Bookworm Transcripts

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So Joe, you have been crushing it with your newsletter lately.

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I'm digging the weekly impulse.

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You like that?

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It's kind of fun.

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It is, but you have some explaining to do.

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Oh, I think I know where this is going.

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I know where this is going.

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So what is what is going on with the 10% happier experiment?

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I have been daily meditating for about two weeks now.

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This if you're new to bookworm, that doesn't seem like that big a deal.

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If you've been listening for a while, you understand how much of a bombshell that is.

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Well, I had OK, so the full story is I had a an appointment with my Lyme specialist,

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longtime listeners, Joe fights Lyme disease.

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But in the midst of that appointment, she made a comment that just kind of got me

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thinking about meditation because she's been trying to get me to do something

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in this realm of mindfulness for quite some time.

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And this will actually tie into our book for today later on, too.

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I was kind of dumbfounded how it all connected, but she she got me to think

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about meditation in a way that I hadn't really thought about because she basically

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showed me that I've been reaping the benefits of meditation, even though I don't do it

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regularly.

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I have a tendency to try it, leave it, try it, leave it, try it, leave it.

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And she was showing this like, well, the fact that you keep coming back to it shows

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me that the meditation is teaching you to keep coming back to where you should be.

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Oh, come on.

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So you're telling me that whenever I think meditation is doing absolutely nothing,

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it's actually working quite well.

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So she pointed me in the right direction.

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I decided that if I were to make an actual commitment to meditating on a daily basis

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via financial commitment by actually paying for a service, I will dedicate time to it

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every single day and focus on it.

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Thus, Joe is now meditating every day.

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And I'm trying to notice where meditation has a positive impact on me outside of just

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focus.

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That's kind of where I've pointed my eyes in the past.

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And she's kind of helped me broaden that perspective quite a bit.

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So 10% happier.

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It's where I spend time each day now.

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Nice.

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And for people who want more information, you also have a newsletter about this.

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I'm not sure if they can go back and read the old episodes.

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No, actually can newsletter.

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It's a news letter.

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But yeah, people should definitely go sign up for that because I I've been getting

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them because I was subscribed, I think, to your old newsletter.

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Right.

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Right.

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But they are very well written.

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It's one of the few newsletters that I look forward to receiving every week.

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So well done, sir.

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Oh, thanks, sir.

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No, they're fun.

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I'd spend a lot of time on them each week.

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So it's a good time and you'll like the one coming out this week too.

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Awesome.

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Looking forward to it.

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It's totally your fault.

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Excellent.

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Oh, fun times.

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That said, follow up.

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One of them on my list here is to apply the 80/20 rule to my work and where I spend

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my time, one of which was the newsletter and my blogging and where do I dedicate

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my time and those are.

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Those are definitely sticking around for a while.

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So because they definitely play into that 80 side of the 80/20.

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So I am focusing on that.

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So who knows to, you know, you for promoting it because I'm going to keep it.

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Awesome.

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So that's that's a piece that we'll stick around.

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There's a few aspects that are minor behind the scene that I'm going to cut out

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of what I do each day.

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I'm not going to talk about them because some of it's a bit sensitive.

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But it has been working really well.

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I have some lists on my side of things, but it's been a fun, fun experience.

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So I don't know what to say about it.

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So there you go.

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80/20 rule apply to your work.

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It works really well.

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The other one is to test a potential business idea.

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I actually ended up testing two, Mike.

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OK.

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One of which I'm going to come back to because I will talk about it this time.

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And it's mostly because it's going to be part of the newsletter, but this episode

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will release after the newsletter comes out.

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So anyone who's on the newsletter, if you get my newsletter and you're listening

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to this, you already know about this.

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So you already have a teaser of what I'm going to talk about later.

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But the other business idea that I tested completely fell on its face.

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So I'm glad I did not dedicate time to that one.

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Basically, it was a community of sorts that I wanted to build out and opted to not

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because almost nobody was interested in it.

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Thus, I saved myself a whole bunch of time.

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Nice.

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There you go.

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So I tested two, one I'm going to move forward with the other.

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Goodbye.

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All right.

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I've got a couple here.

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One was to look into a VA.

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But when I said this, I said I was not going to do this immediately.

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So I did not do anything with this.

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Although we did get some feedback in the club from Tulip

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girl who encouraged me maybe not to delegate my planning of a Disney

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vacation to a VA, which was an interesting idea.

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I never thought of it from that perspective before, but she's basically

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saying that part of what makes a Disney, something like a Disney vacation.

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So fun is the anticipation.

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And I agree with that.

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I tend to just obsess over all the little details that don't really matter.

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Like you would never do such a thing.

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What do you mind?

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When I book flights, it's usually like a seven day process starting with

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Southwest and then looking on Expedia and then looking at every individual

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airline site and then going back to Southwest and then repeating like three

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or four times it.

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It's insane.

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The amount of hours that I spend looking for an ideal flight because there

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really aren't any ideal flights from close to where I am from Minneapolis.

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You can kind of direct flight anywhere, but even Milwaukee,

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you're going to have connections.

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And so like as we're recording this next week, I'm going out to San Francisco

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for the relay five year anniversary show.

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I'm going to be a part of it, which is pretty cool.

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Party time.

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Yeah.

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Uh, that was ridiculously hard because I didn't want to get into San Francisco

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at 11 o'clock, which is like one in the morning my time.

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I also didn't want to leave at five in the morning my time.

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So yeah, just an example of how I tend to make things.

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More difficult than they need to be and where a VA could really help me

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with some of that probably.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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So I don't know exactly where I land on like the Disney vacation type stuff.

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I do think though that there are a lot of things like booking a flight for

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something that I do want to do.

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Uh, that's totally something I could have somebody else do hotels too.

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I mean hotels in San Francisco, you're not going to find a good deal and you

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got to be careful where you get.

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So I'm trying to find like a decent hotel.

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My wife's going to be with me as close to the venue.

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And I've never been to San Francisco before.

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This is paralyzing to me.

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There are literally thousands of hotels in San Francisco.

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Uh, but finally we made a decision.

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I don't have to deal with that at least till next time.

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Hopefully by next time I'll have a VA to do that.

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But I think like coming back to the comment that tulip girl had made, like

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some of the anticipation side of it was that in the process of doing the

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research and trying to figure out the details of how that trip should go.

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You learn more about the venue and the event that you're going to participate

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in.

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And that's what helps you build that anticipation.

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I think something like what you're talking about, I just need a hotel somewhere

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close.

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I just need a flight that gets me there within these parameters.

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Like doing the research on that isn't really building anticipation as much

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as it is frustration.

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Yeah.

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True.

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I mean, this was kind of like a anniversary birthday part two.

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Part one was max stock.

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So it is kind of like a reward fun trip sort of a thing.

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So, you know, I didn't, I don't want to stay at like the hotel that we're

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staying at is like a, a Marriott downtown.

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It's fairly decent, not a five star hotel or anything, but it's a nicer hotel.

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I probably wouldn't have picked that if Rachel hadn't been going with me.

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But I don't know.

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I could have said, go find me a nice hotel in San Francisco.

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Sessing over all of the options.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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And then, okay, so to wrap up this rabbit trail, all of those deal sites, they give

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you like the, you know, 40% off or whatever.

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And they change based on the time that you are looking at them.

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So as I'm doing all of this unnecessary research, I'm seeing the prices change.

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Some are getting more expensive.

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Some are getting cheaper.

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And so like as soon as I make a decision about, oh, this one seems like a good one.

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All of a sudden it's more expensive and then something else has like got a flash

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deal going on.

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So that obviously reinforces the fact that, hey, don't hit the big red button yet.

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Yeah.

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But anyways, that's just the first one.

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The second one use, how can I help you instead of how are you?

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I mentioned I was going to do this sparingly.

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I haven't done this at all.

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Feels kind of sleazy, especially as I started reading this book.

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Yeah, more to come on that, but yep.

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I do think I will still deploy this tactically.

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My last one was start learning a second language.

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I really didn't do a whole lot with this, but I did download Duolingo and I did go

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through a couple of lessons.

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And I do think that's the thing that's going to work for me.

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I still have trouble speaking Spanish.

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That's the language I'm going to start working on.

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But so far I haven't had to roll my R's.

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So I'm good.

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All right.

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Well, probably in the next time we record or maybe the following time, I will ask

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you to roll an R on air.

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Oh boy, not going to happen.

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All right.

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So what to keep up in the club.

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So we've mentioned this a couple of times.

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Tulip girl had mentioned some things on the Bookworm Club.

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And I just want to make a quick call out.

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Like that's where we spend most of our time when we're interacting with listeners

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of the show.

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Like that's where we do it.

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So club.bookworm.fm.

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If you're not a member there, join us.

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You can have conversations about the books and our action items.

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Kind of a fun little place to chat.

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Yep.

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Hey, I got to real quickly call out another piece of feedback that we got

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regarding the club.

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So let me find this.

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It was posted by T.

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Bombadil, which is an awesome username.

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I like that.

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Yeah.

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I'm not sure if it's a person's actually named Tom, but that would be amazing.

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They mentioned that on episode 68 and then episode 70, they listened to those

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episodes, basically back to back.

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OK.

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And they found it interesting that the smart notes book landed at 2.5, 3.5.

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Well, Michael Hyatt's book, "Fritifocus," landed at 4.5 and 4.0 respectively.

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And basically challenged us and said, "Fritifocus is kind of fluffy."

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And how to take smart notes, even though it's not written very well, there's a

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lot more meat there.

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And I think that there's some truth to that statement.

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I wanted to call this out because I went back and I looked at the scores and

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basically was like, well, did I rate this wrong or what influenced the rating

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that I gave it?

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And actually, my scores were pretty similar.

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Mine was the 3.5 and the 4.0.

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You were the 2.5 and the 4.5.

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So I'm the wild crazy one.

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You're the wild card here.

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But I do also think that maybe what attributed to this, at least for me, was

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the readability of the book.

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You know, we're rating this in terms of recommending this to other people.

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That's part of what goes into the equation, at least for me.

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But also kind of the point here was it seemed like the how to take smart notes

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really had a lasting impact while there was nothing new and free to focus.

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And while I would agree with the not a whole lot new in the free to focus part,

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I also wanted to check in on the how to take smart notes because I know at the

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time we were all like, oh, we got to build our Zetal castons.

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I pretty much have checked that out the window.

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I'm still using drafts to capture ideas.

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I'm using Ulysses to flesh them out, but this is totally not a Zetal cast.

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It's serving the same purpose for me, where I collect ideas and then I've got a

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place where I can develop them and publish them.

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But I just wanted to kind of push back, I guess, on the impression that we left

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after episode 68, where it's like, oh my gosh, this is transformational.

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Turns out really hasn't been super transformational for me.

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And I don't know about, but you maybe you want to weigh in on this.

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Maybe you don't, you know, but I wanted to just chime in on that.

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No, that's fine.

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I don't do the Zetal cast on it all anymore.

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Like that's it's a really cool idea.

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And I think if you are someone who wants to write a ton of nonfiction or

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exploratory, like do a lot of that type of work, I think it would make sense.

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But it's kind of a fun little side thing here and there, but I don't take or have

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the time to dedicate to doing something like that daily for a while I did.

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But it's kind of falling off like it just doesn't stick.

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It's a cool concept, but it kind of stays there.

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It is a cool concept.

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And I guess, you know, if I were to analyze the way I've implemented it, I've kind of

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80 20 to for my needs where I'm not doing the Zetal cast in, but I'm getting, in my

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opinion, the benefit of the Zetal cast and where I can see how things connect.

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And I never run out of stuff to write.

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That was really my goal.

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And I went through it was like, I just want to be able to sit down and know exactly

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what I'm going to write.

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And that has been the case.

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And I've also been pushed lately in that area where I do need to crank out more

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words and write more articles and it's going really well.

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So looking back on it, I still think that there was value for me in reading that book.

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And I'm happy with the results that I've gotten from it.

