks happening in one day that can force

01:11:26

me to have the fluctuate quite a bit. And I don't really have a whole lot of control

01:11:32

over that. So I like the concept. I just don't know how practical it is day to day for me.

01:11:38

I haven't put a whole bunch of thought into this, but I kind of view this as like podcasting,

01:11:49

creating that kind of front stage, backstage is kind of all the admin stuff. And I like

01:11:56

this idea of the stages. But the more I think about this metaphor that he's using, I kind

01:12:02

of feel like it loses its effectiveness. I think very simply it could just be like creating

01:12:08

versus managing. I forget who first came up with that model, but I feel like that's essentially

01:12:13

what he's talking about here.

01:12:15

Sure. Now, I mean, have you ever done this ideal week process?

01:12:20

Yes, it's part of my personal retreat course. So I do it once a quarter, basically, where

01:12:28

I plan out my ideal week. I don't break down the stages, themes, and activities like he

01:12:33

does, but I do put the big rocks in first. And I make sure that Friday mornings, for example,

01:12:39

I'm going to do my one on ones. And then work fills in around that. Church is on there.

01:12:46

Like all the stuff that I know I need to do. That's the things that go in there first.

01:12:53

And then the work stuff kind of fills in the cracks, which is not typically the way that

01:12:59

a lot of people do it. I think if you've never done it before, that's the big takeaway you'll

01:13:01

have is like, well, if I don't give work first priority, and again, that's kind of a privileged

01:13:07

situation for you to be able to do that. But if you're able to do that, you'll be amazed

01:13:12

at how everything just seems to work when you don't make work the priority.

01:13:18

Right. I don't know. I've done this whole ideal week thing before. Actually, I remember,

01:13:26

I don't know if it was the first time Michael Hyatt mentioned it. I used to follow everything

01:13:31

he did. And I know that at one point he had mentioned doing an ideal week and I went through

01:13:38

the process of building out my own. But I quickly learned that my personal struggle is to follow

01:13:49

said plan. I'm pretty easy at letting things go if I make a commitment to myself. It feels

01:13:59

like something easily cut from my schedule. So that's something I've always struggled

01:14:08

with. I did go ahead and theme my days after reading this. Now that I'm working full time

01:14:14

at our church, I've been able to theme my days to some degree, like putting out fires

01:14:20

on these days and building into new projects on these days, like that sort of thing, which

01:14:25

kind of floats into the whole back office for an office thing. Like it kind of gets into

01:14:29

that. But I feel like I can't really schedule much more than the day themes because I don't

01:14:38

really know what's going to happen. Like if there's an event in the afternoon, they

01:14:42

tell me they don't need my help. And then they need your help. But then that event shows

01:14:46

up in 10 minutes before they realize, oh, we need an extra microphone. Yeah. Well, guess

01:14:53

what? It doesn't really matter what I have on the calendar. Like I'll step out of meetings

01:14:57

and all kinds of stuff to go get that taken care of because that's my primary job. So

01:15:02

just call Joe. Yep. That's the way that works. So I can't say that scheduling to that level

01:15:11

would work. At least not at that level. Like if I can pay attention to events that are

01:15:17

happening in the building and such and I could schedule around that even, I could probably

01:15:21

get there. I just don't think it's worth all that. Like it would be quite a while taking

01:15:27

need that all the work. Yeah, which is why when I talk about planning your ideal week,

01:15:33

I do it once a quarter. I don't do it every single week. I'm not sure if that's what

01:15:36

Michael Haidt's advocating for. But recently I did kind of have a revelation that maybe

01:15:44

I should be doing that every week, not to the same level, but just like I very quickly

01:15:53

time block for my days at the beginning of the week, take some time and do the same sort

01:15:59

of process just a couple of minutes. And then again, like it doesn't have to be, this

01:16:03

is the gold standard. I have to make sure that I hit this, but just a little bit of

01:16:07

intentionality and something I can reference when I look at, you know, today is Tuesday,

01:16:13

for example, and my theme for this day is X and I'm going to try to stick to what I originally

01:16:19

said I was going to try to do on that Tuesday. But again, it changes so much. Plans are worthless

01:16:25

planning is everything. One of my favorite quotes. I really don't know yet how effective

01:16:31

that is going to be, but I did commit to trying that recently. So sure. I don't know.

