Bookworm Transcripts

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So Joe I see that you have continued to be busy on the social media is promoting all of the bookworm things.

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It's quite fun. I should probably stop at some point but.

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Well people are noticing my wife specifically noticed and she's like so what's the deal with the bookworm YouTube channel?

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I'm like just go look at it and hopefully it makes sense.

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[laughter]

00:00:22

If you're on YouTube and you would rather listen to the show through YouTube, people do that.

00:00:28

Yeah I know which I don't understand but.

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I was looking at the stats it's not a ton of people but there are people listening to the show through YouTube now.

00:00:38

So even has the waveforms and everything.

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Yeah I noticed that that's entertaining for about 30 seconds.

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I don't think I could look at that for an hour and a half.

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Yep.

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But hey you do you.

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I know I know it was zero work to add the waveform so anyway.

00:00:56

The audiograms are way cooler with that but.

00:01:00

Yeah that's true.

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Those are kind of a fun deal but yes I have been posting.

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I had a little bit of some breaks here and there because I was gone last week.

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I was out in North Carolina celebrating our anniversary and so I had a bunch of things scheduled for while I was gone but.

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I had a little bit of a hiatus whenever I got back but it should pick up now so I've got like the next few days taken care of.

00:01:26

And then the next week we'll keep pushing through it but yeah I mean you can follow Bookworm on Instagram.

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Bookworm.fm on Instagram.

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Also we are on Twitter.

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I realize we don't talk about Twitter.

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We've been on Twitter for a very long time.

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Is that from day one probably?

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I don't remember when we started that one.

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Yeah I think it is but it's interesting.

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Yeah we never mention it and it's also the only real social media platform that I hang out on.

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So if you want to get my attention you have to come to Twitter.

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Sure.

00:01:55

Sorry everybody.

00:01:56

So we are on Twitter.

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I've been changing up how that has operated.

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I've been keeping tabs on all of the authors we've read in the past and just trying to pay attention to which of them have new books coming out.

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And posting about those as they come up.

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There's a lot of links they have to do with libraries, books you should read, etc.

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So there's quite a few things I'm doing there that I haven't done previously.

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So all that to say I've been doing stuff on social media and it's been kind of fun.

00:02:30

Cool have you gotten many submissions for listener bookshelves?

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I have a couple.

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Yeah.

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So I have a few there that'll start coming out.

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Is that tomorrow?

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I don't remember.

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There's yes and I would love some more.

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Well I haven't looked at the buffer so I have no idea.

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Yeah I would love more.

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So if you have and it doesn't matter and I had a couple of people ask me this of does it have to be my personal library?

00:03:01

No.

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If you find even if it's a bookstore and you took a cool picture of it like pictures of bookshelves period libraries at bookworm.fm send me an email.

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I would love to see those and if you have an Instagram account shoot me your username for that and I'll make sure you're tagged in that photo.

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So yeah hit me up I'm all over that.

00:03:22

Cool.

00:03:23

I guess we should mention Max stock one more time for all of you who are procrastinating until the last possible moment.

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Well if you're listening to this and you haven't gotten a ticket for Max stock but you still want to come.

00:03:34

Congratulations this is the last possible moment.

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Yes.

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Because this episode will drop exactly one week before Max stock starts.

00:03:44

So you do not have a lot of time but I believe the coupon code will work up until the beginning of Max stock.

00:03:51

So if you have not purchased a weekend pass and you want to get one for $179 instead of $249 which is a savings of $70 for those of you who aren't math nerds.

00:04:06

You can use the coupon code FOCUSED.

00:04:09

Apparently there are multiple ways to spell focused.

00:04:11

I always thought it was just a single S but apparently it's also valid to use it with two S's.

00:04:16

That's not the way you spell coupon code though.

00:04:18

FOCUSED will save you $70 and you'll be able to come hang out with me.

00:04:23

Joe, everybody Josh is going to be there.

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He's presenting.

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David Sparks is going to be there.

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They're doing the Mac power users episode 500 live as part of Max stock.

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So it'll be a good time.

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I'm looking forward to that.

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I really want to see how this live event goes for MPU.

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I think that'll be a lot of fun to watch.

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Yeah this one will be interesting because it's also like a milestone show.

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So I attended MPU live in Chicago when was that in the spring I think?

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And Chris Bailey came down.

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We hung out together so that was kind of fun.

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But that was like a normal episode.

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They obviously had a couple guests come on but they talked Mac power user stuff.

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And this one I believe is going to be kind of a basically Stevens collecting questions

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from listeners that Max Sparky is going to answer.

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And it's kind of a weird episode too because it's episode 500 but Steven just joined this year.

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So in the forum is a lot of people saying, "Oh it would be great if Katie could be there."

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She's not coming.

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Sorry.

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Right.

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I feel kind of bad for Steven but I know I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun but I also think

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it's going to be a little bit different.

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Yeah.

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I mean what do you do?

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I mean things more things change.

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You got to deal with situations as they come.

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So the one constant throughout the years is bookworm.

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We just keep going.

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We've had our moments.

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It's been close a couple times but you mentioned the other day and I don't think I responded

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to it because I just saw it in passing and I forgot but you mentioned that we've been

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at this for over three years now which is kind of cool.

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Yeah.

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So I honestly didn't realize that until you had tweeted about it.

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Right.

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So thanks for doing that.

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You know immediately when you mentioned that I went into retrospective mode and I'm like,

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how am I different now than I was three years ago?

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Like sure.

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What have I learned that I didn't know when we started this podcast and it's hard to put

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a specific number or identify a specific thing.

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I would say that one big thing that's changed is the way that I read books.

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I feel like I get a lot more of the books that I read now because I've kind of developed

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this my node system and that's very different than when we first started where I was just

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jotting down a couple of things that stood out to me from the book that we read.

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I don't think that's necessarily a wrong way to do it either but I do recognize that

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I find myself remembering and retaining information a lot better ever since episode 42 I think

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was kind of a tipping point.

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I think that was the one where we did how to read a book.

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So I don't know any navel gazing you want to do over the last three years of bookworm?

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See, there's a lot of things that I could say about it.

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The only reason I thought about it is because I was thinking this is my third max stock

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and I went to my first max stock right after we started bookworm.

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That's how I came to the realization that holy cow it's been three years.

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Some people look at it and say we're on episode 72.

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That's a little over a year if you're doing it weekly but we don't and we've had some

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spells where it's been three sometimes four weeks between episodes which means it takes

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a while to go through 72 books not including all the gap books too.

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So there's a lot of time involved there.

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I have noticed though that over time kind of what you're saying like the way that you

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read books morphs and changes over time and I used to go through a book and it's like

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okay this is borderline life altering but as time goes on you kind of shift away from

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expecting books to be life altering and you're just looking for one or two snippets out of

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them.

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That's true.

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Yeah, it's a good point.

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It's not any fault to the books.

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It's purely the mass amount of information that you collect on a regular basis.

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So because of the number and the volume of information, number of books and the volume

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of information that we go through the chances of running across one as impactful as man's

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search for meaning is quite slim.

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So you're only going to have the cream of the crop that do that.

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So it's been kind of fascinating to see that over time.

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So it's been a good run.

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I'm happy for the last three years.

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Go bookworm.

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Yeah, and thank you to all the listeners who have faithfully listened over the years and

00:09:04

specifically got a call out the premium members, the people who are actually willing to pay

00:09:09

a couple bucks a month in order to support us in this crazy venture of reading a book

00:09:13

every couple weeks.

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So the show doesn't exist without you all.

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So thank you for your support.

00:09:20

Certainly.

00:09:21

So for the teaser, we have something to add to the premium memberships, which we'll mention

00:09:25

at the end.

00:09:27

Cliff Hanger, sorry.

00:09:28

Happy to do it.

00:09:29

All right.

00:09:30

Should we jump into action items?

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Sure.

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I have an epic fail on mine this time.

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Goal was to start writing letters to my kids.

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You would think this would be something that would be highly motivating and I would just

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jump on immediately and I haven't touched it.

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And that's sad.

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That is kind of sad.

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It's quite terrible.

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Even when I'm saying this out loud, it kind of hurts me to say this, but yes, I haven't

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touched it.

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I have the notebook.

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What's step one?

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I have the notebook.

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Have the pin.

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I know what I want to do.

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I just haven't done it.

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I'm going to do this first thing tomorrow morning because it's Saturday and I will have

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the time.

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Okay.

00:10:12

I'm going to do it.

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My action item was to build out my story file in day one, which I have done, but not

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too.

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It's not complete, but then again, it's probably never going to be complete.

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So I did add a bunch of things from my trip to Costa Rica, inspired by my wife the other

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day who said, "Hey, did you do that?"

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We're going to shoot us listening to bookworm.

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Oh, shoot, I forgot.

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But I did do it.

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And I still have some, like I still want to flesh out some of this stuff, but I have

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like the rough bullet points that I mentioned from the last episode where like I have

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the building blocks there, but I do want to add some more meat to those things.

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And then also I haven't gone back in just like retrospective, all of the crazy events

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that have happened even in the last couple of years, but really like throughout the

00:11:03

course of my life, I haven't gone through and gotten all of that stuff in there, which

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is ultimately what I want to do with this.

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And then once I have all of that, obviously it's being aware of things as they happen

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so that I can continue to build that out.

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So this one's never going to be finished, but made some decent progress on it anyways.

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Sure.

00:11:22

Good job.

00:11:23

Thanks.

00:11:24

That was pretty quick for action items, but I believe we're ready to go into today's

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book.

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I think so.

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I'm excited about this one.

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It'll be fun.

00:11:33

All right.

00:11:34

So I have a disclaimer here because I mentioned when we, when I picked this one that this is

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kind of the anti-systems book, well actually there is a system here.

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Yep.

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It's not really a system.

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Did you forget that there's a system?

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There's a system in this?

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Yeah, I guess I kind of did because they talk about it right at the beginning.

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We'll get into that, but then there's a whole bunch of tactics and things and basically

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like apply this however you want.

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So I did that.

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I applied it however I wanted and completely chuck the system until we forgot about it.

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So there is a very basic system which we'll talk about here, but this is make time how

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to focus on what matters every day by Jake Knapp and John Zorotzky.

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And it is very different than some of the other systems books that we have read because

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it is not prescriptive, just follow XYZ and you'll get one, two, three.

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Instead it is a basic framework that they present at the beginning and then a whole

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bunch of tactics they call them and you pick and choose the ones that you want to use.

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And there are a ridiculous number of these, let's see, 86 of them?

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Of the tactics.

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But yeah, but they say at the very beginning, you know, you're not going to use all of them

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just pick and choose the ones that seem to work for you.

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And they're all based off of personal experience and kind of experiments that they've tried

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on themselves.

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And it's written by two people who have the same approach, but also different things

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work for different people and they kind of compare and contrast that.

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There's also some awesome illustrations in this book.

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Yes.

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I don't have an affront of me.

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I'm not sure who did the illustrations, but they're amazing.

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I think it was Jake.

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It's one of the two.

00:13:06

Okay.

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They're great because there are several times when they're talking about technology and

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they've got all of these like cartoon animations for like a computer or an iPhone, which I

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don't know, like seeing it drawn like that paints it in a different light.

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At least it did for me when I was going through it.

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It feels like you have more control over those things, which is really what they want

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to like.

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That's the point they want to make throughout the book is that you do have control over

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this stuff.

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Right.

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But it feels a lot more approachable when it's a cartoon form, like you're not so scared

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of the machine.

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Yeah.

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My opinion anyways.

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No, that's fair.

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I have to say when I pick this up, I opened the front cover.

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This isn't even to the first page.

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This is on the cover itself.

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On the inside, there's this diagram, which looks like a system.

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I read some of the captions that go with this diagram.

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My first thought was, wait, I thought this was not a systems book.

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Mike rails on systems books.

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And then he picked one.

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I hadn't even got to the first page yet.

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Yeah.