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But also I want to call out that, you know, we get excited in a particular

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episode about something we're going to try.

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It doesn't mean that it's going to stick forever.

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And that's okay.

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Number one, it's okay if it just completely disappears.

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But number two, the real value in all of this stuff is figuring out how it works for

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you and then applying it that way, not sticking to the system that they describe.

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So, you know, we talk about that a lot, but I wanted, because we just got this

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piece of feedback and it was really well written feedback.

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And I was glad to see it come through in the Bookworm Club.

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You know, I wanted to call it out and then also just reiterate the idea that, you

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know, you really don't know how this stuff is going to play out and impact you,

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which is why you just keep collecting new dots and trying new things and figuring

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out long term, you know, what's really going to stick.

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Thus bookworm.

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Woo hoo.

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Thus bookworm.

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And thus today's book, which is the second mountain, the quest for a moral life

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by David Brooks, right on the heels of Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week.

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Couldn't have planned that better.

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This, this is such a different book.

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We went through last time.

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Such a different book.

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So Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week.

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And by the way, I want to call out because we were I was, I'll just say it that way.

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I was a little harsh going through that.

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I didn't think I went completely off the rails like I thought maybe I would

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when we recorded it.

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But I definitely got some feedback from people saying that Tim Ferriss is really

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had a positive impact in my life.

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And I think that's awesome.

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I think that that is probably Tim Ferriss's goal and everybody else that we read.

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Like at some level, that is their goals.

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They want to, they want to make a difference.

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And that is completely fine.

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Tony Robbins, you know, another guy that not my cup of tea, but does a ton of good.

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I think when he wrote the money book, he mentioned that like he gave away 40,000

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Thanksgiving meals or something like that.

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I got the number wrong.

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I know, but it was a ridiculous number.

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And it really stood out to me when I when I started listening to that book on

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on Audible because it was so long.

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I was like, man, that's, that's really cool.

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You know, and he tells a story about how when he was a kids, somebody dropped off

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a Thanksgiving meal for his family when they couldn't afford one.

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And so that really stuck with him and he's still, you know, paying it forward.

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I think that's awesome.

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So nothing against Tim Ferriss, the person, but I didn't really obviously enjoy the

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the four hour work week.

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And you can go back and listen to that episode for all my thoughts on.

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On that, the big takeaway, if I were to encapsulate it was that I felt it was a

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little bit self serving.

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I use the term selfish, egocentric, whatever.

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David Brooks is on the complete opposite end of that.

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Yes.

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Uh, this whole, this whole idea in the second mountain is that people tend to

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take the Tim Ferriss approach and seek individual success, purpose, meaning

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whatever they climb that first mountain, they achieve their goals, they get to

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the summit, they look around and they're like, zis it.

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And then they see a second mountain and then they're like, Oh, that's the one I

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should have been climbing the entire time.

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Is that a fair synopsis?

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Yes.

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But the trick there is that you also have potentially a valley between those two

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mountains.

00:18:04

Yes.

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Exactly.

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There's, we'll definitely have to cover that.

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We've got a few points here to go over that.

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But that first mountain is all about achieving success and define success.

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However you like, it doesn't matter.

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So once you reach that peak, that's when to your point, you realize, well,

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okay, is that the point?

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No.

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And then you go through this valley.

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Not everyone does.

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He does call that out.

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It's like, not everyone's journey is the same.

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Some people start in the valley, climb the first and then just keep going onto the

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second.

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Some people do skip the first mountain and go straight to the second mountain.

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But that second mountain, I guess we'll get into some details about what it is,

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but it's basically what is the purpose behind your life and how do you go about

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achieving that?

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And it's always bigger than yourself.

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Exactly.

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It's always based on what could you can do for other people, which is where Tim Ferriss's

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book left off, which makes sense.

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Rode a while back.

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You were to interview Tim Ferriss today.

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Probably has a totally different mindset.

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Somebody also had mentioned, you know, when he was going, when he

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wrote that book, he had basically just been jilted by a girl that he thought he was

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going to marry.

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And then I totally can see where that would throw you for a loop and then you

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got to figure something out and, you know, where do I go from here?

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Sort of a thing.

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But again, we'll, we'll leave that in the past for now.

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Let's dive into the book itself.

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It's broken down into really two different sections, although there's five parts here.

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The first part is the two mountains.

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And then the second part talks about the four different areas, basically, that you

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would climb your second mountain.

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But those are broken down into their own individual parts.

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So thus we've got five different parts here in the outline.

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Let's dive into part one, which is the two mountains here.

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We kind of touched on this a little bit, but I wanted to find this first mountain

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using a term that he uses in this book, which is going to appear again and again.

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And that is hyper individualism.

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And he talks about how this is not a new problem.

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He uses an example, which I thought was interesting of the colonists when they

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came to North America, that the colonists occasionally would defect to native tribes,

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but the natives would seldom go the other way.

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The colonists thought that they had the superior civilization.

00:20:29

But really, he makes the point that people were voting with their feet the other way.

00:20:33

They would train the natives and then the natives would always go back because

00:20:38

those native cultures were communal and they had these close attachments and the

00:20:41

colonials just couldn't figure that out.

00:20:43

They thought they were superior.

00:20:44

That's basically what hyper individual individualism is.

00:20:48

You think that your life is superior to the people around you, which when I read

00:20:52

that, I'm like, yes, that is exactly the impression that I got from the Tim Ferriss book.

00:20:56

You described it way better than I did in an hour and a half.

00:20:59

Thanks a lot, David Brooks.

00:21:00

I feel like an idiot.

00:21:01

I do love that story though, because there's another aspect of it where there were

00:21:07

occasions when the natives would kidnap some of the colonists and the colonists

00:21:14

would then go about rescuing the those who had been kidnapped.

00:21:18

But whenever those who had been kidnapped were rescued, they would run and they

00:21:24

would run away and oftentimes would find themselves back with the natives because

00:21:31

they prefer that lifestyle once they had become familiar with it.

00:21:34

Yeah, really, really interesting.

00:21:37

And just kind of shows that we tend to have a bias towards our own way of life.

00:21:45

But I think there's a lot of value to consistently asking the question, is there

00:21:52

a better way?

00:21:53

Is there something out there that is at another level from what I currently know,

00:21:59

we tend to stick with what we currently know because it's comfortable.

00:22:02

But I don't know the whole idea behind the second mountain is really appealing to me.

00:22:09

And to be honest, a lot of this stuff that he talks about, these are questions

00:22:13

that I've been asking for a while.

00:22:14

David Brooks is just a much better writer than I am.

00:22:18

He's very, he's a really good writer.

00:22:22

We'll get into author's style when we get to the the rating at the end.

00:22:26

But this is a very, I won't say easy read because it is very meaty.

00:22:33

Actually, when I was reading this, it reminded me a lot of a class I had in

00:22:38

college where we had to read a CS Lewis book.

00:22:40

And then we would have discussions on it and we would have to write a one page paper,

00:22:45

which sounds super simple, except that you were basically forced with the

00:22:51

constraint of a one page paper to write a really, really good paper.

00:22:54

Get all of your thoughts out and articulate them well.

00:22:57

And it was actually one of the most difficult papers that I've ever had to write.

00:23:00

But it was taught by a professor who was probably friends with David Brooks,

00:23:04

just super, super smart and really just challenged everything.

00:23:11

It was very different.

00:23:13

I remember thinking when I was in that class that a lot of the classes that I was

00:23:19

in, the goal of the teacher would be just to get you to verbalize any random idea

00:23:27

that you had.

00:23:28

And if you threw something completely stupid out there, they would just reinforce it.

00:23:32

Oh, that's really interesting.

00:23:33

I never thought about it that way.

00:23:34

But this guy, like he wouldn't discourage you from doing that, but he would always

00:23:38

ask the follow up questions and you would always have to have some sort of thought

00:23:43

process behind the idea.

00:23:44

And whenever you could totally tell there are people in that class that like they

00:23:48

had never been challenged like that before, what do you mean?

00:23:50

I have to defend my beliefs.

00:23:52

Like this is, I've never had to do this before.

00:23:55

You know, just the fact that I had this idea that makes it valid, right?

00:23:57

No, no, you got to put more thought into it.

00:24:00

And so it was really interesting.

00:24:02

You know, he just thought on a whole new, a whole different level.

00:24:06

And he didn't do it in a way that was, was mean, but he would just ask questions.

00:24:13

And he would provoke you to think deeper about things.

00:24:18

You know, you couldn't just settle for the surface level of opinions in, in that

00:24:22

class. And that's, that's what, that's what this book reminded me of is like, when

00:24:27

we read that CS Lewis book, you had to read it over and over and over again to

00:24:32

catch really what he was saying.

00:24:34

And that's kind of the, the impression that I had with, with this book and to,

00:24:38

it's too long for me to have read it multiple times before we recorded it.

00:24:41

I barely got through it.

00:24:42

I finished it this morning, actually.

00:24:44

But it is so much meat here.

00:24:48

And he also brings in a lot of stuff from other people, which support his ideas.

00:24:55

And a lot of books have been written on, you know, like a one paragraph thing

00:24:59

that, that he mentions.

00:25:00

There's a lot here.

00:25:01

And if you just skim over it, you're going to miss a lot of the depth that's in

00:25:05

this book for sure.

00:25:07

I do want to come back to this hyper individualism concept because he does

00:25:13

give the history of where this comes from.

00:25:15

And I think that's kind of important to lay that foundation before we get into

00:25:19

the rest of this mic.

00:25:20

Yep.

00:25:20

Cause he, he goes into how from like the 1910s into like the 50s, I believe,

00:25:28

where because of the World Wars and a number of other factors, we had built a

00:25:34

society and a culture that was communal and was driven by looking out for each

00:25:43

other.

00:25:43

We're all in this together, that mentality.

00:25:45

And once we got past the Second World War, there was a bit of a, a start of a

00:25:53

rebellion against that in the 50s and 60s and came into a head in roughly the

00:25:59

70s.

00:26:00

But there was this rebellion against we're all in this, in this together and it

00:26:06

came through in the form of, I'm free to be myself.

00:26:10

So we ended up creating a culture that focuses inward more so than outward.

00:26:19

And he does go into quite a few results of that, one of which is what he calls

00:26:27

the Instagram life or the aesthetic life where we have a tendency to catch the

00:26:32

high points.

00:26:33

Look, we've, we've heard this before.

00:26:34

We've talked about this on the show before where people like to share the

00:26:38

best moments of their life.

00:26:39

Yep.

00:26:40

And it makes us look amazing.

00:26:42

You know, you got the fancy car, you got the fancy house, you got this, you got

00:26:46

that, you're doing this experience.

00:26:48

You're going here, you're going there.

00:26:49

But we only share those highlights as a way of showing off what we've accomplished.

00:26:55

This is one of the sub points I wrote down was centrality of accomplishment,

00:26:59

because this is something I feel like we see a lot of in that we put a lot of

00:27:03

emphasis on, especially with students, how they are driven towards succeeding in

00:27:11

sports or academics in school, you name it.

00:27:15

Even when we get into adulthood and in a career or a job, like that's, it's

00:27:20

something where we put a lot of emphasis on how well we achieve something.

00:27:25

You know, I even see this today in my own life, like I find myself kind of working

00:27:31

towards achievements that would make it look as if I'm successful.

00:27:37

And I always want to paint things in that way.

00:27:39

And I don't want to do that.

00:27:41

Like that's not my intent, but that's what everyone around me does.

00:27:45

Like everybody I wrote into is in that same mindset.

00:27:50

And it all comes from this hyper individualism mentality, which in our society is

00:27:57

driven by this individual accomplishment goal.

00:28:01

Yep, totally.

00:28:03

You know, if I had not pretty much completely given up Instagram already,

00:28:08

this chapter would have been enough for that to be an action item for me.

00:28:11

There you go.

00:28:12

Yeah.

00:28:14

Um, so I guess to, uh,

00:28:20

borrow all of the productivity terms, let's open up the kimono, take you back

00:28:25

stage, reveal the deep dark secrets here.