01:16:39

On that topic, though, a very important thing worth calling out here is that I'm not doing

01:16:43

it the way Michael Haidt said do it. And you could look at it then as like, am I following

01:16:48

his advice or am I not following his advice? I don't really know. You could make an argument

01:16:52

for each. But I feel like that's the value for a lot of this stuff for a lot of people

01:16:58

is you hear people talk about this thing. And then maybe the way they're implementing

01:17:03

it isn't exactly the same way that you should that you would implement it and be okay with

01:17:08

trying something different, which really is at the heart of why I despise all of these

01:17:12

systems books because you look at it at surface level, it's like just do XYZ and you'll get

01:17:17

123 and save X number of hours per week. Never that simple. There's going to be certain

01:17:24

pieces of the advice that that's there that's going to provide a significant amount of value,

01:17:29

but there's going to be other stuff that you're going to try it and it's going to be like,

01:17:31

well, this did nothing. And so I kind of feel like having a very top level view of what

01:17:38

this week entails, there is some value in that. I'm not going to the point where I'm

01:17:43

identifying stages, themes and activities though. Sure. Chapter eight designate. I just wanted

01:17:49

to say it like that. I've been thinking about this for a little bit. There are two things

01:17:56

I feel that you can sum up this entire chapter with. Okay. One, do a weekly review and pick

01:18:03

three things to get done this week. Two, do a daily review and pick three things to do

01:18:09

today. I feel like that's the entire chapter. Am I right? Sounds good to me.

01:18:13

Yeah. Thank you. All right. Well, just to clarify a little bit, in this section, there's

01:18:19

really two different two different pieces here where he talks about the weekly preview.

01:18:24

And I feel like we kind of just talked about that. And then there's the design your day.

01:18:28

And I am doing both of those things with templates that I created for my faith-based

01:18:35

productivity course. So not a whole lot new here for me. But if you have not heard those

01:18:41

ideas before, again, this potentially could be revolutionary, though he skips over it

01:18:46

so quickly that it's such a surface level approach to this type of stuff that I'm not

01:18:51

sure how much value is here. I feel like his six different steps for the weekly preview

01:18:56

is kind of ridiculous. There's no way I would follow that.

01:18:59

Yeah, there's a lot in that. But, you know, we don't need to go there.

01:19:03

Yeah, there's a lot of things that could be in it that aren't. But, you know, it's, again,

01:19:10

if you're, if you're brand new to it, I could see how it's super helpful. But, yeah. Anyway,

01:19:18

I'm good for chapter nine now. Activate.

01:19:21

I'm not even really sure where to go with this. I have a bunch of like scattered notes

01:19:27

here. He's got some focus tactics. He talks about listening to the right music. He mentions

01:19:34

classical music and focus at will. Have you ever used focus at will, by the way?

01:19:38

I did way back like two or three years ago. It lasted about a week.

01:19:44

Yeah. Then I got, I kind of got into classical music at that point.

01:19:47

Okay, so do you still listen to classical music?

01:19:50

Not entirely, but I do occasionally still like probably once a week. I use it. Josh in the

01:19:58

chat room says he thinks focus at will is awesome. So, you know, there's definitely

01:20:03

science behind it. Yeah, I get it. I mean, I understand why people use it. It's just never

01:20:11

clicked for me. That's me. I am weird. I know that.

01:20:18

Yeah.

01:20:19

So if I'm listening to music, it's a lot of like repeated playlists that I've played in

01:20:26

the past or like I think even Michael Hyatt mentioned like Baroque classical music like

01:20:31

that's what I tend to listen to if I'm not listening to just a repetitive playlist.

01:20:37

Yeah. I've kind of shifted a bit. I've got a home pod in my office. So, I'll tell the

01:20:46

lady in the can to play typically some instrumental music. My current favorites are

01:20:52

NightDrive instrumental edition, anything Tycho and a band called Utah, I believe.

