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8: The Power Of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
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I'm back from the wilderness.
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Where did you go?
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I saw some pictures between you and your wife.
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You were posting pictures and I couldn't figure out where you guys went.
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Which is probably a good thing.
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Yeah, our sole goal was to be unfindable by Joe Buellig and friends.
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Awesome.
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Well, you did good.
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No, we went to Manaco, Wisconsin.
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So I'm not sure if you've heard of Manaco, it's a little island town in Northern Wisconsin,
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which is, it's a little touristy town.
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But it's a cool little place.
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And it's really nice in the summer.
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So my parents rented a place on the lake and we went up there for the week.
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And I would go into town in the morning to work a little bit on some Asian efficiency stuff.
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I had a coffee shop, other than that.
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Did not have a cell signal, did not have Wi-Fi.
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So I was able to disconnect and get actually a lot of reading done.
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I read two and a half books while we were up.
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Whoa, nice.
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So what were the books?
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Well, I finished the one we're going to talk about today.
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Okay.
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Powerful engagement by Jim Lear and Tony Schwartz.
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Also read Born For This by Chris Gillabro.
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I think that's how you say his name.
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Gillabro?
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And then I...
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Is that what you're trying to say?
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Yes.
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Okay.
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So I threw an extra R in there, I guess.
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Guirbo.
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Okay.
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Got it?
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And then I started the...
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I think it's The Blessed Life by Robert Morris.
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Okay.
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Nice.
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Wow.
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So a reading vacation.
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Yeah.
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Turns out when you don't have any internet connection and you can't check any social media
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accounts and no one can get a hold of you to interrupt you, you can get a lot of reading
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done.
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Oh, I bet.
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I bet.
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So here's...
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I'm going to go through this follow up piece because there's one of these questions I really
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want to know.
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So we were talking last time about how...
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So last time it was deep work and we were talking about scheduling your day.
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I want to know Mike, how did the digital calendar thing work out?
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Did you do it?
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Did it work?
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I did.
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Obviously last week I was gone.
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So I didn't really have much use for it last week.
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True.
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But I did do it this week and I like it so far.
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It doesn't really provide very rigid constraints.
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Like I think most people think of digital calendars.
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I don't have alarms turned on at all.
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So it's not telling me, you know, in five minutes you have to be here working on this.
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But I do find it helpful to the night before create all of those blocks on my calendar
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and plan out how I'm going to go about my day.
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And I've found that by sticking to hour long blocks at least.
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So really I try to keep the breaks on the hour.
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Sometimes I'll have to compromise that and do them at 30 minute intervals.
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But I don't stack like a bunch of 30 minute time blocks together.
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I try to keep like big chunks on my calendar that I'll set aside time to work on something.
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I'll work on it knowing that I have the time and space to work on it.
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And a lot of times I'll get done a little bit early.
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And that gives me a little bit of a chance to relax and do something else or start on
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the next task, whatever I want to do.
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But it provides more framework and direction I think for my day.
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And I think it's helping me get more done just by making me think through this stuff
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that really the night before.
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That's the key in my opinion.
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So whenever you, I'm still going to get my head around how you can do this because it
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doesn't work for me.
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I really want this to work for me.
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How do you have your calendar open all day?
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Like whenever you're going through your regular day, do you keep a digital calendar like up
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on your Mac the whole time?
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Is that what you're doing?
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Well, I do have a fantastic account in my menu bar.
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But I don't really work off of that.
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Like I'm not constantly checking that.
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By looking at it the night before and filling out the big blocks of time.
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I know pretty much what my day is going to look like without having to consult the calendar.
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But one thing I've done is on my iOS devices, so my phone in particular, I've hidden every
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other calendar except the one that I created for this, which I've called a Canvas calendar.
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And so when I do check my phone, that is the only thing that I see.
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And then I also use that Canvas calendar whenever people want to schedule additional,
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they want to meet for coffee or they want to record a podcast, whatever.
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That's the calendar that I'm basing my availability off of.
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Okay.
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So that makes sense.
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But I'm really jealous, Mike.
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I want a digital thing to work, but it doesn't.
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Because I still have to do mine on paper.
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I've just got a notebook that I have to write it all down in.
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And I do mine.
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I think I'm like you.
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I do mine the night before.
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And then whenever I get up in the morning, I'm looking at it while I'm grabbing breakfast
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for the first time in the morning.
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So anyway, that's something I'm very jealous of.
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So I'm glad it's working for you.
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Okay.
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So I have to ask you, said breakfast for the first time.
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How many breakfast do you eat?
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Depending on the day, it's typically...
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You a hobbit?
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Do you eat 11sies?
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Yeah.
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I see.
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Mm.
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It's first...
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I get up at five in the morning.
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The lately I've been getting about four.
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I'm not sure if that's such a smart idea.
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Especially after this book.
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I'm going to get really cool for that one.
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But I've been getting up at four because I've been working on that Omni Focus course.
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And I really want it done.
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So I've been getting up an hour early to do that.
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Anyway, whenever I get up, whether it's four or five, one of those two, I go downstairs
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and I grab breakfast then, which is usually two eggs and a banana.
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I'm...
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Creature habit.
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I eat the exact same thing every single morning.
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And then I go to work until roughly eight o'clock when the girls start to get up for
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the day.
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And once they're up for the day, I go up and grab breakfast with them again.
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And then I go back to work somewhere around nine and then somewhere mid-morning...
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Well, at that point, late morning, I get hungry and I go upstairs and I grab something.
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And it's usually around 11.
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So maybe...
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I might be a Hobbit.
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Yes, suppose I'm...
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You have Hobbit tendencies.
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Yes, I would say I have Hobbit tendencies, of course.
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And it's interesting and we'll get into this a little later, but the whole...
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Because I've kind of set up my day like that.
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Not intentionally, it's just kind of morphed into that just because I know I've just been
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paying attention to when I get tired and when I feel like I can't keep going anymore.
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And once I've gotten to a point where I know I just can't go anymore, I take a break in
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some form or another.
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And it just kind of happens to put me in these oscillations of go work your tail off, take
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a break, go work your tail off, go take a break.
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Like I just kind of go through that cycle throughout my day, which is just because I
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get tired and I'm lazy, Mike.
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I think it actually is you've been implementing this managing your energy stuff that Jim
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Leer and Tony Schwartz have been talking about without even realizing it.
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That's a nice segue there.
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Well done.
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Yeah, before we actually jump into the book though, you want to talk about your follow
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up stuff?
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Oh, right.
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Yeah.
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I think we'd discussion site over the social media and then also the email update.
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Yeah.
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So let me go with the discussion site first.
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So I started, I created a new category on that thing for links because that was the one
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thing I was missing with that whole forum is a way to share links that I think are interesting.
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And that's been going pretty well.
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There's a couple of people that have been responding to that, which is about identical
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to what I saw on Twitter anyway.
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So it's not really any different, even though there's fewer people following me there.
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So yes, so I've been focusing on the discussion site more than Twitter and that's gone.
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I think really, really well, it hasn't really changed anything, which is probably saying
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something since it takes much less time to do my activities on the discussion site than
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it does on Twitter.
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So there's probably something to be said of that.
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The other one was email.
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And I think I mentioned that I changed my contact form or put in a contact form and did
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some things there.
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Mike, my email went from about 300 in a day down to about 40.
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Nice.
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I can handle 40.
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I can do 40 quick because I was used to 300.