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So I had to throw a disclaimer out there because there is, yeah, there is a diagram.

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It's not as intimidating as it looks like the one on the inside cover you're talking

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about, right?

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Where they have a couple of arrows and things.

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But I personally, I don't know, I guess you could call this a system.

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I don't know.

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It doesn't feel like a system compared to all of the other systems that we've covered

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in all of the other books that we've read.

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It feels to me like this is how your body is designed to work.

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And it's going to do this and you can maximize any one of these areas using the different

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tactics, like you can kind of figure out what works, plug and play.

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But I don't know.

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It gets, well, let's just talk about the system, I guess.

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Well, and since we're here.

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Yeah.

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And let me just say this because I would say that the quote unquote system, and I think

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the reason you're waffling on it a little bit is because really the system is the one

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thing.

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So the book, the one thing.

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Focusing one thing and focusing on that for your day and getting it done.

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Like that's, that's really it.

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But yeah, that's my perception of it anyway.

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I think so.

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Although I think even the one thing has more of a system.

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So you could condense this one in make time to pick one thing and focus on it.

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That's it.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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And so that's kind of the idea behind make time is like, well, you're not going to find

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time.

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If you are constantly just going from one thing to the next, whatever happens to pop up in

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front of you, you're going to find yourself not doing the things that are important to

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you.

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So how do you do that?

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Well, you pick a highlight.

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That's the first part of the system.

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That's the focal point, the single activity to prioritize and protect on your calendar.

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And this is an interesting idea to me is, and one of my I have an action item associated

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with this, but we'll talk about that in a little bit.

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It's kind of like, what's going to be the highlight of your day as you're planning it,

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whether it's the night before or in the morning.

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And then the next piece of that is laser.

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So you're going to do everything you can to limit your distractions so that you can focus

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on your highlight.

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You're going to control your technology so that you can easily find that laser mode.

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And then underneath that kind of related to laser is this energized piece.

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So you need to use your body to recharge your brain.

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And this is where things like exercise, food, sleep, quiet, face to face time come in, and

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then reflect where you recognize what worked, what didn't, and then you adjust and improve

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your system.

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This is kind of like journaling before you would go to bed.

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That's kind of how I use that.

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Sure.

00:17:12

And that's why I guess, you know, I didn't think of this as a system because I feel like

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I have my own journaling system.

00:17:18

Okay.

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Which overlaps with this system in the reflect piece, but also like isn't a one to one matching

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of the reflect piece of their system either.

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So I feel like this right here is kind of how your body wants to function if you were

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to just get out of its own way.

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And all of the tactics are things that you can use to kind of like trim the fat so to

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speak, where you can kind of prune your own day to day so that your body can kind of

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just flow in this natural state.

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I'm probably not doing a very good job of explaining this, but it doesn't feel like

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something like, okay, I need to make an intentional choice to follow these simple steps so that

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I can get this result.

00:18:13

Does that make sense?

00:18:14

Yeah.

00:18:15

If this might be an easy way to do it.

00:18:18

So I don't know if we can put a picture of this, this show notes, this whole diagram.

00:18:24

But there's really four aspects to it.

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One is off on the side.

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So there's three points to this highlight laser and reflect and then energizes underneath

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the laser point because you won't be able to laser focus 100% of the time.

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But they do have little descriptions for each of these.

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So highlight, start each day by choosing a focal point, laser, beat distraction to make

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time for your highlight, reflect, adjust and improve your system every day, and then the

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energizes, take care of your body to recharge your brain and that feeds into the laser piece.

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So with each of those, essentially what you're doing is picking one thing, the most important

00:19:02

thing to do for the day, focusing on it, and then try to figure out how well did you do

00:19:07

at it and make adjustments and improve.

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Like that's really it.

00:19:12

Yeah, and then also to complicate this simple diagram even further.

00:19:17

Yeah.

00:19:18

Like energizes underneath, it doesn't really have its own place in the flow.

00:19:23

But the next, or the rest of the book is broken into some different sections.

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So we're talking about the introduction right now.

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The next section is how make time works.

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Actually, I guess that's kind of what we're talking about right now.

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The introduction, that's where they talk about the fact that they're time dorks and how this

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isn't a productivity book.

00:19:43

They make that very clear right at the beginning.

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Maybe that's another reason why I didn't think of it as a systems book.

00:19:48

But then they're broken down into the sections, highlight, laser, energize, and then reflect

00:19:54

as the last section.

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And for highlight, laser, and energize, there are a whole bunch of tactics that go along

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with it.

00:20:02

For reflect, there really isn't.

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For reflect, there's a couple things.

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You know, there's the scientific method they talk about and there are three hypotheses, which

00:20:07

we'll get to in a little bit.

00:20:09

And a form that they use to rate how they did during the day.

00:20:13

But like I said, I journal the same sort of stuff.

00:20:16

So there was nothing new for me in that particular section.

00:20:20

But kind of the approach we took with this is because there's these different sections

00:20:25

and all these different tactics and no way that we'll get through all of them as we kind

00:20:28

of picked out a couple that we wanted to talk about specifically.

00:20:34

And actually, you know, before we get into some of the specific tactics, we probably

00:20:38

should talk about a couple of their main ideas that will resurface throughout the book.

00:20:43

And that is Infinity Pools in the Busy Bandwagon.

00:20:45

Yes.

00:20:46

Now, I do want to preface the Infinity Pools piece with these two guys, Jake Knapp and

00:20:53

John Zorotzky.

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They are ex-Google employees.

00:21:00

One of them worked on Gmail.

00:21:02

The other one worked on YouTube.

00:21:04

Yeah, I think Jake was email and John was YouTube.

00:21:07

Yeah, I'm going to guess that most everybody has heard of Gmail and YouTube.

00:21:12

I don't think there's anyone listening that hasn't heard of those two services.

00:21:17

So these guys worked on those and helped bring about some of the modern day views that we

00:21:25

use today in those tools.

00:21:28

Infinity Pools, it's what it sounds like, anything that has an infinite amount of information

00:21:34

they can give to you, a Twitter feed, an Instagram feed, a YouTube list of videos,

00:21:41

like things that if you refreshed, you would get something new every single time.

00:21:44

It's infinite, thus an Infinity Pool.

00:21:47

Yeah, it's interesting because there are things that fall into the category of Infinity Pool,

00:21:53

though, that you wouldn't really think of as Infinity Pools.

00:21:57

I first heard about this book when I interviewed Shahid Amada in episode 70, I believe, of Focused.

00:22:06

And he's a video game developer who got rid of his iPhone X and went down to an iPhone

00:22:12

SE after reading this book and basically deleted all of the Infinity Pools off of his device.

00:22:19

And that was, I thought, kind of a drastic approach, especially for a video game developer.

00:22:24

But it really got me interested in the idea.

00:22:27

And he mentioned a couple things like he needed to order some screwdrivers off of Amazon.

00:22:32

So he had the Amazon app open and he went and he found the screwdrivers, but then he continued

00:22:36

to search through the Amazon app.

00:22:40

And he's like, "Oh, that's an Infinity Pool.

00:22:42

That's got to go."

00:22:43

Yeah.

00:22:44

Like anything that has additional information and you can never exhaust, basically, that's

00:22:49

what an Infinity Pool is.

00:22:51

Even a web browser, Safari on your phone.

00:22:54

Yeah, exactly.

00:22:55

Could be the same thing, for sure.

00:22:57

The other piece of this busy bandwagon, overflowing inboxes, stuff calendars, endless to-do lists,

00:23:04

I mean, how many things have we talked about numerous times, Mike?

00:23:08

They all play into this busy bandwagon mindset that if you want to meet the demands that

00:23:15

people place on us and just keep up with everything that's going on, you will be overwhelmed

00:23:20

and way too busy.

00:23:21

Yes.

00:23:22

That's the busy bandwagon.

00:23:23

Yep, exactly.

00:23:26

And these are not new ideas, but the way they describe them, I think, is very approachable.

00:23:31

I feel like the Infinity Pool specifically, once you grasp the idea of that, you're going

00:23:35

to identify those all over the place.

00:23:39

Right.

00:23:40

It just kind of sticks with you.

00:23:41

You're going to be going through whatever app you have on your phone.

00:23:44

You'll think you've got it all cleaned up.

00:23:45

You're not going to be distracted anymore.

00:23:47

And then you'll be in something like, "Dang it, this is an Infinity Pool.

00:23:50

It's got to go."

00:23:51

Yeah.

00:23:52

The reason that they bring these things up is because they also have this concept of defaults.

00:23:57

Again, we've talked about this before.

00:24:00

Most of this book is not groundbreaking.

00:24:03

It's not something brand new.

00:24:04

They're just packaging a bunch of things that have been talked about before in a very

00:24:08

unique way.

00:24:09

Yep.

00:24:10

But this concept of defaults is, "What is your default answer in a given scenario?"

00:24:17

You're standing in line, you're waiting.

00:24:19

What's your default answer?

00:24:21

Most people, it's pull out the phone and entertain yourself in some way.

00:24:25

Yep.

00:24:26

Their argument is, "Change your defaults."

00:24:28

So many of the tactics that we'll get into later revolve around changing your defaults.

00:24:32

Yep.

00:24:33

Definitely.

00:24:34

All right.

00:24:35

So that being said, I think we're ready to dive into some of these tactics.

00:24:39

So let's go into the next, and I'm going to call this the first section, and that is

00:24:44

highlight.

00:24:45

Now, in here, they've got some, in each of these sections, they have a little bit of

00:24:53

information at the beginning, and then they've got a whole bunch of tactics that go along

00:24:58

with it.

00:24:59

And so let's talk about some of the specific tactics here that relate to highlights.

00:25:06

But then I also want to talk about from this section, they talk about the problem with

00:25:09

to-do lists.

00:25:11

I feel like the tactics are the place to start here, though.

00:25:15

And one of the ones that I really liked under the "Choose Your Highlight" section for the

00:25:21

tactics was number five, the "Might-Do List."

00:25:26

And when I read this, I kind of thought that this was the approach I was trying to articulate

00:25:34

with my back burner context way back in the day.

00:25:37

Oh, the one that you'd agree for?

00:25:39

Yeah, and I have not used in a very long time.

00:25:42

Yeah, because I was trying-

00:25:44

Yeah, well, to be fair, I don't really use OmniFocus anymore, but that's another conversation

00:25:50

for another day.

00:25:52

Yeah, so number five, the "Might-Do List."

00:25:56

Basically the approach here is you've got a whole list of things that you might do, and

00:26:00

then you look at that list and you pick the one that's going to be your highlight.

00:26:04

And if I'm remembering right, my use case for this back burner context was, these are

00:26:10

the things that I might do.

00:26:13

And then I was going to pick the ones that I wanted to do from there for the things that

00:26:17

I was going to- that were going to become my most important task for the day.

00:26:21

I think that's from memory, I believe that's kind of how I was to find that.

00:26:26

Maybe I'm wrong in that.

00:26:28

But I think that I was fairly close to describing what they describe as the "Might-Do List."

00:26:34

The only difference is that I was selecting multiple things and they're saying, "Just

00:26:37

pick one."

00:26:38

And I like their version better.

00:26:39

Just pick one.

00:26:41

Because the task manager basically, my little note in this section, that is your "Might-Do

00:26:50

List."

00:26:52

And when you select more than one thing, as you go throughout your day, you can find

00:26:57

yourself kind of going back and forth between them, trying to find the path of least resistance.

00:27:04

And they say that you're especially vulnerable on page 51 to the path of least resistance

00:27:07

thinking when you don't actually plan.

00:27:09

But I've found it even when I do plan and I've selected five different things that I'm

00:27:12

going to work on throughout the day, you look at the first one and you're like, "I don't

00:27:16

really want to do that right now.

00:27:17

What's next on the list?"

00:27:20

But when you have a highlight, it brings you back to this is the thing that you said is

00:27:24

absolutely critical for today.

00:27:27

So that's the thing you work on.