01:21:00

I think it's Utah. I'm getting it mixed up in my head because they're from Kansas City.

01:21:06

So I kind of want to say Kansas, but I don't think that's right.

01:21:09

And I just walk in and I say play whatever. And I do agree that instrumental music makes it

01:21:17

easier to focus on the thing that you're doing. But I haven't noticed personally any benefit

01:21:24

with focus at will versus that type of stuff. And it really just came down to I like that music

01:21:31

better than the focus at Will stuff. I do respect all of the effort that has gone into

01:21:36

focus that well, I've heard the guy who started on several podcasts and the amount of research that

01:21:41

they do and how they come up with those tracks. I have no doubt that for some people, that's

01:21:46

absolutely the key that unlocks their ability to focus. But I haven't I've tried to get into it.

01:21:56

I also have a lifetime membership to it, but I've tried to get into it so many times.

01:22:00

And it's just never worked for me. I gave up a couple of years ago when the iOS app in particular

01:22:05

was just complete garbage. And yeah, I don't know. I do think that the music that you listen to is

01:22:14

important and you want something that's not going to have words. So don't listen to bookworm as a

01:22:18

podcast if you're trying to focus on something. You should definitely listen to bookworm all day

01:22:23

every day. That's what you should get your work.

01:22:26

Unless you're trying to do deep focused work. No, even with deep focus work, like bookworm is

01:22:32

the thing. Like, it doesn't matter what your work is. You need to be listening to bookworm.

01:22:36

Maybe we should sign up and to be like narrators on Focus At Will and the Dalset tones.

01:22:42

Exactly. So I'm like, can people focus on it?

01:22:44

Oh, real quick. Somebody mentioned brain.fm. I did get into that one at one point.

01:22:49

Me too, because the app was way better.

01:22:51

I don't remember why I did it. It didn't last long for me because I had found other stuff at

01:22:55

the time. There's not a whole lot of tracks in that. And I found them very repetitive.

01:23:00

Maybe that doesn't matter. I tend to listen to the same music on my home pod all the time.

01:23:05

Whatever. Brain.fm. Here we go again. It wasn't bringing me joy anymore.

01:23:10

So I gave up on it. Another one that I have a lifetime membership to.

01:23:17

Nice. There is one more chapter at the end of this. I don't know if you have more you want to

01:23:21

say on activate. Well, I will mention that he has this metaphor of interruptions versus distractions

01:23:30

interruptions are breaking in where distractions are busting out. I thought that was kind of a

01:23:35

cool way to think about that. So interruptions, maybe there's nothing that you can do about it,

01:23:39

although he does have some things that you can do like limit your instant communication or

01:23:45

proactively set and enforce boundaries. Distractions, those are typically where you're your own worst

01:23:50

enemy though. And that's the one that I would argue people should focus on. You may not be able

01:23:56

to stop your boss from walking into your office and saying, I need you help with this thing right

01:24:00

now. But you can control whether you get distracted when you sit down to write. And for a lot of people,

01:24:05

if that's all the big, if that was the only place you're able to make any sort of gain,

01:24:09

that would be that would be a huge win. Sure. I did have another action item from this section,

01:24:15

which was to stop being other people's problem solver. This is hard for me,

01:24:22

but I feel like I made a lot of progress in this area lately since I read this even.

01:24:30

Where when someone says, Hey, I need your help with this, doesn't necessarily mean that I have to

01:24:37

agree to take on the project or the task. I can if I want to, but I shouldn't feel compelled to,

01:24:47

like one example, I did this website a couple of years ago for this guy, and I did it for free.

01:24:53

And he contacts me out of the blue. It's like, I need you help with this right away. And I

01:25:00

ignored the text message. And then he calls and I ignore the phone call because I don't want to

01:25:06

set that expectation that I did this project for you for free. You're not going to pay me for the

01:25:12

time that I'm going to spend on this thing. And really what he wants help with is like transferring

01:25:17

a domain that he controls to somebody else. I shouldn't be responsible for that. You know, so

01:25:23

I responded like a day later and I said, you know, I'm not sure what I can do, but here's what you

01:25:30

should do. And I feel like that was totally appropriate. I feel like the relationship is totally fine,

01:25:39

that it did not hinder it or hurt it in any way. But in the past, there was definitely a clear path

01:25:46

to Mike being completely frazzled for about four hours on a Wednesday night. Sure. That I was able

01:25:53

to avoid. And so I'm sure that there's lots of other situations like that. And I just

01:25:57

want to not sign for those packages if I can help it.