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So doing 40.
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Holy cow.
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That's significant progress.
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Yeah, no kidding.
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And oddly enough, because I don't know if it's because of or as a result of, but I've had
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a lot more leads on building websites lately and they've been coming via phone calls instead
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of emails.
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I don't know if that's good or bad, but I've had more business pick up at the same time.
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Feels like it's related in some form, but I'm not real sure.
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It's interesting at least.
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So long story short email, I think I'm in a really good place now.
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Cool.
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I think I'm going to say, I think.
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Okay.
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So we keep alluding to it.
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What book did we go through?
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The powerful engagement and why did you pick this, Mike?
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I honestly just picked it because it's been one of those books that I think everybody
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except me in the productivity space has read over the course of the last several years.
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And I was kind of ashamed of it.
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So I'm like, "Hey, let's read it for bookworm."
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Well, as a good example of that, up until probably about three months before we started
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this podcast, I really didn't read much at all, if ever, as far as books go.
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So even in my limited state and not ever really reading books, this was still a book that I
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read.
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So you're finally caught up like.
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Thanks.
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Not to rub salt in your wounds there, but.
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Yeah.
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So he starts off, well, I suppose I shouldn't say he, they, I wish they would spell out who
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did most of the writing and who was writing each individual piece.
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That's the thing I always struggle with whenever they're co-authored is who wrote what part?
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I always want to know because I want to know who to blame for certain quotes.
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True.
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Sometimes you got one guy's name that's bigger on the front, but there's no visual cues.
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Right.
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This one has nothing.
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But I love that they start the whole book off.
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And the premise of the book is that managing energy, what's the byline?
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Managing energy, not time is the key to high performance and personal renewal.
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And I think there's some value in that.
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We'll get into a lot of this, I'm sure.
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But to make his point, make their point, man, I'm going to do that this whole episode.
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I know I am.
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Like to make their point, they tell the story of Roger B and they have a ton of stories
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through this whole book, which is awesome because it really helps cement and help you
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to understand the concepts that they're getting at.
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But he tells a story about this guy by the name of Roger B and how he feels overworked.
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He's tired, stressed, has no time for family.
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Just overall miserable guy.
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I know, because this is a reread for me as I was talking about earlier, but the first
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time and this time, both, whenever I go through that story, it does two things.
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One, it makes me really excited to read the rest of the book.
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And two, it reminds me an awful lot of my corporate days, Mike.
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It just sounds an awful lot like not necessarily me than what I was doing and how I was living,
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but a lot of the executives that I worked under and for.
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Yeah, it definitely reminded me of a lot of their lifestyles, just in general.
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So it kind of hit home for me.
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Yeah, the story of Roger B is, they started off and they say, "We're going to tell you
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a story about this guy and we're going to tell you about all the improvements that he
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made at the end."
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And if that was the only story that they used, that I think, at least for me, may have been
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a little bit more effective, but they used so many stories throughout this book that
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it was kind of like, "Oh boy, here's another one."
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I lost count.
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There's got to be at least 30 different stories.
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I mean, it makes sense.
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Another one of Jim Lear's books is The Power of Story.
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Well, yeah, that makes sense.
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Because there's what?
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11 chapters.
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The last one's all about Roger, though.
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So probably 10 chapters.
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I know they go through at least three.
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Some are between three to five stories per chapter, so it might be over 30.
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Yeah, that part got a little bit repetitive for me personally.
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I know some people really connect with those stories and I did for a couple of them, but
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towards the end, I was like, "Okay, yeah, I get it.
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You're telling me another story."
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And a lot of them even sound, I'm sure they're real because they've done the research behind
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this and they've got the corporate training university or whatever they call it, where
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people actually go through this program, but they almost sound like they're made up, don't
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they?
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Oh, yeah, because they're using a first name and then they always use a letter for the
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last name.
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Yeah.
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I don't know if it's the real name and they just didn't give you the last, but I've got
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George D and I've got Roger B and I've got...
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I just found those just from flipping it open.
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That tells you how many stories are in this thing.
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Peter D.
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I mean, they just have tons of these and they're kind of generic names and then a single letter.
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So there's times I'm like, "Okay, is this the same person?
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Is this a different one?
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Are you going back to an old one?
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I'm with you."
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It just seemed like there was a ton of stories and they're easy to get confused.
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And honestly, a lot of the principles between the stories were fairly similar.
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Exactly.
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It was pretty easy to get lost in them.
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It's like you read one at the beginning of a chapter and then they talk about the principal
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who likes that person and they tell another story and then they continue on telling the
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principal and then they tell another story and at that point you're just like, "Okay,
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I get it."
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Are we done yet?
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A lot of examples of how this works.
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But I mean, yeah, it's not necessarily bad.
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It just got a little bit repetitive for me, but all of the stories that they tell, they
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kind of illustrate the four basic principles that they cover in here and Roger B is probably
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the most...
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It's the one they go deepest in.
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They tell his story.
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They use more pages, I guess, devoted to Roger B.
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But really even the way that they tell the stories, it doesn't even seem like it's really
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deeper.
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The way that they bring more details to it, at least when I read that story, it didn't
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really seem like they were fleshing out this character where I felt like I knew him more.
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It was just more like, "Oh, now he's doing this sort of a thing."
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I think it could have been a lot more powerful if we were able to really dissect the life
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of Roger B.
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Not just, "Here's exactly what happened to him," and he went from point A to point B.
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Now his life is a whole lot better.
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But anyways, the four principles that he really hit home through all of these stories, and
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specifically the life of Roger B are that...
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I'll just go through these real quickly because I wrote them down.
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Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy.
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I thought this was a really cool point.
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Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
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We can come back to that in a little bit, but the spiritual one in particular, that really
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hit home with me and it was kind of like a naha moment like, "Hey, that makes sense."
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Number two was because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and underuse.
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We have to balance our energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
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You can't just keep going, you have to recharge.
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Number three, to build capacity, we have to push beyond our normal limits, training in
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the same systematic way that elite athletes do, which is kind of along the lines of deep
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work where we talked about how this is a skill that you can develop and it gets easier to
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click in and do deep work and establish flow and all that.
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And then the fourth one, the positive energy rituals, highly specific routines for managing
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energy are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.
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I thought that one in particular was really cool and I like that that's the emphasis at
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the end of the book.
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I mean, kind of jumping all around here, but we already mentioned Roger B at the beginning.
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At the end, they kind of talk about what Roger B was doing to establish these rituals.
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And I think that's a really important key where if you just read the book, you can miss
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that one if you're not careful, but because I guess my perspective and working with Asian
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efficiency where we've got a product based on rituals, like I understand the science
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behind this, I understand why those are so important, how those are really your body's
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efficiency mechanism.
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Like if you really want energy management to stick, you can't skip that last part.
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And there I think could be a tendency to look at this and say, oh yeah, I get the first
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three principles.
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I understand the areas.
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I understand that it diminishes.
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I understand I need to increase my capacity.
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And then if all you did was try to formulate a plan from there, you're going to make it
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a lot harder than if you actually apply the fourth principle, which is the positive energy
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rituals.
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I think there's, because you go through these and now that you've said those principles
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out loud, I'm reflecting on those as compared to the four levels that he called out.
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Did we mention those?
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Did you just mention those?
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I'm losing my mind here, Mike.
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Yeah, the first principle, I don't know that they were, I don't know if I qualified them
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as levels, but there were four different areas, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
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Is that what you're talking about?