00:27:28

And when you get that done, if you've got more in the tank, then you can just tackle

00:27:33

the next thing on the list and you can get ahead.

00:27:35

But when you make one thing, the highlight, it's a lot easier for me anyways to transition

00:27:42

into Go mode for that.

00:27:44

And then they would say, "Take that a step further and put it on your calendar."

00:27:48

I kind of do this with my daily planning sheet.

00:27:51

I block all my time, although I haven't specifically gone to the length of blocking out three hours

00:27:57

for I'm going to work on this specific thing.

00:27:59

I just kind of frame out like I'm going to, for these hours, I mean, actually, like the

00:28:04

beginning of the day, for example, today, I've got an hour set aside for my morning routine

00:28:07

and then I'm going to be home and I'm going to be writing.

00:28:10

And then I've got a recording bookworm with Joe blocked off from 1 to 3 p.m. central time.

00:28:15

And then more writing after that.

00:28:17

And then later tonight, I've got a men's meeting at our church.

00:28:21

So those are the types of things where I'm blocking out all the different hours throughout

00:28:24

my day.

00:28:25

But I don't have specifically on there, you know, write this specific thing for this specific

00:28:31

project.

00:28:33

That feels to me like a step too far.

00:28:35

But I do have, and this is kind of where one of my action items comes in, of adding the

00:28:40

highlight to my daily planning template.

00:28:42

I did redo that and I do have now at the top of my daily planning template in the area

00:28:46

for my highlight.

00:28:47

So I pick one thing that's going to become my focus.

00:28:50

And I found, since I started doing that even just like a week ago, that that's really helpful.

00:28:55

That really keeps me on track, makes sure that I don't waste the beginning of my day, which

00:29:01

is really my biological prime time or Jocelyn K. Glai would call it like your golden hours.

00:29:06

Like when you're really in a state generally to do good focused work, you know, you don't

00:29:12

want to waste that time trying to decide what to do.

00:29:14

So by planning my day the night before, by putting my highlight on there, it's a lot easier

00:29:18

to, okay, let's just do this.

00:29:20

Yeah, I have to say this whole concept of a might do list, it still feels weird to me.

00:29:27

It seems like just a someday maybe project list.

00:29:31

Maybe that's all it is.

00:29:33

But it just, it never, like to me, it's the same thing as when we had this back burner

00:29:37

context thing that we were talking about way back now.

00:29:41

It feels very similar to that.

00:29:42

I totally understand your interest in it.

00:29:45

I just don't work off of lists like that.

00:29:47

And it just feels so weird.

00:29:49

Yeah.

00:29:50

Well, here's, here's the thing like as we're recording this, what was it like last week,

00:29:54

Omni Focus added the ability to drop a task, right?

00:29:59

Yeah.

00:30:00

Well, the reason they added that feature is because people have things on their list that

00:30:03

they don't want to do anymore and they're dropping them.

00:30:07

So that illustrates my point that your task manager is essentially a might do list.

00:30:12

You can only pick one thing from that list that you're going to work on at a given time.

00:30:17

You can have a whole bunch of things, flag five things that you want to do today.

00:30:21

But kind of the revelation I got as I'm going through this is like, that's too much.

00:30:26

You got to pick one thing.

00:30:27

Sure.

00:30:28

And only that's going to be your focus.

00:30:30

You can't say, I'm going to focus and prioritize this, that and the other thing.

00:30:34

You got to pick one.

00:30:35

And if you can't say one thing is the most important, then you're operating whether you

00:30:40

realize it or not where everything is kind of on this might do list and everything is

00:30:44

in your back burner context and you're kind of always looking at it thinking, what should

00:30:48

I be doing right now?

00:30:49

And kind of freaking out whenever you choose something because you may have chosen the

00:30:52

wrong thing, at least that was my experience.

00:30:54

Right.

00:30:56

Another tactic from this section is tactic number 13, design your day.

00:31:03

And you kind of mentioned it here a little bit.

00:31:05

I go with scheduling time for your highlight, your focal point for the day.

00:31:10

And they take this a step further and use like the hyper scheduling or the block scheduling

00:31:17

concept and design every moment of the entire day so that they know when each thing is going

00:31:25

to happen.

00:31:26

This is not something I can do given my current work scenario.

00:31:32

Being an IT, you never know when people are coming up, but I'm assuming this is something

00:31:36

you would like to try.

00:31:37

Yeah.

00:31:38

And I would argue this is something that I have been doing when I'm with my daily planning

00:31:42

template, but this is awesome.

00:31:44

And this is the reason why I've kind of gone away from OmniFocus because I recognize that

00:31:50

OmniFocus can collect the things that I have to do personally.

00:31:53

But for all of the other teams that I have worked with, they all use something different

00:31:57

for collaborating on a project.

00:31:59

And I went back and I thought through in the last year, what are all the teams that I've

00:32:04

worked with and the programs that they've used.

00:32:07

And at one point, I was working with teams that were using Jira, Basecamp, Asana, Patio,

00:32:17

and there was one other one.

00:32:18

There were five of them, all at the same time.

00:32:21

And I'm like, okay, so I'm not going to duplicate all the tasks from all those different systems

00:32:26

and put them into my OmniFocus just so that OmniFocus is the single source of truth.

00:32:30

I'm going to look at those things when I need to look at them.

00:32:33

And I'm going to have a general idea of what I need to get done when.

00:32:36

And I've got a big wall calendar in my office that kind of shows what my deadlines are.

00:32:42

But then for daily planning, I am going to just write everything out.

00:32:47

And I use a template inside of GoodNotes, which is amazing.

00:32:53

This is the single most killer feature for the iPad Pro, in my opinion.

00:33:00

GoodNotes is an absolutely amazing app.

00:33:01

And if you really use the import your own PDF template feature, you can turn this into

00:33:07

just about anything for planning.

00:33:10

In fact, if you go to atc.com and you search for GoodNotes templates, you will find tons

00:33:17

of digital templates, template packs that people have created where you can just import them

00:33:22

into GoodNotes and you can use them with your iPad and your Apple Pencil.

00:33:26

It's amazing.

00:33:27

And then the OCR is all your text.

00:33:28

You can go back.

00:33:29

You can search everything.

00:33:30

You need a new page.

00:33:31

You just swipe from right to left or you hit the little plus button in the upper right.

00:33:34

You can select from any of your templated pages so you can insert whatever you want whenever

00:33:38

you need it.

00:33:39

It's like having your own.

00:33:40

So like if you've looked at the self journal or Michael Hyatt's full focus planner, if

00:33:45

you look at those, every time I've tried to use one of those, I've always come close

00:33:50

and like the general ideas, but there's always been a couple of things where it's like,

00:33:53

"Ah, I don't really want to do that."

00:33:55

So what I found is you can create your own templates and I do it in Omnigraffle now.

00:34:01

And you can pick and choose the pieces that you want and create a digital version that

00:34:05

is exactly how you want it to work.

00:34:09

And then you never have to buy another notebook again.

00:34:12

You just pick and choose the pieces or the pages that you want, stick them wherever you

00:34:17

want and you can build your own digital planner.

00:34:21

And that to me, I don't know, again, you're the analog guy.

00:34:26

So there is something to be said for pen and paper.

00:34:29

I get it.

00:34:30

Like the right pen, the right paper, it just feels different.

00:34:34

But with an iPad Pro and the new Apple Pencil specifically, it's shorter.

00:34:37

It feels more like a pencil and it feels much more natural in your hand.

00:34:42

It feels close enough for me where I don't miss writing on paper every single day because

00:34:48

I used to do that with my daily planning sheets.

00:34:49

I used to print them off, make tablets, and I'd throw them away in the trash can every

00:34:53

day after I was done.

00:34:55

But this just feels so much better and I can tweak the system as I go.

00:35:03

I can go in Omnigraffle, I can make a single change like my action item for this was to

00:35:07

add that highlight section to the top of my page.

00:35:09

I did that.

00:35:10

It took a couple minutes.

00:35:11

I had a new template, throw it in their BAM.

00:35:12

I can continue to roll with that.

00:35:14

So here's some of my argument against, because I see this all the time, people want to use

00:35:21

the iPads for this sort of thing.

00:35:25

So I have a paper notebook that I use for a lot of stuff, more on that in a little bit,

00:35:33

because it's morphing right now.

00:35:35

I had a situation this morning where one gentleman was trying to show me a few things on his

00:35:42

iPad that he had sketched out and written.

00:35:45

And I had my notebook there.

00:35:47

I had my thumb and finger in, I think it was four different places in my notebook and could

00:35:52

flip back and forth between things very quickly and could look at three, four, five things

00:35:57

at one time in that scenario.

00:36:00

Technically speaking, you can get that done on an iPad, but it is nowhere near as simple

00:36:07

as just stick your finger in it and physically move it.

00:36:11

That's true.

00:36:12

Although you can bookmark specific pages in your notebooks.

00:36:15

So you can get back and forth between your bookmarks pretty quickly.

00:36:19

And it's probably not as quick as the scenario that you're describing, but again, good enough.

00:36:25

And it is of course not near as tactile either.

00:36:28

Yes.

00:36:29

Yeah, that's true.

00:36:30

Although it feels pretty good.

00:36:33

It's not going to feel the same obviously as a pen on paper, especially if you like those

00:36:38

fancy fountain pens like you do.

00:36:40

Totally.

00:36:41

But I don't know.

00:36:43

It gives you so many advantages that that just really isn't a that big a deal for me.

00:36:50

Sorry, analog wins.

00:36:51

Okay.

00:36:52

Now that's it.

00:36:53

I got to move on quick before you get argue with me.

00:36:57

The problem with to-do list, Mike, what's the problem with to-do list?

00:37:00

All right.

00:37:01

The problem with to-do list as the authors state in this section is that they are usually

00:37:08

a reflection of other people's priorities.

00:37:11

No matter how many tasks you get done, there are always more to take its place and they

00:37:16

can obscure what's really important.

00:37:19

I agree with all three of those things.

00:37:23

What's your opinion on this?

00:37:25

This is-and I was so happy when I saw this on the outline.

00:37:30

This is something I have been working towards and tweaking and conceptualizing for about

00:37:35

a year now.

00:37:38

It's come out in a few places with one or two individuals who have previously worked

00:37:45

for me under Pro-Course.

00:37:47

They've mentioned this concept that within Pro-Course, we've been operating on a project

00:37:52

level.

00:37:53

We'll dictate tasks.

00:37:57

We'll say here is a project.

00:37:59

Here are the general concepts of what need done.

00:38:03

Go.

00:38:04

Ask me if you have questions.

00:38:06

That's the way that we've operated.

00:38:09

Because of that, I've been slowly morphing my own personal systems to just a simple project

00:38:16

list, not necessarily a task list.

00:38:20

Reviewing that list of projects on a daily basis and then making a to-day list.

00:38:23

So just a daily list for now, what I got to get done today.

00:38:28

Not worrying about breaking things out on a deeper level on a task or to-do list that

00:38:35

I'm going to work off of each day.

00:38:38

It's only created for that one day.

00:38:40

You get the difference there.

00:38:41

It's not a long term task list.

00:38:44

What we traditionally see in something like OmniFocus.

00:38:47

It's just maybe three or four or five things for today and then a project list to help

00:38:54

me reference to know what it is to do for today.

00:38:56

Yeah, that makes total sense.

00:38:59

Now all of the GTD purists are screaming at us right now because they're saying, "Well,

00:39:06

you need to have a place where you can capture things so you don't forget about them."

00:39:11

Sure.

00:39:12

And that is one positive they call out with to-do lists is that they allow you to capture

00:39:16

things so you don't have to hold them in your brain.

00:39:19

Although as I thought about this, there's a couple different ways that I would need

00:39:27

to capture things.

00:39:30

Most of the things that I've wanted to capture lately I realized have been ideas.

00:39:36

Those don't need to go in a task manager.