00:28:28

Mike is the insecure overachiever described in chapter three.

00:28:33

Actually, I should say when I read that I felt like this was me.

00:28:39

In fact, that was the note I put in my mind known file is I think this was me.

00:28:42

Exclamation point.

00:28:44

I feel like I'm on the road to recovery.

00:28:47

Focused has helped a lot with that.

00:28:48

Bookworm has helped a lot with that where it's kind of just challenging the

00:28:53

norms that are out there, you know, what people see because nobody really has all

00:28:59

this stuff figured out.

00:29:00

Nobody has it all together.

00:29:02

And I think that there is a lot of value.

00:29:06

And I hope that I'm guessing, but I believe that listeners of bookworm feel the

00:29:12

same way that it's refreshing to hear people who will share their honest

00:29:19

struggles about things.

00:29:20

Now there's obviously a fine line there because no one wants to hear you just

00:29:24

complain about all the stuff that you're going through.

00:29:27

But this whole idea of the insecure overachiever, this is focusing solely on

00:29:35

what you, what you were just talking about, the individual achievement.

00:29:40

They call it the meritocracy in that chapter on the insecure overachiever, where

00:29:45

the focus is on productivity, grit, self discipline instead of love, service and

00:29:49

care.

00:29:49

Community is a group of talented individuals competing with one another.

00:29:55

And the soul flattening influence is only survivable if you have your own

00:30:01

competing moral system or values.

00:30:04

When I read that, it kind of smacked me in the face.

00:30:08

It made me feel a little bit, what's the term I'm looking for here?

00:30:11

I want to be careful.

00:30:13

I didn't feel great maybe about some of the stuff that I have done in the past.

00:30:22

Um, I recognize that, you know, it's, it is a journey and part of the fact that

00:30:30

you put out stuff that is wrong in your eyes later on, like that's, that is part

00:30:36

of the journey and there's no way to escape that.

00:30:38

The only alternative is not to do anything.

00:30:39

And that's something that I dealt with for a long time.

00:30:42

You know, I've been delivered of that, I'll say, and I'm glad for that.

00:30:47

But there is always in the back of your head, like, I don't want to put out

00:30:50

something that's going to encourage somebody to do something the wrong way.

00:30:53

I don't want to build the wrong beliefs.

00:30:55

You know, I want to help people in a positive way.

00:30:56

And when you are climbing your second mountain, you look back at some of the

00:31:01

stuff you did in the first one, you're like, what an idiot.

00:31:05

Yeah.

00:31:06

You know, so I recognized myself in, uh, in some of that, the aesthetic life.

00:31:13

Going back to your main point, I feel like this is completely on display in most

00:31:17

of the, the productivity world.

00:31:18

I'm glad to see not just focused bookworm, you know, stuff like that, that I'm

00:31:24

involved with, but things like hurry slowly.

00:31:27

Jocelyn Keglai, um, make time, which we covered Jake Knapp-Johns-Aratsky.

00:31:33

Where they are explicitly saying, this is not a productivity book, you know, and

00:31:37

it really is, I would argue, but it's taking a different approach to things.

00:31:41

I feel like that's really healthy.

00:31:43

I'm hoping that that continues and that this, this wave, I don't know what even

00:31:49

what to call it.

00:31:50

It's not exclusively relationalism, like he's talking about at the end of this

00:31:54

book, but just people challenging the idea of hyper individualism, even if they

00:31:58

don't know what hyper individualism is, like, I can see this as a trend that's

00:32:02

happening and I hope that it continues.

00:32:04

Yeah, I agree with that for sure.

00:32:06

And I feel like you and I have been promoting that to some degree or another.

00:32:12

Uh, in most every book we come across, it might be a theme that we find ourselves

00:32:18

hunting for simply because, you know, we struggle with it in the productivity

00:32:25

space and in that world of self improvement, it seems like it's easy to

00:32:30

share and talk about the pinnacle of how things should operate.

00:32:35

And, you know, I can talk about how a journaling habit can help you be more

00:32:41

reflective and I can talk about all the tips and tricks on how to find the time

00:32:46

and develop the time to work on that particular habit.

00:32:51

Same thing with reading.

00:32:51

You know, we read tons of books.

00:32:53

I had a conversation with a guy at, uh, Max stock, Tony.

00:32:58

Hi, Tony, about the process of starting to read more books and how when you and

00:33:07

I started, we didn't read this many books.

00:33:10

Like this is not a case where Mike and I were reading a book a week and we're

00:33:14

like, Hey, you know what?

00:33:15

We do this all the time.

00:33:16

Maybe we should just start recording these.

00:33:17

Like, no, this is, that's so far from the truth.

00:33:20

Like I think I read three books in the two previous years leading up to bookworm.

00:33:26

Yeah, we did it because we wanted to change our, our default behavior to that

00:33:32

of one who reads books.

00:33:34

Exactly.

00:33:35

So with that in mind, like, you know, we made the commitment to starting to

00:33:42

build in this habit and, and make that commitment to reading books, because

00:33:47

it was something that we wanted to develop in ourselves.

00:33:50

So like, I just want to kind of quell that perception.

00:33:54

Cause a lot of people I've, I learned at max.dot got the perception that, you

00:33:58

know, we do this all the time.

00:34:00

I was like, well, we do now.

00:34:01

Three years in.

00:34:03

Yes, we do this now, but yeah, not then, not back when we started.

00:34:08

That's interesting.

00:34:09

I agree.

00:34:10

And I raises the question in my head, you know, we read atomic habits by James

00:34:14

Clear, which was a phenomenal book on, on habits.

00:34:18

And he talks in there about if you want to become a writer, you show up and you

00:34:25

write.

00:34:25

Okay.

00:34:26

So if you want to become a reader, you show up and you read.

00:34:29

That's what we did.

00:34:30

We said we want to become readers.

00:34:33

So we're going to read more.

00:34:34

At what point along the journey though, do you think we transitioned from

00:34:39

somebody who doesn't do this to somebody who does do this?

00:34:41

Oh gosh, I don't know.

00:34:42

After 10 bucks.

00:34:43

I don't know.

00:34:44

Six months in, you know, we're three years in.

00:34:48

It's kind of interesting because people join in now and they say, Oh, yeah,

00:34:52

you read a book every week.

00:34:53

But at what point did you feel okay, saying, yeah, I read a book every week or

00:34:58

every other week, you know, without the gap books?

00:35:00

Yeah, that's a good question.

00:35:02

I think you it's hard to nail that down.

00:35:04

But I think it has to be somewhere in the realm of when reading the books, like

00:35:10

you don't have to work at making it happen.

00:35:13

Sure.

00:35:14

And reading 25, 30 pages a day is just kind of normal.

00:35:18

Yep.

00:35:19

Wherever that happens, that's probably that point.

00:35:22

But is that a month in?

00:35:24

Is that 18 months in?

00:35:26

Where is that?

00:35:27

I don't know.

00:35:28

Yeah, exactly.

00:35:29

You can't look back and say this was the point where I became a reader.

00:35:33

Right.

00:35:33

Which is interesting to me because this is a journey.

00:35:37

We talk about how we're on this, this same journey.

00:35:40

Everybody else is.

00:35:42

And really, you don't know when you've arrived, although I would argue, maybe

00:35:46

you never actually arrive.

00:35:48

Or like, here's here's another way of coming at it with this particular

00:35:51

show is when would you call yourself a bookworm?

00:35:54

You know, right?

00:35:56

Everyone who listens to this, like my tendency is to think that everyone who

00:36:00

listens to this is a bookworm.

00:36:02

So hello fellow bookworms, but I'm a bookworm when I have my library with

00:36:05

the sliding ladder.

00:36:06

See, even you and I wouldn't as like, I, the show was called bookworm.

00:36:12

But I struggled to call myself a bookworm at the same time.

00:36:15

Aspiring bookworms.

00:36:16

There you go.

00:36:17

So, so welcome fellow aspiring bookworms.

00:36:21

There you go.

00:36:22

Yeah.

00:36:24

Well, that's a tangent that I really hadn't planned on.

00:36:27

I'm sorry to, but I think it's, it's really important.

00:36:31

This whole idea of the aesthetic life, this just kind of smacked me in the face.

00:36:35

And I think Instagram has always, not always.

00:36:40

Let me rephrase that.

00:36:41

Instagram, if you hear people talk about social media, at least in the tech circles

00:36:48

that we tend to pay attention to, you will hear a lot of people saying, Oh, Twitter

00:36:54

is a cesspool, Instagram is the good one.

00:36:56

That's where I hang out.

00:36:57

But when you describe Instagram as basically the tool for supporting the aesthetic life

00:37:05

and hyper individualism that is attached to it, it really kind of paints it in a

00:37:10

negative light, which I think is more fair and more accurate and I'm okay with it.

00:37:14

I just thought it was, I thought it was interesting.

00:37:17

An interesting observation is I was going through this.

00:37:19

And I will say that like that whole Instagram life and like kudos to you for being

00:37:26

honest about the insecure overachiever thing.

00:37:29

It's not easy to just come out and say, but all of that revolves around in the

00:37:34

scheme of first mountain valley, second mountain.

00:37:36

It once you become aware of it, that's where you're in that valley.

00:37:41

You know, there's more to that and there are other crises that can put you into

00:37:44

that valley when a massive issue causes you to stop and reflect on the things

00:37:51

that you do every day.

00:37:52

And it makes you wonder, like, am I doing the thing I should be doing?

00:37:55

Like that's when you're in the valley is when you're almost in a moment of

00:38:00

despair or are in despair.

00:38:02

I will say that like me personally, I feel like I'm slowly starting to come out

00:38:08

of that valley to start climbing the second mountain.

00:38:10

Yeah.

00:38:10

That's where I personally feel like I'm on, on this journey.

00:38:14

But he, he tells story after story after story about folks who were in the valley,

00:38:20

what their valley was and how they came up out of it.

00:38:22

And I compare, because I can't help myself, I compare their valley to mine.

00:38:27

And I think, well, maybe I just had a little dip.

00:38:29

Like, I don't know.

00:38:30

Like it doesn't seem that bad when I look at those.

00:38:33

Yeah.

00:38:34

No, that's, I'm.

00:38:36

That's true.

00:38:37

And the definition for being in the valley that he uses in the book is the

00:38:43

telos crisis.

00:38:45

It's defined by the fact that people in it typically don't know what their

00:38:50

purpose is when it happens, they become fragile.

00:38:53

This is also where he uses that quote from, I don't know, Hasey.

00:38:56

Nietzsche.

00:38:57

Nietzsche.

00:38:57

He who has a why to live for can endure anyhow.

00:39:00

Not something that people have, at least in the productivity space heard for a

00:39:05

long time because it's attached to the idea of, I'll just find your why.

00:39:08

Not so simple.

00:39:10

I developed a whole course on helping people do that, by the way, which I still

00:39:16

feel really good about that specific thing.

00:39:19

I do think that focusing on that question, like that's one of the things

00:39:22

that is on my second mountain, but I also don't want to rehash the whole thing.

00:39:28

But I did tell the story of how I got to where I am today and the things that I'm

00:39:37

doing and how it kind of came as a shock to me.

00:39:39

I'm not going to retell that, but I looking back on it as I'm reading this whole

00:39:44

section on the valley, I realized that that was kind of my valley where I was

00:39:50

working with a family business and then thought I found my thing and then my thing

00:39:55

was ripped out from under me.

00:39:56

And then it's like, okay, where it's my other thing.

00:39:59

Is there another piece?

00:40:02

Yeah.

00:40:02

Is there another thing?

00:40:03

Hopefully.

00:40:04

But the whole idea of going through the valley that he talks about in here,

00:40:13

there's nothing really intrinsically noble about the suffering, but going through

00:40:21

stuff, I would argue, having read this is a valuable experience.

00:40:27

It does kind of shift your perspective.

00:40:30

He says specifically that there are three things that suffering teaches us.