00:18:45
Yeah.
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And I know why I think of it as levels, Mike.
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It's honest.
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Well, it's Asian efficiency.
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They have a, they have an article, I'm going to hunt this down for the show notes.
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They have an article about this book somewhere.
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I know you didn't write it.
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And they have a pyramid, there's a picture of a pyramid in there and they spell out the,
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because I know physicals on the bottom, physical, emotional, mental and then spiritual.
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So they build on top of each other in the pyramid on Asian efficiency.
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I haven't, I don't think I saw that in this book at all, but I remember seeing it on, so
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I think tan is the one that put that together.
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And ultimately what that was showing me is you got to get your physical side figured out
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first.
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And then you can go to mental and then spiritual, you kind of build from the bottom up.
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I know we talk about this a little bit with GTD where in theory you should start at your
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life mission and your life goals.
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And these guys are kind of saying the same thing with the spiritual side.
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If you got to figure out what your core values are, you need to figure out what your weaknesses
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are, what's your, what's your mission, what are you shooting for?
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And then you use that to craft these rituals and the goals that you're shooting for and
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your positive energy habits.
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And I think there's a lot of value in that, but I also think there's a little bit of a
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danger in going all high and mighty, if you will, of what am I supposed to be doing?
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What's the best case scenario?
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How do I do all of this and getting to a point where you're just focused to high level and
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not so much in the day to day?
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How do I actually get the energy to keep going in the afternoon?
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A lot of people struggle with trying to keep moving right after the lunch.
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There's kind of that little period that we all deal with.
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And I think the Spaniards have that figured out with the siesta.
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Come on, bring it back.
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I think there's a lot of that that has some traditional and historical value, but we don't
00:20:48
see that in today's world.
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And I think that's, I think these guys would say that there's a lot of value in maintaining
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that even as a culture.
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But we really don't do that anymore.
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If you were corporate and you went over and you took a nap in the early afternoon and
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they'd make fun of you, you might lose your job.
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There's just a lot of negatives that can come with that.
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True.
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They did share in there that Winston Churchill was a napper though.
00:21:14
So if you shared that, maybe that would help your case.
00:21:17
Wasn't Teddy Roosevelt an app or two?
00:21:19
There was some other president that was not other president, but a president, I remember
00:21:25
that was doing that.
00:21:26
Churchill wasn't a president.
00:21:29
Yeah, gotta get your fans.
00:21:32
I don't remember who it was, but there's a lot of really successful people who actually
00:21:35
do take naps in the middle of the day.
00:21:39
Going back to your point though about the different levels, they didn't explicitly have
00:21:43
that diagram, but I have seen those diagrams.
00:21:46
And I shouldn't say they didn't explicitly have it because I just don't remember seeing
00:21:49
it.
00:21:50
I did write down though a quote which they said, the quantity of energy that we have
00:21:56
to spend at any given moment is a reflection of our physical energy.
00:21:59
Our motivation to spend what we have is largely a spiritual issue.
00:22:03
So the spiritual level of energy really is all about finding your why and that kind of
00:22:09
drives everything else.
00:22:12
So I think you could articulate that or frame that as different levels and that's going
00:22:19
to be, you know, that if you headed a pyramid and that's at the top really, or what you're
00:22:24
saying is that you're working down, you know, that's going to really permeate through all
00:22:29
the different levels below it until what you actually do on the surface your day to day,
00:22:36
your work, your tasks that you do, how you manage your time, that is going to be, that's
00:22:44
going to originate, that motion is going to originate from the spiritual level.
00:22:48
Okay, so I found it.
00:22:50
If you have your book in front of you, page 201, it's in the resources section number
00:22:55
24.
00:22:56
I'm going to get specific here.
00:22:59
Number 24 on page 201, there's that pyramid and it's exactly what I was thinking of.
00:23:04
So physical, emotional, mental and spiritual from the bottom up and then next to it, they
00:23:08
have an arrow pointing down and in the arrow it says change, which I think is what you're
00:23:13
saying is if you want to really make change to what you do to stay fit.
00:23:19
If you're going to start going to the gym and you're going to start running or lifting
00:23:23
weights or whatever it is you decide to do, if you're going to make that decision and
00:23:26
do it, you have to have some core value that you connect with on an internal deep level
00:23:35
that's not some external factor, like you're not turning look good for your wife, you're
00:23:38
not like that doesn't always work.
00:23:41
It can temporarily, but it doesn't work long term.
00:23:43
But if you have something internal of value that you hold that can drive that change,
00:23:49
that's where those rituals come from.
00:23:51
Is that what you're getting at?
00:23:53
Yep, exactly.
00:23:54
Although, I don't necessarily think it just applies to change.
00:23:58
I think it really applies to any sort of action that you take in your life with the exception
00:24:05
of the rituals.
00:24:06
Obviously, like I said, that's your body's efficiency mechanism.
00:24:09
So it's easy to just once you've creased that into your psyche, that is just something
00:24:15
that you do, it becomes a lot easier.
00:24:17
You don't have to reference that why all the time.
00:24:21
But if you're in the middle of doing hard work, if you're doing deep work, that why is
00:24:26
really important because if you don't keep going back to the drawing board, if you don't
00:24:31
keep consulting your goals or your vision, if you don't write it down in a place where
00:24:34
you can actually see it, then it's easy to lose momentum and then just give up.
00:24:39
I mean, you see that every January when people are like, "I'm going to join the gym.
00:24:43
I'm going to get in shape."
00:24:44
And then by January 31st, 9/10 of them are gone.
00:24:47
Yeah.
00:24:48
It's because they don't have, like you said, strong enough.
00:24:51
Why?
00:24:52
Though sometimes you can take advantage of that because I know not, well, I think it
00:24:57
was three years ago, three years ago.
00:25:00
I was looking to get into cycling.
00:25:03
So I have a road bike and I go cycling occasionally whenever the girls, I've got a little trailer
00:25:09
that I can pull behind the bike.
00:25:11
So I'll take the road bike out and go for a spin occasionally.
00:25:16
And I've been looking to do a lot more of that.
00:25:18
So I have been grabbing my bike and doing that a little bit more lately.
00:25:22
And I told my wife, "Okay, I'd like to upgrade my bike and get something a little nicer, but
00:25:28
I'm just not ready to do it this summer.
00:25:30
I might do something over the winter."
00:25:33
And just in the midst of that conversation, it struck me as like, "Oh, right.
00:25:37
The best time to buy bikes because I have a friend who likes to buy these types of,
00:25:42
like these higher end road bikes.
00:25:43
He likes to buy them, fix them up and then resell them."
00:25:46
And he has found that the best time to buy them is about the first week of February because
00:25:53
people buy them around New Year's and then they realize that they're not going to stick
00:25:57
with it so they go to sell them somewhere in February.
00:26:01
So, okay, you can take advantage of that too.
00:26:04
Let's talk about the energy quadrant because that was one of the things that I really liked
00:26:08
about this.
00:26:09
This made so much sense to me.
00:26:13
And it was kind of illuminating, I guess, to see how I would typically naturally manage
00:26:22
my energy according to this quadrant.
00:26:24
So the quadrant is really two axes, X and Y with a center point and then you've got
00:26:33
the upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right.
00:26:36
And so if you were going on the Y axis, so the top would be high and the bottom would
00:26:43
be low and then on the right side, so right of the zero zero point would be positive and
00:26:48
left of that would be negative.