00:39:39

That's kind of what I was doing.

00:39:40

I had an ideas perspective inside of OmniFocus where I would tag things with ideas that would

00:39:46

show up there and then when I decided I wanted to write a blog post or create a podcast or

00:39:51

whatever on a topic I would just select from that ideas bucket.

00:39:54

But that doesn't have to exist in a task manager.

00:39:56

And the other thing that a task manager, the service that it was, that it was a SERP, the

00:40:02

thing that it was doing for me was it was allowing me to be reminded of something that

00:40:08

was due.

00:40:10

And I don't think I need a full-on task manager for that sort of thing.

00:40:15

I've been toying around with the idea of using the new Reminders app once iOS 13 and Mac

00:40:21

Quest Catalina comes out.

00:40:23

It's got expanded functionality.

00:40:26

It's got subtasks and things like that.

00:40:28

It's still not anywhere close to the power of the functionality of something like things

00:40:32

around OmniFocus.

00:40:33

But for me, I don't think I necessarily need it to be.

00:40:36

I need to be able to say a Hoi telephone remind me to do this thing at this time.

00:40:41

And Reminders is going to be more than enough for that.

00:40:45

And the passive also used do for that sort of thing with the nagging reminders.

00:40:50

But I don't know.

00:40:52

I think my life has simplified in recent history where I don't need to be reminded of a ton

00:41:01

of things all the time.

00:41:04

And I've got a little bit more control over my day and my schedule.

00:41:08

So there's less of a chance that I'm going to just ignore something if my phone is telling

00:41:14

me, hey, you really need to do this now.

00:41:17

That's my initial thought with this.

00:41:19

Obviously, I'll try it out and see.

00:41:21

Maybe I do need something a little bit more powerful.

00:41:23

But that's the thought process at the moment.

00:41:25

Yeah.

00:41:26

No, and that makes sense.

00:41:29

And I alluded to this earlier.

00:41:30

I'm in the process of trying out a lot of things on paper.

00:41:36

And I found myself because of this book and some other areas, you know, one of the action

00:41:43

or the tactics later on is to write things on paper, like write something down today.

00:41:47

I think it was at number 54.

00:41:50

So I was combining that with doing a daily highlight.

00:41:55

Like those two pretty easy.

00:41:57

Like I'm in the process of writing out a list each day now.

00:42:01

But I was trying to get a feel for what do I do with these things that it's not today,

00:42:07

but it's sometime in the next week or the next month or, you know, how do I handle that?

00:42:13

So I was trying to figure out how to put together like a six month view, but I needed

00:42:18

dial in on this month and then specifically today.

00:42:21

And it occurred to me.

00:42:24

That's the bullet journal.

00:42:26

I think that's how that tends to operate.

00:42:29

So I'm in the middle of kind of an experiment of sorts of just trying out the bullet journal

00:42:35

process.

00:42:36

I know there's a few other folks that are doing that in the productivity space right

00:42:39

now.

00:42:40

Myself included, but I don't follow it like the system that they talk about.

00:42:45

I've taken basically the planning pieces of it, but I don't keep my master task list

00:42:49

there.

00:42:50

And I don't really think that a master task list is something I'm really going to keep

00:42:58

at all.

00:42:59

And I think that's what they're getting at.

00:43:01

So what I've been doing is I've of course tweaked it.

00:43:03

I don't do the whole dot thing that they do.

00:43:06

I'm old school and use Patrick Roan's dash plus system.

00:43:12

So I definitely think that writer kind of somewhat ripped that off of Roan.

00:43:19

It's very similar, but definitely different.

00:43:22

Anyway, that's side note.

00:43:24

So anyway, I've got some pretty different ways of using it, but it's kind of a heavily

00:43:29

modified version of a bullet journal of sorts.

00:43:33

So I'm trying that out.

00:43:35

We'll see how it goes.

00:43:36

But the main thing is for a way to help me manage projects and make decisions about projects

00:43:41

as opposed to tasks themselves.

00:43:44

Yep.

00:43:45

Exactly.

00:43:46

Well said.

00:43:47

I think they talk about, by the way, at the beginning of this section how goals can be

00:43:53

useful for orienting you in the right direction, but they make it hard to enjoy the time that

00:43:57

you spent working along the way, which I like the way that they describe that.

00:44:01

Yeah.

00:44:02

They say that tasks are too machine-like.

00:44:04

Goals are too far away, but in their opinion, highlight, that's the Goldilocks and the Three

00:44:10

Bears.

00:44:11

You know, that one is just right.

00:44:12

Yeah, totally.

00:44:14

And I tend to agree with them.

00:44:15

For sure.

00:44:17

That's the highlight section.

00:44:18

Okay.

00:44:19

Choosing one thing for today.

00:44:21

How do you decide what it is that one thing is going to be today?

00:44:24

The next section is laser.

00:44:25

How do you laser focus on that one thing?

00:44:29

We've got three tactics written down here.

00:44:32

And I noticed, Mike, that one of those, I think, got both of us into an action item.

00:44:39

Did I get this right?

00:44:40

Well, maybe you didn't.

00:44:41

You didn't do it entirely.

00:44:43

You copped out on it.

00:44:44

Well, I kind of, so I should mention here that this is not the first time I've read this

00:44:54

book.

00:44:55

I covered this as a gap book a while ago.

00:44:58

And one of the things that stood out to me in this section was this idea that you're

00:45:05

alluding to number 20.

00:45:08

That is to clear your home screen.

00:45:11

So my home screen is not completely clear.

00:45:15

It has a couple of apps that I use for positive interactions with my phone at the top.

00:45:23

So like right now, I've got my habit tracker, the shortcuts app, which I used to trigger

00:45:29

my reflection template at the end of the day, the per app that I use, and the Bible app,

00:45:35

which I've got a group reading plan with a couple of my discipleship guys at the bottom.

00:45:39

In the doc, I've got my node, day one, drafts, and at the moment, OmniFocus actually, but

00:45:46

that will probably be gone soon.

00:45:49

So those are all, if I were to go into any one of those apps, that's kind of a positive

00:45:54

interaction with my phone.

00:45:55

Twitter would not be there.

00:45:58

Any of the other infinity pools would not be there.

00:46:01

Email is not on my phone at all.

00:46:03

Any of the things that are going to be a distraction are not going to show up on my home screen.

00:46:09

They argue that you should just remove everything from your home screen.

00:46:11

I didn't do that, but I did take the idea and prune things.

00:46:16

By the way, the idea of distraction, I want to call it a quote from this section or an

00:46:21

idea from this section because I really like this.

00:46:24

They say that distraction is like a disco ball, scattering your laser rays all over the place.

00:46:31

And I really like that.

00:46:32

So obviously the goal is to eliminate the distractions.

00:46:38

You can do that different ways.

00:46:40

That's why they have all these different tactics and things that you can do.

00:46:43

So another one here is like next-year notifications.

00:46:45

That's number 19, a distraction-free phone, number 17, which I have as an action item.

00:46:52

And I actually have been trying it.

00:46:53

Like I'm not 100% there, but they have a number of steps to get to what they're calling a

00:46:58

distraction-free phone.

00:47:00

Yep.

00:47:01

And I'm going through most of those.

00:47:02

I haven't done all of them, but I'm darn close.

00:47:06

And they make a pretty compelling case for doing that.

00:47:11

They share a couple of statistics.

00:47:13

They say in 2017, Americans use their smartphones more than four hours per day.

00:47:17

It's probably gone up since then.

00:47:18

They cited a study that showed that people touched their phone on average 2,617 times

00:47:25

per day in 2016.

00:47:26

Again, it's probably gone up.

00:47:28

And there's a great quote on page 88.

00:47:31

They say, "When we use our smartphones to navigate an unfamiliar city or have a video

00:47:34

call with a friend or download an entire book in mere seconds, it's like having superpowers.

00:47:38

But by default, we don't just get the best of modern technology.

00:47:41

We get it.

00:47:42

We get all of it all the time.

00:47:44

We get futuristic superpowers and addictive distraction together on every screen.

00:47:47

The better the technology gets, the cooler our superpowers will become, and the more

00:47:51

of our time and attention the machines will steal."

00:47:54

And I completely agree with that.

00:47:56

And the rest of this section is basically tactics on how to eliminate those distractions

00:48:02

and control your defaults.

00:48:04

Sending you a picture via iMessage.

00:48:07

And it is a picture of my home screen.

00:48:09

Nice.

00:48:10

Drafts made it back on.

00:48:14

Drafts is back on my phone.

00:48:15

It's the only thing.

00:48:16

It is the only thing on that first page because it's the only thing I have in my dock.

00:48:24

And I have a few things on.

00:48:27

There's two other pages to it.

00:48:30

But first thing, we can put this in the show notes.

00:48:33

First thing someone's going to ask me is where is that picture from?

00:48:35

That is from my trip to North Carolina last week.

00:48:38

We were a mile up in the sky on a peak.

00:48:41

And I took that picture with my phone.

00:48:43

So that is where that came from.

00:48:45

So that picture has some meaning to me personally.

00:48:49

And the idea here is that whenever I open my phone, there's absolutely nothing for me

00:48:53

to do but take notes into drafts.

00:48:56

Like, that's the concept.

00:48:57

I like it.

00:48:59

And so far it's been pretty helpful.

00:49:01

It means that it specifically forces me to think, wait, why am I here?

00:49:09

As opposed to just letting the default be tap on the first thing that seems interesting.

00:49:15

So because of the distraction free phone process and going through that, like, there is no

00:49:21

social media on my phone.

00:49:23

There is no email.

00:49:24

There's none of that.

00:49:26

All it is is either creation tools or things that are not distractions, like navigation

00:49:36

and such.

00:49:37

So that's all I've really got on it.

00:49:38

But yeah, that's my home screen.

00:49:39

Just drafts.

00:49:40

That's it.

00:49:41

Nice.

00:49:42

Yeah.

00:49:43

And that's one of the reasons I mentioned regarding the no social media stuff, one of

00:49:49

the reasons that I am only on Twitter, I actually like Instagram, but they refuse to make an

00:49:53

iPad app.

00:49:54

So yeah.

00:49:55

I'm not going to install Instagram on my phone because that's one of those infinity pools

00:49:59

that I will get sucked into.

00:50:01

Right.

00:50:02

So again, you know, I've kind of tempered the idea.

00:50:06

I haven't gone all the way in like you have, but I've seen positive benefit from it.

00:50:11

And I'm sure, you know, the more you follow that idea, the more benefit you're going to

00:50:15

get in terms of you're not going to be distracted by things on your phone.

00:50:20

I would argue for anybody who's considering the step one maybe is identifying or recognizing

00:50:27

the problem first.

00:50:28

So I honestly believe there may be people who just don't have an issue with distractions

00:50:36

on their phone.

00:50:37

I think they are probably very rare.

00:50:38

I think most people do and they just don't even think about it.

00:50:42

So they don't realize it.

00:50:44

But you know, maybe you don't need to delete everything.

00:50:48

But maybe you do.

00:50:49

I think it's worth considering that you may have fallen to either of those categories.

00:50:54

It's true.

00:50:56

There's another tactic here.

00:50:57

Actually, we've got two more to go over here under the laser section.

00:51:01

You wrote down, watch out for time craters.

00:51:03

What's a time crater, Mike?

00:51:05

I just like the idea of time craters.

00:51:07

So they tell this story of one of them have gone to this place in Arizona, I think, where

00:51:13

a meteor had hit and it was like a mile in diameter.

00:51:16

And the meteor wasn't anywhere close to that big when it hit.

00:51:21

But that's the idea is that these small things can suck up a lot of time.

00:51:28

And one of the examples that they use is composing a tweet inside of Twitter.

00:51:32

That maybe only takes a few seconds, a couple minutes, whatever.

00:51:36

But then you end up scrolling through a bunch of other things.

00:51:38

And then that leads to checking all the other things.