00:40:34

It teaches us gratitude.

00:40:35

It calls for a response.

00:40:37

So when you are suffering, you want to do something to alleviate it.

00:40:41

And then also it shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency.

00:40:44

So that is very true.

00:40:46

I can tell you that from personal experience.

00:40:48

If you think you are all of that and then all of a sudden your thing is gone and all

00:40:53

of a sudden it's not about you anymore, that will destroy your self-sufficiency.

00:40:56

That will make you think, oh, maybe you're not as great as you thought you were.

00:40:59

And to be honest, I never really tried to anyways, portray that.

00:41:06

I had it all figured out, but we're just talking about how that's kind of the general

00:41:11

tone of the productivity space.

00:41:12

And this book helps me realize really the big issue that I have with it, like why

00:41:18

it bothers me so much when I see that now.

00:41:21

And that's basically a part of it is I think it just kind of glosses over.

00:41:27

Maybe, you know, the people who are spewing that stuff, they haven't gone

00:41:33

through the valley yet, but it kind of it's dangerous, I think, because when you read

00:41:37

that sort of thing, it kind of diminishes the fact that the valley is there.

00:41:44

And I don't know, I guess, you know, looking back on my experience, didn't see the valley

00:41:50

coming.

00:41:51

Maybe I thought, you know, well, maybe some people have to go through the valley, but

00:41:55

I don't have to.

00:41:55

I'm just going to skip it because I know better.

00:41:59

No, not what happened.

00:42:00

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about what this second mountain is.

00:42:06

Um, before we jump into some of these other pieces, because we need to get into those.

00:42:10

This is the big one, by the way, I mean, yeah, when I was reading through this, I'm

00:42:15

like, half the show is going to be part one, half the show is going to be all the

00:42:17

other parts combined for sure.

00:42:19

So the easy way I think to compare and contrast this is with the four hour work week.

00:42:27

Perfect timing.

00:42:28

That's why we were seeing that earlier.

00:42:29

The four hour work week is the path and journey of hitting the peak of the first

00:42:35

mountain.

00:42:36

That's kind of the way I saw it, Mike.

00:42:37

Like that, that whole book was designed to help you get to the peak of the first

00:42:42

mountain.

00:42:42

But I think some of the issues that you and I took with it were that that whole

00:42:50

lifestyle is one that tends to be geared, at least the way Tim Ferris, but it was

00:42:55

geared around travel and such.

00:42:58

Obviously you can extract that from it.

00:43:00

He does call that out.

00:43:01

Um, but I think that once you hit that peak,

00:43:06

and you start to ask the question, is this all there is?

00:43:09

That's the point at which you can start to fall into that valley and wonder,

00:43:15

well, what was it all worth?

00:43:17

Now to Tim Ferris's credit, he does at the end say that whenever you're at these

00:43:23

trips and you're doing all the new rich things, like you have to focus on helping

00:43:28

other people as a part of that.

00:43:29

Um, it was kind of an afterthought it felt like, but anyway, yeah, I'm not going

00:43:35

to give Tim Ferris credit for that.

00:43:36

All right.

00:43:37

So you hit this valley.

00:43:39

We've talked about that.

00:43:40

Um, me personally, I had hit a point when I was having a lot of success in

00:43:45

corporate jobs and such and then ended up in a scenario where I was, uh, doing a

00:43:51

lot of web development and such and a lot of that has come crashing down on me.

00:43:55

Uh, a lot of that has to do with my own health that has just taken a nose dive

00:44:02

and has forced me into this valley and made me stop and rethink a lot.

00:44:08

This is one of the action items.

00:44:10

I don't have anything outline yet, but one of my action items is to this afternoon,

00:44:15

go have a conversation about a lot of this with my wife.

00:44:17

Cause there's a lot of these things that I'm because of this book, I'm just now

00:44:22

starting to be able to put words to I've been feeling them, but I didn't really

00:44:25

understand them well enough to relay them.

00:44:27

So kind of getting some fresh thoughts here on bookworm, but I'm going to be

00:44:31

sharing some of this with, um, my wife this afternoon as well on a much deeper

00:44:36

level and a more personal level of course, but hot takes.

00:44:40

I know, right?

00:44:41

What I'm, what I'm trying to do is understand what does this second mountain

00:44:46

look like?

00:44:46

Because the main thing he talks about is trying to determine where that

00:44:52

second mountain or which second mountain you're going to climb.

00:44:55

Cause there's a few different areas you can do this in or need to do this in.

00:45:00

And I'm trying to nail down exactly what that looks like for me, mostly from a,

00:45:07

a vocation point, which we'll get to right here.

00:45:10

And I have a process that I want to go through in order to understand what that

00:45:17

is for myself.

00:45:18

And I think I have at least the starting point for it.

00:45:20

That's, I'll explain it here in a little bit, but anything else you want to add to

00:45:25

that before we move on?

00:45:25

Yeah.

00:45:27

So the Tim Ferriss thing, um, the thing that really encapsulates the difference

00:45:34

of perspectives here, I think the best is in chapter eight, we're talking about

00:45:40

the second mountain.

00:45:41

And David Brooks says that second mountain people know why they have been

00:45:44

put on this earth.

00:45:46

And like you talked about earlier, it's also, it's not individual, uh, it's not

00:45:51

individual gain.

00:45:52

So there is a bigger purpose that involves other people and you know

00:45:55

exactly what that thing is.

00:45:57

And that's the piece that I felt was missing from the Tim Ferriss book.

00:46:01

That actually does not diminish the quality of the book itself.

00:46:08

Like I mentioned, I wrote stuff, made stuff when I was sending the first

00:46:12

mountain and I look back at it now and I'm like, man, young Mike Schmitz was a jerk.

00:46:17

Yeah.

00:46:19

Uh, maybe, maybe I was still a jerk.

00:46:21

I don't know.

00:46:22

I'm constantly trying to get better.

00:46:24

100% but I are all jerk completely.

00:46:26

Well, I don't want it like I said, I don't want to assume that I've arrived.

00:46:31

Like this is peak Mike right here.

00:46:32

Definitely not the case, but the whole idea of like second mountain people

00:46:39

know why they've been put on this earth.

00:46:40

That phrasing challenged me.

00:46:42

I created faith based productivity.

00:46:46

I have that cheat that I created with my life theme on it.

00:46:49

Like that's a big part of what I've been thinking about and brewing on for the

00:46:53

last, I don't know, say year or so.

00:46:55

Maybe longer than that, but I feel like even what I have currently isn't like

00:47:02

the final version of that.

00:47:04

I think that is the thing that I can, I can use to answer honestly, if someone

00:47:11

asked me, like, what is your purpose?

00:47:12

You know, I will rattle off that life theme and it's to help people answer the

00:47:17

question, why am I here by inspiring, encouraging and teaching them,

00:47:20

connected, they're calling, discover their destiny, live the life they were

00:47:22

created for.

00:47:23

A hundred percent believe that, but I also a hundred percent believe that

00:47:26

that's not going to be the thing five, 10, 15 years from now, it's going to be a

00:47:29

derivative of that.

00:47:30

And I don't know what path that's going to take.

00:47:33

One other thing here, which I think is an important difference between first

00:47:39

mountain and second mountain is the distinction between a commitment and a

00:47:43

contract.

00:47:44

So a contract, David Brooks defines as a transaction, whereas a commitment is a

00:47:50

relationship.

00:47:50

So right there, we're back to the idea being that productivity is really about

00:47:57

other people.

00:47:58

It's not about what you can accomplish hyper individualism.

00:48:02

Contracts are based on the benefits, how they can benefit you.

00:48:08

Commitment is about the transformation.

00:48:11

And really, I would argue the benefits that you can give the other person.

00:48:15

Ed Cole is another author that I really respect said it this way.

00:48:20

Love is the desire to benefit others at the expense of self.

00:48:24

And lust is the desire to benefit self at the expense of others.

00:48:29

And that's kind of the picture that I got here between a contract and a

00:48:34

commitment.

00:48:35

We'll get into the marriage stuff later, but the commitment being like, I'm in

00:48:39

this for better or for worse.

00:48:41

Contract would be, I'm in this until I don't want to be anymore.

00:48:45

No, I think that's a good way to look at it.

00:48:47

There's there's four mountains here that he says that we need to climb.

00:48:52

Four second mountains, four different areas that you need to climb a second

00:48:56

mountain within.

00:48:57

Vocation marriage, as Mike alluded to philosophy and faith and the fourth one

00:49:02

is community.

00:49:03

He loves philosophy and faith together into one.

00:49:05

Let's go into vocation first because he does call out the difference

00:49:11

between a career and a vocation.

00:49:13

So career is a path of jobs that you're going to go through in order to achieve

00:49:19

success in the first mountain.

00:49:21

Vocation is where you're starting to tap into your inner desires and your

00:49:28

inner ways of helping others.

00:49:31

That's when you start to climb that second mountain.

00:49:35

And yes, it might be called work, but it isn't for any other gain other than to

00:49:41

help someone else or for your own to fulfill your own passions, which need

00:49:47

to be others center, others focused.

00:49:50

Is that a fair summary, Mike?

00:49:52

Yes, definitely.

00:49:54

The whole idea in this section on vocation, because I feel like we've kind

00:50:01

of talked about that quite a bit already in terms of your vocation is bigger,

00:50:05

others focused, but there's an idea that's tied to this, which is the

00:50:08

Annunciation moment.

00:50:10

Do you remember this concept?

00:50:11

Yes.

00:50:12

Okay.

00:50:13

That's fine.

00:50:13

So the definition of an Annunciation moment is the moment where something

00:50:18

sparks an interest or cast a spell and arouses a desire that somehow

00:50:22

prefigured much of what comes after in life, both the delights and the challenges.

00:50:27

Typically happens when you're young as something enthrals you.

00:50:31

And I'm curious.

00:50:34

Do you have an Annunciation moment?

00:50:38

Uh, I think there's two actually one that happened to me when I was little

00:50:44

and another that I think I might be in the middle of right now, which is kind

00:50:48

of weird when I was little.

00:50:51

And when I say little, I think I was nine.

00:50:54

I had like a week long trip.

00:51:00

I don't know what it was.

00:51:01

It wasn't a camp.

00:51:02

It wasn't like a church camp or anything.

00:51:04

It was a week long trip of some sort.

00:51:07

And for the life of me, I've not been able to figure out what it was.

00:51:09

But at the end of that trip, I told my mother that I felt like I needed to go

00:51:16

into the ministry in some form and I had no idea what that meant.

00:51:20

I knew I did not want to be a pastor.

00:51:22

I knew I didn't want to be going to seminary or anything, but I wanted to go

00:51:26

into ministry somehow.

00:51:27

And a lot of years later, I'm now working full time at our church.

00:51:36

And whenever I told my mom that I was accepting a full time position at our church,

00:51:43

she's like, oh, yeah, I knew you would eventually do that.

00:51:45

Thanks, mom.

00:51:47

Thanks.

00:51:48

Love you.

00:51:49

So that's that was kind of the first.

00:51:52

I think I had a moment like that.

00:51:54

And I'm only just now starting to.

00:51:58

So maybe now is not the enunciation moment.

00:52:01

It's it's more about now I'm coming to the realization of what that is.

00:52:06

But I also know that like the way that that comes out in me, because I have

00:52:15

such a strong background in the tech space and, you know, we talk about this

00:52:19

whole being intentional and mindfulness thing.

00:52:24

It comes up a lot.

00:52:25

I'm definitely fascinated by a lot of it.

00:52:28

You call me analog Joe all the time.

00:52:31

Like it's it's a thing.

00:52:32

I do.

00:52:33

But I think that like the analog thing is is always a fascination to me.

00:52:39

Like people get on to me if I ever mentioned anything remotely about

00:52:43

listening to an audio book, because I'm big on the paper books.

00:52:46

I do a lot of things with physical objects in some degree versus the digital side.