00:26:50
Now what they said in here is that the key to full engagement is to manage the ebbs and
00:26:58
flows of your energy between the high and the low instead of bouncing all over the place
00:27:06
from positive to negative.
00:27:08
I personally think that I tend to bounce back and forth between positive and negative but
00:27:16
still the high part of this quadrant.
00:27:22
And what they're suggesting and this makes so much sense to me is instead of going back
00:27:27
and forth, in my case, on the X axis, maybe we can find an image here that we can put
00:27:32
in the show notes so people can reference this.
00:27:35
But instead of bouncing back and forth on the X axis between the positive and negative,
00:27:39
stay in the positive, but bounce back and forth on the Y axis.
00:27:42
So you've got those high intensity positive experiences and then by being proactive and
00:27:51
being intentional and choosing to come down off of that euphoric high and manage your
00:27:56
energy in a way where you can be more relaxed, you can be more mellow, it's more peaceful
00:28:02
or tranquil.
00:28:04
You're able to allow your body to recover and ramp up for that next period of high intensity
00:28:11
that you don't have to drift over into the negative.
00:28:15
I think this is what I was talking about at the beginning with kind of my daily routine
00:28:19
and how I do things because when I get up in the morning, I have kind of a relaxing,
00:28:24
you know, get myself ready and go for the day, grab a shower, grab breakfast and I don't
00:28:29
rush through that.
00:28:30
I just kind of take my time going through it.
00:28:32
And then once I've done that, I go into my work mode and after reading deep work, I've
00:28:37
kind of just treated that as a deep work session.
00:28:41
So I don't check email.
00:28:42
I don't deal with anything up until second breakfast rolls around.
00:28:47
But I go through one of those deep work sessions leading up to breakfast and that's roughly
00:28:53
two to two and a half hours kind of depending on the day and what time I get up in the morning.
00:28:57
But once I've gotten through that and I go up for breakfast, it's always fun because I
00:29:01
get to go see my girls.
00:29:02
They're always excited in the morning.
00:29:04
We run around the house.
00:29:05
We have fun.
00:29:06
Make breakfast.
00:29:07
We've got an hour to do.
00:29:08
Breakfast is probably longer than necessary, but we have fun while we're doing it.
00:29:12
And then I can go back to work for a few hours, do another deep work session until lunch,
00:29:17
take another 30 minutes to an hour for lunch, do the same thing.
00:29:20
And you get this.
00:29:21
I mean, it's a cycle throughout the day and it's kind of the same process where you go
00:29:26
through a really intense process of doing your work and spending a lot of energy and
00:29:33
then you go do something that's refreshing and fun and re-energizing and then it gives
00:29:37
you the boost to get back into it.
00:29:40
And that's, I'm going to kind of summarize the whole book here.
00:29:44
To me, whenever I finish this book, and again, this is the second time I'm through it, so
00:29:49
for me, I've known about some of this oscillation process and this burn energy, build energy
00:29:56
process for a while.
00:29:58
And I can't say that I've been awesome at it.
00:30:00
We talked about how we sometimes have these grandiose plans and these awesome action
00:30:05
items that we're going to take and they tend to fall off.
00:30:09
Well, this is a prime example of that because I came off of this book, I think it was a
00:30:13
year and a half, two years ago when I read it.
00:30:16
And I did the whole mission statement, did the values and weaknesses thing.
00:30:21
And I have been reviewing those for a long time, but I haven't really seen them in the
00:30:26
right light, I guess would be the way to say it, Mike.
00:30:29
Just because it's not something that I've actively tried to make decisions on and change rituals
00:30:35
based on those has just been kind of a, well, here's what I value.
00:30:39
That's interesting.
00:30:40
I'll just kind of keep that in mind.
00:30:41
And then that's where it dies.
00:30:42
And I've never really done anything with it.
00:30:45
But I just want to make that point that sometimes we put some of this stuff in place.
00:30:50
It sounds awesome at the beginning and then over time, it kind of falls away.
00:30:53
And then you do something, you read another book and you reread the original book.
00:30:57
And then it rekindles some of that energy and that motivation to get it up and running
00:31:01
again.
00:31:02
And this is a prime example of that for me, because this is a case where I feel that need
00:31:07
to just be more intentional with that daily cycling that I have going on.
00:31:12
So I've got that, that cycling ritual built in.
00:31:15
I just need to make sure that I'm doing it intentionally.
00:31:18
But that's to me, the ultimate behind the whole of the book is that you have to figure
00:31:24
out where you value things and then where your points of potential lack are, like where
00:31:31
you're potentially weak.
00:31:33
And then look for ways to either increase those or focus on your values.
00:31:37
And whenever you go through the process of building in these daily rituals where you have
00:31:41
these set periods of time and these set ways of doing things to calm yourself down, to
00:31:47
make the transition from work to home, to get yourself fired up at work, you know, to do
00:31:51
a lot of these things.
00:31:52
You have to have these rituals to make those transitions.
00:31:56
And I think if you just think of the whole book as understanding how things oscillate,
00:32:02
take the oscillations and take advantage of building in energy building rituals to help
00:32:08
you combat some of the areas that you tend to be lacking in, I think that sums up the
00:32:14
mass of the book because a lot of the stories they tell are based around those exact principles.
00:32:21
Yeah, I agree.
00:32:23
The big thing that you don't get from the stories though and is the whole sprint and
00:32:31
then recover idea that they talk about.
00:32:35
They mentioned that life is not a marathon.
00:32:37
It's a series of sprints and going back to the energy quadrant, you know, understanding
00:32:45
that I want to bounce back and forth between a high intensity and low intensity to stay
00:32:50
in the positive.
00:32:51
I think that mapping out my day using large blocks on my calendar, just the fact that
00:32:58
I'm putting those in place actually helps me do that better because if I set aside two
00:33:05
hours to work on this video for Asian efficiency and I get done in an hour and a half, then
00:33:13
I have a half an hour to wind down and I'll go do something for that half hour that is
00:33:18
not high intensity.
00:33:20
I'll go do productive meditation like we talked about last time and take my dog for a walk
00:33:25
or something.
00:33:27
And those little pockets of time when you actually set aside, I'm going to work on this
00:33:33
for two hours and the next thing that you're going to work on doesn't have to start for
00:33:37
another 30 minutes.
00:33:39
Like that's the natural inclination then.
00:33:42
In the past, what I would have done is have my list of things which I need to do and I
00:33:49
would still not get everything done.
00:33:51
But as soon as I got done with one thing, I would instantly maintain that high intensity
00:33:55
and jump into the next thing.
00:33:57
But just by framing it a little bit and not having specific times that I'm going to do
00:34:02
this exact thing at this exact time, but just like the blocks of time, I'm finding that
00:34:07
is helping me manage my energy more effectively and that's really the key.
00:34:15
That's what they say in the book anyways and I'm beginning to see that in my own life
00:34:18
is that the real key to high performance is not how you manage your time, but it's really
00:34:24
how you manage your energy because if you manage your energy well, then during those
00:34:28
times when you are head down on a task, you're going to get it done quicker.
00:34:34
You'll be more productive, you'll be more efficient and then you'll have more time,
00:34:39
more disposable time I guess if you want to use the idea of disposable income, not finances,
00:34:45
but time on your calendar.
00:34:46
You'll have more disposable time like that where you can then intentionally ramp down
00:34:51
and I think that is the biggest thing that I got out of this book is recognizing that
00:34:58
those ebbs and flows, those have to take place.