00:51:42

And pretty soon you've spent a couple of hours because you were just going to compose a

00:51:47

tweet.

00:51:48

So that's the idea is identifying what are the things that can really get you off the

00:51:54

rails and eat up significant amounts of time.

00:51:58

They also say that recovery time can be a time crater.

00:52:03

So if you eat a big lunch, for example, you may have to, well, not may, you will not have

00:52:12

a ton of energy right after that.

00:52:14

You're going to feel like going and taking a nap.

00:52:15

So don't try to do something like write a bunch of words right after you've eaten a

00:52:21

big meal.

00:52:22

You can go ahead and eat a big meal if you want.

00:52:24

But if you're going to, you have to recognize that there's going to be ramifications throughout

00:52:28

the rest of your day that are tied to that one simple act.

00:52:32

And I don't have an action item associated with this.

00:52:35

I just really like this idea.

00:52:38

And I think it's something that people should be aware of because it always starts off

00:52:42

as just one little thing.

00:52:44

And this can, by the way, also be applied in the positive where like, let's say you want

00:52:49

to create an exercise habit, you don't say, I'm going to go to the gym for an hour.

00:52:54

You say, I'm just going to go on the treadmill for five minutes.

00:52:58

And then once you get on there, you complete the workout because you're already there,

00:53:01

you know?

00:53:02

So the idea being that small actions can have a big impact.

00:53:08

And in this specific case, obviously, in terms of distractions, it's a negative thing.

00:53:11

Sure.

00:53:12

I can't say I am good at this, but I definitely have time creators.

00:53:18

Everybody does.

00:53:19

That's kind of the point.

00:53:20

Like they're going to be different for everybody.

00:53:22

You may not be tempted to go compose a tweet if you're not on Twitter.

00:53:27

But maybe you like scrolling through Amazon.

00:53:30

I don't know.

00:53:32

Thus.

00:53:33

And this is where like the distraction free phone thing comes in for me because that's

00:53:36

way more effective because if I have a time crater, it's on my phone.

00:53:39

I don't really deal with that as much on my Mac, which is kind of weird.

00:53:44

You would think it would be way easier to do it there.

00:53:47

But I have a tendency to see my Mac as a tool to get work done.

00:53:50

And my phone historically has been a, what do I call that, a pacifying device.

00:53:57

So I have a tendency to deal with issues on the phone more so than the Mac, thus creating

00:54:04

a distraction free phone.

00:54:06

The number of times I've pulled it out, seen this beautiful landscape and thought, oh,

00:54:10

yeah, and then close it and put it back in my pocket.

00:54:12

I don't want to know how many times I've done that.

00:54:14

So it does work.

00:54:16

It is successful in that sense.

00:54:19

You know, I don't have a screenshot, but I know that David Sparks, my focus podcast

00:54:25

partner, talking about how he created like this six month wallpaper and he puts it on

00:54:30

his desktop, but he also put it on his phone, I believe.

00:54:33

And he's got basically his outline for all the things that he wants to get done for the

00:54:38

next six months on there.

00:54:39

And he keeps his iPhone home screen clean so that he sees that every time he opens it.

00:54:44

And just by looking at like, oh, I've got this field guide that I want to launch in

00:54:48

a couple of months, like that's enough for him to not go be distracted by something,

00:54:53

but buckle down and do the actual work.

00:54:55

Yeah.

00:54:56

A couple of the time creators I wanted to call out here, email is absolutely a time crater.

00:55:00

And another one that I thought of is your, your task manager.

00:55:03

This can totally be a time creator.

00:55:04

I recognize that this is kind of where Omni focus fell for me is like, I'm not using it

00:55:09

to its full capacity.

00:55:10

So I need to put more things in here.

00:55:11

I need to take advantage of all these fancy perspectives.

00:55:14

I need to review every week, even though I don't have that many things to review.

00:55:17

Like it just got to be more, more time spent babysitting the system than was justified

00:55:26

in terms of what I needed to get done.

00:55:29

In fact, when I was launching faith based productivity, I mean, you saw us because you

00:55:33

actually slept in my office.

00:55:35

Like I had everything written out on the whiteboard.

00:55:38

That was everything I had planning wise or this activity.

00:55:41

I knew what I needed to do based off of everything that was on that whiteboard.

00:55:45

I didn't create all the projects and things and Omni focus because I didn't want to have

00:55:48

to go back there.

00:55:49

I just had to have something where when I walked into the office, I saw it.

00:55:52

I saw the date circled there and I'm like, okay, time to get to work.

00:55:56

And I knew what I needed to do.

00:55:58

So I think that if you are going to try and track every minute detail of the things that

00:56:04

you are going to do, that could definitely be a time creator too.

00:56:07

For sure.

00:56:08

You're fiddling with the system instead of doing the actual work.

00:56:11

Another tactic in the laser section is number 53.

00:56:15

Avoid the allure of fancy tools.

00:56:17

Yes.

00:56:18

Okay, Mike, you and I have both worked in the productivity space for a long time.

00:56:22

How many times have you seen people decide to try a different task manager just because

00:56:27

they feel it will make them more productive?

00:56:30

So many times.

00:56:33

This was interesting because I recognize that I when someone says, oh, I found this new

00:56:40

app and it's great.

00:56:41

It does all these things.

00:56:42

My initial response is I'm not going to use that because it's going to be gone in six

00:56:47

months.

00:56:48

Right.

00:56:49

Even if it's not, I tend to not try those things until the app has been around for several

00:56:55

years and I'm like, okay, I guess it's sustainable.

00:56:57

I'm going to get shot.

00:57:00

One specific area where you see this all the time is third party email apps on iOS.

00:57:06

There is not a good third party email app, in my opinion, for iOS.

00:57:11

There are lots of options.

00:57:12

Spark is the least sucky one.

00:57:15

But you know, that means though, Mike, right?

00:57:19

Don't do email on your iPad.

00:57:23

Exactly.

00:57:24

That's kind of what I've, that's kind of the place I've landed.

00:57:28

Even though I'm using my iPad more and I really like it, there isn't a great application for

00:57:34

email on there.

00:57:35

If I could get mail made on my iPad, I'd be really happy.

00:57:38

But I'm okay with just saying the Mac is going to be the place where I'm going to check email.

00:57:43

It's more efficient that way anyways when I've got a keyboard with me all the time.

00:57:48

And the iPad is going to be used for the other things like different devices, different

00:57:51

modes.

00:57:52

It's a completely valid approach.

00:57:55

But the, the really the point I wanted to make was that dispatch was the one app that

00:57:59

I was like, yes, this is the thing for iOS.

00:58:03

Because you could send things to different places, different applications.

00:58:07

And you could use that message URL scheme.

00:58:09

So once you sent it, you could still get to those messages, even if you weren't using

00:58:13

dispatch on your Mac, which there was no Mac app.

00:58:15

So that was no problem.

00:58:17

But it hasn't been updated in years and nobody else has used that default message URL scheme.

00:58:23

Everybody uses the proprietary one.

00:58:24

If you send something to a task manager and spark an email, you're going to have to use

00:58:28

an email or spark URL scheme, which means that you click on that on your Mac, you're

00:58:32

going to have to have the Mac version of that app in order to view it.

00:58:36

And that's a big deal to me.

00:58:38

It's probably not a big deal to a lot of people.

00:58:39

And so if you don't understand that, don't even worry about it.

00:58:42

But that was a big part of my productivity workflow.

00:58:45

And when dispatch just became terrible, I'm like, man, come on.

00:58:49

Like, throw me a bone.

00:58:50

Just update this for me.

00:58:53

You know?

00:58:54

But obviously they're not going to do that.

00:58:55

And it's hard.

00:58:56

Really the bottom line is that it is hard to make money on the iOS app store for that

00:59:02

particular product category, especially given probably all the infrastructure that you need

00:59:06

in order to implement all of those features that people want.

00:59:10

And you have to recognize that there are whole categories, I guess, of applications where

00:59:17

people will just decide it's not worth it.

00:59:20

And you're not going to be able to do what you used to do.

00:59:23

Not just a particular app, but third party email clients, like I said, there is not a

00:59:26

single one in there that I would trust at the moment.

00:59:29

Right.

00:59:30

Task managers maybe are a little bit more stable.

00:59:32

And I don't know, like, Evernote replacement type apps, like, I don't know what category

00:59:36

you would call that reference apps maybe.

00:59:37

But I think that's not a great representation of those types of apps.

00:59:42

You can pick your category and you may find something that is going to be more stable.

00:59:46

But like, that's always in the back of my mind is like, when is this going to go away?

00:59:50

It's only going to be a matter of time before they just decide, "I'm not going to do this

00:59:54

anymore."

00:59:55

Even now we focus, it's been around forever.

00:59:57

You know, that one's probably, you could make a case for that one being the most stable.

01:00:02

But who knows?

01:00:03

It could be gone tomorrow.

01:00:04

You really, you really can't be sure.

01:00:06

Right.

01:00:07

And I feel like this comes up more and more.

01:00:10

I've had a handful of folks ask me about tools that are web-based.

01:00:17

They don't really want the app, even if it hasn't.

01:00:20

And it has to do with the website is more universal.

01:00:26

So they don't have to be locked into a specific device even.

01:00:31

So me personally, I've been on this boat for a while with moving over to text files and

01:00:38

analog because I just get tired of these things dying off.

01:00:43

You know, Evernote was the one that bit me hard to begin with and kind of started me

01:00:46

down that trail.

01:00:47

They made it to where I either had to pay them or not use the tool.

01:00:53

And like, well, I'm not spending that amount of money per year to just throw things at

01:00:58

it.

01:00:59

So goodbye.

01:01:00

Like, you know, that's the way that is gone for me.

01:01:04

So thus, I'm playing around with bullet journal.

01:01:06

I've played around with things like that in my notebooks for a long time.

01:01:10

I've moved a lot of things over to text files.

01:01:13

I will use tools once in a while, like in Valt, but only because it uses text files on

01:01:20

the back end.

01:01:22

This is the only reason I've considered what's the one Devin think people revert to quite

01:01:27

a bit.

01:01:28

I've read a few times because you can store the files and text files, but the UI has been

01:01:32

terrible historically.

01:01:34

So like, I just don't want to be locked into some proprietary stuff.

01:01:39

I played with bear.

01:01:40

I played with you, Lissies.

01:01:41

I've played with, you know, Apple notes and all that.

01:01:44

But at the end of the day, I'm dependent on that app staying around.

01:01:50

And it doesn't necessarily stay around.

01:01:53

Yeah.

01:01:54

So what do you do?

01:01:56

Exactly.

01:01:57

Now, I will say that like I mentioned, I use good notes a lot and I really like good notes.

01:02:02

I would recommend good notes to anybody.

01:02:06

And you may say, well, might not my good notes disappear?

01:02:09

Yes, it is possible that good notes can disappear.

01:02:12

But the difference I would argue with good notes is that you can export all of the things

01:02:17

that are in there as PDF files.

01:02:20

So you mentioned text files.

01:02:21

I would argue PDF files are the other thing that are kind of timeless.

01:02:26

Yep.

01:02:27

So I kind of have an exit strategy, I guess, for any app that you're going to use.

01:02:31

Like if I really need to get everything out of here, can I do so?

01:02:35

And what's it going to look like?

01:02:37

If good notes disappears tomorrow and I have to export everything as PDF files, I'm not

01:02:41

going to be sad that I have all of these PDFs.

01:02:43

They're not going to be sitting in a useless, useless pile on my desktop.

01:02:46

Like, what do I do with these?

01:02:48

They're PDFs.

01:02:49

I can use them anywhere.

01:02:50

Right.

01:02:51

Yeah.

01:02:52

I would say like PDFs, picture files, text files, even markdown files.

01:02:56

You know, for the most part, those are all, to me, safe file formats to operate in for

01:03:04

the long term.

01:03:05

Text files have been around since day one.

01:03:08

It's not going anywhere.

01:03:10

So I don't know.