01:26:00

That's fair. There's one more chapter when he just summarizes the whole book.

01:26:06

There is. That's pretty much it. I really have nothing to say about that one.

01:26:09

Yeah, I don't either because there's not really anything new in that one.

01:26:11

It's kind of nice that he wraps it all in a neat little bow and ties it up and hands it over.

01:26:18

Like I like that go by free to focus. Yeah, I mean, kind of, but it is kind of nice to

01:26:25

see the summary. Basically, it's the blog post that was expanded into the book.

01:26:30

So if you want the full summary to read the last chapter, that's the easy way to do it.

01:26:36

We don't have time or I would read it to you right now. You can listen to me reading the last

01:26:40

chapter of Michael Hyatt's free to focus book. Let's not do that. If you want that sort of thing

01:26:45

for the premium members, go ahead and. I hadn't thought of that.

01:26:48

Very fair. That said, you're ready for action items. You have three. I have to.

01:26:55

Where is that go? I do. All right. So I mentioned all of these already. We can do this quick.

01:27:01

I want to create a not to do list things that I just either don't want to do or shouldn't be

01:27:05

doing anymore. I want to do a social audit and figure out which are the people that I talk to,

01:27:11

that give me energy and which are the people that take energy. Then I want to stop being

01:27:16

other people's problem solvers. That's the big, vague general one that you're not going to be

01:27:20

able to hold me accountable to. Like I said, I've already had a win with that. That action item

01:27:26

is already worth it. Sure. You can definitely keep me accountable on these. There's two of them.

01:27:34

They follow the same pattern. Schedule and follow a startup routine for the mornings and a communication

01:27:40

routine three times daily. So startup routine, pretty simple. A list of things I run through

01:27:46

whenever I first get to the office. Then a communication routine, which in the morning

01:27:52

follows that startup routine and then midday and end of the day. The goal is to give me points when

01:27:59

I'm cranking through email and such where I can get caught up on that without having it open all

01:28:07

day long because we all know email open all day long is how you get lots done. False.

01:28:12

Right. Scheduling it is the way to go. I was looking at my timing data the other day

01:28:21

because I always have thought, I don't spend a whole lot of time in email, but I wonder how

01:28:27

much time I do spend an email. Last week, I spent 27 minutes in email.

01:28:32

27 minutes? I spend that in one sitting.

01:28:36

Yeah. That's not stupid.

01:28:39

I'm also a little bit behind, but I feel kind of vindicated by those statistics. It's like,

01:28:46

man, it is possible. I should be spending a little bit more time. There are definitely

01:28:50

some people I need to respond to, but I've also feel like I've kind of set the expectations

01:28:55

regarding email. So I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people are furious waiting for me to get

01:28:59

back to them, but I easily spend an hour to an hour and a half every day. Easily. Go email.

01:29:05

Nah. All right. How are you going to rate this?

01:29:09

Stylin rating. You want me to go first? I do. It's your book. Go.

01:29:12

I am very conflicted about this book. You read it fast. I did read it fast. It was an entertaining

01:29:22

read. Actually, you know another reason why this was such a fast book is because like every five

01:29:28

pages, he has a full page graphic with like one sentence. Yes. Yes. So even though the book is,

01:29:36

let's see, 220 some pages, it's probably like 160 pages of actual text. Yeah.

01:29:43

I also skipped the action items. That's fair. I don't know. I mentioned at the beginning

01:29:49

that I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. I was ready to just completely

01:29:55

rail on this thing, but I feel like there's a lot of good stuff here. I'm trying to disconnect my

01:30:02

perspective with what I feel is a very shallow overview of a lot of very important topics.