00:35:02
It is impossible to just go, go, go, go, go, go all day long because you will wear out
00:35:07
by the end of the day and you will not be as productive the next day.
00:35:12
If you continually burn yourself out and you do not give yourself a chance to recover,
00:35:17
you don't even realize it a lot of times you think that you've got this, that we're super
00:35:21
human and we're stronger than we think we are, but if you actually look at how effective
00:35:25
you are and a lot of times we just don't ever keep score so we don't have the metrics
00:35:30
in front of us, that's what putting stuff on the calendar is done for me is I can say,
00:35:34
well this task usually takes me two hours to do and then if I manage my energy well,
00:35:39
it doesn't take me two hours to do, it takes me an hour to do it and then I look at that,
00:35:42
I see a consistent pattern there and I'm like, oh yeah, I guess I actually am way more efficient
00:35:47
at this, I get a lot more good ideas, a lot sooner there, there in quicker succession when
00:35:54
I actually apply this stuff.
00:35:55
So the calendar is the way that I'm keeping score I guess, but that's really illuminated
00:36:00
to me that yeah, this is like next level productivity stuff.
00:36:04
A lot of people will focus on the time management and that's good, I mean you do need to look
00:36:09
at your tasks and what you say you're going to get done in the span of a day, all of that
00:36:14
stuff does need to take place within the context of your calendar, what time you've got to
00:36:18
work with.
00:36:20
But if you can take that a step further and start managing your energy, then it just makes
00:36:26
everything simpler, it's a cheat code, it's like the mushroom in Super Mario, your productivity
00:36:33
superhero now, which sounds a little bit extreme and grandiose, but I really do think like I've
00:36:39
seen that just in this week and I have every intention of continuing to manage my time
00:36:44
this way but yeah, it's been really cool.
00:36:48
I can tell you love this.
00:36:50
I do, I do.
00:36:51
Well I didn't really care for the writing style, like the ideas that were in this book.
00:36:56
Right.
00:36:57
I absolutely resonated with me.
00:36:59
Yeah, I know it's fun listening to you kind of go on a little rant, but it seems like
00:37:06
whenever, and I'm prime example of this, I'd fall into this, it's me to a T. When I first
00:37:13
got into the whole productivity space, I was working corporate, I mentioned that all the
00:37:17
time, I had too much stuff trying to pull at my time.
00:37:21
So I did the whole time management thing.
00:37:22
How do I schedule my day?
00:37:24
And then you get into something like this, how do you manage your energy and how do you
00:37:27
make sure that you're on point during that time?
00:37:31
But the funny thing to me is that it's almost like a chicken and egg conversation because
00:37:35
you almost need the energy to make sure that you're planning your time the right way so
00:37:39
that you can manage your energy, but you need to manage your time so that you can build
00:37:42
the energy.
00:37:43
And I get like there's this little cycle that seems to be going on.
00:37:47
It's easier, of course, to do your time management than it is the energy management, in my opinion.
00:37:52
But I'm with you on once you get this kind of time management thing figured out.
00:37:58
And I think honestly, Cal Newport last time hit this to a T of scheduling your time and
00:38:04
how do you focus for a certain amount of time?
00:38:08
He seems to nail that really well.
00:38:09
And then this tells you how do you build the energy so that you can endure that so that
00:38:16
it's not just going to kill you whenever you sit down to do three hours of deep work.
00:38:20
Exactly.
00:38:21
There's a quote in here that I absolutely love.
00:38:23
It said, "Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much
00:38:29
opportunity for being."
00:38:31
I really think especially for a knowledge worker that is so important and really it
00:38:36
doesn't apply just to knowledge workers, I think probably the people that they're targeting
00:38:41
with their corporate fitness or corporate training, university or whatever, they are
00:38:47
going to be more like management level CEO type people that really understand these concepts.
00:38:54
But I think that this is key in this applies to just about anybody.
00:38:59
Yeah, I would agree with that.
00:39:01
I know there's, and he even has some points in here that because if you talk to the older
00:39:08
crowd, I don't know how else to say it, but if you talk to folks who are starting to deal
00:39:13
with say memory loss or physical fitness isn't there, they have to use a cane or a wheelchair
00:39:19
at times.
00:39:20
There's a lot of instances that, and he calls out a few of them, like as we get older, just
00:39:25
the muscles that it takes to take learning a language for example.
00:39:30
He mentioned that because of our society and the way that we tend to do things, we Google
00:39:35
everything, we say we ask our devices to give us the answer to questions.
00:39:41
Whenever you have that ability, you just don't have the need to work your memory muscles nearly
00:39:47
as much and nearly as often.
00:39:49
I've been reading a bunch of articles, like scholarly articles about how helping kids
00:39:56
memorize, because we don't memorize in school really at all anymore, we're always trying
00:40:00
to learn how to find the information instead of memorizing the information itself, such
00:40:05
as like poems and such, but there seems to be a lot of research going on right now about
00:40:09
how having kids memorize things like poems or long blocks of text can actually help them
00:40:18
be top of class and have better writing skills, better speaking skills, and it's purely based
00:40:25
on the memorization versus doing actual training in those areas.
00:40:30
He calls this out a little bit in here too of how if you were to work your memory muscles
00:40:34
in that way, if you're constantly working on memory, then learning a language is not
00:40:39
nearly as difficult as it is for most of us today, because we don't memorize really ever
00:40:46
right now, at least I don't.
00:40:50
I've thought about, do I pick up another language at some point?
00:40:53
I don't really want to do that because it's a pain in the rear and I don't have the time
00:40:56
for it.
00:40:57
Well, it's also partly that I don't have the memory skills right now to handle that because
00:41:01
I haven't been working that muscle.
00:41:04
That's one of the premises here is in order to build a muscle in order to get better at
00:41:09
one of these energy levels, you have to work it a certain amount and then let it recover.
00:41:13
You don't want to overwork it like you were saying earlier, you don't want to underwork
00:41:16
it, but you need to work it so that it can grow and continue to build.
00:41:20
Does that make any sense?
00:41:21
I feel like I just went on a long goat trail.
00:41:24
No, it does make sense.
00:41:27
I think that it really comes back to establishing the why.
00:41:36
You said it's a chicken and egg situation.
00:41:38
You need to establish your why to establish the need to manage your energy to really take
00:41:46
the time to figure out what your why is.
00:41:50
There's a quote in there, "This clarifying purpose takes time, quiet, uninterrupted time,
00:41:54
which is something that many of us feel we simply don't have."
00:41:58
It's true.
00:41:59
If you just look at your schedule right now, you might say, "Well, I don't have the physical
00:42:05
time to sit down and think high level about my life, but if you don't do it, things won't
00:42:11
get easier."
00:42:12
There's going to be pain in the short term, but it really is important.
00:42:20
Where is that other quote he says?
00:42:22
"Oh, the most compelling source of purpose is spiritual.
00:42:26
The energy derived from connecting to deeply held values beyond self-interest.
00:42:33
Purpose creates the destination.
00:42:35
It drives full engagement by prompting our desire to invest focus energy in a particular
00:42:39
activity or goal.
00:42:40
We become fully engaged and we care deeply when we feel what we are doing really matters.
00:42:44
Purpose is what lights us up, floats our boats, feeds our souls."