00:52:55

So I've been having conversations about this with my wife and a few other folks

00:53:00

and a few of you have emailed me about this over time.

00:53:04

And then Mr.

00:53:05

Mike Schmitz texted me when was this three weeks ago, four weeks ago, he looked up

00:53:10

to find out.

00:53:11

I have no idea what possessed you to do this, but and I was kind of angry at you

00:53:15

for doing it at first, but I'm coming around to it.

00:53:17

But he hunted down and discovered that analog Joe.com was available.

00:53:24

You can't just leave that sitting there.

00:53:27

You have to acquire this.

00:53:29

So I made the purchase for analog Joe.com and have been trying to figure out what

00:53:35

that becomes.

00:53:36

And in the in the like the last week in having these conversations with a few

00:53:44

folks, because I played around with what to do with that domain.

00:53:47

Like do I set it up and just have like a list of all the gear I use in the analog

00:53:51

space, but that seems kind of weird to me.

00:53:53

I debated making it its own business of sorts.

00:53:57

And it has occurred to me that a lot of people are asking for a way to get

00:54:04

together, not about analog productivity necessarily.

00:54:07

Like that could definitely be a piece of it, but they're looking for a community

00:54:12

of sorts that's just analog period, whether it's analog music, analog, like

00:54:18

cooking methods, there's like ways of interpreting analog coffee making versus

00:54:23

like all the digital ways of doing it.

00:54:26

That might be the thing that gets me in there.

00:54:28

I know, I know, right?

00:54:29

Because you use that whole robot thing to yours.

00:54:31

So these these conversations have come up with me quite a bit.

00:54:36

And I think I'd like to do something about it, because this is something that

00:54:41

I feel very strongly about because I I know that a lot of people struggle with

00:54:48

being intentional because all of these digital tools and digital devices and

00:54:53

the screens everywhere, it gets to be a lot.

00:54:56

And there's a large number of people that are looking for ways to get off of it.

00:55:03

Now it's a bit weird to think about building a digital community to help

00:55:07

you get off of digital.

00:55:08

I get that juxtaposition going on there, but it's something that I'm going to

00:55:16

give a try.

00:55:17

And oddly enough, my wife is interested in this.

00:55:21

I finally found something that she's interested in participating.

00:55:26

I know it's crazy.

00:55:27

So she she is considering how her role and this is going to play out.

00:55:34

But right now I have no idea what this actually means per se, but the goal

00:55:41

is to take analog Joe dot com and build a community that is geared towards

00:55:47

stepping away from digital devices and how do you engage the real world

00:55:52

in this space of digital abundance that we live in.

00:55:58

That's the concept because I've had a very strong passion towards that.

00:56:01

And I think that combining that in different avenues between what I do at the

00:56:06

church and what I do on my own, like they're they're kind of coming into

00:56:10

a conjunction where they're going to collide.

00:56:12

Now I'm still keeping some of them separate depending on how you come at them.

00:56:17

But for me as a whole person, like they do have a tendency to to overlap.

00:56:21

But that's what I'm shooting towards.

00:56:23

So I think this all started because of you, Mike.

00:56:26

So thanks for that.

00:56:28

But reading the second.

00:56:30

The world is to my house.

00:56:31

But but reading the second mountain, like I don't know how many times I was

00:56:38

reading through, especially this vocation section.

00:56:41

I was like, yes, yes, yes.

00:56:44

And I have all kinds of like these little one sentence phrases that I've written

00:56:48

down in my notebook about how this could come to a realization in my own life.

00:56:54

So thank you for picking this book and for sending me a domain.

00:56:58

I did not want to buy it originally.

00:57:00

So thank you, sir.

00:57:01

No problem.

00:57:04

You know, a lot of the stuff that you were just describing gets into some of the

00:57:08

stuff from chapter 12 with vampire problems, it's called.

00:57:12

Yes.

00:57:13

And I love that.

00:57:15

This whole chapter is weird.

00:57:16

The story at the beginning is basically that you are faced with the choice of

00:57:24

becoming a vampire or not.

00:57:25

And you don't know what you're going to be like.

00:57:27

If you get bit by the bat, whatever, it makes it sound like it's your choice, but

00:57:32

you don't know what the other side is going to look like.

00:57:34

That's really the point that he's making.

00:57:36

There's really nothing else about vampires in here, but yeah, I probably would have

00:57:40

phrased it a little bit different, but I understand what he's saying.

00:57:45

And there's there's a lot of value in this.

00:57:47

He talks about when you're choosing a vocation, don't discount interest.

00:57:51

And he says that knowledge is plentiful, but motivation is scarce.

00:57:55

So what you were talking about with the analog stuff, something that you're

00:57:59

passionate about, you know, there's a lot of people who maybe have written things

00:58:03

about the benefits of analog tools.

00:58:05

But really the thing that makes analog.

00:58:07

Dot com work is the fact that you are passionate about it and you're willing to

00:58:11

show up and build a community around it.

00:58:13

And, you know, we're talking about this now, like it's already happened.

00:58:17

Maybe.

00:58:18

So I guess pressure is on you now.

00:58:22

But yeah.

00:58:23

Yeah.

00:58:24

Well, by the time this releases, you'll be able to go there and sign up.

00:58:27

I'll put it that way.

00:58:28

OK.

00:58:29

OK, cool.

00:58:30

But I, you know, I wanted to call that out because as much as I

00:58:33

reel against the idea of passion and just doing what you love, there is

00:58:37

something to be said for that.

00:58:39

And I don't think it's actually too far off when you consider like the real

00:58:43

definition of passion, which is something that you're willing to to suffer.

00:58:46

Just come see about we've talked about that before.

00:58:48

We don't have to go there again.

00:58:50

But that's really what it comes down to is motivation is something that you are

00:58:55

willing to push through the obstacles that are going to appear.

00:58:58

You know, when you are setting this thing up, it's not going to go, even if

00:59:03

you set up a thousand websites, you're going to encounter some point of friction

00:59:05

along the way and motivation is going to be the thing that allows you to push

00:59:09

through and actually follow through with the thing.

00:59:11

So that's a really powerful idea.

00:59:15

And I like the way that he he frames it here.

00:59:18

You know, what am I motivated to do?

00:59:20

That's an important question to ask when you're trying to find out what your

00:59:25

second mountain is all about.

00:59:27

He also mentions that when you're in search of a vocation, say yes to

00:59:31

everything, there's these moments of obligation you calls them and you never

00:59:34

know where the next thing that you say yes to is going to lead.

00:59:37

I think that's maybe a little bit different than a lot of the traditional

00:59:41

advice that you would hear now and even that I would give people where the

00:59:46

default needs to become no, I don't think these are these are ideas that are

00:59:49

at odds with each other.

00:59:50

This is really speaking to 18 year old me, 22 year old me when you get out

00:59:56

of college, try some things, don't just automatically go into your career,

01:00:02

figure out some things.

01:00:04

And I feel like I've kind of done that later than maybe I should have in life.

01:00:08

I've talked about how I really enjoy public speaking, but that was never

01:00:12

something that I anticipated I would enjoy doing.

01:00:14

It took me recording some screencast and then recording some podcasts and

01:00:20

then being scared out of my skin to go to a toastmasters meeting, but doing it

01:00:25

anyways and realizing that, oh, hey, actually, I really enjoy this.

01:00:29

Yes, it freaks me out, but I feel very fulfilled when I'm doing it.

01:00:34

You know, just as an example of like the kind of path that you can't really

01:00:38

predict, he says it this way, think of yourself as a fish hoping to get caught.

01:00:44

And then when you feel those those tugs, like the one I just described

01:00:50

public speaking, then you ask a couple of follow up questions, you know, is it big

01:00:53

enough in my uniquely positioned to make this happen?

01:00:56

And am I truly passionate about this thing?

01:00:58

So I don't know.

01:01:00

I thought that was really valuable advice for somebody who is maybe

01:01:04

reconsidering their vocation.

01:01:06

I want to go back to the enunciation moment idea here for a minute because I

01:01:09

put you on the spot and you shared yours.

01:01:11

Yeah, but I also want to just real briefly share mine and then encourage

01:01:16

everybody who's listening to this to kind of identify theirs.

01:01:19

I won't tell the whole story because I have told it before, but really my

01:01:25

journey into this productivity space started for me when I was, uh, I had

01:01:32

gone through Bible college in our church because we had a satellite campus.

01:01:36

And I got my Bible college degree.

01:01:38

Basically I say for funsies, you know, my goal was not to become a pastor,

01:01:42

but I just wanted to learn more.

01:01:45

And so they had a way for me to do that.

01:01:49

And I was just eating it up and loved it.

01:01:51

So got my Bible college degree, then they asked me to teach a class on

01:01:56

personal management.

01:01:57

And as I was going through and studying the syllabus on personal

01:02:02

management, I was reading things like Matthew 25, the parable, the talents,

01:02:06

and really just got this revelation of how seriously I believe God takes

01:02:12

productivity and stewardship.

01:02:14

And, you know, I was looking around and I saw the problem in front of me,

01:02:18

like, man, people just don't get this.

01:02:20

They sit and they wait for things to happen, but I believe God's waiting

01:02:24

for you to do something so he can help you multiply the talent that he gave

01:02:27

you and can't be multiplied.

01:02:28

If you don't take action, you know, all that sort of stuff that led to me

01:02:33

writing my book, that led to me getting the job with Asian efficiency,

01:02:38

getting connected with everybody else that I do everything with, you know,

01:02:42

I met you through a, I met David Sparks, Sean Blanc, I believe through there, too, like

01:02:49

as much as I look back on the time there and I have mixed feelings about

01:02:56

how things went down at the end, there's no doubt that that was part of my journey

01:03:02

and I can look at it and I could be grateful for the things that have come

01:03:05

from it, the relationships, essentially, that have come from it.

01:03:07

To David Brooks' point, this is all about relationships.

01:03:11

It's not about the things.

01:03:12

I don't look back and be like, man, I'm really glad that I built that course

01:03:17

or I did this thing.

01:03:18

Right.

01:03:18

You know, it's like, for sure, I met these awesome people who I get to

01:03:21

continue the conversation with.

01:03:23

That's the valuable thing.

01:03:26

And so, you know, just to wrap this up with the enunciation moment, I would

01:03:30

challenge everybody to kind of think about what's yours.

01:03:32

And maybe you have an enunciation moment, but you haven't viewed it as an

01:03:38

enunciation moment and you're doing something that really isn't, you're

01:03:43

climbing a mountain, but it's not your true second mountain.

01:03:45

I think there would be a lot of value in identifying that and course

01:03:49

correcting as soon as possible.

01:03:50

If that is you, it doesn't mean you have to just all of a sudden make a leap

01:03:53

either, you know, you can start to move in the right direction.

01:03:57

You don't have to drastically change your life.

01:03:59

Maybe you can't.

01:04:00

Maybe you're like me, you're married.

01:04:01

You got five kids at home, like you're not just going to walk away from a job

01:04:05

and say, I'm going to be an artist, you know?

01:04:06

Right.

01:04:08

Yeah, it really did.

01:04:08

Yeah, but you do want to recognize, you know, where where this is all, all

01:04:14

heading and it's kind of funny because you get yourself around the right

01:04:17

people who can, who know you and they can kind of see your life's trajectory.

01:04:22

And they can help point you in the right direction.

01:04:25

You know, it's kind of funny that you'd mentioned the story about your mom

01:04:28

like, Hey, I'm full time at church and I knew you're going to do that.

01:04:31

Like, well, why didn't you tell me?

01:04:32

It can save me five, 10 years, you know?

01:04:36

Okay.

01:04:37

Well, it's because you didn't ask and you didn't want to know.

01:04:39

And I've been in the same position.

01:04:41

It's not a knock on you, but well, and my character hadn't been built to the point

01:04:45

exactly that I was ready for that.

01:04:47

And I hadn't been through the experiences that were necessary to enable me to do

01:04:51

that, do a good job in this role.