01:30:06

Not able to do that completely effectively. I do think that if you are just looking for

01:30:17

an introductory type book that's going to focus on the intentional aspect of productivity and not

01:30:24

just the efficiency, this is a great book. I don't think there was anything in here that was

01:30:30

particularly life changing for me. And I don't think there is anything even for people who are

01:30:36

just getting into this space. I feel like it's a great introduction. You'll have a solid grasp of

01:30:40

a lot of the concepts that are important, but you won't have any like real aha moments that are

01:30:48

going to profoundly impact your life five years from now. So it is what it is. And I think it's a

01:30:56

very good introductory book on the topic of focus. And I'm going to give it four stars.

01:31:01

Four stars, huh? Okay.

01:31:03

So again, I read this in two days. I had a hard time putting it down. Michael Hyatt's a great

01:31:12

writer in that sense. So as far as ease of reading, it's easy. It's very easy to pick up.

01:31:22

It's hard to put back down. So kudos to Mike on that one. You know, I, part of that is because

01:31:30

I really, really liked this as basically a motivational book. Like it's pitched as a productivity system

01:31:37

and a productivity book. But I really liked it as a motivational book instead. But that's partly

01:31:42

because like he didn't teach me any tactics here. I didn't already know. Did he put a system together

01:31:50

that I wasn't aware of? Not really. They're all just pieces that you can pick out from different

01:31:57

places. Can you get one piece without the other? Yeah, absolutely. So I don't think his system,

01:32:02

per se, is something that I'm going to go around recommending. I don't even know what you would

01:32:09

have to maybe, I don't know, free to focus. But the systems always have to have the acronyms.

01:32:15

GTD, F2, like whatever. I don't really see that happening. But I would say like if you're brand

01:32:24

new to productivity, this is a good one to pick up and get started with. If you've been in productivity

01:32:29

for a long time, I think this is still a good one to pick up because it's kind of inspiring to

01:32:35

keep going with what you're doing and maybe tweak it. Like obviously we've got five action items here

01:32:40

from a book that is full of things that we already know. Like you get what I'm saying? Like that's,

01:32:46

it's not something that's completely groundbreaking. But at the same time, I think there's a lot of

01:32:50

value in it. So I'm with you in that I'm a little bit torn on how to rate it because there's not

01:32:58

anything that completely stood out to me. But I also have a hard time seeing how this is not a,

01:33:06

like this book would be helpful to pretty much anyone who picked it up. So I'm going to put it

01:33:11

at a 4.5. All right. Because I think there's a lot of motivational value in this. Again,

01:33:20

it's I had a hard time putting it down. I mean, we're ripping on it here and there. But I think

01:33:25

overall, I do think it's a good book. I think it's a good one to pick up and read. So yeah,

01:33:30

I'll recommend it and I'll put it at a 4.5. All right. Well, I do think it is a good book

01:33:34

also. And I think that the discussion of the style and rating has just determined what I'm

01:33:41

going to pick next for an upcoming book. Okay. All right. So you're first on the outline.

01:33:46

So yes, next one up, I picked this one up at a like a thrift store of sorts bird by bird.

01:33:53

And Lamont. This is one that's pretty well known in writing circles. Some instructions on writing

01:34:00

and life. And there's actually a quote from this book in Michael Hyatt's free to focus too. So

01:34:06

I'm excited about this one. I've wanted to read this one for a long time. So, and someone recommended

01:34:11

it after I mentioned it on the last episode on the club. I thought that was kind of cheating.

01:34:16

But you know, here we are. Yeah. So speaking of the club, there's another book which has

01:34:23

actually it's the highest rated book that we have not covered. Okay. And that is Make Time,

01:34:30

How to Focus on What Matters Every Day, which is actually something that I read as a gap book,

01:34:36

not too long ago by Jake Knapp and John Zorotsky. Okay. This is on the complete other end of the

01:34:43

spectrum from Michael Hyatt's free to focus. And it's on the same topic. So okay, this is

01:34:50

first of all, I don't know which one of these guys is the illustrator, but there's a lot of really

01:34:56

cool illustrations in this book. It's a very easy read, very entertaining read. I want to get

01:35:04

your perspective on this book versus the Michael Hyatt systems book and see which one you like