00:42:50
You could say, "I don't have the time to establish my purpose, but once you take the
00:42:54
time to establish the purpose, everything else gets easier.
00:42:57
If you establish a purpose for wanting to memorize something or learn a new language,
00:43:03
that gets a whole lot easier.
00:43:06
But a lot of people won't take the time to figure that out."
00:43:11
I think it really ties into what he calls a hero's journey.
00:43:17
There's four parts to the hero's journey.
00:43:19
He says the first part is the call to adventure.
00:43:22
The second part is the supreme ordeal.
00:43:24
Third part is the victory and the celebration and the fourth part.
00:43:28
You repeat it.
00:43:29
But most people don't pursue that hero's path.
00:43:33
He says the simple, almost embarrassing reality is that we feel too busy to search for meaning.
00:43:39
I think that's really, really sad.
00:43:41
It's the most important thing I think that we could do is to establish that meaning.
00:43:45
Isn't that pathetic?
00:43:47
I feel like I hate my job.
00:43:50
Well, have you ever figured out what you want to do?
00:43:52
Well, no, I don't have time to figure out what I want to do because I'm too busy hating
00:43:55
my current job.
00:43:57
Exactly.
00:43:59
It just doesn't make sense.
00:44:01
It's so simple.
00:44:03
It seems so simple.
00:44:04
Just sit down and figure out what's your purpose in life?
00:44:07
What's your in mission in life?
00:44:09
I just had a meeting with some guys about a month ago about this of how do you come up
00:44:12
with a mission statement for yourself?
00:44:15
And ultimately what we were getting at is you have to find the way that suits you using
00:44:21
the skills and talents that you have and have been given and find a way to help other
00:44:25
people using those skills.
00:44:27
If you can find a way to help other people do that because if you can help other people,
00:44:31
I mean, you talk to people who are in their 80s and 90s and you ask them, "What's the meaning
00:44:36
in life?"
00:44:37
They'll tell you there's a lot of meanings in life.
00:44:39
And the ultimate that a lot of them ever mention is that they derive a lot of joy and
00:44:46
pleasure out of helping the people around them.
00:44:48
Like that's giving to other people, whether it's time or money, it doesn't matter.
00:44:53
But giving to other people can bring you to that ultimate joy in life.
00:44:57
And if you're finding ways to help others and you make that as part of your vision and your
00:45:02
mission in life, I mean, you've got a pretty good goal to shoot for.
00:45:05
But we don't take time to do this.
00:45:07
I mean, we just don't.
00:45:09
We don't stop long enough.
00:45:10
We're too busy going to soccer practice to figure out what it is that we want to actually
00:45:15
do what the skills we have.
00:45:16
Right.
00:45:17
And he shares a quote in there by Arthur Ashe, who is a pretty famous tennis player, said
00:45:21
"From what we get in life, we make a living.
00:45:24
From what we give, we make a life."
00:45:26
And I completely agree that giving and the focus on others is really, really important.
00:45:34
It's one of the things that attracted me to Asian efficiency in the first place is their
00:45:39
core values line up very much with my family's core values.
00:45:42
The first one is glow green.
00:45:43
Become the best version of yourself that you can.
00:45:46
So that number two, you can pull others up.
00:45:49
It's all about helping people reach their full potential, not just you achieving a certain
00:45:55
milestone or accumulating enough stuff.
00:45:59
That's really, really important.
00:46:03
We've actually articulated our core values as a family.
00:46:08
And I had a graphic designer friend, Jared Picker.
00:46:11
I wish Jared had a Twitter handle.
00:46:13
It's like a point people to him because he's really talented.
00:46:15
But if you have any design needs, he's the one who did the logo for Bookworm by the way.
00:46:21
Does he have a website?
00:46:22
He does not.
00:46:23
Does he know what the internet is?
00:46:28
Yeah.
00:46:29
He's a full time graphic designer for a local company here and he's pretty happy with his
00:46:35
situation, but he does some stuff on the side and he's really, really talented.
00:46:38
But I'll give you a copy of this.
00:46:40
You can put it in the show notes, but he designed the core values that we use for our family.
00:46:46
And there are five of them.
00:46:49
I just want to pull up the image here real quick so I don't mess them up.
00:46:53
The first, yeah, that would be bad.
00:46:58
First one is love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
00:47:01
And so that specifically, like heart, soul, mind and strength, everything that you have,
00:47:05
which is why I wanted to pull this up before I just rattled these off.
00:47:08
All right.
00:47:09
Second one, give selflessly by finding the need and meeting it.
00:47:12
I mean, that really is what you're talking about, but that's really important to us.
00:47:16
And then the rest of them, just so people have reference to these, if you haven't ever
00:47:20
taken the time to do core values, especially as a family, like definitely recommend it.
00:47:23
But third one, lead courageously, always stand for the truth.
00:47:27
Fourth one is impact the culture, leave your own legacy.
00:47:30
And then fifth one is determined to be different and don't settle for average.
00:47:34
And I think specifically in context of this book, average people will be completely, I
00:47:42
won't say happy, but they'll be content.
00:47:44
They won't, there won't be enough pain for there to actually be a change.
00:47:48
I think it was my dad who told me that when pain is sufficient, change will come.
00:47:52
There will be a lot of people who will read this type of material, maybe listen to this
00:47:56
podcast and the pain isn't sufficient enough for them to change.
00:48:01
They're going to be content to complain about their job that they hate and they're not going
00:48:08
to do anything about it, which I think is really, really sad.
00:48:11
There's going to be a lot of people who are going to be stuck in the level one, you know,
00:48:17
trying to manage their time just a little bit better, trying to squeak out a few more minutes
00:48:21
of their day.
00:48:23
And I really, I guess my whole point going down this rabbit trail is establish those core
00:48:29
values and be willing to go deeper, be willing to go beneath the surface, be willing to go
00:48:34
to the next level and manage your energy because I've seen myself a bunch of positive benefits
00:48:43
from this.
00:48:45
And even looking back retrospectively at my life and some of the successes that I've
00:48:51
had, I realized that this is what I was doing at that particular time.
00:48:55
I maybe wasn't aware of it.
00:48:58
And because of that, I wasn't able to keep it going.
00:49:01
You know, I was bouncing back, like I said, between the positive and the negative instead
00:49:04
of just bouncing back and forth between the high and low intensity.
00:49:08
But I really do think that this is really, really critical and people really need to
00:49:13
understand this.
00:49:14
It's fun to me that you have your family mission printed and put on, you put it up
00:49:21
on the wall?
00:49:22
Is that right?
00:49:23
Yep.
00:49:24
Yeah, we did the same thing, which is funny to me because I've never seen anyone else
00:49:28
do it.
00:49:29
It's interesting.
00:49:30
But yeah, we have one too.
00:49:33
It's yeah, I'll grab a picture of that and we can put both of them in the show notes and
00:49:38
that way people can see them.
00:49:40
But I do think, because we need to start wrapping some things up here, but it's interesting
00:49:45
to me whenever you read a lot of books in a similar realm that you run across some names
00:49:53
and they're like researchers or doctors in some form and you run across them in multiple
00:49:58
books and it's sometimes the same study, but coming from a different light and they look
00:50:03
at it a little bit differently.
00:50:05
Okay, I need you to say this name.
00:50:07
Mihali, Cheekset, Mihali.
00:50:10
Yeah, okay, you looked it up.
00:50:11
Good, thank you.
00:50:12
But Mihali was brought up in this book as well and was also in, was it in Deep Work?