01:04:52

So yep, but if you're younger and you're climbing the hyper individualism first

01:04:57

mountain, let me tell you, you can save yourself some heartache and some time.

01:05:02

If you open yourself up to the idea that maybe other people are right more than

01:05:06

you are.

01:05:07

One one side note on this vocation section.

01:05:12

He calls out Victor Frankel.

01:05:14

Yep.

01:05:15

And man search for meaning and tells Frankel's story.

01:05:20

If you if you don't know what we're talking about, go listen to that episode.

01:05:25

We we did that book, Victor Frankel, man search for meaning.

01:05:27

And he then comes back to Frankel throughout the rest of the book.

01:05:32

After this point, it just made me happy.

01:05:34

I was like, okay, that's that that's probably a pretty good mark on the positive

01:05:39

side of the columns for this one.

01:05:42

Bring up Frankel and talk highly of him.

01:05:44

I knew Victor Frankel was going to be mentioned at some point.

01:05:47

I just didn't know where it was.

01:05:48

Yeah.

01:05:49

So part three is when we get into marriage and the concept of maximal marriages.

01:05:56

How would you summarize this, Mike?

01:05:58

Uh, how would I summarize this?

01:06:01

Um, well, I forget which episode it was.

01:06:05

Maybe it was the last one when I was talking about relationships and.

01:06:12

How for me, basically, there were no other options because I am committed to my wife.

01:06:21

And I felt a little bit clumsy making that argument, but I knew.

01:06:29

I knew I was resolved in my spirit and I knew, you know, what I believed about it,

01:06:34

but I just felt like the way that I was describing it, if you didn't understand

01:06:38

already where I was coming from, it sounded a little bit weird.

01:06:41

And reading this section, I was like, man, I wish I could just go delete that

01:06:47

full argument from the internet and do it again.

01:06:51

Because he talks about how marriage is a decades long commitment in, in his, his

01:07:00

words, passion peaks among the young, but marriage is the thing that peaks in old

01:07:05

age.

01:07:06

And when you get married, you have no idea what changes you're going to go through

01:07:13

or what the other person is going to go through, but you're committed to the

01:07:18

relationship, and so you're willing to figure that out as you go.

01:07:23

The whole idea of like the contract versus the commitment that we mentioned

01:07:27

earlier, this is where I feel like that is really exemplified.

01:07:33

A maximal marriage is really one that stands the test of time and not just the

01:07:40

fact that you don't get divorced, but you completely remove yourself from that

01:07:48

culture of individualism, which in David Brooks's words undermines the maximal

01:07:53

definition of marriage.

01:07:56

So marriage is constantly dragging yourself away from the goals of self, your

01:08:02

heart yearns diffuse with others, he says, which can only be done through joint

01:08:05

surrender, not joint autonomy.

01:08:07

And he uses a quote by Mike Mason, we must return to an attitude of total

01:08:12

abandonment.

01:08:13

And if I were to describe my view on my marriage, it is that phrase specifically

01:08:19

totally abandoning all of the other options for the rest of my life and being

01:08:24

completely okay with that, which I, you know, as we talk about hyper

01:08:29

individualism and the focus on the self and I define less versus love earlier

01:08:33

and just focusing on like what's in it for me, you will never get to that point.

01:08:39

It's a, I recognize a very different way of looking at things.

01:08:44

But this is kind of what he says is how great marriages are measured.

01:08:50

It's not about your victories.

01:08:53

It's about taking joy in your spouse's victories.

01:08:56

He mentions on page 143, people talk about settling down, but in fact, marriage

01:09:00

is a hopeful revolution to people undertake together without any real idea

01:09:04

of what's on the other side.

01:09:05

Yeah.

01:09:06

You know, for your marriage to work, you've got to know that you're

01:09:09

spouse ball enough to love her in the way that will bring out her, her

01:09:13

loveliness.

01:09:13

You know, you can't, it's not about, it's not about you.

01:09:16

I guess if I were to summarize this whole chapter, that's that would be it.

01:09:19

It's not about you.

01:09:20

Sure.

01:09:20

No, I think that's a great way to look at it.

01:09:23

You know, my wife and I have been through a lot of ups and downs and with my health

01:09:28

problems of late, it of course turns up the heat and forces you to have

01:09:33

conversations that are not fun.

01:09:35

And we've been through a lot of that and reading this section, like, you know,

01:09:40

one of the things I think, you know, we need to work on is being more focused

01:09:43

on the others needs.

01:09:44

We do a pretty good job of that.

01:09:46

I'm not saying that this is a huge flaw.

01:09:49

We've talked about this quite a bit in our marriage, but maximal marriage is.

01:09:54

He does mention a number of ways that this comes to fruition.

01:09:59

And one of those is by seeing and noticing the nuances of how that other

01:10:05

person lives and likes to live and being willing to help them in that process.

01:10:12

It's definitely a long-term relationship and it's a commitment to interdependence.

01:10:17

And so much of what we see in a lot of the books that we've read for bookworm

01:10:24

is how to become better as you as an individual.

01:10:27

Yeah.

01:10:28

And in a lot of cases, it's how do you, when marriage is brought up, which isn't

01:10:33

a lot, but it does come up when it's brought up, it seems like there's this

01:10:38

error of, you know, taking care of your side of that marriage, which I'm not

01:10:44

saying is bad, but I also don't know that we've really caught that in the past.

01:10:49

And I would guess that if we went back and reread a lot of those sections,

01:10:52

that we would notice it more now.

01:10:53

Yeah.

01:10:54

Because having this view of interdependence and like we are here to work as one

01:11:00

isn't something that's talked about a lot, but you're making a commitment to do

01:11:05

things together instead of individually, which and not even not even the

01:11:10

interdependence where we're going to work as one, but the, I would, I would say

01:11:15

taking it a step further, the belief that we have to figure out how to make this

01:11:20

work because there's no going back.

01:11:22

Correct.

01:11:23

You're fully 100% all on board with, we have to figure out how to work together

01:11:28

in order to achieve a common goal.

01:11:33

And this is partly why I'm saying I want to have a lot of this conversation

01:11:38

with my wife, obviously on a deeper level.

01:11:42

I love you, Mike, but, you know, I want to have that conversation with her as well,

01:11:49

because this is something that we're going to have to go on a journey for

01:11:52

together.

01:11:53

So that's, that's something that we're that I'm planning to initiate this

01:11:59

afternoon, because this is something we are never done with, but you were always

01:12:03

on that journey of achieving.

01:12:05

Yep.

01:12:06

Exactly.

01:12:07

And then the thing that makes it work, David Brooks argues, is the fact that you

01:12:15

burn the bridges or burn the boats, so to speak.

01:12:17

He says that marriage is a sort of thing that is safer to go all in.

01:12:21

It's dangerous to go and have hearted.

01:12:23

So that's the part that I know is going to be radical to a lot of people.

01:12:27

Is this idea that like, wow, you really are all in for the rest of your life?

01:12:34

Yes, absolutely.

01:12:35

I am.

01:12:36

And that's not to discount that people will get into bad relationships.

01:12:42

And, you know, if you're, if you're significant, other is, is abusive, I would

01:12:47

argue like you want to get out of that.

01:12:49

But for the most part, it's, it is a commitment and it's up to you then to make

01:12:56

it work.

01:12:57

And the way that you make it work is not by thinking about yourself.

01:13:01

He mentions later on that divorce doesn't happen when conflicts increase.

01:13:05

It happens when positive things decrease.

01:13:08

And if you're focused on yourself and what you are getting, it's impossible for

01:13:14

the person to read your mind and they're probably just as selfish as you are.

01:13:19

So they're not going to give you everything that you want.

01:13:21

And when you don't get what you want, you will stew and brew and be negative.

01:13:25

If you are focused on the other person and you're constantly asking the question,

01:13:31

how can I bring surprise, joy, delight, show love, then you're going to create a

01:13:37

lot of positive things.

01:13:38

And so it's easy for me to see how people can get stuck in either a negative or a

01:13:44

positive cycle.

01:13:45

I want to break every negative cycle that ever happens because it will happen.

01:13:51

You know, it's not all puppies and rainbows all the time.

01:13:53

Newsflash for anybody who's not married.

01:13:56

The person isn't as perfect as you think they are and you're not as perfect as you

01:14:01

or they think you are.

01:14:02

But recognizing that that stuff is happening and making the shift back over to

01:14:09

the positive, that's kind of my goal.

01:14:12

My big takeaway from this is to, as he puts it, overwhelm the negative by increasing

01:14:16

the positive as much as I can.

01:14:18

So part four, philosophy and faith, he goes deep into Christianity and his

01:14:28

religious backgrounds in this section.

01:14:30

I think we can skip the majority of that because, yeah, it's basically his story.

01:14:35

But he does, he does talk a little bit at the beginning about something that he

01:14:40

saw happen in American universities from like the 1950s until now, where he says

01:14:46

that they used to believe in this humanistic idea, which is the teleological

01:14:50

purpose to help students answer the ultimate questions in life, kind of

01:14:53

teaching to the whole person.

01:14:54

And over time, they drop that humanistic ideal.

01:14:56

They embrace the research ideal, draws your focus away from the whole of our lives

01:15:00

and requires you focus on some small aspect instead.

01:15:03

I thought that was kind of interesting and he's an academic.

01:15:07

So his perspective as he recognizes this is kind of interesting to see

01:15:11

like the journey that he went through from a Marxist to a Jew to a Christian

01:15:15

to a Jew to, you know, all over the place.

01:15:17

You know, by the end of the story, you're really not even sure where exactly.

01:15:20

Yeah, I'm still not sure where he lands.

01:15:22

Yeah.

01:15:23

It's one of the longest sections in the book.

01:15:25

And most of it is his personal journey, which is interesting, but probably not

01:15:29

for bookworm listeners.

01:15:30

No, which like I enjoyed it.

01:15:34

I'm sure you did as well.

01:15:35

It's a fascinating journey.

01:15:37

If I have one complaint with the book, like that's probably going to be it.

01:15:41

Like that was probably a bit long, but I still found it interesting.

01:15:44

But that's because it fits exactly what I'm fascinated by.

01:15:47

So there you go.

01:15:48

Yep.

01:15:49

Actually, you know, it's not an outline, but one thing that was interesting

01:15:52

about this section in the last chapter in the section 22, Ramps and Walls, he

01:15:56

talks about the siege mentality, which is us against them.

01:15:59

And he talks about how this is the approach that a lot of Christians have.

01:16:04

This part really resonated with me, not because I think I embrace the siege

01:16:08

mentality, but you can totally see it from other people.

01:16:11

Like most, most people who are not Christians, they think of Christians and

01:16:14

they think of like the Westboro Baptist, the people who are like.

01:16:17

Yelling at people all the time, telling them they're going to hell, that sort of

01:16:21

thing.

01:16:21

And that's really very counterproductive, even if you think that that is your,

01:16:26

your mission is to proselytize people that way.

01:16:29

But he talks about how these different things that people typically do can

01:16:34

construct walls, things like bad listening, invasive care, you know, giving

01:16:38

help when people haven't asked for it.

01:16:40

Right.

01:16:41

Intellectual mediocrity was another one.

01:16:44

And then there's other things that are ramps, which make it easy for people to

01:16:48

embrace, I'll just say spirituality.

01:16:51

I think that's kind of how he'd find it in the book.

01:16:52

It's not a specific religion, but things like rituals, unabashed faith, prayer,

01:16:57

spiritual consciousness, language of good and evil, things like that.

01:17:02

I thought that part was, was really interesting.

01:17:04

And then there's one other idea here from this section.

01:17:09

Trying to find it now.

01:17:13

It also comes up in the community section, which we'll talk about next, but

01:17:17

this whole idea of down and out, basically, where you, you focus first on

01:17:27

yourself and then outward to other people.

01:17:31

And it's not, you know, using the tactics of building walls, but the

01:17:35

tactics that would build ramps, showing people that you care, not invasive care.

01:17:42

But I'm trying to think of a good example of this to kind of explain what

01:17:48

I'm talking about.