01:03:12

We've beat this pretty hard at this point.

01:03:14

But the key point that they're making is that if you're going to stay laser focused,

01:03:20

spending your time playing around with new tools and exploring new stuff or trying to

01:03:26

do something fancy with like scrivener and such, like that type of thing, just stay away

01:03:32

from it.

01:03:33

It's going to just create more bloat in the process when you should be working on your

01:03:38

highlight.

01:03:39

I think that's their point.

01:03:41

Yeah, definitely.

01:03:42

So don't, when everyone's talking about the new test manager hotness, don't feel like,

01:03:47

"Oh, I need to go check that out because maybe it'll solve a problem for me."

01:03:51

It's probably going to just eat up a bunch of your time as you look at it and try it out

01:03:56

and then you realize that, "Oh, this isn't going to be the right thing anyways and you're

01:03:59

going to go back to the old thing, but you're going to have wasted a bunch of time."

01:04:03

There's also a whole section in here which I just want to call out.

01:04:05

We don't have anything specific from here, but the whole idea of slowing your inbox is

01:04:10

an interesting idea.

01:04:12

And number 38 specifically, be slow to respond.

01:04:15

They mentioned shifting from as fast as I can to as slow as I can get away with.

01:04:19

I feel like I've done this with email.

01:04:21

Yeah.

01:04:22

Over the last couple years.

01:04:23

But they articulated it way better than I would have.

01:04:27

So that's the basic idea with a lot of these things.

01:04:31

And I think the baseline of as slow as you can get away with is going to be different

01:04:35

for different people, different situations, but that should be what you're aiming for.

01:04:40

Yeah.

01:04:41

And I will say this is something I'm working towards.

01:04:43

I have it as an action.

01:04:45

I'm off of number 34, which is email at the end of the day and only once a day.

01:04:50

And historically, I haven't been able to do that because of the client side of things.

01:04:53

But I'm transitioning out of that and I've been offloading all of my client business.

01:04:58

So that means that I can get to this point.

01:05:02

So I'm in the middle of all of that transition right now.

01:05:05

So as part of that, probably by the time we hit max stock, by the time we record next

01:05:11

mic, I should be able to be at that point where I'm just doing it once a day.

01:05:15

So I'm finally going to be solving some of my email nightmares.

01:05:19

Nice.

01:05:20

Whoo.

01:05:21

All right.

01:05:22

Next section, energy.

01:05:23

Yes.

01:05:24

I'm excited about this section, even though we only have two points here.

01:05:28

Neither one really covers a whole bunch of energy, but energy is something I've had to

01:05:33

pay very close attention to because of the whole Lyme disease stuff I fight.

01:05:37

So yes, energy levels.

01:05:41

Right.

01:05:42

So this section has a bunch of tactics which are going to appear, well, I guess depending

01:05:51

on your frame of reference.

01:05:55

But if you have been following the productivity space for any length of time, you probably

01:05:59

heard all of this stuff before.

01:06:01

For example, exercise, eat right, disconnect, and get enough sleep.

01:06:07

Really that's kind of the main ideas here.

01:06:10

But there's specific tactics from here which I feel like this section has some gold in

01:06:15

it.

01:06:16

Number one that I want to talk about is actually number, let's see, what is this?

01:06:23

It's in the outline number 70, which is to wake up before you caffeinate.

01:06:29

And this is something that struck me the first time that I read this.

01:06:33

And I feel like I've kind of made this shift already.

01:06:36

But even before I read this, I recognized for myself that I didn't want to drink coffee

01:06:41

like as soon as I woke up.

01:06:43

But they explain why that is not a great idea.

01:06:47

They mentioned that your cortisol is high when you first wake up.

01:06:50

And if you drink coffee when you have a cortisol coursing through your veins, then it's not

01:06:54

going to do a lot of good for you.

01:06:56

If you wake up at 7 a.m., you really want to wait until about 930 to have your first cup

01:07:02

of coffee.

01:07:04

And I think that this makes a ton of sense and probably reduces the amount of coffee that

01:07:11

you would typically drink.

01:07:14

And then they have this little grid here in the book.

01:07:18

They have the curve, your energy levels.

01:07:22

And they talk about the prime time for caffeine.

01:07:24

They show the afternoon dip.

01:07:28

And if you're going to drink coffee in the afternoon, this is the point where you should

01:07:32

do it.

01:07:33

And after 4 p.m. basically do not touch the stuff.

01:07:37

I know you actually are a little bit more strict about this even than what they articulate

01:07:41

here.

01:07:42

But basic idea being that you need to give your body enough time for that caffeine to

01:07:45

work its way through if you don't want it to interfere with you going to bed at night.

01:07:51

Right.

01:07:52

Yeah.

01:07:53

I've known that you shouldn't do coffee immediately when you get up.

01:07:57

I can't say that I thought through it a whole lot to decide when I would.

01:08:01

Just because by the time I get up and get around and get to making it, it's already

01:08:05

an hour after I've been up.

01:08:08

I do have it as an action item though to wait a little bit longer than what I normally do

01:08:12

because I think for me I'm still into it a little bit early.

01:08:17

I've tried it the last couple days of waiting until it's about 2 hours, 2.5 hours after

01:08:23

the time I get up before I have that first cup.

01:08:27

Seems to make a little bit of a difference.

01:08:29

I can't say it's drastic but I'm going to keep it as a build into my habit structure

01:08:35

right now just to see how it pans out long term.

01:08:39

But yeah, I know that if I'm going to drink coffee, I need to be done finished drinking

01:08:45

coffee in the day by like 9.30 o'clock in the morning so that I've had more than ample

01:08:50

time for that to get out of my system before bedtime at night.

01:08:53

Otherwise Joe can't sleep too well.

01:08:57

Yeah.

01:08:59

And that's the important thing I would argue with this whole section on optimizing caffeine

01:09:04

because they actually have a whole bunch of tips related to this.

01:09:07

Like take a caffeine nap, that sort of thing.

01:09:11

And I feel like the idea that you really need to understand here is that caffeine should

01:09:19

be used sparingly I guess and also you need to recognize when to do it optimally so that

01:09:30

it doesn't become the crutch that most people think of it as or most people who don't drink

01:09:37

coffee for example, they kind of view this as like an addiction that you absolutely can't

01:09:42

break away from.

01:09:44

And every single year I go on like a 21 day fast at the beginning of the year and give

01:09:48

up coffee for 21 days just to show my body like I'm boss you can't control me.

01:09:55

So that stuff really doesn't bother me when people say that I really do just enjoy the

01:09:59

taste of a good cup of coffee but I can function without it.

01:10:04

And I think you know the point of this section is that it can be a help it doesn't have to

01:10:09

be a hindrance but you do have to recognize the effect and when you know that you can

01:10:14

apply it strategically to help you focus on and laser on your highlight.

01:10:19

We have another tactic here number 81 spend time with your tribe in other words hang out

01:10:27

with people Mike thus max stock.

01:10:30

Yeah so you went straight to the end for this one but I put this on here because they

01:10:38

say that even introverts are hardwired for connection.

01:10:43

I just spent a week with my family in Dork county which was awesome but at one point

01:10:51

during that vacation I admit I told my wife my ideal vacation is an island with nobody

01:10:58

on it.

01:11:02

So I guess you know when I read this section again it hit me that even for someone like

01:11:14

me who I would consider myself very introverted I need to spend time with the right people

01:11:22

finding those people who can give me energy.

01:11:25

And one of the action items that I had on here from the last time that I read it that

01:11:29

I actually did for the last episode I believe was to make a list of energy givers.

01:11:34

I did that when I identified all my plus plus people you know.

01:11:38

Does that make the list?

01:11:40

Yeah so I kind of did that already but yeah specifically max stock I would argue that's

01:11:46

for me spending time with my tribe.

01:11:50

Last time I was at max stock I found by the time we went home I was like kind of depressed

01:11:57

and I recognized on the way home I said something along the lines to my wife something along

01:12:04

the lines of like these are my people.

01:12:09

Like they get me.

01:12:12

So recognizing who is your tribe I think is important and then surrounding yourself with

01:12:19

those people as often as you can is also important.

01:12:24

Maybe you can't do it in person all that often.

01:12:27

You know I would be great if max stock happened multiple times per year but it's not going

01:12:34

to happen.

01:12:35

That is why I go down whenever I can to like the relay live events though and I'm toying

01:12:40

with the idea of going out to San Francisco for the five year anniversary thing.

01:12:44

It's going to be expensive but again that's my tribe those are my people.

01:12:50

And every time I get around those people I just feel I don't even really know how to

01:12:56

describe it.

01:12:57

It feels like home more so than actually being home.

01:13:03

Like around here where I live there are a handful of people who are max nerds who listen

01:13:10

to podcasts who care about productivity but they're the exception not the rule.

01:13:16

You're not going to just bump into those types of people when you're out about town.

01:13:21

And it's probably the same thing for you even though you're close to Minneapolis like you

01:13:25

could probably find those people easier than I could.

01:13:29

But I don't know like it's fine most of the time for me not to physically be in the same

01:13:37

place with those people but I recognize that every time I am physically in the same place

01:13:41

with those people it does rejuvenate me.

01:13:44

It does something inside of me.

01:13:46

And so I can't manufacture that as often as I would like but step one is identifying the

01:13:52

places and the times where that can really happen.

01:13:55

And then investing in that.

01:13:57

It's hard for me to quantify the value of going and being in that place and being around

01:14:05

those people because it will inspire me and that momentum will carry on for weeks after

01:14:11

I've been there.

01:14:12

It's not just the dollar value of booking a flight and finding a hotel and then the time

01:14:17

that you're going to be there like going to craft and commerce for example that was another

01:14:22

place where like I was really energized by my time there.

01:14:27

And if you open your eyes to the opportunities that are around you those experiences you

01:14:32

know those are the things that are really going to stick and going to be worthwhile.

01:14:35

So that's not really an action item that I want to like pick something else to go to

01:14:41

but kind of in the back of my mind is like be looking for those things.

01:14:44

Sure.

01:14:45

Yeah I feel like I hang out with a number of groups of people on a pretty regular basis.

01:14:51

Again we're in a higher populated area than I think what you are.

01:14:55

But at the same time it's all about different types of tribes too.

01:15:01

If I'm hanging out with a small group from church that's one area and I love hanging

01:15:06

out with our small group.

01:15:08

Totally.

01:15:09

And I also have this tribe around computers and nerdy thus Max-Stock and that kind of scratches

01:15:16

the itch there.

01:15:18

You know I'm finding people in my area that are into books so the bookworm has kind of

01:15:23

got some local following as well.

01:15:25

Hi folks.

01:15:27

You know those tribes are different but they're also very important to connect with people

01:15:33

in those different areas.

01:15:34

Yeah.

01:15:35

That's a piece of it that I've been trying to focus on more recently and this simply

01:15:38

confirmed that.

01:15:40

And the bookworm club for example that can totally be this for a lot of people but it's

01:15:48

not going to do the same thing as being physically in the same place.

01:15:54

So you can absolutely join the bookworm club and then the live recordings like be part

01:15:58

of the conversation that is a version of spending time with your tribe.

01:16:03

And you can be energized by hanging out in the same place online.

01:16:07

I don't want to discount that because there is a lot of value in that.

01:16:11

Sure.

01:16:12

But it isn't the same.

01:16:13

It isn't the same as looking Joe in the eyeball and talking about stuff.

01:16:19

Yeah.

01:16:20

And there are a handful of opportunities to do that every single year.

01:16:24

And the value of doing that is greater than just the cost associated with it in my opinion.

01:16:34

You know, even for an introvert like me, I recognize that that's the stuff that really

01:16:39

recharges my batteries because that's this whole section, the energized section.

01:16:43

That's what it's all about.

01:16:45

So we've picked our highlight.

01:16:47

We have laser focused on it.

01:16:49

We have learned how to maintain energy for that laser focus.