00:50:18
What was the other one that they were in?
00:50:21
Yep, it was Deep Work.
00:50:22
Mihali's my boy.
00:50:23
Okay, so Mihali, I just thought it was fun that came up again.
00:50:29
But anyway, for what it is.
00:50:30
Yeah, it talks about flow and I mean it absolutely lines up with what they're talking about here.
00:50:36
It was in the power of full engagement.
00:50:38
I actually wrote down a quote by Mihali in, which I'll share really real quickly.
00:50:43
It says, "The best moments usually occur when a person's by your mind is stretched to its
00:50:47
limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."
00:50:52
And that ties back to the four principles.
00:50:56
That's going to be the third one where in order to build capacity, we have to push beyond
00:51:03
our normal limits, which is really interesting because most people will try to avoid stress.
00:51:09
But stress isn't actually bad.
00:51:12
There can be bad stress.
00:51:13
There can be stress that you're under because of a situation that is totally avoidable and
00:51:18
you just drop the ball and you're living out of emergency scan modality like David Allen
00:51:21
would say.
00:51:23
But the fact that there is stress is not enough to say that this is a negative situation.
00:51:28
Although I guess Ryan Holiday wouldn't even call it a negative situation.
00:51:33
But as a quote near it says, "With stress is not the enemy in our lives.
00:51:36
Paradoxically, it is the key to growth."
00:51:39
So again, managing your energy.
00:51:42
You want to go high intensity.
00:51:43
You want to push the limits of what's possible.
00:51:46
You want to push your boundaries.
00:51:48
And that's what Mihali's talking about.
00:51:50
You want to do that.
00:51:51
You want to get into that state of flow.
00:51:53
You want to enlarge your capacity, so to speak.
00:51:55
And then you want to dial back and you want to recover.
00:51:59
So I want to move on to action items.
00:52:01
And I only have one down this time.
00:52:04
And I want to say it's a cop out, but it might be a cop out.
00:52:08
You can call me out on this if you want.
00:52:11
I simply put down be intentional about my daily routines or my daily rituals.
00:52:19
Just because I do take time, you know, we were talking about this whole cycle of my
00:52:25
day thing a couple of times here.
00:52:27
I do take that time, but I don't always do a good job of making that a renewal time,
00:52:33
I guess.
00:52:34
I'm pretty good about taking the time off, but it's sometimes hard for me to make sure
00:52:39
that my mind is shut off from work so that I'm not focused on, did I get that video
00:52:44
edited?
00:52:45
Did I get that one record?
00:52:46
Where am I at in that process?
00:52:47
Like, I'm not thinking through that.
00:52:49
So I just need to make sure that I'm clearing my mind and maybe there's a ritual there of
00:52:53
something I need to do before I start that.
00:52:55
It's probably maybe an action item there, but I just need to be more intentional about
00:52:59
those times.
00:53:00
I'll let you get away with that one as long as you give me a definition of done.
00:53:05
Like, what does it look like when you successfully do this or unsuccessfully do this?
00:53:09
See, now you got to make it hard.
00:53:11
I got to hold you accountable next time.
00:53:13
It's true.
00:53:14
Okay.
00:53:15
All right.
00:53:16
I'm going to put together a ritual of some sort of a mindset shift whenever I leave the
00:53:24
work mode to go to family mode.
00:53:27
So I'm going to put together some sort of a ritual in that transition.
00:53:31
Does that work for you?
00:53:33
Cool.
00:53:34
Yep.
00:53:35
Okay.
00:53:36
All right.
00:53:37
Your turn.
00:53:38
All right.
00:53:39
So my turn.
00:53:40
The first one I have is to be fully engaged or strategically unengaged.
00:53:43
And another way to say this would be to be in control of the how I manage my energy.
00:53:51
Like I said, there's natural ebbs and ebbs and flows.
00:53:54
You can either go from high to low intensity or you can go from positive to negative,
00:53:58
at least in my experience, it seems to be how it goes.
00:54:03
So instead of defaulting to positive to something, then we'll go wrong and switching
00:54:10
to the negative being intentional about dialing down and then ramping back up.
00:54:18
I believe that if I do that, then the variables in my life, the things that could potentially
00:54:27
swing me into the high intensity, but negative quadrant will not be able to do that.
00:54:34
And if there is something that maybe is not a ideal or good situation that I will be much
00:54:40
being a much better place to deal with it when I am coming out of monk mode, where I'm
00:54:46
laser focused on just doing this thing, cranking out high intensity positive energy.
00:54:51
And then I'm coming down.
00:54:52
Like if that's the point where I am when my wife says, hey, by the way, Malek, I fell
00:54:58
off the slide and needs to go to the emergency room to get stitches, which is a true story,
00:55:03
then I won't fly off the handle.
00:55:07
That does not sound good.
00:55:09
Yeah, no.
00:55:10
So he's good now.
00:55:12
So that's my first action point.
00:55:15
And then the other one here is he they mentioned in the book that they use a they talk about
00:55:22
tennis a lot, actually, and I used to play tennis.
00:55:26
So that kind of resonated with me, but they talk about how the successful tennis players
00:55:31
are the ones who implemented that ritual between points.
00:55:36
And tennis is interesting because you will play a point.
00:55:39
And even if you've got a rally, it's going to last like 30 seconds typically.
00:55:43
And then you've got like another minute or so before the next point starts.
00:55:48
And the really successful tennis players are the ones that during that minute, they have
00:55:52
this ritual where they can kind of calm themselves and refocus.
00:55:57
And that helps them execute better.
00:56:00
And that is what I am seeing reading this book kind of crystallized it for me and showed
00:56:07
me that this is what was actually happening when I was managing my calendar the way that
00:56:12
I am.
00:56:13
I want to not only have the space for those rituals to happen, but I want to figure out
00:56:20
what is the best ritual that I can implement, which won't take very long, but I can use
00:56:26
whenever I have that little bit of a break within my day to manage my energy, come back
00:56:32
down, dial back up before the next point, before the next task and be more effective that way.
00:56:37
It sounds like a tall task.
00:56:40
It is a tall task.
00:56:41
And I probably won't have it completely figured out by next time, but I hope to have something
00:56:45
that I can show you is like, this is what I am doing at the moment.
00:56:48
And these are the results.
00:56:49
Okay.
00:56:50
All right.
00:56:51
I'll look for it.
00:56:54
I wrote down repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat again.
00:57:01
It could have been cut in half.
00:57:03
So it just seemed like the two of them, they would put together a point and then they would
00:57:09
talk about it and then would put the point together again and talk about it again and
00:57:12
again and again and again.
00:57:14
It just got to be long, in my opinion.
00:57:17
I mean, the content, like what they're talking about is awesome.
00:57:21
The concept of oscillations and managing energy.
00:57:23
It's awesome, but it just got really long to me.
00:57:26
Yeah, I agree.
00:57:28
It was, I think, just under 200 pages, if you don't include the PENDX with all the resources,
00:57:34
it probably could have been if you take out the stories and the repeats, maybe 50 or 60
00:57:41
pages.
00:57:42
Yeah, I could see that pretty easy.
00:57:43
So yeah, it's long, in my opinion.
00:57:46
I mean, the last couple chapters, well, I think it's the last three chapters maybe.
00:57:51
No, the last four.
00:57:53
Oh, wow.
00:57:54
The last four, I didn't even underline anything at that point.