01:17:49

My church recently, we did a thing we called a block party.

01:17:54

So there's an area in our town, which is not, you know, small town.

01:18:00

Definitely don't have the extreme poverty like bigger cities do.

01:18:05

But there's an area which is government housing and the people who live there.

01:18:09

You know, it's not real great.

01:18:11

In fact, one of the buildings just got condemned that people were living.

01:18:14

So we show up and we have this block party in like this big open area.

01:18:19

And we set up human foods ball.

01:18:21

We've got like an inflatable obstacle course.

01:18:24

We've got like a hundred people from our church that are there.

01:18:26

There's music.

01:18:27

We give away stuff like a, we give away a gas card for people, a bus card, bikes,

01:18:33

scooters and things for kids.

01:18:34

We cook up all this food and we just give it all away.

01:18:37

It's completely free.

01:18:38

And like everybody from these apartments like comes and hangs out and obviously

01:18:42

they're like, well, why, why are you doing this?

01:18:44

You know, well, we just want to tell you God loves you.

01:18:47

You know, you, you're valuable.

01:18:48

And that's different than busting down the door and saying, Hey, get to

01:18:53

church.

01:18:54

Yeah.

01:18:56

You know, and that's, that's where the invasive care idea comes in as opposed

01:19:00

to like, we're just going to show up and we're going to do this thing for you.

01:19:04

If you want it, you know, you can obviously stay inside and decline the free meal.

01:19:08

There's plenty of people who do that.

01:19:09

But, um, you know, that's, that's the kind of thing that, uh, is going to be,

01:19:15

could be more beneficial for everybody involved.

01:19:18

That's kind of my, my goal.

01:19:21

You know, as I'm reading this, the section, I obviously have my own belief system.

01:19:27

You know, the reason why you, you do things and ultimately it is a second

01:19:31

mountain goal and that is to help other people, uh, but not just so that you

01:19:36

can check off the box and say there I did what I was supposed to do.

01:19:39

It's genuinely caring about the people and wanting to see their situation

01:19:43

improve and not using, well, I know better as the ultimate Trump card in order

01:19:49

to see that.

01:19:49

Right.

01:19:49

Right.

01:19:51

And I think that's what this whole section really comes down to is that you're

01:19:55

going to climb the second mountain.

01:19:56

Faith is going to have, uh, a role to play in that to some degree, even if you

01:20:05

claim to be an atheist, you're still dedicating faith in something, even if it

01:20:11

is just money and power.

01:20:12

I think that's definitely something you can put your faith in.

01:20:15

You'll always think you need more, but, you know, that's your choice.

01:20:20

So I do find this as an interesting section, but I'm not sure what else to

01:20:26

talk about with it.

01:20:27

So that said, let's go into part five community.

01:20:31

This is where this is some of what instigated my interest in, uh, this whole

01:20:39

intentional life community of sorts, which side note, I'm not building on

01:20:45

discourse, by the way, ooh, uh, I know that'll throw a wrench in things for

01:20:49

people.

01:20:50

Um, so, but this whole section on community is building relationships, really.

01:20:56

And so much of this book is that in a nutshell is building relationships and

01:21:02

being intentional with sharing life together and finding the way of doing that.

01:21:11

That helps you to truly feel like you are helping improve the world on a small

01:21:18

scale or a large scale.

01:21:20

Doesn't matter.

01:21:20

It depends on you.

01:21:22

Yep.

01:21:22

But this is something that I think all of us need to do, like of all the sections,

01:21:27

like, to me, the vocation section is incredibly important.

01:21:31

If you're married, the marriage section is super important.

01:21:35

The philosophy and faith piece, I would say is, is vital.

01:21:38

But the community piece, I think, is like the most down to earth.

01:21:42

Absolutely.

01:21:44

Everyone, no matter where you're at in this process, like you can jump

01:21:48

on board with this right away.

01:21:50

Yep.

01:21:50

Totally agree.

01:21:52

As I was reading through this, kind of when he was describing community, I was

01:21:57

thinking of like physical community, like where you live.

01:22:01

Right.

01:22:01

And I know that that is definitely one aspect of community, but I would argue

01:22:09

for me, it's not the primary one.

01:22:11

And the question that I had in the back of my head and kind of an action item

01:22:17

associated with this, though nothing super specific with this, the question

01:22:20

is basically, how can I build my communities?

01:22:23

Or basically, what can we build together as a community?

01:22:28

And when you look at something like the Bookworm Club, it's kind of cool to see

01:22:33

what that has evolved into.

01:22:36

But it's not something that you could have ever just done by yourself from scratch,

01:22:43

even if you had a vision for this is what this thing could be part of community

01:22:48

growth.

01:22:49

Kind of what I got from going through this anyways, is that it kind of has to be

01:22:54

organic.

01:22:55

It has to evolve over time.

01:22:57

You can kind of set it up to go the direction that you want.

01:23:01

He talks about how the community narrative has four different parts.

01:23:05

Framing, which is the context, the narrative or what's going on, the identity,

01:23:09

which is who we are.

01:23:10

And then the behavior, which are the actions that define us.

01:23:13

Like you can set the defaults for those, but then if you really want to build a

01:23:17

thriving community, you have to be willing to adapt those, I would argue,

01:23:21

which is kind of interesting and also kind of challenging.

01:23:28

So as I'm going through this, I'm kind of getting a different blueprint, I guess,

01:23:36

for how I am supposed to be interacting with my different

01:23:43

communities.

01:23:44

It has to be the key you mentioned a little bit earlier is the intentionality behind it.

01:23:50

You know, just the fact that you've got people gathered together doesn't mean

01:23:55

that there's a community connections have to be made.

01:23:58

So the question in the back of my head is kind of how do I facilitate that

01:24:04

connection making?

01:24:05

For sure.

01:24:06

Like it's a difficult thing.

01:24:08

Like I just finished reading The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

01:24:14

And that's a lot of what she talks about is how do you put together these events

01:24:20

or these, these gatherings that draw people in and have people continuing to talk

01:24:27

about them.

01:24:27

And so much of that plays into this because exactly what she's talking about is

01:24:31

building communities.

01:24:32

She never says that per se, but that's what she's referring to.

01:24:38

This is the same thing in that whenever you're putting together moments or events,

01:24:43

whether they're in person or they're online on something like the Bookworm Club

01:24:48

or on the new analog Joe thing, no matter where those are, the whole point

01:24:55

is to connect with other people in some form.

01:24:57

I have all kinds of visions of how that could happen in person.

01:25:02

I have thoughts on how you can do that online.

01:25:06

I think both have their place, but again, if you're intentional and you make a

01:25:11

decision about how you want that to happen, don't think about it in the way

01:25:18

that it needs to happen super long term, like making a 10 year plan.

01:25:22

Like I could see where you want to do that.

01:25:23

It's where like making the plan is everything, but having a plan is nothing

01:25:27

like that whole concept.

01:25:28

Like you're going to deviate from it.

01:25:31

But that whole mentality of like, let's decide what we're going to be

01:25:36

intentional about in this next interaction and then grow from there.

01:25:41

Like that, that to me is super important.

01:25:44

Yeah.

01:25:44

And just to clarify, I guess a little bit because in the code of the neighbor

01:25:49

section, he talks about this concept of having 30 year eyes where you do look

01:25:54

30 years into the picture or into the future, right?

01:25:56

Right.

01:25:56

About the thing that you're building, but that's different.

01:25:59

Like you're not interacting with the people around you in your community today

01:26:04

with the specific perspective of what can I get from you in 30 years?

01:26:09

Correct.

01:26:10

Yes.

01:26:11

That's that's the difference there.

01:26:13

And then the other thing that's kind of crazy about this, especially as people who

01:26:18

work in the productivity space and are huge tech nerds, is that relationships

01:26:23

don't scale.

01:26:23

Yeah.

01:26:25

There's no automation to this.

01:26:27

No, there's no technological way to make it more efficient.

01:26:30

Like you just got to put in the time, but obviously the whole just of the book is

01:26:35

that the relationships are the main thing.

01:26:37

People are the main thing and that it's worth it.

01:26:38

I like that.

01:26:39

Anything else you want to add to this before we wrap?

01:26:43

I don't think so.

01:26:45

I mean, I put in the outline, this idea of the central journey.

01:26:48

There's really not a whole lot to say about this.

01:26:50

I think we just kind of encapsulated this, but this is the term he uses for

01:26:53

making that move from self to service, where it's all about me to it's all about

01:26:59

other people.

01:26:59

And I like that term, essential journey.

01:27:02

So I'll probably use that going forward.

01:27:05

If you hear me drop that term, that's what it means.

01:27:07

No, I like that.

01:27:10

I like ending there.

01:27:11

So that said action items, Mike, what you got?

01:27:15

I have a couple of action questions, not action items.

01:27:22

So the first one, well, I'll mention the one that I mentioned already, which is

01:27:26

asking myself the question, how can I build my communities in a more effective

01:27:30

way, not more efficiently, more effective, so deep in the relationships that I have,

01:27:37

basically.

01:27:38

And then the other question that I want to ask myself comes from the first section,

01:27:46

I believe.

01:27:48

I can't remember if it's the vocation section or if it's the very first section

01:27:52

where he's talking about the two mountains.

01:27:54

But he talks about the concept of mentors a little bit and how mentors kind of

01:28:02

inspire you to push through things.

01:28:07

Let me see where I wrote that down.

01:28:09

Oh, yeah.

01:28:10

Chapter 11, what mentors do?

01:28:11

He makes a point that there's some things you can't learn in books and mentors teach

01:28:16

us what excellence looks like day to day.

01:28:18

They teach you how to embrace the struggle.

01:28:19

And I really liked that definition and it makes me ask the question, who do I

01:28:26

consider to be my mentors?

01:28:29

I don't think I have a formal mentor relationship.

01:28:32

I do have a couple of people specifically who I would argue they do have to be

01:28:37

older than you because there is value in the life experience that people have.

01:28:43

There's a couple of people in my life that I can think of specifically who

01:28:47

kind of serve that role for me.

01:28:49

I'm not sure if I've ever told them that they serve that role for me.

01:28:52

So one, obviously, is going to be my dad.

01:28:56

One is going to be David Sparks, my co-host over at Focused.

01:29:01

And one of them is going to be Mike Diamond, who is a guy in my Apple

01:29:05

to mastermind, who I've learned a lot from.

01:29:07

But I want to ask that question and think about who are the other people that I

01:29:13

have access to that could be mentors for me.

01:29:16

And it doesn't have to be something where like, OK, we're going to meet once a

01:29:19

week and I'm going to bring a notebook and you just say whatever you want.

01:29:22

But I think the value is in recognizing the people who have the potential to be

01:29:28

my mentors and then placing more emphasis, attention, importance on what

01:29:33

they have to say, if that makes sense.

01:29:35

It does.

01:29:36

It does.

01:29:37

I think that was in the whole mentors thing is in the vocation section.

01:29:41

Right.

01:29:42

And they're, oh, by the way, I'm an idiot.

01:29:44

One other one, I do have to call out because I do have like a regular

01:29:47

relationship, but I just described, you know, I do regular discipleship with my

01:29:50

pastor.

01:29:51

He's another person that I would definitely define as a mentor.

01:29:54

Um, I just am so used to it.

01:29:56

I guess that didn't, my brain didn't go there.

01:29:58

Nice.

01:30:01

Well, I've got two action items here.

01:30:02

One is, and I've mentioned this a few times, this talk with my wife.

01:30:05

Uh, I just want to work through some of this.

01:30:08

There may be more action items that come from that.

01:30:10

Hopefully not on a honeydew format, but, you know, here we go.

01:30:15

Uh, another one, this one just mentioned in passing.

01:30:17

They were referring to a certain area where there was a family and they got

01:30:22

around a table and then after they were done eating, they would go grab a piano

01:30:26

and play music and sing.