01:16:54

Once you've done those aspects of this system that Mike didn't want to go about.

01:17:00

This non system.

01:17:02

You need to reflect on what you've done so far.

01:17:05

And they bring up the scientific method.

01:17:08

I don't have that list in front of me and I am not a scientist.

01:17:11

So I cannot refer you to the exact steps.

01:17:14

I'm sure Mike will have it by the time I'm done here.

01:17:17

But once you've gotten into the end of this process, the goal is to revise and reiterate.

01:17:26

Like go over it again.

01:17:28

You have to figure out what happened, what went wrong, make a hypothesis of how to change

01:17:32

it, make an edit and go about determining what to do next.

01:17:36

Is that fair?

01:17:38

Yeah.

01:17:39

So the scientific method that they outline is observe what's going on.

01:17:42

Guess why things are happening the way they are.

01:17:44

Experiment, test your hypothesis and measure the results and decide if you were right.

01:17:48

And that's why they've got their own tracking sheet that they use.

01:17:52

I, again, you know, I've got a reflection template.

01:17:55

I'm not tracking how focused I was or what my energy levels were.

01:17:58

Although I definitely see that as being valuable if that's where you want to, if that's what

01:18:06

you want to tweak, you know, if you really want to just maximize your energy levels,

01:18:11

it's valuable to track that sort of stuff for a period of time until you get that nailed

01:18:14

down.

01:18:15

I feel like I've been doing that for a while.

01:18:17

There's a whole section in the energy part about sleep, for example.

01:18:21

And you know, I don't need to go there, but you know, I've mentioned before, if that's

01:18:26

something that I care deeply about because of the epilepsy I've been diagnosed with.

01:18:32

So I've been applying a lot of that stuff.

01:18:34

And so I just at this point have no need to track that energy level because I know that

01:18:38

the things that I'm doing are the right things.

01:18:40

I just need to keep doing them.

01:18:42

But if you wanted to use that, totally take it.

01:18:45

They've also got three hypotheses that they share here regarding the highlight laser and

01:18:50

energize.

01:18:51

The highlight hypothesis is that if you set a single intention at the start of each day,

01:18:54

they predict you'll be more satisfied, joyful and effective.

01:18:57

The laser hypothesis is that if you create barriers around the busy bandwagon and infinity

01:19:01

pools, they predict you'll focus your attention like a laser beam.

01:19:04

And the energized hypothesis is that if you love a little more like a prehistoric human,

01:19:09

they predict you'll enhance your mental and your physical energy or live a little more.

01:19:14

Sorry, that's a typo.

01:19:15

Yeah.

01:19:16

So on the energized piece, I think a piece of that that we didn't cover is that they

01:19:21

refer to our cave mandates and how we used to live.

01:19:26

Yeah.

01:19:27

What's that guy's name?

01:19:28

Erk.

01:19:29

Erk.

01:19:30

You are a erk.

01:19:31

So live like Erk.

01:19:32

He hunted and gathered his food, which meant that he was moving all the time, spent time

01:19:38

in community with his people.

01:19:41

And the type of food that he ate was all natural whole foods.

01:19:45

You get the idea.

01:19:46

Yep.

01:19:47

Putely.

01:19:48

Dead when it was dark.

01:19:49

Yadda yadda yadda.

01:19:50

But anyway, that's the hypothesis there.

01:19:54

So yeah, so I really don't think we need to spend a ton of time in this reflection.

01:19:58

Yeah.

01:19:59

Other than like the main idea here is have some sort of way to measure if what you are

01:20:04

doing is working.

01:20:06

And it doesn't have to even have a number associated with it.

01:20:08

You can just generally jot down.

01:20:10

How do you feel at the end of the day?

01:20:13

The way I do this with my reflection template is just a star rating.

01:20:16

And I've got one through five stars.

01:20:18

How'd you do overall today?

01:20:20

And if there was something that happened, I'm going to jot that down in that entry that

01:20:24

impacted that.

01:20:26

But I don't know.

01:20:27

I've kind of tweaked this system to the point now where I know what the right things are

01:20:32

to do.

01:20:33

I need to get up early, which means I have to go to bed at a decent time the night before.

01:20:37

I need to eat healthy and I need to exercise.

01:20:40

Yeah.

01:20:41

That's the big thing.

01:20:42

I got to know what my highlight is going into the beginning of my day or the big thing

01:20:46

that I want to get done.

01:20:47

And that's one of the big changes I'm going to make.

01:20:50

And I've actually already made it, I mentioned, to my daily planning sheet, adding that highlight

01:20:53

section to it, just a refinement of those things.

01:20:57

But feel free, I guess, to make this your own.

01:21:02

Just keep an eye on this.

01:21:03

Don't just blindly go from one day to the next and, oh, I hope this is going to work

01:21:06

out in the end.

01:21:08

Sure.

01:21:09

Yeah.

01:21:10

I don't know that I have an action item on the reflect piece because I have some reflective

01:21:15

type time built into my days that will tell me if I'm on the right track or not what I

01:21:22

need to change.

01:21:23

So yeah, I don't know.

01:21:25

I think it's good.

01:21:26

It's a good thing to do.

01:21:27

I think if you're doing absolutely nothing, following their recommendations is an excellent

01:21:32

place to start.

01:21:33

I just think that we have experience with this at this point.

01:21:36

Yep.

01:21:37

So trying to adopt their methodology doesn't make any sense, I don't think.

01:21:40

Right.

01:21:41

No, I agree.

01:21:42

All right.

01:21:43

Action items.

01:21:44

Totally.

01:21:45

I'm game.

01:21:46

All right.

01:21:47

So I've got a couple which I've kind of mentioned.

01:21:50

I've been applying this stuff as we go.

01:21:52

The big one that I applied from this, going through the book this time, but I've already

01:21:57

done this is adding a highlight section to my daily planning template.

01:21:59

I really, really like this.

01:22:01

This has made a big difference for me.

01:22:04

I've also, there's a whole section in here on sleep that I mentioned and there was one

01:22:08

thing that I jotted down when I went through this the first time.

01:22:12

The action item was to try a sleep mask because they mentioned you want to block out all

01:22:20

the light and you want to fake the sunset by cutting the blue light, by dimming the lights,

01:22:30

that sort of thing.

01:22:32

And the sleep mask was the inexpensive solution that I'm like, I should just try that even

01:22:37

though I never liked the idea of wearing something on my face as I went to bed.

01:22:42

But after I wrote that down, my wife decided to get blackout curtains for our bedroom,

01:22:49

which have been amazing.

01:22:51

So I've actually already done that one, but these are great.

01:22:55

I love them.

01:22:56

And we also have a, it's not a gravity blanket, but it's one of those weighted blankets on

01:23:02

our bed.

01:23:03

Yep.

01:23:04

So you get in and this thing is on top of you and it takes a couple of minutes before

01:23:09

it's like sleeping in a warm hug.

01:23:12

Yeah.

01:23:13

Like you're just, you're ready for bed and you don't want to, like, you don't want to

01:23:15

get up until, until the morning.

01:23:17

Like what it, it's hard to describe the effect that it has on me, but it helps me transition

01:23:22

into sleep a lot easier.

01:23:24

Sure.

01:23:25

So those have been a couple of things that I've, I've already done that have been great.

01:23:29

And then the other one I mentioned condensing my home screen.

01:23:32

I've, I've done that.

01:23:33

I'm kind of thinking through other additional ways that I can do this.

01:23:38

I'm sure there are, I'm not going to go all the way to the point that you have, but I'm

01:23:43

going to try to trim this down even further.

01:23:45

All right.

01:23:47

I expect updates and screenshots, by the way.

01:23:50

All right.

01:23:51

Prove it.

01:23:52

In other words.

01:23:53

So anyway, on my side, I have five down here.

01:23:56

They're pretty quick.

01:23:57

Some of them are already done.

01:23:59

One is explore bullet journaling.

01:24:00

I'm doing an experiment in the month of July to see how it goes.

01:24:04

I, for those who are into bullet journaling, leave a comment on this episode in the club

01:24:10

and let me know if you think a month is enough time for that experiment.

01:24:15

I kind of speculate that it's not, but it's a month is a long time for me with an experiment.

01:24:21

I don't know if that's enough.

01:24:23

So if you have experience with this, help me out here.

01:24:28

That's one.

01:24:29

Two, I blanked out my home screen.

01:24:31

That one's done.

01:24:32

I've gone through the process of building a distraction free iPhone.

01:24:37

Still got one or two things I got to do on that yet, but I'll detail those out in the

01:24:41

club as well.

01:24:42

Moving email to once a day at the end of the day, I'm in transition getting there right

01:24:47

now.

01:24:48

So it'll take a little bit of time to get that one.

01:24:49

And then one I'm working on already is waiting until I drink my first cup of coffee in the

01:24:54

morning just to let my body fully wake up before before the day starts.

01:25:00

Nice.

01:25:01

There you go.

01:25:02

So like I said, this is the second time that I read this interesting observation as I went

01:25:12

through and looked at all the different action items that I had written down the first time.

01:25:17

I had implemented most of them, even though I typically don't implement action items from

01:25:23

non-bookworm books.

01:25:25

This book just really impacted me.

01:25:28

Some of the different tactics and that's really, in my opinion, the beauty of this book we mentioned

01:25:34

earlier that our perspective on how we read books has changed.

01:25:37

It doesn't have to completely change your life.

01:25:40

There just has to be a couple of things that you really like and that you're going to apply.

01:25:44

This book is the perfect book for that because there are so many things in here and they give

01:25:48

you permission right at the beginning to pick and choose the ones that you want.

01:25:52

They mention at the very beginning, this is not a productivity.

01:25:56

This is not a, I would argue, a systems book because it's not going to be prescriptive of

01:26:01

this is what you need to do in order to get this result.

01:26:04

They basically say, here's a whole bunch of stuff.

01:26:06

Here's our experience with it.

01:26:07

You may want to try some of this stuff and see if it works for you.

01:26:10

But the stuff that they share is really, really good.

01:26:13

It's also very, very approachable as people who maybe are interested in productivity books

01:26:19

but are put off by some of the used car salesman type of speech.

01:26:26

There's none of that in here.

01:26:27

The illustrations are really entertaining.

01:26:30

I think that, I'm kind of sad that it took me so long to find this book.

01:26:38

Even for someone who has been in the productivity space for a long time, there was a lot of

01:26:41

stuff in here that I really, really enjoyed.

01:26:43

I would recommend this to absolutely anybody.

01:26:47

I really am having a hard time finding a reason not to rate it five stars.

01:26:52

I think I got to rate it five stars.

01:26:54

Like I said, it's really the kind of thing that will speak to anybody no matter what

01:26:59

situation you happen to find yourself and you'll find one idea in here that just really

01:27:03

is really, it speaks to you.

01:27:05

The whole thing, even if you went through it and found absolutely nothing, is very entertaining.

01:27:09

They have a very relaxed approachable, fun writing style.

01:27:15

The fact that there's two different authors, this is the first book we've read where it

01:27:19

feels like they've both contributed and it's been a positive.

01:27:23

Right.

01:27:24

Yeah, I think this is a great book and I'm really curious to hear your perspective on

01:27:29

it because I know you really liked Michael Hyatt in my opinion.

01:27:32

This is kind of like the other end of the spectrum compared to that one.

01:27:37

I will say, I will join you.

01:27:39

These guys are awesome to read.

01:27:41

They do a fantastic job keeping you engaged.

01:27:45

Every once in a while you run across one that's kind of hard to put down.

01:27:48

We read a lot of these but they don't always necessarily hit that point where I want to

01:27:53

go grab it and read it.

01:27:56

There's quite a few points where I find myself, it's a good book.

01:28:02

I enjoy reading it but it doesn't draw me to it if you get what I'm saying.

01:28:07

This one definitely had me wanting to make time to sit down and read it.

01:28:14

They definitely kept you engaged.