00:57:58
I didn't take any notes on it.
00:57:59
I didn't do anything about it.
00:58:01
I just read it.
00:58:03
Because nothing used.
00:58:04
I definitely took way more notes at the beginning than I did at the end.
00:58:10
I'll just reiterate that there were a ton of stories.
00:58:15
So if you really like stories, then you'll probably really like this book.
00:58:19
They got a little bit old for me, and it seemed like after a while, it's like, you're just
00:58:25
making these people up.
00:58:28
But I'm sure they weren't.
00:58:30
That's just the impression that I got is like, okay, you're really trying really, really
00:58:35
hard to show me that there are all these people that I personally can't connect with.
00:58:40
So it seems like they're made up.
00:58:43
And you're just telling me one side of their situation to illustrate your point and you're
00:58:48
doing it over and over and over again.
00:58:50
So it just seemed like, I don't know, if there were real names on the people, like really
00:58:54
factual people, like Ryan holiday did this where he talked about historical people, like
00:58:58
Abraham Lincoln, right?
00:59:00
Teddy Roosevelt.
00:59:01
That would have been a little bit different for me because I have a little bit more of
00:59:05
a frame of reference.
00:59:06
But these people, like you said, it's first name, last initial.
00:59:09
It's like, okay, Roger B. Well, hope your life turns out well.
00:59:13
If you're real.
00:59:14
Yeah.
00:59:15
Yeah.
00:59:16
Like, and if all of them feel fake, they tend to feel like it's the same person.
00:59:21
Like, it feels like it's the same story just going on and on and on and on and on.
00:59:26
That's what it feels like.
00:59:27
Exactly.
00:59:28
That's a great way to describe it.
00:59:29
Like, if you literally, if you change the person's name and it took the person's name
00:59:34
out and just lined up all these stories, you've got the same story told different ways over
00:59:40
and over and over again.
00:59:41
It's kind of the way it seems.
00:59:42
Yeah.
00:59:43
So we figure out like 30 to 40, since there's 30 to 40 of them, it feels like the same story
00:59:47
as being brought up 30 to 40 times.
00:59:49
That's what it feels like.
00:59:51
Right.
00:59:52
So that by itself, you know, that as compared to the content of it, I'm trying to get, figure
00:59:59
out what I want to read this because the actual subject, the content of the process of building
01:00:06
rituals and understanding cycles, like that I want to give a five, but the style of writing,
01:00:13
I want to give a three.
01:00:14
Like, it's just hard.
01:00:16
I don't know if it would go lower than that.
01:00:19
So part of me wants to average that and say a four, but I feel like it's a book, the writing
01:00:25
style and how you come about sharing the information is really important.
01:00:28
That's the whole point behind it.
01:00:30
So I think in this case, Mike, I'm going to have to dip into the three and a half range.
01:00:34
That's fair.
01:00:36
I am going to say, well, let me just say this, that the reason that we are doing this podcast
01:00:43
and the reason that we are reading a lot of books is because we want to improve ourselves.
01:00:51
And from that perspective, I feel like the information that he did share, even though
01:00:58
it was, it took a lot more words than it probably needed to, I believe that this book is very
01:01:06
transformational, especially if you've not read it before.
01:01:09
Like I have, if you've read it before, maybe you have a little bit different perspective
01:01:14
on it.
01:01:16
But for me, this gave me a lot of revelation and insight.
01:01:21
So even though I've got a few issues with the number of stories and maybe how it was
01:01:27
written based on the content alone, I feel like I've got to give it at least four, I'm
01:01:32
going to go four and a half.
01:01:34
That's fair.
01:01:35
That's fair.
01:01:36
I may be colored by the fact that I've read this one other time before.
01:01:42
So if that's probably getting in my way here, that might be part of it.
01:01:48
I just know that I have one naturally built in a lot of this and it just seems natural
01:01:53
to me.
01:01:54
It's just second nature.
01:01:55
And I don't know if that's because I read this or if that's just me.
01:02:00
So it didn't really, I don't think it had anywhere near the impact on me is what it
01:02:05
did on you, which is fine.
01:02:08
Just a difference.
01:02:09
Yeah, and that's completely fair.
01:02:12
But yeah, I really enjoyed the application of the principles in this book, not necessarily
01:02:18
so much reading the book.
01:02:21
But I can see the results, which is ultimately why we read the books in the first place.
01:02:29
So.
01:02:30
Yep.
01:02:31
Yep.
01:02:32
And speaking of reading books, the ones that we have coming up next.
01:02:35
So the next one up on the list is Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.
01:02:40
That one is my choice.
01:02:42
And I've got it here so I can read the tagline.
01:02:44
So the tagline on that one, how will the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way
01:02:48
we live, love, parent and lead.
01:02:51
So this one's going to step us out of some of the, how do you get work done and step
01:02:56
us into relationships, Mike.
01:02:59
We're going to step on the dangerous territory here.
01:03:03
So yeah, anyway, that's my choice.
01:03:05
What did you pick for following that?
01:03:07
I picked Start With Why by Simon Sinek.
01:03:11
I believe that's how you say his name.
01:03:13
I've read Leaders Eat Last, which is a phenomenal book.
01:03:18
And I've been told by several people that Start With Why is even better.
01:03:23
So I am really excited about this one.
01:03:25
Yeah.
01:03:26
Now this is interesting because both Brene Brown of Daring Greatly and Simon Sinek of Start
01:03:33
With Why.
01:03:34
I've done some of the most popular TED Talks out there.
01:03:38
I know Brene's I think is within the top five.
01:03:41
Simon's might be top five as well.
01:03:44
He's got a TED Talk by the same title.
01:03:46
Same title.
01:03:47
Yeah.
01:03:48
I went on a binge of TED Talks for a long time.
01:03:50
So every once in a while I'll say something about a TED Talk that I watch and how this
01:03:54
author was that is because I binged watched like a hundred of them across the period of
01:03:59
a few months at one point.
01:04:00
Yeah, I got into a big TED binge there for a while.
01:04:05
Anyway, getting off of that.
01:04:07
So that's the books coming up.
01:04:08
I do want to point out if you go over to bookworm.fm there is a link at the top right of that
01:04:15
page in the sidebar so you can recommend a book.
01:04:18
So if you have an idea of a book that you want to hear us read and talk about you can
01:04:24
go over there and you can recommend that book there.
01:04:27
There's also same place just scroll down a little bit.
01:04:31
There's a book list that has a list of all the books that we've read are planning to read
01:04:36
and that we've had recommended.
01:04:38
So you can see that full list over there on the website at bookworm.fm.
01:04:42
Nice.
01:04:43
Yeah.
01:04:44
And if you want to engage with us in our podcast book club experiment, you can go over to remarks.fm.
01:04:55
This is something where you can not only listen to the episode, but you can also leave comments
01:05:00
at specific time codes.
01:05:01
And we do check that get notified of any comments that people leave there.
01:05:06
We would also love it if you would go on iTunes and leave us a review.
01:05:11
iTunes is kind of a funky algorithm for how they rank podcasts, but reviews is one of
01:05:16
the things that they rate highly.
01:05:18
So if you are enjoying the podcast and you don't mind leaving us a review, that will
01:05:22
help other people find the podcast as well.
01:05:26
Good work, sir.
01:05:27
And we will get to work reading Daring Greatly.
01:05:30
If you want to join us, pick up the book and we will go through that one in a couple of
01:05:34
weeks.