01:30:28

My wife and I've kind of wanted to do that for a long time of just starting to

01:30:33

get together with our girls and play a piano and, you know, play a record or

01:30:38

something and sing with it together.

01:30:40

Like that's something I've wanted to do for a long time.

01:30:43

I think it's about time we started doing it.

01:30:44

I'm going to do that tonight.

01:30:46

We're going to start this mic.

01:30:47

Awesome.

01:30:48

I love that one.

01:30:49

It'll be a fun one.

01:30:49

All right.

01:30:50

Style and rating hit me.

01:30:52

All right.

01:30:53

Uh, this is a very meaty book.

01:30:56

It's a very good book.

01:30:58

It's also kind of different.

01:31:00

Um, from a lot of the stuff that we read that I really, really enjoy.

01:31:05

Like I mentioned, I barely got this one done.

01:31:08

I've been reading this one actually for almost two weeks, but it's a kind of

01:31:12

thing where like I'll sit down to read it at night.

01:31:13

The chapters are short.

01:31:14

I'll read eight pages and then I just got to like come up for a breath and kind

01:31:18

of think about what I just read.

01:31:20

So very felt very different than a lot of the other books that, you know,

01:31:25

even crank through in a day or two.

01:31:27

And when I was considering author style and rating, I was thinking back to like

01:31:32

how I've read this book compared to some of those other ones, like mindset.

01:31:36

I really just devoured Victor Frankl, you know, his man search for meaning.

01:31:40

We mentioned a couple of those other ones make time that I just like, I

01:31:44

couldn't put it down.

01:31:45

This was definitely not one that I couldn't put down and it made me question

01:31:48

like, well, does that diminish the quality of the book?

01:31:51

And after talking through it, I think I've decided that no, it does not.

01:31:57

Uh, it's definitely not going to be for everybody.

01:32:00

There is also obviously a faith based component to this.

01:32:04

I wouldn't, I would say it's not.

01:32:07

It's pretty subtle, like he mentions it where it's appropriate, but it is

01:32:11

definitely not beating you over the head with it.

01:32:14

And you can definitely glean everything out of the book without subscribing to,

01:32:21

to his belief system, which you really don't even, like we mentioned, we really

01:32:25

don't even know exactly what it is because he's just kind of sharing his, his

01:32:29

experiences.

01:32:30

And I should say that I didn't really, like, it was quite a ways into it before

01:32:35

I fully connected that he was a Bible believing person in some form.

01:32:43

It took me like it was probably two thirds of the way through the book before

01:32:46

I even connected that.

01:32:47

Yeah.

01:32:48

So it's definitely not a religious book.

01:32:50

It's not a faith book.

01:32:52

It is, you know, the subtitle says it all the quest for a moral life.

01:32:56

It's a character building book.

01:32:58

Uh, it's kind of interesting to hear him talk about the lessons you learned

01:33:01

from the previous books that he had written.

01:33:04

You know, he's a New York Times best selling author.

01:33:05

He's a really, really good writer.

01:33:08

Sometimes it's a little bit detrimental because he's so smart that you kind of

01:33:13

have to stop and think about what you just read to really understand it.

01:33:17

You know, like, if you write online, there's tools that'll help you write

01:33:20

like a fifth grade reading level, like, uh, what's that?

01:33:23

Yoast SEO, I think is the plugin for WordPress, where I tell you, like your

01:33:27

readability is too high.

01:33:28

Well, if you struggle with that, then you're not going to like David Brooks for

01:33:33

sure, but, you know, if you don't mind something that is, uh, you know, a

01:33:39

little bit that requires you to chew on it a little bit, then this book is, is

01:33:44

phenomenal.

01:33:44

I'm really glad that I read it not just because he seems to like the same themes

01:33:48

that, that I like, I feel like reading this.

01:33:51

I learned a lot.

01:33:52

I gained a lot of insight.

01:33:54

I understood a lot of things in a different light.

01:33:56

You know, the light bulb went on a couple different times like, oh, that's

01:33:59

why I have an issue with this.

01:34:02

It's a long book for sure.

01:34:03

He cites a lot of other stuff from a lot of other people, which if I had one nitpick

01:34:08

with this book, I would say that that would be the thing.

01:34:12

You know, somebody told me one time that I have been in this space long enough

01:34:17

that I can synthesize these ideas and have my own spin to it and not have to give

01:34:21

people credit every single time I mentioned, you know, an idea.

01:34:25

Uh, and that's kind of what he does.

01:34:30

So and so says this and this book, they say that, you know, and that got a little

01:34:34

bit old for me because really what I wanted to know was what David Brooks was

01:34:37

saying.

01:34:37

You know, I get it.

01:34:38

There's a lot of value in how he pieces all of this stuff together, but it would

01:34:44

be a more interesting read, I think, if it was, you know, just him speaking and him

01:34:49

not trying to like download everything that he has learned in his entire life

01:34:53

into one volume, if that makes sense.

01:34:56

Uh, I'm going to write it at 4.5 stars just because it is a little bit difficult

01:35:01

to get through.

01:35:01

I can totally see a scenario where somebody hears us talking about this.

01:35:05

They go pick up the book, they start reading it and they just, they can't get

01:35:08

through it.

01:35:08

Yeah.

01:35:09

Uh, but I would encourage you to push past that if you can, because there is a lot

01:35:14

of great stuff in here.

01:35:15

I feel like the, the journey that he describes is something that is inevitable

01:35:20

for just about everyone.

01:35:21

And so if you're able to glean a little bit of wisdom before you get there, that

01:35:28

would definitely be a good thing.

01:35:29

You know, I mentioned, I feel like I've kind of gone through some of this stuff.

01:35:33

I probably have to go through it again at some point, but also in the back of my

01:35:36

head, I'm like, man, I wish I would have read this earlier.

01:35:37

I probably would have responded a little bit more appropriately when I had to go

01:35:44

through that stuff.

01:35:44

Sure.

01:35:45

And again, you know, you can't look back and say, well, that was a mistake or I

01:35:51

wish that wouldn't have happened.

01:35:52

It happened, learn what you can from it and try to do better next time.

01:35:55

So, but yeah, I really enjoyed this book.

01:35:58

Uh, I'm glad that I, that it was recommended to me.

01:36:01

I'm glad everybody in the book room, well voted for it.

01:36:03

I'm glad that I got to talk to you about it.

01:36:05

Well, I, I love this book.

01:36:09

I'm with you in saying that I wish I had finished reading this one much earlier.

01:36:15

I would have liked to have read this twice before we recorded it, but I love it.

01:36:20

I mean, it's a great book and there's a lot of stories to it.

01:36:23

I really liked that.

01:36:24

He's an extremely well read author, uh, which I always tend to appreciate.

01:36:30

To your point, this is not a third grade reading level.

01:36:34

This is definitely higher than that.

01:36:36

I definitely appreciate that though.

01:36:38

In, in my case, like I, it was kind of a breath of fresh air to some degree.

01:36:42

It's like, okay, you're not just going to spoon feed me everything.

01:36:45

You're going to make me actually process through this.

01:36:48

So this is not one.

01:36:50

Like I had a hard time putting it down.

01:36:51

I will say that, but it's not one that I found myself, uh, struggling to read.

01:36:58

But maybe that's because we've read so much at this point.

01:37:02

That could be the case.

01:37:03

Uh, it definitely got to me a little bit when he started getting into some

01:37:08

evicted or Frankles things in my head.

01:37:10

I was like, oh, he mentioned Frankle.

01:37:12

Mike's going to rate it a five.

01:37:13

Like that's what went through my head.

01:37:16

Definitely not necessarily true and definitely shouldn't hold up just by that.

01:37:22

Well, kids could be made for sure.

01:37:24

Yeah, because Victor Frankles has been brought up in other books that were not rated well.

01:37:29

So that, that can be a factor there.

01:37:33

I will join you at four point five, mostly because there's there.

01:37:39

I don't think it's for everybody per se, because it is a little bit more

01:37:43

difficult to read.

01:37:44

There are a couple sections.

01:37:45

I wish he had shortened and shouldn't have elaborated on.

01:37:48

I think there was some of it.

01:37:49

He just wanted to tell his story.

01:37:51

And although some of that is good, I think he overdid it and sure it took away

01:37:58

from what he was trying to say and lengthened a section that shouldn't have been.

01:38:02

Thus the book ended up a little bit longer than I felt it should have been.

01:38:05

But I really, really enjoyed this and it has prompted me to ask some hard

01:38:10

questions that not every book will ask or cause me to ask.

01:38:15

So I'll join you at four point five.

01:38:17

It's a great book.

01:38:18

I definitely recommend it.

01:38:19

Awesome.

01:38:20

So what do we read next?

01:38:22

Up next, getting results the agile way by J.D.

01:38:26

Meyer.

01:38:26

This one's been on my list for a while.

01:38:28

It's kind of a companion to GTD way back episode one, but has its own flair on things.

01:38:36

So I'm, I want to drag you along with me on this one, Mike.

01:38:40

All right.

01:38:40

The next book after that is not Sapiens.

01:38:44

Sorry, Josh.

01:38:45

Just because I feel like this book was was more than I thought it was going to be.

01:38:54

I need a little bit of a breather before we tackle that one.

01:38:57

But the next highest voted for book on the club is range.

01:39:03

Why Generals Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.

01:39:08

And this, I know nothing about this book other than what people shared in the book

01:39:13

or in club when they recommended it in the discussion that followed.

01:39:15

Sounds fascinating though.

01:39:17

And I'm very intrigued by this topic.

01:39:18

When we were at Mac stock, this was on one of the shelves there.

01:39:21

I kind of flipped through it.

01:39:22

I don't know if I handed it to you or not.

01:39:24

Hmm.

01:39:24

I should have bought it.

01:39:25

It looks like an interesting book.

01:39:27

So that's nice choice.

01:39:29

Well done, sir.

01:39:30

For a gap book, I have this one sitting on my shelf.

01:39:34

Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon.

01:39:36

I'm picking it up like this morning is when I first picked it up.

01:39:40

I don't really know what I'm expecting out of that, but it sounds like an interesting book.

01:39:45

All right.

01:39:46

My gap book was recommended to me by several different listeners.

01:39:52

And that is Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.

01:39:55

This is a guy who has gone through some stuff.

01:39:58

I don't know.

01:40:00

I haven't started this book yet, but I do know that from what I was told about it.

01:40:05

But anyways, that he's a Marine, I believe.

01:40:08

And when you join the Marines, you have to go through what they call Hell Week.

01:40:12

And the goal of Hell Week is to get you to quit.

01:40:15

The majority of people I believe do or something like 40% do.

01:40:19

He had to go through it three times.

01:40:21

So this will be this will be an interesting one about resilience, I believe, and

01:40:28

and grit to borrow Angela Duckworth's term.

01:40:31

And it sounds interesting.

01:40:33

Yeah.

01:40:34

I don't think, you know, this is primarily a story, I believe.

01:40:37

I'm not sure that this, there's a whole lot of necessarily like straight out advice in this, but

01:40:43

that's okay.

01:40:44

It's a gap book.

01:40:45

And if you want to join the club and recommend your own books, you can do that

01:40:50

over at club.bookworm.fm.

01:40:53

Lots of cool conversations happening over there.

01:40:56

Lots of cool people hanging out there.

01:40:57

So go join the club.

01:40:59

Yeah, we've really enjoyed the club.

01:41:01

It's been kind of fun.

01:41:02

And, you know, I don't know how many times we've mentioned it on this show, not intentionally.

01:41:05

It's just kind of come up quite a bit, whether it's premium members or on the free side.

01:41:11

It's just a, it's a fun place to have conversations about these books.

01:41:14

There's even conversations going on about some of the gap book recommendations that are coming out now.

01:41:19

So it's kind of fun.

01:41:20

So thanks for joining the club.

01:41:22

If you're there, if you haven't, join us over on club.bookworm.fm.

01:41:26

And that said, let's pick up Getting Results the Adjaw Way by J.D.

01:41:30

Meyer.

01:41:30

We'll go through it next time.