01:28:17

It's the first time you're right, there's two authors but they do a fantastic job of letting

01:28:21

each of them speak because although it's co-authored, they have call outs where you know Jake wrote

01:28:27

this piece and John or Jay Z as they refer to him in the book, Jay Z definitely wrote

01:28:32

this other section.

01:28:34

And sometimes they have competing opinions about things.

01:28:37

Yes.

01:28:38

Like morning versus night.

01:28:40

Should you do important highlight work in the morning or should you do it at night?

01:28:43

Well, one of them does it in the morning and the other one does it at night so they can't

01:28:46

give you one particular opinion on it.

01:28:51

They fight over it.

01:28:52

So it's kind of fun to see those battles take place within the book.

01:28:56

This is one that if you're in the productivity space you've been there for a long time, you're

01:29:00

going to get a lot out of it.

01:29:01

If you're brand new to it, it's very approachable, easy to get a lot out of it.

01:29:05

I have to join you at the 5.0.

01:29:08

This is a fantastic book.

01:29:09

I'm with you.

01:29:10

I wish I had seen this earlier.

01:29:12

And frankly, I kind of wish I had run across this much earlier in my productivity journey.

01:29:19

It's a great one to get started with, but it's also a great one to continue to get better

01:29:22

with.

01:29:24

It's fascinating in that it's not really a system, but it's a flow to work through.

01:29:33

And it's not like task level and it's not necessarily goal level.

01:29:39

It's that middle ground of the project level, which is what I was referring to earlier in

01:29:44

the episode.

01:29:45

So it's a piece of it.

01:29:47

Michael Hyatt did this to some degree too and free to focus in trying to help you determine

01:29:52

what projects should or shouldn't you be operating with.

01:29:56

And I think they do a wonderful job of helping that come out.

01:30:02

So I absolutely love this book and highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in

01:30:06

it.

01:30:07

Awesome.

01:30:08

All right, let's put this one on the shelf.

01:30:10

Next time we're covering one that's been out for quite a while, I think it's been recommended

01:30:15

for a while.

01:30:17

It's towards the top of the vote list, though I didn't know that when I picked it.

01:30:21

The four hour work week by Tim Ferriss.

01:30:24

Strong opinions on Tim Ferriss, one way or the other.

01:30:27

Some people absolutely adore him.

01:30:28

Some people cannot stand him.

01:30:30

That's probably why he's so successful.

01:30:33

We need to cover this one, Mike.

01:30:34

It's been kind of looming over us for a while.

01:30:37

Get your popcorn ready.

01:30:38

It's all I'm going to say.

01:30:40

Have you read this one before?

01:30:43

I started.

01:30:44

I had to put it down because I couldn't stand Tim Ferriss.

01:30:46

I'm going to finish it this time.

01:30:50

I have the book.

01:30:51

I have not even cracked it open.

01:30:52

I've never been into this book in any way, shape, or form in the past.

01:30:56

So I feel like this is a very dangerous book.

01:31:00

That's fair.

01:31:01

We'll see.

01:31:02

All right.

01:31:03

So I have in the document here some question marks for my upcoming book.

01:31:07

But I do actually have a book.

01:31:08

I looked at the votes.

01:31:10

You encouraged people to vote before we started because I tend to pick things live.

01:31:14

You do this like every time.

01:31:15

Not picking this one live.

01:31:17

But I did look earlier today at the ones that people had voted for.

01:31:23

The next one, highest on the list that we have not covered is sapiens.

01:31:30

I with max.coming up can't read this one.

01:31:33

It's like 500 pages.

01:31:35

Okay.

01:31:36

Sure.

01:31:37

So I'm on the list and there's a couple of them that are tied below that.

01:31:40

It doesn't have to be crazy at work in Second Mountain by David Brooks.

01:31:44

One of the people in my mastermind who I'm going to try and get to submit a picture of

01:31:48

their library because they actually have, I've been told, one of those like sliding

01:31:52

ladders that I want in my library some day.

01:31:54

Oh, I totally want one of those.

01:31:56

Yes.

01:31:57

Well, Michael Diamond, we have a, we link to it and we can link to it again.

01:32:01

He's got a list of great books on his website.

01:32:05

He did not vote for this in the Bookworm Club, but he has told me recently in a mastermind

01:32:09

meeting that I should read Second Mountain by David Brooks.

01:32:11

So that is going to be the tiebreaker for me.

01:32:13

Okay.

01:32:14

And that is the one that I'm going to pick.

01:32:16

I looked at the description of this briefly on Amazon and it's really, it sounds interesting.

01:32:22

It sounds like the type of book that speaks to kind of finding your purpose, which as

01:32:28

the developer of faith, this productivity, like that's, that's something I'm interested

01:32:31

in.

01:32:32

I feel like that's something that a lot of our listeners probably are interested into.

01:32:36

It'll be kind of cool to go through a book like that.

01:32:40

And so that's the one I'm going to pick.

01:32:43

Awesome.

01:32:44

Looking forward to that.

01:32:45

I have a gap book that I recently finished up.

01:32:51

Or no, that I'm just now starting.

01:32:53

I just finished one.

01:32:54

Now I'm into another one.

01:32:55

Anyway, this one is high performance habits by Brendan Bertchard.

01:33:00

I don't know how he says the last name, Bertchard swim around with high performance habits.

01:33:05

I picked this one up at like a goodwill somewhere.

01:33:08

It was like three bucks, I think.

01:33:11

But I've seen him around Brendan a few places.

01:33:15

And I've seen this book mentioned in quite a few places.

01:33:18

Curious to see, well, I'll put it this way.

01:33:20

I thought it was going to be similar to atomic habits, which is why I haven't started it.

01:33:24

I've had it for a few months now.

01:33:26

I thought it was going to be very similar to that.

01:33:29

But it's not.

01:33:30

Yeah, you thought wrong.

01:33:32

Yeah, I definitely thought wrong.

01:33:34

It's more about what habits should you be building to become a high performance individual

01:33:38

as opposed to performing good habits if you get the difference there.

01:33:44

So I had a misunderstanding on it.

01:33:46

Yeah.

01:33:47

So if you take James Clear and apply some Tim Ferriss with a dash of Grant Cardone, you

01:33:53

get Brendan Bertchard.

01:33:55

Maybe a little bit of Tony Robbins in there.

01:34:01

Yeah.

01:34:02

I don't think that's what I'm going to be reading.

01:34:05

That's fair.

01:34:06

That's fair.

01:34:07

My gapbook, which I actually finished up, I read through it in a couple of days.

01:34:11

It was very entertaining.

01:34:12

It was Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters, I believe.

01:34:17

The idea behind this book is that a good company requires two different types of entrepreneurs,

01:34:22

a visionary and an integrator, and they've got an assessment so you can identify which

01:34:26

one you are.

01:34:28

And there were several aha moments from going through this one.

01:34:31

I'll upload the My Node file to the Bookroom Club for premium members so you can download

01:34:37

that and take a look at some of the things in there.

01:34:39

But it's interesting.

01:34:41

And I feel like a lot of things that they share are very true.

01:34:44

But there is definitely, I don't know, I feel like this one elicits strong opinions

01:34:49

too, not to the level of somebody like Tim Ferriss probably.

01:34:52

But Gino Wickman is also the co-author, I think, of Traction and kind of the architect of

01:34:58

the EOS system, which seems to elicit some strong opinions from people.

01:35:04

Fair enough.

01:35:05

Well, that brings us to something I need to clarify because I have mentioned this in a

01:35:13

couple different places.

01:35:15

Some publicly some under behind the premium wall.

01:35:19

We've all been waiting for the big reveal.

01:35:21

I know.

01:35:22

I know.

01:35:23

So in the premium membership on the club, the Bookworm Club, which, by the way, Bookworm.fm/membership,

01:35:32

and you can sign up.

01:35:33

Mike has been posting his book notes for his gap books and the Bookworm books.

01:35:42

Most of them.

01:35:43

Yeah.

01:35:44

I don't take my notes in such a way that are conducive for sharing and they don't make

01:35:51

much sense to really anyone but me.

01:35:54

So I was trying to figure out, like, okay, I've been reading these gap books.

01:36:00

I've got notes on the Bookworm episodes.

01:36:03

The Bookworm episode notes come out in the recording, as we've seen today.

01:36:10

But my gap books don't really come out in any way, shape, or form.

01:36:14

And I was trying to nail down how do I go about sharing these.

01:36:17

So what I've done, and I've recorded one already, but I'm recording like 15 minute

01:36:23

overviews of those gap books.

01:36:27

I've recorded one for All Marketers or Liars by Seth Godin.

01:36:32

I've got some notes written down for essential manners for men that I'll record that one

01:36:38

probably when we're done recording this one.

01:36:41

And I'm going to trickle those out next week, which means before this episode goes live.

01:36:46

So by the time you're hearing this, premium members, you will have seen two of these little

01:36:53

15 minute overview episodes.

01:36:56

And if you are interested in those, you can do that.

01:36:59

Again, at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:37:02

And I'm going to start doing these for all of my gap books.

01:37:05

Just because I feel like I want to share my thoughts on them, and it's kind of my way

01:37:08

of sharing my gap books, whereas Mike does his My Node files.

01:37:13

So there you go.

01:37:14

Yeah, Joe tried to get me to do this, but I'm terrified of the idea of sitting down by

01:37:18

myself in front of a microphone for 15 minutes when I don't have a script in front of me.

01:37:22

So I'm going to continue to do the My Node files.

01:37:25

I'm pretty good at sitting and just rambling sometimes.

01:37:29

So we'll see how focused they are.

01:37:32

But here we are.

01:37:34

So that said, if you're interested in that, join the premium membership.

01:37:39

Again, as you've probably noticed, we've been slowly adding things to that premium membership.

01:37:45

There's access to a members only section.

01:37:47

You get a badge on your avatar on the club.

01:37:50

You get Mike's book notes.

01:37:52

There's an exclusive 4K resolution bookworm wallpaper for your computer.

01:37:57

There's now going to be my gap book episodes.

01:38:01

You can listen to the recording live.

01:38:03

There's going to be a lot going on with the premium membership.

01:38:07

So if you haven't joined that, I highly recommend it.

01:38:10

That said, you can also recommend a book to us.

01:38:15

You've noticed Mike continues to pick from that list.

01:38:17

I do once in a while as well.

01:38:19

Join the club, click the button for recommend a book, and make sure you vote for other ones

01:38:25

that are coming up.

01:38:26

So that Mike gets a pick done and gets the one you want.

01:38:29

Sapiens is a long though.

01:38:30

I know we're going to have to cover it at some point.

01:38:32

There's also a list of books on the main website.

01:38:36

So bookworm.fm/list.

01:38:38

All the books we've covered in the past.

01:38:40

So that way you can see everything we've covered.

01:38:42

There's tons and tons of books out there.

01:38:45

So go check those out for sure.

01:38:47

All right.

01:38:48

And I want to call out the bookworm club one more time and ask you to go and share

01:38:54

your own action items.

01:38:57

Join the conversation around ours or if you have some of your own.

01:39:01

Feel free to share those as well.

01:39:03

It doesn't have to be something that we got from the episode we want to hear how these

01:39:09

books are impacting your lives as well.

01:39:12

And if you want to support the show, there's a couple of ways that you can do that.

01:39:15

You already mentioned the premium membership for the bookworm club.

01:39:19

You can also go over to iTunes and leave us a rating and review.

01:39:23

The other way you can support the show, I guess, we don't really talk a lot about this, but

01:39:26

all of the links in the show notes are affiliate links.

01:39:30

So if you decide to pick up a book and read along with us, then if you use one of those

01:39:34

links that buys Joe and I a cup of coffee when we see each other at Macstock.

01:39:40

Definitely appreciate that.

01:39:41

All right.

01:39:42

That said, we're going to go into a landmine next time with the four hour work week by

01:39:48

Tim Ferris.

01:39:50

Looking forward to this one, Mike.

01:39:52

Tune in next time.