01:35:11

better since you rated free to focus so high. Okay. This is something that I first heard about

01:35:18

on focused episode 70. I think it was with Shahid. He mentioned this book to me. There's

01:35:24

the concept of the infinity pools. That's where this book comes from. That's what comes

01:35:27

one of the things that comes from this book. So I don't know. I feel like this is just the

01:35:32

perfect follow up conversation to the one we're having right now. Okay. Maybe I'll regret putting

01:35:37

it at a 4.5. We'll see. I think 4.5 is completely fair. So I put it for. I have a gap book this time,

01:35:45

Mike. All right. What is it? I'm excited. I had one kind of last week. All marketers are

01:35:50

liars by Seth Godin. Very fascinating. I have always enjoyed Seth Godin. Been a while since I've

01:35:59

read one of his books. So yeah, I've really enjoyed it. It's a good one. Seth is just a brilliant

01:36:07

guy. I heard him speak at entry leadership. Somebody said that he was at craft and commerce,

01:36:13

which I got to go to, by the way, last weekend as we record this. All right. Somebody said he

01:36:18

was there as an attendee. I didn't actually see him. But yeah, he's he's the kind of guy where you

01:36:24

hear him speak and you're you're just instantly in awe of the fact that he is by far the smartest

01:36:29

person in the room. It doesn't matter who else is there. So true. So true. I've also got a gap book.

01:36:38

Forget where we last talked about it, but I've kind of in the back of my head had this on my radar

01:36:45

ever since we were talking about the whole concept of honor. There is a book in my collection,

01:36:51

which I haven't read now in several years, but I want to read it again called Honor Found by Robert

01:36:55

Barreger. And it's on the topic of honor and why it's important and what it is and how to implement

01:37:04

effectively, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's my gap book. Cool. Cool. Well, bird by bird

01:37:11

is now a recommendation after I mentioned it. Make time is a book recommendation. So if you have one,

01:37:19

obviously we're picking books from that list, you know, let us know. What is it you would like to

01:37:25

hear us go through club.bookworm.fm, click the recommend button, fill out, give us a link,

01:37:32

tell us about it, get it on the list and vote for it. Make sure you vote for it. It's very

01:37:37

important. And you can vote for other books there too as well. Again, you can find that full list

01:37:41

of recommendations on the club. You can find all the ones that we've gone through already. The ones

01:37:47

that are upcoming, like you can find those all on the club as well, but you can also find them on

01:37:51

bookworm.fm/list. That's where you'll find those as well. Cool. We also want to hear your action

01:37:59

items. Joe and I post ours to the the bookworm club, but put yours there as well. If you want

01:38:06

other people to hold you accountable, a lot of times, by the way, just a random side note on this,

01:38:11

you don't even need people who are going to follow up with you. Sometimes just the act of

01:38:15

publicly declaring that you're going to do a thing can be the motivation that you need to follow

01:38:19

through and do it. So if that's the thing that makes it work for you, go ahead and do that. We

01:38:25

don't mind. We love to see you how other people are implementing the stuff that they learn, the

01:38:28

stuff that they read. Also mention that there is a couple different ways that you can support the

01:38:33

show. Number one, you can join the revolution. Take down KCRW. Go to iTunes and leave us a review.

01:38:38

Number two, we do have the premium membership where we are recording this live and apologies

01:38:45

to all the people who are listening live with the tech issues that we had. But it's fun.

01:38:50

And I think it gives a little bit different perspective than the polished, produced version

01:38:55

that you get in your podcast catcher. That is five bucks a month. You can find out how to sign

01:39:02

up for that by going to bookworm.fm/membership. In addition to listening live, you also get the

01:39:07

book notes for all the Mind Node files I've mentioned a couple different things from my Mind Node today.

01:39:11

So that's going to go up on the club when this episode goes out as well.

01:39:16

Cool, cool. Well, if you are reading along with us, I know there are a few of you that do that.

01:39:21

We're going into the National Best Seller, the one and only Bird by Bird by Ann Lamont.

01:39:28

I'm looking forward to this one and we will go through that one next time.